Cate-o-rin

Bucket Potato!!

2011-07-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

So, today I was teaching some kids how to order foods like barbecue ribs, pork chops, grilled chicken, all those things that they don't eat here in Japan and that these kids probably won't ever eat unless they go abroad, and by the time they actually go abroad, they won't remember this lesson anyway...you know, stuff like that.

So, I'm flashing them the cards one by one. The kids are sounding out the words, trying to read them out loud together. I am painfully doing my best to correct their pronunciation.

I show them a card. "Ok, what's this?"

"FRYY-DO PO-TAY-TO!"

"Uhh, nope. French fries!"

"French po-TAY-to!" they cry in the heat of battle.

"French FRIES!" I repeat.

"French FRY-do!" they call back in a triumphant chorus.

"Um.........ok, close enough."

(I flash a new card)

"Roasto beefu!"

I correct them. "Roast beef."

"Roast beef!" they parrot back.

"Wow, nice one!"

I flash a new card.

"What's this?"

They tell me knowingly, with little smirks on their faces, "Sarada."

"Nooo, that's Japanese. In English, it's SALAD!" (Seriously, in Japanese, salad is called "sarada.")

They muster up some more strength, and then try again. "Salada!"

"SAAA-LID." I draw the word out, slowly.

"SaaalEEEEda." Oh dear god, they sound Spanish now.

"SAAA-lid." I make my body droop as I say the "-lid," emphasizing the intonation in a softer tone at the end.

"Saaaally," they say softly, their bodies drooping to the floor.

"Heh. Um, ok."

(new card)

"What's this?"

"uh-???"

"Let's read it...what's this?"

"uh-???"

"bbbb-....." I prompt them.

"buhhhhh...." they moan.

I give them a little more. "Bayy-..."

They give it back. "Bayyyy....."

"BAH-KEH-TO PO-TAY-TO!"

All movement stops. The room is quiet. Everyone is looking at me, but I'm looking at 9-year-old Ayaka, my mouth frozen in a perfect "o" of surprise.

They watch me. They wonder.

I'm thinking in my head.... "bah-ked potato? neh-ked potato? naked potato? Uaghhh...no."

They look at Ayaka, the source of that.... whatever you'd call it, for some answers.

Finally, I burst. "Bwahhahahahhahahah!"

The kids take their cue, "bwahahahahahahha!"

Ayaka's relieved. She laughs and smiles. We're all crying with laughter, but it's time to turn off the waterworks.

"Haha, ok, that's funny. Anyway, listen. BAY-KT potato!"

"BUCKET POTATO!" they cry in unison.

"Hahahha. Um, no. Listen again. BAYYYKT potato!"

"Baaaaaaayyyykt potato."

"YES!"

The small kid in the back jumps up in delight, "BAH-KEH-TO PO-TAY-TOOO!!!" He raises his fist and does a little dance.

"....no."

"Bwahahahhaha," the room explodes in a sing-song chatter. "Bucket potato, bucket potato, bucket potatoooooo!!!"

Alright, that's it. I stand up. I approach the whiteboard and pick up a marker. I draw. A little here, a little there.

Ahh... a bucket potato.

They roar in what I accept as approval. "Bwahahahhahh!"

I chuckle and mentally pat myself on the back. Oh you're a clever one, you are...

"Ok, next card! What's this?"

"BUCKET beanzu!" they answer decidedly.

Oh crap... no.

"Baked beans!" I cry out to the masses."It's Baked beans!" But they only continue to torment me.

"BAH-KEH-TO BEANZU! BAH-KEH-TO BEANZU! BAH-KEH-TO BEANZUUUU..."

Oh dear, oh dear. What have I done...?

--------

30 minutes and a few hair-graying games later...

"Ok," I tell them. "Time to go! Cushions over there, line up at the door!"

"Wazzzzzzaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!" Cushions, children and stuffed elephants are flying everywhere.

"Ok, Nami, are you ready to order?"

"I'd like the roasto beefu ando za bucket beanzu."

"Ok, Nami... seriously."

"I'd like the roast beef and the the bucket beans."

I point to the picture of beans.

"Very close. But, what is this in English, Nami?"

"Ehhh to, bah---k---?

"baked..."

"Aahhh! Ahhh! Baked beanzu!"

"Oy, ok, good job. See y-"

"SEEE YOUUUUUUUU!" A stampede of children tramples me in the doorway.

"...next week."

Monkey Mako Chan

2011-06-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

I seriously had a breakthrough with my private kid student yesterday. This kid has had me cradling my head and wondering how the hell I'm supposed to teach him anything if he doesn't want to be taught. After he threw the flashcards in my face and told me to go away (in Japanese, of course), I threw those flashcards in the back of my closet. I stopped trying to make him repeat things. I pretty much gave up and just decided to have fun and play with him. I just talked to him, mostly in English, a few Japanese words sprinkled in if he really didn't understand. But he almost never spoke a single English word. I felt like I was wasting his mother's money. I was a fake, a liar. I wasn't a real teacher. Sure, I can teach kids at my school. But that's different. They provide materials, lesson plans, a classroom, Japanese staff to help you enforce the rules. I had no experience in making my own lesson plans, and this kid didn't want them anyway. So, I chased him with stuffed turtles and caterpillars and let him throw plastic apples at me. I performed a play for him where I jumped on a futon pretending to be a monkey jumping on the bed. I fell on my head and I cried for my mama. Then I pretended to be mama, calling the doctor and telling them,"no more monkeys jumping on the bed!" Mako just sat there and laughed his head off while I threw away my dignity, his mother watching the whole thing.

But then something changed, Mako started to trust me. We became friends. I regained my confidence and starting getting more creative ideas. I slowly incorporated interesting ways of learning without him ever realizing it. I bought those plastic capsules filled with little sponges shaped like animals. You put them in hot water and watch them grow. We decided if they were fish, or turtles, or sharks, or starfish. I bought a big fuzzy dice at Tokyu Hands and some pieces of colored felt. I sewed a different colored square of felt on each side of the dice. I counted to three, he threw the dice at me, we looked to see what color and then we ran to find something that was the same color. This whole time he almost never repeated ANYTHING. But slowly, something was changing.

Yesterday, I came into his bedroom bracing myself for more plastic apple abuse, but something was different. Mako-chan suddenly wanted to learn something. We matched foam ABC letters to the letters on a mat, and he repeated A B C D E and F. We threw the dice around and he repeated all the colors as he touched them. We collected everything we could find that was yellow. Then we sat down on his floor and had a snack. We ate mango jelly and drank green tea his mother had brought upstairs on a tray. I felt like I was on a playdate, only I was 25 and he was 3. Recently I had been trying to get him used to hearing and answering the question "Do you like___?" So, I asked him, do you like mango jelly? Instead of answering in Japanese "Un, suki da yo," like he usually does, he said, "Yes!" and gave me a thumbs up. Wow, I thought, progress!

I rubbed my tummy and asked, "Is it yummy?" He nodded, "Yes!" Then he couldn't open his package of crackers and commanded me to open it, "akete!" I pretended not to understand. I made a motion like I was opening something and questioned "Open, Mako? Open?" He nodded and said, "Open!" I said... "Open, please?" He repeated, "OPEN PLEASE!" Well, how about that. I finally got him to say please. And then I opened it for him. Well, my work here is done, I thought.

But then, something even better happened. It was almost time to go and his mother had come up to collect our dirty dishes. I was cleaning up the plastic food toys that littered the floor. There should be seven french fries but I counted only four. I asked Mako, "Mako, where are the french fries? French fries please!" He raced to retrieve them from under the sofa and brought them to me. Trust me, he had never obeyed a request like this before. I said, "Thank you," and he repeated, "THANK YOU!" I laughed. Hmm.. maybe this was the the chance I'd been waiting for. I handed the fries to his mother and said, "Here you are." She said, "Thank you." I motioned for her to hand the fries to her son and say "Here you are." She did, and I can't believe what happened next. Mako said "Thank you," and then he passed them to me and said, "Here you are!" I was literally about to cry with happiness. For months, I couldn't even get him to say, "Thank you," and now he was saying, "here you are." This was too much progress for one lesson. I was sure he would soon be bored, I was ready to stop there and take the progress I could get. But then, Mako tells his mother he wants to do it AGAIN. Doubtful, I ask him, "One more time?" He says, "One more!" I hand the fries to his mother, we do our little conversation, she hands them to Mako, he says his lines perfectly, he passes them to me again, and we continue like this for maybe 7 rounds. Here you are. Thank you! gobble gobble gobble. Here you are. Thank you! gobble gobble gobble. Mako loved every minute of it. And so did I!

Now, I can't wait for next Monday.

A set of Very Hungry Caterpillar-themed cards
we sometimes "play" with

Oh. Hello again.

2011-06-06T17:37:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long absence. You know, busy with moving and worrying about earthquakes and radiation and whether all those people up in Northern Japan are okay. I just saw pictures taken by some friends who went to volunteer for a few days over the weekend. The piles of rubble are insane- as high as the houses sitting next to them. I would have liked to volunteer as well, but I noticed there were only men in the group that went up North. Apparently they thought clearing rubble was too hard for someone like me. (Yeah, fair enough, they're probably right.)

Anyway, the aftershocks finally stopped about a month or so ago. Every so often we still get an earthquake, but it's a small one. I don't even know what's happening with the nuclear power plant anymore. I haven't turned on my TV in a long time and frankly, I like it this way. I was tired of being nervous all the time. I just needed to get on with life.

Apparently, so did everyone else. Life in Tokyo seems business as usual. People are out and about shopping and eating and all those things they do.

Personally, things are pretty good right now in my corner. Being a newly single foreigner in Japan, I am excited to have the freedom and the independence to really get to know this place better than ever. I no longer have a Japanese guy I can depend on for help with translation, question asking, buying electronic appliances, etc. It can be scary to approach someone and try to explain something in Japanese because you never know what new word they're going to say that might trip you up, or whether or not they're going to panic and tell you they can't help you because they don't speak English, even though you're trying you hardest to speak THEIR language. Sometimes I just can't stand the awkwardness. I'm sure I make it awkward as well, but when we're both awkward about the fact that I'm not Japanese and my Japanese isn't perfect, it's just painful sometimes. But, in the past couple of weeks I've done a bunch of things that I have seriously put off for months and months because I was lacking confidence about my Japanese ability. Finally, I think I'm gaining some confidence in that regard.

1. I went to a hair salon and got a haircut using only Japanese. Granted, the haircut sucked afterward, but at least I got some Japanese practice. Now I know that just because the salon is close to my apartment, that doesn't mean I should go there. Seriously, this girl just didn't care. She parted it to the side, whacked off a couple of inches and said she was done. I mean, I know I told her to just cut it and then do what she thought was appropriate. Back in America they would put some layers in without even asking you, make it look nice. It wasn't until the next day that I discovered the worst part. If you don't get the part lined up exactly as she had it, then strands of hair fall on the wrong side and look at least an inch or two longer than the rest of my hair. I had to fix this with my craft scissors in the bathroom.

2. I went to the Suginami City Office and finally asked them why my recent health insurance bill had appeared to double, and whether it would continue at this rate. They did explain, and I mostly understood. There were a few points I didn't quite get, but I'm gonna chalk that up more to my atrocious math skills rather than any lack in my Japanese ability. Anyway, I was relieved to find out that everything made (relatively) perfect sense and from now on I'll be charged at the normal monthly rate. Thank heavenly goodness.

3. I called my landlord yesterday and asked if he could do anything about my clogged sink in my bathroom. It's been clogged since a week after I moved in. That was about four months ago. Right now, as I write this blog post, there's a dude in my bathroom fixing it. Truth is, I could have emailed the company that helped me get this apartment (they speak English) and they could have called the landlord for me and translated. But why not cut out the middleman? I've been studying this language for 3 years now. It's time to frickin use it! And now, use it I have.

Earth: a salon where the hairstylists don't give a crap

Life is also good because this weekend was especially fun-filled and relaxing. I did all my usual favorite things- studied Japanese in a coffee shop, sang karaoke for two hours by myself belting out Madonna, Michael Jackson, Weezer, Lady Gaga, and more. They didn't have Fiona Apple's "Criminal" anymore. Apparently her popularity has waned in Japan. I'm pretty upset about that one. That was seriously my best karaoke song.

Anyway, after that I went to the neighborhood Sento (public bath house) and took a nice long soak. Super relaxing. I was also surprised to see a girl with tattoos in there. She wasn't kicked out, in fact, no one paid her any attention. Usually these kinds of places, particularly Onsen- that is, natural hot spring- would strictly forbid people with tattoos from entering. Once upon a time the only people with tattoos were the Yakuza (mafia). However, I'm guessing since my neighborhood is famous for having lots of tattoo-adorned, thrift-store-clothed, guitar-toting young people, the most popular neighborhood sento has adopted a lax policy towards tattoos. No tattoos, no customers...

The other highlights of my weekend included seeing a Paul Klee exhibit at the MOMAT (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) and then going to a pop idol group concert. The exhibition was really interesting. I always knew Paul Klee was famous because we briefly studied him in art history class in college, but I never gave him much notice. It turns out... we have a lot in common. He loves yellow, orange and green, too! Every time I stood next to a painting, someone said something like, "Oh, you match the painting!!" I swear I had no intention in matching his color palette when I was dressing that morning. I did get a lot of enjoyment out of his colors though.

Below is a photo I took of a postcard of my favorite painting in the show. Then, below that is one of my paintings from my junior year in college, during my western phase. Note the abundance of yellow and orange in both images.

Paul Klee, 1922

As for the pop idol concert, well it started with the visit to the art museum. I went to the museum with a few friends and acquaintances. One girl mentioned that she was going to her cousin's concert that evening. She explained that her cousin was in a teen pop idol group called Paspo (ぱすぽ), which is short for the English word "passport." The group consists of 10 girls all in their teens. Their costumes and songs have a bit of an airline theme to it, meaning they push suitcases around stage for a few seconds at the beginning and then salute the audience a lot. Some are short and cute, some are tall and model-esque. All are skinny, with long pony tails, short skirts, and high voices. I never expected to attend something like this, but my friend suddenly realized her other friend wasn't going to make it and she needed an extra person to take the ticket. That's how I found myself accepting an invitation to a teen idol concert. After a second's thought, I figured, well, I never made it to a Hanson concert when I was 10 years old, now's my chance to see what this sort of event is like. I had no idea what I was in for.

In America, one would expect to see an audience largely made up of young pre-teen or teenage girls, desperate to grow up beautiful and popular like their idols. But this concert was totally unexpected. I'd say 98% of the audience was male. On top of that, probably half of those males were over 30, perhaps even in their 4os or 50s. They knew all the lyrics and dance moves by heart. Some of them had obviously practiced together at home, or in the park. (On any given Sunday afternoon you can often simultaneously see dozens of various groups practicing dance moves, singing in a circle, or playing an instrument in Yoyogi park-perhaps I've seen some of these guys on a Sunday afternoon, faithfully practicing their Paspo dance moves). Anyway, there was one group of about 10 young guys (they looked about 15 years old) at the back of the concert hall with a huge pile of glow-sticks on the floor (backup, in case the sticks ran out out of juice). They held glow-sticks in each hand and did synchronized dances while singing along. The sticks made it feel a bit like a rave or something. What's more, everyone else in the audience was holding glow-sticks, too. Each girl in the pop group has a designated color- ie. pink, yellow, red, green. Our friend's cousin was the blue girl. So we wore blue glow-stick bracelets in support of our friend's cousin. Everyone in the audience held a different colored glow-stick depending on which girl was their favorite.

To be honest, the fact that there was so much importance placed on the idea of which girl was most popular, and that the entire audience was male, suggested to me that this whole thing was less about the music and more about fetish-izing the girls. I mean.. half the time the girls weren't even singing. They would put one of the more popular girls out on stage by herself and she would dance to a song by herself. The crowd loved it, but honestly it's apparent these girls aren't really dancers. It was mostly a lot of jazz hands and simple, easy cheerleader moves. No flips or anything fancy like that. At the end of the show, they announced that anyone who bought a CD could line up to meet and take a picture with their favorite girl. Each time a girl was requested, they would announce it over the loudspeaker and she would run to greet her fan and laugh at his jokes and give him a hug and take a picture with him. Some girls were called up over and over again, like 20 times, while others (including our friends cousin) got called over only two or three times. It was a big popularity contest. According to our friend, the manager is pretty mean to them, as well. I just can't imagine the terrible pressure and distorted self-image that weighs upon these young girls.

But there I go, trying to bring my feminist ideals into a teen idol pop concert. It was a fun experience though, no doubt about that. I especially enjoyed it when that group of boys lent us some glow-sticks and we tried to follow their synchronized dance moves. I can't say I'll ever attend another event like this, especially as my ticket was free this time, but I valued the cultural experience. Only in Japan, eh?

Get ready for take off, it's PASPO!

Bad Man On Plane

2011-01-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting on a plane from Japan to New York. The guy next to me is some overweight American guy and by the window is his Asian girlfriend. Thankfully, I have the aisle seat, but the cute baby I admired earlier at the gate is now screaming bloody murder. And only two measly rows ahead of me. I accept the fact that I will not be sleeping on this flight. Time to watch some movies.

It soon becomes clear that my headphone jack is irretrievably broken, meaning that I have 12 hours and 45 minutes to NOT watch movies or TV. Well, that's great. Apparently Delta doesn't bother to maintain their equipment. An announcement overhead informs me that if I am interested in signing up with the Delta Airlines sky miles program, I should contact a flight attendant. Well contact this Delta.

I recall my experience on an American Airlines flight where I could choose from a menu of movies from my own personal TV on the back of the seat in front of me. And oh, how well it worked, too. On this flight, I have to lean out into the aisle and squint my eyes to see the screen all the way in the front of the cabin. At least now, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't be able to hear it anyway.

This is what they DIDN'T have on my Delta flight.

I politely ask the guy next to me if his headphone jack is working properly.

"Cause, uh, mine doesn't seem to be working." That baby releases a deathly scream that makes the hairs on my neck stand up. Talk about foreshadowing.

"Let me see. Yeah it's working."

"Oh, okay. So I guess it's just mine then."

"Yep, guess so."

"Hmm... this sucks. I wonder what I should do."

"You should tell them. Maybe they can fix it."

"Yeah, okay. I guess I'll do that."

The happiest flight attendant I've ever met conveniently comes sashaying down the aisle with her drink cart.

"Hey baby, what kin I git for you?"

"I'll have ginger ale, please."

"Okay, honey... one ginger ale, coming right up. There you go sweetie."

"Thank you."

"OH, you're SO welcome honey!" she says in a deep, appropriately honeyed voice. She seems overly pleased that I've bothered to thank her. Even though I overheard all three in the row ahead say exactly the same thing. I wonder if she'll be as pleasant at the end of the flight as she is now.

"By the way, my headphone jack doesn't seem to be working. Is there anything we can do about it?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, honey. There's really not much we can do."

"Are there any other seats available?"

"Well, not unless you wanna sit in the middle?"

"Ah, I see. Okay, I'll stay here then. Thanks anyway."

"Sorry, sweetie pie," she purrs over blood curdling baby shrieks. She glides away.

Oh. This is not good.

I turn to the guy next to me. "Sorry, I was wondering... do you think you're gonna watch any movies?"

"Well, yeah I mean I don't want to say I'm not, cause if there's something good, I definitely wanna watch. Sorry."

"Oh. Okay..."

"You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, sure, I understand."

Jerk.

I pull out a book and start reading as the baby continues to wail in despair. Yes, baby, I know.
This is seriously going to be the longest flight ever.

Here's Delta.. the worst airline I've ever flown...

I'm working on my laptop hours later, studying some Japanese, when I feel something slither into my lap. I peer down in the darkness. The guy next to me is grabbing my hand, yet he seems to be asleep.

I pick up the vile, ghastly thing and put it back where it belongs. His eyes never opening for a second. Okay, no one has to know.

Tap tap tap, I'm typing away. Tap tap ta--What the?

That beast's got his elbow all up in my space and he's still asleep. I don't even understand how he can sleep through all that crying and shrieking anyway. I give a good shove and make sure that revolting limb withdraws into it's hole.

"So," I think, "the jerk told me I couldn't use his headphone jack and now he and his lady friend are out cold. Two movies have played already and yet not one of us in aisle 27 has been able to enjoy them. Unbelievable."

I start typing again. Though, I continue to deal with the advances, ever increasing in frequency. It attacks, I thwack, it retreats. It worms it's way back, I smack, it recedes. Elbow-wrestling is on it's way to becoming a regular in-flight pastime. As I'm fighting to the death, for the right to some peace and a bit of space, super-happy flight attendant is cooing down the aisle.

"Would you like some water, honey?"

"Yes, please."

"Would you like some water, baby?"

"Yes, thanks."

"Would you like some water, sugar baby?"

"Um.... no?" Can't she see I'm busy? I search her eyes for any possible recognition of what I'm going through.

"Ok, sugar." And she's gone.

Man, it is like way past my bedtime.

I try typing with my left hand, using my right to keep that repugnant creature at bay. Tap tap tap, bam! Take that you repulsive creep. I stop typing. I sit. I watch, ready to block it's next move. I see it coming. Those horrid hairy arms uncrossing, the left one raising up in the air and reaching it's peak, and then it's coming, sailing down around my head. I freeze in terror, unsure, unable to react. And then...

Oh no you did not!

He has actually put his arm around me. It is resting on my shoulder, the hand like a spider on my back. He has a vulgar grin on his face. I do not like that face. Does he think I'm his girlfriend, or is something super scary going on here? And why won't he just wake up already? I mean, is he used to getting battered in his sleep? I don't even want to know what kind of relationship those two have. She seems all sweet and innocent, but who knows...

Well, it's time to send the beast running. I pick it gingerly off my backside and throw it back in his chest. My sleep-stunned opponent falls back in befuddled confusion. He turns the other way, with his over-sized rear facing me. Finally, now I can get some work done.

I'm in the zone. Tap tap tap. I am so productive. Tap tap. I'm gonna be quite the Japanese expert when I get off this airplane. Oh yeah, this is great, maybe it's--

That thing has come back for more. And this time it's enveloped me in both furry limbs, it's head nestled in the crook of my neck. Oh god, help me. Now it's attempting to lace it's digits in mine. This can not go on.

"Hello, excuse me.." I'm tapping on his arm.

"Hello? Um... please wake up." The tapping gets desperate.

"PLEASE. Come on. WAKE UP."

He snorts and a long, groaning, "Huh?" escapes his mouth. His eyes open for the first time in what seems a century.

"Excuse me, you're..."

"OH GOD!" The man recoils from my side-- as if I'm the one being a creeper.

"Um, yeah... wrong direction."

"Sorry. I, uh, I thought you were her," he stutters, jabbing his thumb in that general direction.

"Yeah, I see that. Whatever. Don't worry about it."

The girlfriend wakes up. "What's going on?" she demands.

"Well, I thought she was you."

"What!?"

"Nevermind, let's go back to sleep." He burrows his face deep into her inadequate bosom.

So they're really not gonna watch a single movie? Okay, fine. Time for justice buddy. I fish out my headphones from the seat pocket and insert them into his headphone jack. Looks like a good one is just starting. Too bad they'll miss it...

What don't you like about your job?

2010-09-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

I know that learning or teaching a foreign language is a situation that naturally results in misunderstandings and awkwardness, but seriously people, today was something else:

4:30pm

Me: Wow, Fusae, that was great. Ask me another question using the grammar structure, "What don't you like about..."

Fusae: Okay. What don't you like about your job?

Me: Um... geez. Okay, ask me about my neighborhood.

7:25pm

Student: My parents had flower arrangement marriage.

Me: Um, sorry?

S: Ahh, my parents had arrangement marriage.

Me: Arrangement?

S: Ahh, I mean arranged marriage. My parents had an arranged marriage.

Me: Ahh, ok... Wow, really? That was pretty common in Japan in the past, right?

S: Yes. I have arranged marriage, too.

Me: Oh........ Wow, really? That's.... so interesting.

S: Yes. What do you think about arranged marriages?

Me: What do I think? Oh, gosh.. I dunno. I mean, it's so different from my culture. It's, well, interesting. So... uh... do you have any siblings?

8:23pm

female student: What is your personality? Are you outgoing?

male student: Well, when I meet new people I am usually shy. But, sometimes when I meet people I am outgoing.

fs: How about you Ken, are you outgoing?

Ken: Yes.

fs: Really, why do you think so?

Ken: I like to go outside. I like to play sports and traveling.

fs: ehh????

male student: ehh????????

Me: Um, do you like to meet people, Ken?

Ken: No.

9:15pm

So, I was tired of explaining to students that it is NOT okay to sit there like a dead fish while someone else is talking. How many times do I have to tell them that eye contact is important, and so is verbal response, whether it be a simple laugh or an "oh really?" This time, I didn't even bother with my speech. I came up with another solution. I liken it to when an audience is watching a live talk show. At certain designated moments, a flashing sign that reads "applause" tells people when to put their hands together.

Tonight, the usual male, intermediate-level students in their 30s sat around the table with their their mouths hanging open and their eyes focused on the carpet as Yoko the 40-something spoke under her breath-- literally, in a whisper, about her family. Her eyes, too, were focused on the carpet.

Me: How about you guys, are you more like your mother, or your father?

Yoko: I'm more like my mother.

Male student 1: dead fish

Yoko: Because my dad doesn't care about other people.

Male student 2: dead fish dead fish

Exasperated, I snatch my piece of scrap paper and scrawl at the bottom in BIG letters:

REALLY? OH YEAH? WOW!

The students look at me expectantly. Any chance to get me talking is an even better chance to let them be silent. Good thing they're in a conversation class, right?

I point to the word REALLY?

Male student 1: Oh really?

Yoko: Yes. And he's very selfish.

Male student 2: speaking of fish, this one is DEAD

Male student 1: and this fish has up and died all over again

10 minutes later...

Male Student 1: I've run 10 marathons.

Yoko: dead fish

(I point to Wow!)

Yoko: Wow!

Male student 1: Yes.

(I point to Really?)

Yoko: Really? Where?

Male Student 1: In Japan.

Yoko: ...

(I point to Oh yeah?)

Yoko: Oh yeah? Where in Japan?

Male Student 1: Near Tokyo.

Yoko: ...dead...............................................fish.

Male student 2: dead fish that was eaten so long ago by other fish that they, too, have also died

(I point to Really?)

Yoko: Really?

Male student 2: maybe he's actually dead?

Bon Bon Bon!

2010-08-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

This summer break I went on a 5 day trip to Nagano prefecture. It's located Northwest of Tokyo prefecture (see above map for more detail). I've been to the prefecture before but that was to a different area. Anyway, the first few days I went to Matsumoto. It took about five hours by bus to get there. I don't remember much of that city, but here is the one thing I really do remember: the Matsumoto city theme song that was blasted on repeat for over 5 hours from speakers that hung from light posts around the city streets. ( Note to reader: I don't know why everything seems to be in five's in this blog post, but I will try to continue this trend now that I've noticed it.)

"Bon bon Matsumoto Bon Bon Bon. Bon Bon Matsumoto Bon Bon Bon."

So simple. So pure. So genius.

It's my fifth new favorite song and it will never leave my head, at least not for the next five months. For your own amazing experience of the Matsumoto Bon Bon festival, watch this video below. (Watch it five times if you please.)

After the festival, I remember seeing a castle that I assume was called Matsumoto Castle. I climbed to the top, I think there was probably a beautiful view. Mostly I waited in the dark unlit interior of the castle behind a long snake of people, as I waited to climb the dozens (or maybe there were five?) of identically steep and narrow staircases up to the top. I also remember going to a hot spring on a roof with an amazing view of the city and the mountains surrounding it. I was naked on the roof of a building. I have no idea if people could see me, but I guess in Japan they don't care about those things. Apparently I took pictures, more than five. (Are you sick of it yet?)

After Matsumoto, I went to Kamikouchi. It didn't take five hours to get there. It took one and a half. I stayed in a Japanese style inn (called a ryokan) with the traditional tatami mat floors. People wore the casual kimono (actually called yukata) and slippers around the place and took advantage of the free hot spring. I'm just crazy about hot springs- they are super relaxing. There is nothing like scrubbing every inch of your body clean and then soaking in a hot tub of water. There was also another private onsen you could use for free. They had to drive you to it cause it was in a cave. A cave I tell you! How cool is that?

But seriously, Kamikouchi is a beautiful place. It's situated in a gorgeous river valley among the something-something Alps (in case you couldn't tell, I can't remember which Alps because just about every mountain range in Japan is called "the blabbity blabbity Alps"). The river's water was so clean and clear you could see right through to the bottom and it was a gorgeous green color. It was also extremely misty, which made everything very mystical and mysterious. The weather was also extremely cool. We were able to sleep with our windows open to let the cool breeze in at night. It was quite a relief from living in Tokyo, where the heat is simply brutal.

Also, where else can one eat an ice cream cone, in the rain, while hiking in the mountains? Yes, there was a souvenir shop selling ice cream. I couldn't help myself. And it wasn't raining until I stepped outside of the shop with my freshly bought cone. Call it bad timing, or denial of iffy looking clouds in the sky. Either way, I felt a bit ridiculous, but also really enjoyed my ice cream.

The other exciting part was eating at a restaurant where I watched the staff pulling fish out the river, sticking them on skewers in one, big, violent thrust, then ripping out their organs, and putting them on an open fire to cook. A good while later at my table, a delicious set lunch of grilled fish, rice, Japanese pickles, miso soup, and other assorted goodies was set before me. I was told I could eat the entire fish-- head, tail, fins and all. You could even eat the eyes, the bones, the teeth! Oh my! My companion just bit right into the head and ate that whole darn fish in a few gulps. Craziness! I managed to eat everything, but the head. It was a mighty delicious fish, though. I've never had fresher.

I Actually Write like... http://www.richardclegg.org/write/

2010-08-04T21:30:00.001-07:00

I actually write like
a moonstruck lunatic possibly actually wearing a straightjacket

I Actually Write Like Analyze your writing!

Is THIS what I look like?

2010-08-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

I do not understand the Japanese custom of ooohing and ahhhing over people right to their faces. I went with a Japanese friend to hear his friend perform at a live house. The crowd was not your bubbly giggly crowd by any means, but as soon as he introduced me to a couple of his friends, the girls turned into cooing, squealing old ladies. It was nuts, I tell you!

"kawaaiiiiii!! Ningyou mitai ne! sugoiii kawaiiiii!"
{translation: cuuuuuute! She looks like a doll! SOOOO adorable!!" }

For one, I was a bit offended to be compared to the likes of something I find rather creepy (see photo above). But also, couldn't they have waited for me to go buy a drink or something, before making me want to die of embarrassment? And they didn't stop. I'd say thank you and hope that would be the end of it. The conversation might wander off for a bit, and then there would be a lull and "OOOOHH KAWAIIIII!!!" It would start all over again. Maybe they were just trying to be nice. Maybe they had nothing else to say. But holy geez! Just cause I have pasty white skin, blue eyes, and hair that isn't black? Get over it!

I mean, if I was back in the U.S. and I met someone from a foreign country--actually, if I met anyone really-- and I was to ooh and ahh over them like that they would probably smack me, or put me in an insane asylum, or maybe just call me a freak. Either way, it's not something we consider normal.

To make matters worse, one of the girls found out that she knew my roommate, who is also Japanese. Later that night she was text messaging my roommate, letting her know she had met me and that I was super cuuuuuuute and looked like a doll. What's with this doll stuff? I'm a human, okay? If you wanna call someone a doll, do it behind their back.

It's been suggested I sell my recipes to McDonalds...

2010-08-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

The hamburgers have gotten out of control...

Yes, this is what I did on my day off. And yes, I plan to do it again.

Who is William Gibson?

2010-08-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

So I just heard about this website, forgive me if it's totally old news, I live in Japan.... so sue me. Anyways, you plug in a sample of your writing, hit a button, and the site analyzes your writing to tell you which famous author you write like. It said I write like William Gibson. Too bad I've never heard of him. But according to Amazon.com he is a science fiction writer. Already I am displeased. Here is a list of some of his titles: Neuromancer, Johnny Mnemonic, Pattern Recognition, Count Zero, Burning Chrome... I can honestly say I've never been less interested in reading someone's books before.

The sample of writing I used was simply a blog post from this very same blog. Imagine that! Who knew this was a science fiction blog!

Anyway, here's where you can find out who you write like:

http://iwl.me/

I write like
William Gibson

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

26 Year-old learns to ride bike

2010-06-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

There's this group of islands in the south of Japan, called the Izu Islands. Considered part of Tokyo, they are actually managed by the Tokyo government, but it takes over 9 hours by ferry to reach them. One island that goes by the name of Nijima, though not a particularly spectacular island, has become extremely favored by the foreigners in my circle of friends and acquaintances. Perhaps it can be attributed to the fact that this place is pretty much the exact opposite of touristy. There is one hotel, there are 2 supermarkets, literally no convenience stores (seriously, what a shocker in Japan!), one bakery, one pizza shop, one tiny history museum, and two hot springs. There are two beaches, one littered with blocks of concrete, the other littered with surfers battling the terrifying waves that crash you into large rocks that batter your shins and trap your feet so that when a wave comes you fall flat on your face. I obviously thoroughly enjoyed my 10-minute water-treading session.

Really, I enjoyed my trip there-- both of my trips there, actually. Considering my raving review above of the island, you must be wondering why I bothered to go back there again. Well, I could say that it was nice and relaxing, that I enjoyed camping out, lying on the beach, cooking food on a grill outside, and riding a bicycle to town to buy food or go to the hot spring. Yeah those things were nice the first time, but the second year was like.. um hey, didn't I do this last year?

Okay, so maybe I'm not the tiny, quiet island-type. Or maybe I like variety and I don't really enjoy visiting the same place twice. I've never been a huge fan of visiting the same museum, restaurant, or park more than a few times. It gets old quickly. Actually, I can't stand walking the same seven-minute route to the train station every day. Anyway, I got a little bored my second time around visiting this island.

However! This trip did have it's highlights, or highlight... I should say. On this island, I taught my 26 year old friend to ride a bicycle. Yes, I know what you're thinking. 26 years old and he didn't know how to ride a bicycle? I don't know why. Ask his parents. What normal parent doesn't teach their child how to ride a bicycle? Nevertheless, this guy had literally never set foot, or perhaps I should say bottom, on a bicycle before. I must add though that he never really seemed like the outdoorsy type.

Now, here's where I should mention that if you stay on this island it's pretty much impossible to get around without a bicycle. I mean, sure if you want to walk, go right on ahead. That's what this guy had to do the first time he visited Nijima. His friends all rented bikes and took like 15, 20 minutes to get to town to buy food or visit the hot spring. He had to walk. You can imagine how long it took. I'm sure it was not a pretty sight. From what I gather, he mostly ended up sitting alone at the campsite while everyone else happily rode their bicycles and frolicked around in their bathing suits in the hot spring with a gorgeous sunset view.

This time around, it was insisted that he learn to finally ride a bike. Two of his friends agreed to teach him. The three rented their bikes, took them to a parking lot, and let the learning begin. Evidently it did not go so well, as about a half an hour later I rode by to find the guy alone in the parking lot rather disheveled and sweaty.

My offer to try teaching him was quickly rebuffed with "I can't," or "I'm too old," or "I look like an idiot," and so on. I set to riding my own bike around the lot, quietly trying to figure out exactly what I was doing when I rode a bike. Eventually, I tried to explain: push down hard on the pedal with one foot and get the bike moving. Keep good posture so as to stay balanced, and as quickly as possible, get that other foot on it's pedal. You want to start pedaling immediately and not slow down. If you lose momentum, you lose your balance. But the guy was so sure that if he put that second foot up on it's pedal, he would fall. He would get the bike going and I would cry, "Yes! That's it! Now get that other foot up and keep going, don't stop!" and then that foot would hit the ground. "Aw, come on. Don't put your foot down. You had it!"

"No. I was going to fall," he insisted. "I'm never going to be able to do this. You can go. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

We went on like this for probably an hour and I realized literally the only thing keeping him from being able to ride that bike was his fear of falling.

"Don't be silly. Where are you going to fall to? The ground isn't that far away. You might get a little scrape or bruise, but that's nothing. When you get that urge to put your foot down, resist. Don't do it. Instead, just keep pedaling!"

And then thirty, maybe forty minutes later... oh my god. I swear there was music playing in my head, like when a kid finally makes that home run in some feel-good family movie. He just did it. He rode that damn bicycle. It was a miracle.

And that was, seriously, the highlight of my trip. Seeing this grown man overcome his fear and learn to ride a bicycle at age 26, that was just super inspiring. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside.

You can go ahead and say, "Aww," now (or puke, whatever you prefer).

My MacDonarudo.

2010-04-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you unleash me in a room with small children and plenty of free time...I start asking what kinds of food they like:

Do you like candy?
Do like strawberries?
Do you like hamburgers?

and then suddenly I'm asking them if they like cat watermelon hamburgers or, better yet...television, watermelon, zebra hamburgers.

I think I've stumbled upon new artistic subject matter. yeah?

Am I Invisible?

2010-02-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

You know the stereotype that Japanese people bow a lot? Well, it's not a stereotype. It's true. It's very common to bow to any one you are parting ways with. However, it's usually in formal or business situations. Shop clerks and restaurant staff always bow to customers, employees will bow to co-workers or bosses. I think, perhaps, it's especially important to do it for someone who is superior to you in age, social standing, or position in the company. Depending on their degree of importance, you have to adjust the change the angle degree of the bow. If they are a lot more important than you, you should bow really low. Anyways, I don't know much about it because I'm never really in a situation where I need to know this. Since I'm a foreigner, no one expects me to bow. Right now I'm focusing on the language, not the customs. One thing at a time.

Anyway, I remember noticing a ridiculous amount of bowing one time on the bullet train from Tokyo to somewhere far, maybe Nara. There were these female train staff in their fancy matching uniforms that made them look like flight attendants. They were walking up and down the aisles, passing from car to car for no apparent reason that I could glean. Every single time they exited a car they would open the door, turn around to face the people in the car and give a low bow before going out the door. If there was a group of them, each one would stop and give a bow before exiting. It seemed like these girls were stopping and bowing and going in and out of doors every 10 minutes. All I could think is, no one notices their bowing except me, the foreigner, and I certainly don't care if they bow to me or not. Is anyone really going to be offended if they exit the train car without bowing first? I know I may be missing something culturally, but I just found it rather excessive--to the point of being quite funny.

Another thing I've noticed is that people often bow when they get off trains and part ways with someone. The other night when I was on my way home from work, there weren't any seats so I was standing in the the middle area near the doors. There was a group of people standing a few feet away from me. As the train doors opened, most of the group got off the train and one of the remaining members was saying her deeply polite "goodbyes" and "thank yous" and "you've worked hard's" (Sayonara, arigatou gozaimashita, otsukaresama desu.. etc) to these people who must have been in a higher position than her, maybe even her bosses, but I don't know.

As she was spewing this ridiculous string of intensely polite greetings, she was rapidly bobbing her top-half up and down, up and down, so devotedly, so eagerly, that she failed to notice my presence about a foot or two away. Suddenly, mid-bow, her head landed right on my shoulder. I moved away, quite surprised and she didn't even seem to notice. She continued right on bowing. I couldn't help but laugh. I had just been bowed on!

And for a treat, here's a funny picture I found of Obama bowing to Emperor Akihito last November. It looks pretty funny cause the two are supposed to be in equal standing--both world leaders, and yet the Emperor is giving a very shallow bow and Obama is bowing like a lowly servant. It's also pretty funny that he's shaking hands at the same time. People don't usually shake hands in Japan--unless they are greeting foreigners and they are aware of the custom. I kind of love that he did that, though. So very hilarious..

The Cutest

2010-01-24T23:08:00.000-08:00

This is a Japanese TV ad campaign for beans that is running right now. It seems to be a national phenomenon. Fuzzy plush bean dog toys, bean dog mugs, notebooks, pencils, are being sold in gift shops all over. And I love it! In fact, I've had an image of one of these things as my blog picture for like over a year and I never knew what it was.

The idea is someone's about to sit down and eat their meal when a bean starts talking to them. Th e bean is super cute and has ears, so it kinda looks like a litte dog. Hence the name, bean dog. The bean dog tells them some random disturbing bit of trivia, such as "a kangaroo's pouch is really stinky," or "a flamingo's mother's milk is red." The person is so disgusted they can't finish their food. I'm not sure how this makes someone want to eat more beans, but I find these bean dogs cute and hilarious.

And now, please watch for yourself. There are about 14 versions. Most are in Japanese with English subtitles, one is in English, and one is in Spanish. I personally recommend watching them all.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?gl=US&user=mameshibavideos

Thank Heaven for 7-11

2010-01-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

So one day I decide to go running in my neighborhood. I know it's Winter but it's a particularly sunny day and it can feel quite warm in the middle of the afternoon.

I start running along a dirt path that runs beside one of the many canal/stream whatever things that run across the city. I run for about 20 minutes, I realize I need to pee. No problem, the dirt path intersects with many streets. All I have to do is find a convenience store. Sure enough, there's a 7-11.

I pass a young, female employee mopping the floor. When I get to the restroom, there's a little handwritten note taped to the door. It's mostly in Kanji characters which I can't make out the meaning of. The only word I know is "Key," or "lock." Okay, I think, one school I work at has a handwritten note on the bathroom door that tells you how to work the lock properly. Unconcerned, I go in and lock the door.

When it's time to leave, I try to open door. The lock won't turn. Still calm, I alternate between wriggling the knob and knocking on the door.

Someone comes to the door and cries, "Ehhh?! Okyakusama!?!" (Ehhh is a typical Japanese noise of surprise. Okyakusama means customer or guest.) I hear a sigh of resignation. She knows I'm stuck in here. She's also probably wondering why I stupidly didn't read the note on the door. The young employee frantically tries to open the door. She goes to get some keys. She tries every one. None of them work. She asks me to try unlocking the door from the inside. I tell her I can't. She asks me another question, but she's obviously panicking and it's causing her to speak so quickly I can't understand her. I try to answer, but it soon becomes apparent to her that I'm not Japanese. This is where she really freaks out.

She goes to get the manager, crying something about a foreigner stuck in the bathroom. He also tries the keys. He tries telling me to unlock it from the inside. Well, duh.. don't you guys think I 've already tried that? I don't immediately respond because I'm trying to work out what to say in my head.

This is when he panics. He asks me questions in ridiculously fast Japanese. I start to panic, too, because I just can't understand him. I want to tell him that I can speak Japanese, but he needs to speak slowly and use simpler words. However, I can't seem to remember any of the tons of vocabulary I've studied over the past 2 years.

This continues for about a half hour: shaking the door, yelling in unintelligible Japanese, and trying different keys. Finally, I understand something they say: they are going to call a locksmith. I try to tell them I understand. However, it usually seems to be the case that once a Japanese person realizes you are foreign, their mind becomes literally unable to comprehend that you might understand Japanese.

They come back and tell me, in Japanese, that the locksmith can't come for another hour and a half. I tell them, in perfect Japanese, that I understand. But they don't hear it. I can hear them trying to figure out how to say it in English. They're panicking again. I tell them it's fine, I understand. I'll wait. Don't worry. Of course, I'm pretty upset that I have to be in here another hour and a half, but I'll do it. I'll wait. What choice do I have?

They abandon me to contemplate my imprisoned state in solitude. I close the lid on the toilet and sit down. I'm sweaty and red-faced from my run. I survey the items on the shelf above my head. Toilet paper rolls, spray bottles of cleaner. I remember it kind of smelled when I first came in, but now I seem to have gotten used to it.

Just as I've rested my head against the cold, tile wall, I hear in very broken English:

"heh-ro? Eh...you ..... ehhh... shouldo...ehhh...wait? ehhh, wait one...ehhh...ando....thirty."

Um.. I'm guessing she's trying to tell me to wait for an hour and a half. I try to reconfirm this in Japanese, since her English is obviously not too awesome.

"Hai. Ichi jikan han. Wakarimashita. Arigatou gozaimasu." (Yes. One hour and a half. I understand, thank you.)

She's so surprised that I've answered in Japanese. She half asks, half wonders aloud to herself , "Wait, you can't speak English?"

"No. I mean, Yes. I can speak English," I correct her, in English. But she has already run away to break this devastating news to her superiors. Now how they are supposed to communicate with me?

Eventually she comes back with another girl and they continue trying to open the door. They keep lamenting in Japanese, "An hour and a half? What should we do?"

The new girl asks the first girl if I'm alright. The first girl replies a little too casually and disdainfully for my liking, "I dunno. She's a foreigner. She can't speak English OR Japanese."

The other girl asks, "Really? Where is she from?"

"I dunno. Probably Europe or something."

I attempt to say in Japanese that actually, "I'm American," thank you very much. But they have completely given up on trying to communicate with me.

"Oh, too bad." They walk away.

What the hell am I going to do for an hour and a half, in a 7-11 bathroom? I don't have anything on me, but a key. No cell phone, nothing. I think about asking if they would slide me a pen and some paper, or maybe a magazine, through a little hole in the door, but no one comes back. I wait. I try sleeping with my head propped against the wall.

When the locksmith comes, he can't get the door open. He's banging on it, using some metal tools to try to force it open, fumbling with more keys. Finally, he brings out something so noisy and terrifying that it makes me cower in the corner, as far away from the door as possible. I cover my ears. Fire-y orange spastic sparks shoot everywhere. The door swings open and I peek out. Wearing a gray jumpsuit uniform, the locksmith looks at me, stifling a chuckle as he motions for me to come out. I hop over his mountain of tools and escape like a scared little animal.

Mid-escape, I run into the manager. He awkwardly asks me in Japanese if I'm ok. Yeah, I say, sorry for not speaking Japanese so well, and not being able to read kanji. He gives a simple apology and leaves me standing there, wondering where my free stuff is. Shouldn't I at least get a complimentary bottle of water? Geez. I slink past the register on my way out, avoiding the smirking faces of the young employees behind the counter.

2 hours and 20 minutes after I left my house for a run, I slowly crawl back home, defeated. I feel somehow this is a definitive low point.

The groping hands return...

2010-01-24T20:22:00.001-08:00

The next time it happens, I am looking for my children who have magically disappeared. The mothers are all happily chatting away on the plastic orange sofa in the lobby. I begin my search through the myriad of classrooms. Eventually I hear the telltale sound of giggles. I enter to find five little girls hiding under a table. Cute.

"Ok, kids. Let's go! Time to start!"

They crawl out, one by one. I say hello to the first sweet little girl, who always behaves impeccably:

"Hello, Sehwa! How are you?"
"I'M FINE!"
"Good! High five!"

One missed high five and a little hand lands on my pillowy chest. A wide mischievous grin spreads across her face. She reaches out again.

"No, Sehwa. Don't touch!"

Her frown turns upside down:

"No ja nai!" (Ja nai is Japanese, basically equivalent to "not," so having a negative meaning)

She reaches out again and attempts to pat and prod. More giggles ensue. The other girls have extracted themselves from their hiding place and now see what's going on out here. They want in.

10 little hands are groping and grabbing and chasing me around the classroom. And they won't stop that giggling!

"No! No! No! Stop!" I run out of the room. The mothers look at me, startled.

"Uhhh." I can't think how to tell them in simple English that their children are sex fiends. Didn't these mothers ever tell their children NOT to touch people in naughty places?

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.

2010-01-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

I do apologize for my almost year long absence from this blog.

And now, I would like to announce that I've been sexually harassed at work.. by little girls.

It all starts one innocent Friday afternoon. I'm in the school lobby, about ten minutes before my class starts. A group of young children around age 4 or 5 are all gathered with their mothers, eagerly anticipating another 50 minutes of:

"What's this?"
"Chicken!"
"What do Chicken's say?"
"Cluck cluck!"

You know, the usual stuff.

A girl named Nana, enters the school with her mother. She shyly hands me her attendance booklet and suddenly bursts out with:

"HERE YOU ARE!!"
"Why, thank you, Nana."
"YOU'RE WELCOME!!"
"Good job, Nana, high five!"

Smug with the knowledge that I have taught my kids well enough to say "here you are" and "you're welcome," I start to walk away from the lobby back into the office area. Suddenly, I feel a little hand grab my rear end and give it a good couple of satisfying squeezes.

bonk bonk. One, two.

It reminds me of the way one grabs a little fluffy round bunny tail. All innocent and oh, it just looks so soft and plush, I want to grab it.

"Oh!" the mothers cry.
"Oh!" I cry out.

Mortified, I spin around.

"Nana!?"
giggle giggle.

giggle giggle.

gigglegigglegigglegiggle. the mother's have joined in. Nana's looking real proud of herself.

I sigh and walk back into the office area. I drink my juice. No one speaks English, not even the mothers, so what the heck can I say anyway? I let it go.

CHANGES: Part II

2009-03-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

The most recent and most drastic change that has occurred during my time in Japan is moving house. In the beginning of this year, I was finally forced to face the impending equivalent of a $100 rent increase. At my (sob) old guest house, the usual policy is to give new residents a 12-month rent discount. After 12 months, their rent goes "back to the original price."

Here's a sample of the artwork that covered the walls of Big World 21.
My favorite piece.

Although I had become extremely comfortable in my guest house and was hesitant to leave the amazing social atmosphere it had provided me with, I was also not keen to pay an extra $100 every month. The place was not very clean, to put it mildly. It was also super cold in the winter and disgustingly hot in the summer. We had to pay for heat with 100 yen coins (it adds up). We had to walk up a huge, ridiculously steep hill to get to the train station every day. Despite my strong attachment to Big World 21--an attachment which earned me strange looks and inquiries such as, "are you crazy?" from my friends and co-workers--I knew there definitely had to be better places out there. So, I decided I'd better look around. In early February, I moved into a guest house in the Kichijoji area.

Here's a taste of my amazing social life in Big World 21.

I love Kichijoji. It's probably one of my favorite parts of Tokyo, actually. It's only about 10 minutes away by train from my former home-station, Musashi Koganei. While Musashi Koganei is decidedly homely--or one might say empty and bland, Kichijoji is amazing. It has a lot of character and is just as interesting as all those famously over-crowded places in central Tokyo. In fact, I think it's better because it's actually in the nearby suburbs of Tokyo, and therefore not as big, or crowded, or overwhelming. Still, it has tons of restaurants, bars, cafes, department stores, clothing stores, second hand clothing stores, book stores. It has everything I need. If it weren't for work, I'd never need to leave Kichijoji.

There's also beautiful Inokashira Park, with a big lake that's lined by cherry trees. They are absolutely stunning in the Spring. People ride swan-shaped boats, and play guitars, and run, and eat ice cream and do stuff that people do in parks. There's also a zoo which I have yet to visit. I hear they have an elephant and lots of meerkats. The Ghibli Museum, concerning the animation studio that produces famous Japanese animation films such as Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke, is also located in this park. Again, I have yet to visit.

Inokashira Park, Cherry Blossom Season, April 2008

The hard parts of moving inevitably included the physical moving of my possessions. This took many difficult trips involving dragging my over-sized suitcases many times up and down that blasted hill in Musashi Koganei, and then through the claustrophobia-inducing Tokyo transit system. I enlisted a few friends to assist me, you can be sure of that. After all that was over, I had to go to various important looking buildings to re-register as a foreigner, and re-register my address, and re-register with the phone company, and re-register my eye color, and re-register the number of eggs I eat for breakfast, and re-register the number of freckles on my knees. You get the idea. I did a lot of registering. (There really are a lot of freckles on my knees, though. My dear friend, Anne, used to call me "the spotted freak." What a sweetheart.)

After all that registering, then I had to meet the lovely people in my new guest house. Most of the conversations went like this:

"Hi! I'm Caitlin, nice to meet you."

"Oh.. hi. I'm Yosuke. I'm moving out tomorrow."

And some went kind of like this:

ME: "Oh my! Someone didn't wash this pasta strainer, and then put it back on the shelf! Gross." [I place it in the sink.]

JAPANESE DUDE: "This is not a hotel! ...blah blah blah, your responsibility." (Of course, spoken in a mixture of Japanese and English, the hotel part definitely spoken in English.)

ME: "Um, ok. I was going to wash it... after I strained my pasta."

J.D.: "Whatever."

So, maybe meeting people isn't so easy after all. But I gave it a shot. The other foreigners consist of a bunch of French people, one Canadian who also speaks fluent French, and a Korean girl. There's also a Japanese guy named Shin who lived in New York for 5 years. His English is fairly close to perfect. He likes to come into the kitchen without a shirt on so that I can look at his pectorals. (I refuse.) He enjoys speaking in, what I believe to be a forced, tone of voice that reminds me of an overly-macho Samurai in a cheesy anime cartoon. He also enjoys quoting Star Wars--"Luke, I am your father," in much the same voice. Finally, he loves telling me about his fabulous future as a person working in the fashion industry: he has a fabulous high-paying job, he's really busy, and he's probably going to be promoted any day now. What a winner.

Ok, so the social atmosphere is definitely lacking when compared to my former guest house. I admit that this has produced some acute feelings of homesickness for Musashi Koganei, as well as a bit of "Oh god, what have I done?" But I had lived there for year. It was time to move on, make some changes in my life. What I can say is that this new guest house is definitely cleaner and warmer. It's more expensive, but utilities are included and not paid for by coins. There are endless other little creature comforts provided here that make it feel a bit more like a home. My room is definitely much larger; I have room to breathe in and be organized. Now that I have few people to socialize with over dinner when I return home from work, I get more stuff done. Now that I have lots of cozy cafes to choose from, I am studying Japanese more. I'm also preparing my classes more, trying harder to keep in touch with people back home. I am spending more time writing songs for the band, and trying to draw pictures once in awhile. I have more time for myself. This is true. However, it feels like I am living by myself, which wasn't exactly what I'd expected. But, I'll get used to it. Everyone has to live alone at some point in their life. It builds character.

CH-CH-CHANGES: Part I

2009-03-09T06:36:00.000-07:00

Dear me, it's been way too long since I've updated this thing. But then, you already know that. You're reading it, aren't you?

In the past several months my life in Japan has slowly changed in the slowly evolving changing sort of way, as well as in the sudden, drastically changing sort of way. Naturally, when living in a foreign country and befriending many other foreigners, people are going to leave. That has, of course, already happened a few times. Most notably, my friend Daniel left in the early fall, causing my band situation to also change. The new band, consisting of myself and three others, finally came up with a name: Das Yukon. Please don't ask for an explanation. It would only be a dull one. I guarantee you. I'll just let you know that Andy and I extremely enjoyed the hard K-sound in the work "Yukon." That's about as interesting as it could possibly get. I don't really care about the possible meanings. In fact, I'm pretty sure we tried to avoid any possible meaning of any sort (other than it meaning "The Yukon). We just like sounds. There you go.

In truth, the new band has had it's ups and downs. Actually, a lot of downs, mostly due to the fact that our drummer has canceled practice one too many times (often with fairly short notice). But then, according to stereotypes, that's to be expected of drummers, right? (Notwithstanding, my brother is an extremely responsible and punctual human being, as well as a drummer)! Of course, one can't be too hard on the poor fellow as one of the incidents involved him finding out he had suddenly developed a bad case of diabetes. I suppose that's pretty high up on the list of forgivable things.

In addition to many missed Sunday practices, I should also mention the high number of un-enjoyable/wasted practices, mainly caused by my faithfully sour disposition that never failed to appear immediately upon entering the studio. I believe this was caused by my being extremely tired. My tiredness was caused by the following things: a.) Sunday was the end of my work week b.) I hadn't had enough sleep c.)I had woken up early both Saturday and Sunday morning d.) I taught a very busy shift on Saturday involving lots of jumping around with children and sweating in my full business attire e.)I'd gone out with friends on Saturday night f.) I also worked Sunday which means I was forced to talk to people I probably didn't want to talk to all day g.) I had rushed home to change clothes, eat dinner and then go to practice h.) I had to carry a heavy backpack to practice that held my laptop, a "lovely glockenspiel" (read: a xylophone), and a pair of castanets, among other essential assorted items. i.) Sitting at the keyboard really hurts my back j.) I have terrible posture anyway.

Don't worry, though, I won't complain.

Anyway, all of the above contributed to me being as negative and cranky as possible during many a Sunday night band practice. Nothing ever sounded "good enough." Nothing was working "quite right." I just wasn't "feeling the song anymore." My awful mood inevitably infected the others, causing them also to be extremely frustrated. Oh, Sweet futility! Yet, we had booked those three hours, and by god were we going to use them.

On those days remaining, practice went great! We now have about 3 songs that are basically finished. We can play them really well, almost every time. I've finally memorized my own lyrics (that I wrote--shouldn't have been so hard). We have recorded them and uploaded the recordings to our page on Myspace. We are working on a few more songs at the moment.

our picture on myspace

As we slowly improve and build up a collection of original Das Yukon songs, our pride and excitement are tempered with apprehension. That unreliable diabetic drummer is leaving Japan in April with his Australian girlfriend. The most talented musician in our band is leaving. This means we will need to replace him, but whom with? The question remains unanswered as we also tackle the problem of whether or not we should attempt to play a show in Tokyo before his departure. That, too, remains unanswered, buut April isn't very far away so please just be patient on that one.

Either way, I'm still excited about the way things are going. I really hope we get a good replacement for Adam and we start playing shows around Tokyo. Andy and Kate are totally up for it. I'm also really enjoying writing lyrics and melodies, and horsing around in the studio (I believe some might prefer to use the horrid term, "jamming;" use what you like--I can't stop you), and of course I am very happy to be singing again on a regular basis.

If you are interested in hearing those 3 basically finished original Das Yukon tracks, you can find them here at: http://www.myspace.com/das yukon. And please befriend us if you haven't already (I know chances are you probably haven't as I can count on one hand the number of people, that I personally know, who have). Hope you enjoy!

Naganooooo way!

2008-11-25T00:35:00.000-08:00

So months ago Japan had two national holidays in a row, on a Sunday and Monday. Since life in Japan was starting not to feel like life in Japan anymore--it was starting to feel more just like life--some of my friends and I decided we better get off our rear ends and do some traveling.

We went to Nagano.

Nicole, Alana, Andy, and I hopped on a train Sunday morning. Four hours later, we arrived in Yudanaka, a station about 40 minutes from Nagano station, in the Northern prefecture of Nagano. Yudanaka was extremely tiny from what I could tell. We stayed in a little ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) owned by an indescribably adorable old couple. I will attempt to describe them. To begin with, the man we called Mr. Yumoto, was very small and short. He spoke quite a bit of English, though in a very strange and robotic, sometimes Yoda-esque accent. Phone conversations never ended with a goodbye or a thank you. Mr. Yumoto preferred hanging up the phone at the moment when he deemed the conversation over, which may not necessarily have been the same moment that you found it appropriate to hang up on a person. Sometimes his end of the conversations consisted of simply one word:

Andy-san: Moshi moshi. (hello?)

Yumoto-san: Dozo. (go ahead)

Andy-san: Hai. (Okay.)

Yumoto-san: ... "click"

Then there were moments when Yumoto-san wanted to direct the course of our entire time in Nagano. You must go to Obuse, town with famous restaurant, chestnut restaurant, you eat good chestnut. You go to Sake brewery, drink good sake, must buy Sake. Must go to museum. Must buy souvenir, go to craft shop. Yumoto-san's wife and grandson were equally as cute and enthusiastic. When we went out for dinner the first night, when we arrived back at the room the light was on. We were freaked out thinking someone had broken into our room. When we entered, our slippers were all lined up, the table had been pushed to the side and our futons had been laid with care on the floor, all made up with blankets and pillows and little complimentary mints and toothbrushes on them. It was amazing.

The place was really fun because we stayed in a real tatami-mat style room where you do everything on the floor. We had little chairs that had no legs and a little table with a teapot and what seemed like an endless supply of green tea. We loved putting on the yukata robes (casual style kimono) and taking tons of ridiculous posed pictures of each other in our traditional Japanese clothing.

The next morning we were treated to a huge Japanese style breakfast. It was delicious: grilled fish, rice, japanese pickles, miso soup, salad, and I forget what else, but it was good and very generous.

We originally went to Nagano thinking we wanted to go to an onsen, but we decided some of Yumoto-san's recommended activities might be nice beforehand. The morning was wonderful, Yumoto-san drove us in his van to a monkey park where we saw live monkeys just walking around on a mountain, bathing in natural mountain hot springs, picking bugs out of each others hair, occasionally doing the unmentionable dirty deed, doing what monkeys do. Best of all, there were adorable little baby monkeys. It was insane because there were no fences or anything. We were just walking around with the monkeys. We could have touched them if we really wanted to. Though, they probably would have ripped our arms off.

Afterwards we probably should have just done the onsen (hot spring) thing, instead of following Yumoto-san's plan for us, as we of course got lost and then it started to rain heavily on us. But at least the famous chesnut restaurant had interesting food! Everything was, well, chestnutty..you know, made of chestnuts. They're kinda good, really sweet. After that, I'll spare you the part where we bickered about whether to return home early or still try to figure out where there might be an onsen. I'll just tell you that we decided to return home early and went back to Nagano station, ready to board the shinkansen. We saw a travel shop in the station and decided to go in and ask if they knew of any onsen's really close by that we could hit before returning home. We were tense and disappointed by a wasted afternoon. All we wanted was some hot water to get naked in. Luckily, there was one reachable by taxi.

Like I said, our original reason for going to Nagano was to enjoy bathing in an onsen (hot spring). We had made good use of the onsen in the Ryokan, but that one wasn't a real onsen. It was a good way to introduce Alana to the world of getting naked with your friends. Still, this was indoors, there was only one pool. Now she was introduced to the world of getting naked in front of everyone. She took it well though. She was a real pro, having worked at a health spa for a long time back home. The big, public onsen we went to in Nagano was huge. There were about six pools inside and then one large pool outside where you could look at a mountain side. It was very peaceful. Really relaxing. Just what we needed and a great way to end the trip. Nagano was a bit of a random choice, but I think ultimately it was pretty rewarding. I actually really recommend the Ryokan we stayed at, they were super helpful and accommodating and cute and hilarious and nice. There. Finished. Now for lots of pictures!

All My Children.

2008-11-10T04:46:00.001-08:00

Well, don't ask me how it happened. I took great pains to protect myself from the possibilities of infection. I was afraid of them. I took great pains to avoid acquiring any kind of knowledge that might pertain to them. I took great pains to avoid developing any kind of understanding of them. I avoided developing the ability to feel any sort of comfort in their presence. To the disbelief and anger of my entire neighborhood, I rudely asked everyone to desist in requesting my services as a babysitter when I was in middle school.

I believe I had perfectly good reasons.

I hated it when they smelled bad. I hated it when they cried. I hated it when they complained. I hated it when they were small and I was terrified I was going to drop them on their heads and end up in babykiller's prison. I hated it when their parents expected me to somehow feed them. I hated it when they told me they were going to tell on me when their mother got home. I hated it when they insisted I lay down on the grass in their yard, in broad daylight, mind you, in front of the whole damn neighborhood, just so they could jump over me repeatedly, over and over and over, for hours upon stupid hours, while their ugly golden retrievers slobbered on my face and their saucy older sisters smirked and stifled giggles at my misfortune.

I didn't care how blond they were or how small they were or how chubby their damn hands were. They were scary. No, scratch that. They were utterly terrifying.

But I should have known.

I should have known when I accidentally fell in love with a pair of baby shoes once. I couldn't help it. They were irresistibly small. I should have known that I wouldn't be able to suppress my love of most things miniature forever. I mean, I once had a doll house. Didn't that tell me anything about myself? Who was I kidding?

But I said it. Many times. "I never want to work with kids. I probably don't want to have kids. I certainly never want to teach kids. In fact, I never want to teach anyone, anything, ever! So there!"

Well, here I am. I am in Japan. I am teaching, and I am teaching children.

Oops.

You can't say I didn't try, though. I fought back for a long time. I almost made it 9 months without getting infected with child lover's disease. But in the end, I was fighting an uneven battle. I was teaching nine kids classes per week. Now that's tough. That's cruel. Screaming, crying, sneezing on you, trying to hide flashcards under my skirt (what a stupid hiding place, do they really believe that I won't think to look there?), setting timers to go off after 10 minutes while I'm in the middle of chorusing new vocabulary so it disrupts the class, putting bells on my cushion so I'll make a ringing noise when I place my dainty rear end upon it. The things one goes through. Honestly.

It started slowly, crept up on me without my noticing. It was Soichiro, the six-year-old troublemaker that slid into class on his stomach, wearing his shoes on his hands. He was always trying to do headstands, and purposely provided answers to my questions that were the opposite of correct, effectively confusing the rest of the class. What color is this? RED! No, it's blue. What number is this? 10! No, it's 5, (idiot). And the other kids had no clue. They'd look confused and then repeat his incorrect answer. uhhh oh, ok... RED! No no no. NOT red, BLUE! BLUE, I say!!

This was what I was dealing with.

But it was the day I realized he was the only one in the room who understood my sense of humor- understood me. He totally got me. When I pretended to eat a fake pineapple the way cookie monster would, he laughed so hard he fell over. When I jumped up and down like a monkey and made strange noises so the children would understand exactly what a monkey looks and sounds like, he was the only one who stood up and did it with me, laughing all the way. (I won't bother with the girl who simply sat there, pointed at me with a look of pure disgust and said, "baka," translation: stupid.) That was the day I noticed he didn't annoy me anymore. In fact, looking back upon that time, I understand better what I was feeling that day. It was the feeling of liking something. I actually found the little boy cute.

Then it was Shuu, the three-year-old boy who was so small, and so afraid to come into my class, even though the parents were there, too. It was the day he came out from between his mother's legs and shouted, "salami!" when I asked, "what's this?" Now that was cute: a little person just steaming with pure happiness, pure accomplishment, pure pride.

Then it really happened. Halloween arrived. I was dressed my little piggiest, so as to elicit the most number of "kawaiii"'s (cute) possible from the students. Well, wouldn't you know it? The damn children got dressed up for Halloween, too! Who do they think they are? One girl was a christmas tree (wrong holiday buddy, get with the program mom), one was a samurai, one was a king, one was knight in shining armor, one was a pumpkin, one was a skeleton, one was a I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-but-it's-hilarious, and there were plenty of pointy witch hats being displayed that week. Yes, that's right. Halloween was a week long this year. I dressed like a pig at work, five days in a row. I was subjected to helping little children make balloon ghosts and balloon spiders, and carve pathetically small, green pumpkins because the orange ones don't exist in Japan. They all looked so scared and uncomfortable in their costumes.

It was adorable...

People, the news is in: I'm hooked on kids, and I love teaching. Who have I seriously become?

Blazing Cranes....and wedding bands?

2008-09-22T01:51:00.000-07:00

Folks, it's official. I am officially at an age where it is appropriate to be married. My God.

I seriously didn't think anyone I knew would get married until I was, at least, thirty. But sometimes, you just can't help how and when you fall in love. You never know when it'll happen to you. All you readers, beware, I say. It could strike at any moment. Don't think just cause you're in your 20s you're immune to this infectious disease. Back home, in New York, people are falling like flies.

I can't tell you how many photo albums of weddings I've seen on Facebook this summer. And this is just including the pictures of people I personally know. In all fairness, most of these people are in their later twenties, usually friends of my brother. It makes sense. I could deal with that.

But now, someone extremely dear to me, someone my age, someone who is essentially kind-of like my sister, is now married. EXCUSE ME? I still act like a five-year-old half the time. No one my age should be getting married.

That's right. Last week, one of my best friends got married. This past spring, in my insanity, caused by my love for my kind-of sister, I decided to purchase a plane ticket to New York and take four of my allotted 5 vacation days off. The decision was solidified after I found out that many of best friends, as well as my parents and brother would be there. Well, hell, if they got to be there, then I wanted to be there too!

On Wednesday night, the 10th of September, I returned home from work at about 10pm. I finished packing my suitcase and went to bed. Thursday morning, I woke up at 5:30, hopped on the train to Shinjuku, then transferred to the Narita Express. I got to Narita Airport at 9:30am. Caught an 11:45am plane to JFK airport. I arrived in New York at 11:30, 15 minutes earlier than I had left Japan. That really did my head in. How could I arrive 15 minutes earlier than I left, on the SAME exact day? Time is an amazing institution.

The first thing I noticed about New York was what a jerk the customs officer was. I walked up to the counter and put my passport and customs form on the desk. Little did I know, I had inexplicably become a ghost at some point while I was in Japan, because the guy didn't seem to have any clue that there was even a cloud of moisture in front of him. He was absorbed in what must have been a very interesting discussion with his buddy, and fellow customs officer, across the way. He waited a full minute before slowly picking up my passport, not bothering to wonder where this little book could have come from or what ghostly apparition might have placed it there, and gave it a careless, lopsided little stamp. He placed it back on the counter. I said in a brassy loud voice, "THANK YOU." I waited... Nothing.

Nothing. There was nothing! He couldn't hear me. Then it dawned on me... I really was invisible! My God! What had happened to me? Had I died and no one had bothered to let me know? I was considerably upset by all this until I walked into the terminal, and beaming unmistakably in my direction were my dewy-eyed parents. A smile broke on my face. I was alive!!! It was nice to see my parents, too.

After dropping off my luggage at the house, I set off on some important errands. I got a haircut, a manicure, and a pedicure, lulled to sleep in the salon chair by Norman the Hairstylist's gentle political rantings about Sarah Palin, the devil. Afterwards, I partook of the best Italian food I've ever eaten, at my family's favorite restaurant, accompanied by my parents and brother. I fell asleep at dinner, my head pressed against the cold, candlelit tile wall.

The next morning my family, a good friend of mine, and I set off in a cramped Subaru station wagon to foggy Martha's Vineyard. We drove 5 hours, ate McDonalds for lunch like good, patriotic Americans sometimes do, rode an American yellow school bus to the ferry port, took a 45 -minute ferry-ride to the island and were promptly picked up by the bride-to-be and her family.

Fast forward to the wedding. I really respect and admire Anne for the way she organized her wedding. Firstly, it was extremely small: mostly family and a small number of very close friends. It was also done very simply, locally, and inexpensively.

Before I tell you more let me just preface this next paragraph with an important bit of information: the bride has three Aunts, meaning her mother has three sisters, as well as a Great Aunt, who lives in Martha's Vineyard. Why am I telling you this? Well, just read for crying out loud!

Here we go. Her wedding dress was made by one of her aunts. All the vegetables were grown in another aunt's backyard. All the food was cooked and prepared by her aunts. All the food was served by her aunt's friends. Another Aunt's friend did all the flowers and wedding bouquets. To top it off, the wedding took place in the front yard of her great aunt's house, with a reception on the back porch, over looking the stunning beach scenery. What else did her aunts do? Well maybe that's about it, but I think that's quite a lot, now don't you?

I was amazed that literally everything for the wedding was done by someone who knew the family closely. Here are some more examples: The bride didn't have any makeup or hair done professionally. It was all done by one extremely talented bridesmaid... (no, not me, don't be so silly!). Really though, who needs professionals? She looked perfect, like a Gretian goddess. The photographer was also a friend of ours from high school who is currently embarking on a professional photography career. Her photos are amazing. Now, get this. This one I found really amazing. Okay. The bride and her husband were married by her mother's best friend. That's right, her mother's best, best friend just happens to be a minister. I just think that is a really nice thing, to be married by someone you know well, who is really close to your family. The woman is a really sweet lady too, with a good sense of humor. No one minded when she accidentally skipped a part, and started to repeat a part of the ceremony. She actually demanded that they remove the rings from their fingers and do it again. But no one cared. It was cute, it was hilarious. Everyone just laughed, which was a nice respite from all the crying that was going on. Because let me tell you, there was a lot of that. Even from the bride, herself. She was so happy, she could barely say her vows. Since it worked out that I was the bridesmaid standing closest to her during the ceremony, we had formulated a little plan where I would pass her a little lacy hankerchief with which she could dab her water-proof mascara-ed eyes. I can't remember the last time I was in a place so permeated by happiness before.

There's the bride-to-be, waiting to put on
that beautiful dress hanging in the doorway.

Everything was so quirky, so perfect. The wedding cake consisted of strawberry covered cupcakes made by a local Vineyard bakery. Even the insanely bright bridesmaid dresses, that had made everyone so nervous, ended up looking perfect. There were six bridesmaids in all, most of us in different colors. One wore pink, another blue, one green, two yellow, and I wore orange. Sadly, J Crew failed to convey through photographic evidence on their website that the colors of the dresses had obviously been precisely matched to the colors found in a pack of highlighters. All day we were herded around by the call of, "Okay, over here my little highlighters!" But, by the end, everyone agreed that it made the wedding much brighter and livelier. They were also incredibly photogenic. I was also delighted to be told by many that the color of my dress was decidedly less like a highlighter than the others, and was actually a fabulous color on me. Yippee. Perhaps I'll get to wear it again...

See how those tricky little dresses are deceivingly
not like highlighters when captured in photographs?

Anyways, the wedding was beautiful. I had an amazing weekend seeing my parents, brother, and many very important people and friends from my life back home, all who I love very, very much. Too bad I had to return the following Monday, which meant I arrived in Japan on Tuesday and then went back to work on Wednesday. But, I've decided it was totally worth it. The thirty minutes of that ceremony were probably the most intimate, personal, meaningful thirty minutes in earth's history. I'm not kidding.

Here's one of my favorite pictures, of me and my brother.

The Blazing Cranes are Dead

2008-09-17T09:28:00.002-07:00

So the other reason I've been M.I.A. from this bloggy land is that I was very busy practicing with my band, the Blazing Cranes. We had a live show a few weeks ago at a small bar in Kokubunji, a train stop away from where we live. Since Daniel is leaving Japan (forever) in about a week or so, the band as we know it, is dying. We decided to really give it all we had and a have a gig before he left. So during the months of July and August, we started having practices about two or three times week. A lot of practices were devoted to recording. We tried our darndest to get a good recording of each song so we could make an album to sell at the show. Since none of us are really very technologically or musically knowledgeable, it was quite the struggle. Tensions rose between all of us, and it became harder to play songs with the same kind of passion after playing them over and over again, stopping for even the tiniest little mistakes. But we persevered and were finally able to get recordings that we, at least, felt comfortable burning on CDs and giving to friends.

I bought a crappy used Casio keyboard for 1,000 yen, about $10, so I could practice by myself in my room. We tried doing acoustic practices in the guest house, but eventually we were threatened with eviction after our crotchety old neighbors in the next apartment building over were complaining about us. We took to waking up early and biking to the park to record songs on Daniel's laptop. Children paddled in the river and old men walked their dogs as we sang at the top of our lungs, the boys wailing on their acoustic guitars.

As the the date of the show neared, we got equally busier, more stressed, and more nervous. Our social lives consisted solely of the interactions we had with each other at practices. Daniel was assigned the huge task of mixing the recordings and making the CDs, while I was assigned the task of creating the album covers. We decided on the album title, Blazing Cranes are Burning Hands, which tied-in to one of our songs that was about hands. I didn't want to do an image that was too related to the title, because I tend to find that sort of thing disgustingly cheesy. I settled on using photographs I had taken at aquariums around Tokyo. I made a bunch of protoypes, then let the guys choose their favorite. We decided on a very simple CD case design. Each case was made out of one A4 piece of white cardstock. We folded the sheet around the CD into a square so that the cover image was printed on the front, and then the back flaps were folded back and tucked into themselves. The track list and acknowledgments were printed on the back flaps. I spent a lot of time playing with the design on photoshop, and then finally made the trek to Fedex Kinkos--yes, they have it in Japan--where I printed sixty covers. I bought a ruler and a handy paper scorer and went home to begin a week of meticulous folding. Every night when I came home from work, there was I was, folding, folding, always folding. I was still folding up until the night before the show. In the end, though, I was actually pretty happy with how they turned out. The front side of the final cover looked like this:

The hilarious thing was, at the show the next evening one girl I know asked me why we called ourselves the Blazing Cranes. I told her we just liked the sound of it. Then she asked me why I chose the image I did. I told her I chose it because I liked marine creatures and aquariums a lot, and I didn't want an image too related to the title. I liked how the sea weed in the image looked a little bit like a plume of smoke though, which subtly tied it to the words "blazing" and "burning."

Well, then she really gave it to me. She told me that the moment she saw the cover, she immediately thought of Hiroshima. She said the seaweed looked like an atomic cloud. The "Cranes" in "Blazing Cranes" made her think of origami paper cranes. Paper cranes are a famous symbol of Hiroshima because of a Japanese girl who organized some peace movement that involved folding thousands of paper cranes, but then died of radiation. So basically, we were horrible human beings. I was stunned. All four of us had been oblivious. We had completely failed to notice any of these connections. Why, in God's name, did we have to choose that design out of all the others? I was pretty upset at first, especially after roughly five other people provided similar sentiments about the cover later on. Luckily, none of them were Japanese, they were all foreigners. A few comforting comrades asserted that it was okay, because now it made us seem edgier. Still, I couldn't help wishing we had picked a different design. [See a couple of the other possible designs below. ]

Anyways, on to the show: we were pretty nervous as the show began, but as it progressed we slowly relaxed and got into the music. By the end, I was having a great time. We all made a bunch of mistakes, especially me. However, I'm proud to say we packed the place. Lots of English teachers, and even some Japanese school staff came, as well as a large group from our guest house. After the show, a lot of people told me my voice was "good," "fantastic," "amazing." Always a nice thing to hear, whether or not it's really true. I can't say whether people were sincere in their compliments to us, but I do believe that people in the audience had a lot of fun. They really liked it when we played a song from the video that everyone teaches in our Mini Kids classes. For an idea of what the song might be like, the age range in those classes are 1.5 to 2.5 years old. Anyone who could, sang along and did the corresponding actions that we do in the classes. We played about ten songs at the show. There were also about ten songs on the album, including a secret bonus track. [Ooh, aren't we fancy?] All in all, it's been a good, fun experience. Hopefully when Andy and I play a show with our new band, we won't be quite so nervous.

Here's me singing. Andy on the left, Daniel on the right.

Here's the band after the show, nice n' sweaty.
Daniel, Me, Andy, Leo.
They all look a bit dazed and beat up.

Since Daniel is leaving soon and Leo, the drummer, may be moving to a different part of Tokyo, Andy and I have been brainstorming our next moves. We've decided to recruit my friend Adam, who plays drums and is intensely interested in music, specifically good dance music. That will be a interesting new musical influence. Our other new recruit is Kate Sciandra who apparently plays saxophone, bass guitar, some piano, and can sing. Awesome. So, with the two of them, Andy, and I, we will have a complete group again. Andy and I are excited to incorporate new instruments into the mix and experiment with new music genres. We're thinking of trying something a little more danceable. We'll see where the new lineup takes us.

And now for a bit of traditional culture

2008-09-17T09:28:00.001-07:00

My, it's been awhile since I've posted anything. The summer has been ultra busy. I guess it all started in early August when I had a two week summer vacation. My mother and grandmother came to Japan to visit me. I immediately whisked them off to Kyoto, which probably should have involved less whisking and more slowly stirring because it was super hot and my grandmother was super tired. She was a champ though. I felt kind-of bad for dragging them around to see everything, but I think it worked out okay by the end. If my grandmother really needed to rest, she could easily take a taxi back to the hotel.

We stayed for about 4 days, I believe. Our hotel was literally across the street from Nijo castle. We could see it from our hotel room windows. It was an amazing building, really old and wooden with elaborately painted walls, and also elaborately carved walls, too. I'm sure the walls were decorated elaborately in other ways, too, but we weren't allowed to get close to them, so alas I was denied the privilege of noticing. We were allowed to walk through the hallways and peek through the open doorways into the tatami rooms. The fact that they were hauntingly empty severely contrasted with the walls that had been lavishly filled to the brim with decorations. It occurred to me though, that perhaps there was never much in the rooms to begin with. Perhaps, back a long time ago, rooms were never cluttered with furniture and whatnot like they are today. In a traditional Japanese tatami room, you never wear shoes or set anything really heavy on the floor, so as not to damage the tatami mats. Everyone just kneels on the floor on cushions. Perhaps there people used to have small, low tables to eat off of or something. But that may have been about it. I could be wrong, but it occurred to me, what else would they really need to have in there? No one slept on beds either, just futon mattresses on the floor. Or maybe they didn't even have those back then, either. How curious.

Anyway, we saw lots of amazing beautiful temples. We saw most of the sights the day after we arrived because we had signed up for a day tour. It was a bit long, and a bit hot waiting to enter some of the places all lined up in the sun. My grandma went home after lunch, before the second half of the tour started again.

While I enjoyed Kyoto, and saw many old, beautiful, traditional Japanese places and things, I have to say I was surprised by how ordinary and modern most of Kyoto was. The actual city itself was rather bland and slightly unattractive, in fact. However, on the outskirts, in the mountains, and occasionally within the actual city, there were many isolated, but stunningly beautiful spots. My favorites were Kinkakuji, which was a small temple in the middle of a lake, covered in Gold leaf. Very shiny. Very pretty. My other favorites were the above-mentioned Nijo castle and Kiyomizu temple. Kiyomizu was at the top of a hill, leading into the mountains, and not only had impressive architecture but also had an impressive view of the city.

Kyoto was very strange, because I felt like it was clinging to old traditions for the sake of tourism. We went to Gion, the place that was a big entertainment district and famous for being the home of the Geishas, but during the day it was quite empty and felt a bit contrived. It was still interesting enough for me to become obsessed with taking pictures of it. Though, perhaps that is not a difficult thing to achieve.

When we returned to Tokyo, the following day we went for an adventure around Tokyo itself, guided by my boyfriend's mother. He came along too, of course. But the mother was the one who had planned most of the day for us. What a sweetie. She took us to the Edo-Tokyo museum, then for a boat ride down the Sumida river to Odaiba, a man-made island. It was a very strange place. It had a huge shopping mall and that seemed to be about it, as far as I could tell. Then we went to Roppongi Hills to climb the observation tower and watch the sun set over the extensive views provided of Tokyo. We got to climb up to the roof of the building where there was a helicopter landind strip. It was very strange, but beautiful.

It was a wonderful day, but the most memorable part seems to be the Edo-Tokyo Museum. [Tokyo used to be called Edo back in ancient times.] I barely got to see the exhibits because soon after entering, I happened upon a traditional dance performance inside the museum. I was totally enthralled by it for a number of simple reasons: 1) the costumes were pretty, 2) the music had a nice beat, 3) the dances were exotic and interesting and 4) there was one dance they kept returning to over and over again. It was the same dance that everyone had performed earlier this summer in the dance festival in Musashi Koganei, where I live.

That festival was such a great experience, because I was amazed by the large numbers of people that had come out of the woodwork to fill up the major street leading up to Musashi Koganei station. I've never seen so many people in our neighborhood before. There were tons of aged folk, families, teenagers, couples, small children daring to run and dance into the street every time there was a break in the line of parading festival dancers. It was amazing, there were all sorts of types of people dancing in the parade, too. I got the feeling the schools must have been involved in organizing and encouraging groups of children to participate because there were many large groups of children, all sorted roughly by age and size. Some of the children were so tiny they could barely dance, while some of the older ones were obviously very talented dancers. Others had probably never danced before in their lives, but that didn't stop them-- they certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I just remembered being touched by this highly attended event that really conveyed people's sense of pride in, and love for their community. I imagined being one of those heavily painted, beautifully dressed, dancing children and the only thing I could compare it to was being in the high schools plays. Yet, somehow it just wasn't the same. I was quite jealous of those children. I wished my community had had something similar for me to participate in as a youth. It was also amazing how such a long parade of people could do the same dance over and over again, and chant the same songs over and over again, and beat the same drum beats over and over again and not tire of it. Everyone performed with such vigour and passion, it was utterly enchanting. There was a bit of a carnival air to everything, with food stalls selling yaki soba noodles, chicken on skewers, and lots and lots of cold beer. It was also hilarious because as I was standing on the side of the road with a small group of fellow foreign English teachers a really old toothless man with long gray hair and a long gray beard suddenly appeared in front of us. As he danced he started at us with an intensely ambivalent stare. After a while of us feeling a bit uncomfortable, he finally took the hand of one girl and began teaching her how to do the dance. It was pretty hilarious watching this very white girl doing this funky dance with an old man down the street along the edge of the parade. She actually got quite far down the street before she felt ready to turn back and rejoin our little group of outsiders.

Anyways, this was a very exciting, memorable experience for me. So when I saw this same dance being performed again at the museum, I literally fell into a trance. I watched them dance for about an hour. By the time I was done, it was almost time to leave and I had barely seen anything else. I was just so excited to see this dance again, to recognize it and be familiar with it. I was also glad to see that this dance wasn't just something that people did in museums, to give people a taste of what traditional Japan was once like. I knew, from my own personal experience, that this was a dance that people still did in suburban areas in the outskirts of Tokyo. It was totally still a part of the culture. It was finally something real, found in real, everyday life. And yet, it was very exotic, different from home. And I loved it.

Go Go swallows!

2008-07-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a national holiday and so everyone at ECC had the day off. Since it was a Monday, I already had the day off, so it didn't really mean much to me. However, it did mean that I had more people to hang out with yesterday. And so, we went to a baseball game.

We went in support of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows who were playing against the Yokohama Bay Stars. I can't explain why we were Swallows fans other than that Chani got us the tickets and Chani's first ever baseball game was a Swallow's game. So she has a special soft spot for them, I guess. Sadly, the Bay Stars are pretty good and so our team lost. It was still loads of fun, though. I kinda got into baseball games after seeing the Cardinals a few times in St. Louis. It was pretty great how the community rallied behind them, exhibiting St. Louis pride. I'd never experienced that kind of local pride before, let alone taken part in it. It was intoxicating. I totally fell for it. Especially when the Cards won the World Series. Boy, was that exciting.

Anyways, at this Swallows game yesterday, there was quite a bit of organized chanting. But mostly everyone had noisemakers which consisted of two little plastic baseball bats attached by a string. All you were supposed to do was hit them against each other. Of course, I just had to buy my own overpriced set of "noisemakers." What was really hilarious was the umbrellas. Whenever our team scored a point everyone on the Swallows' side whipped out these tiny umbrellas decorated with little Yakult Swallows mascots perched on top of them. They'd open up the umbrella's and raise them up and down while chanting excitedly. I loved that there was absolutely no inclement weather in sight. There were also cheerleaders with umbrellas during the halftime show.

Another favorite part of the Japanese baseball game experience was the beer vendors. They were all cute young girls dressed in neon jumpsuits with big square packs on their backs, full of beer. The packs had big tubes protruding from them that were probably for dispensing beer, but they really made the backpacks look like some kinda high-tech ghostbusting pack. The combination of the backpacks and the jumpsuits just really made these girls look like ghostbusters.I couldn't get over it. I kept trying to sneak pictures of the beer vending girls all night.

Also, people don't eat hot dogs at baseball games here. They eat pan fried noodles! So there were quite a few differences. In addition, I agreed with the other two American girls in attendance it felt like we were at a high school football game. Somehow we all had that exact same feeling. I suppose it was because it was a rather small stadium. I expected something larger, higher, and much more imposing. Also, it just had that vibe: a high school football game vibe. Probably the marching band that played on the Bay Stars' side of the stadium had a lot to do with this feeling, as well. A lot of Swallows fans had also brought trumpets and other brass instruments to the game.

Afterwards, as our group was walking to the station, we saw a cool fountain on the side of the road. We stopped to look at it, and suddenly, a wall of water spouted up out of the ground and attacked Craig. He got quite a bit of a shock, as well as a soaked t-shirt. Then, since he was already wet, he decided to walk through the wall of spouting water to the other side. We thought he was crazy at first, but then he dared us to do it, too. We were soon all on the other side of the watery wall, and all extremely soaked. Quite a few Japanese people from the crowds walking back from the game had stopped to watch us. We were pretty sure we would soon get told off either by some public official, or a grumpy old lady, whoever showed up first. [I tell you, that happens a lot here. One time we got told off by a random old Japanese woman for sitting in an empty parking lot at night, eating some KFC because KFC had sold us food, only to tell us afterwards that we couldn't eat it there because they were closing. Since we had already received our food, we had to do take out. Oh, those evil Gaijin, always eating their KFC out in the open. Who do they think they are?] Anyway, the point was, we didn't get told off at all! Instead, a bunch of the Japanese people decided it was really just too hot and they wanted to have fun too! Soon we had about seven Japanese people join our ranks on the other side. We encouraged more people to jump through and gave them rounds of applause when they finally did it. We felt like we were showing them how to loosen up and have fun, break a few rules or something. Oh those bold and brave gaijin, paving the way of liberty. We were SOAKED when we got on the subway soon after, though. That's what we get for breaking the rules.

here's Craig behind the wall of water, daring us all to come over to the other side...

I still wasn't dry when we went arrived at an izakaya for a late dinner. Although it wasn't a Disgusting Tuesday yet, Adam and I saw there was horse meat sashimi on the menu and felt we had to take advantage of the opportunity. And so, we ate raw horse meat with garlic and soy sauce! And, it was actually quite tasty! I can't believe I ate horse, because I absolutely love those animals, but at this point I think I'd try almost any food. I don't discriminate anymore.

So there you go. What a day.

Also, here's a fun picture I took through one of my baseball bat noisemakers:

At least these expensive dudes were useful for something other than making noise. That's a Yakult Swallow's player you're looking at through the blue tube.

A band's life

2008-07-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

Well the band is going well. We've been making a lot of attempts to record lately. Some of them are simply lo-fi, acoustic versions that we record on Daniel's laptop in his room in the guest house. But I think probably some people don't like the noise. Anyway, one night Andy, Daniel and I were all sitting in the lounge being social when we realized we really just felt like singing. We had all had Patti Smith's version of "Gloria" stuck in our heads throughout that week for some reason and really felt like recording our own version of it. However, it was about 1am and we were pretty sure we'd either get murdered by our neighbors that night, or kicked out of the guest house by management the next day if we tried recording in the guest house at that hour. The obvious solution was to go to Musashino park, about a 20-30 minute walk from the guest house. We decided that I should borrow this girl Ruth's bicycle so we could get there faster and we all cycled out to the park toting a laptop, a harmonica, and two acoustic guitars. We wandered the forested park until we found a nice picnic table that was too far from civilization to piss anyone off. We set ourselves up and proceeded to record three different songs, singing at the top of our lungs until 4am. We got eaten alive by mosquitoes and we forgot most of the lyrics to Gloria anyway, but we had an amazing time doing it.

Another hilarious story was when we were all riding the train home from band practice one Sunday night. We entered the train car to find three young, perhaps 20-something, Japanese guys sitting on each other's laps. Basically, the first guy sat on the seat, the second guy sat on his lap, and the third on his lap. We were pretty amazed because this isn't really something that most guys would do anywhere in the world, let alone in Japan. People are usually pretty reserved in Japan, and this was pretty out there. Many of the other Japanese people on the train were staring at them and whispering and shooting them disapproving looks. But, as crazy foreigners we of course, totally endorsed their behavior. We chuckled and gave them our little ECC thumbs up. The third Japanese guy, then motioned for Andy to sit on his lap. After a moment of hesitation, Andy accepted his offer. At this, a middle-aged man who was especially enraged by all this, stormed off the train. Well, that was it. Things got out of control. Next, Daniel sat on Andy's lap. Then I, of course, was obliged to sit on Daniel's lap. We made such a long chain that I literally reached the other side of the train car. It was just utterly hilarious. Our drummer, Leo, took a photo of us all sitting on each other's laps. It's taken me awhile to get ahold of this desirable photo, but here it is. Too bad it's a bit blurry.

Mt. Mitake

2008-07-22T06:03:00.001-07:00

Today I went to Mt. Mitake, which is located quite a ways out west of Tokyo. From central Tokyo it takes over an hour, but from where I live it was more like 40 minutes because I live slightly west of Tokyo already.

I went with three of my buddies, Adam, Amanda, and Ben, all from my training group back in February. We didn't know much about the mountain or how to get to it really, or what it would be like. When we got off at the train we were seriously in the middle of nowhere. It was quite shocking. It was very still and quiet, except for the cicadas. Though, by the time we reached the top of the mountain even those cicadas had finally shut the heck up.

It turned out to be quite a walk from the train station to the actual bottom of the mountain. With a lot of guessing, and matching our unreadable Japanese fold-up map to other large, wooden, unreadable Japanese maps scattered around the area, we were able to find it. The walk to the mountain had some great views though. We followed a small path along a rather impressive-sized river. I've never seen a river so clear and so blue. I guessed that meant it was a very clean river, but I really have no idea why. Regardless, it looked gorgeous and refreshingly inviting. There were lots of locals fishing or sunbathing on the shores. There were also lots of little makeshift wooden bridges that I found quite novel and picture worthy. Every so often a little spurt of houses and shops would appear and then quickly disappear. It was all very country and quaint.

When we finally found the bottom of Mt. Mitake we were able to take a cable car up quite a large portion of the way. We stopped for a bit of a ramshackle picnic involving sticks of fish and processed cheese (really disgusting, please don't ever eat this), a block of 700 yen Brie Cheese which Amanda thoughtfully shared and spread upon Ritz crackers for the rest of us, an assortment of nuts, raisins, chocolate, and Calorie Mate, the energy bar that comes in an irresistibly vintage-looking box. We also had cans of Dr. Pepper from one of the many vending machines on the mountain. There are vending machines literally on every block in Japan, and mountains are no exception.

After our feast we took the chair lift the rest of the way up to the official viewpoint area. We couldn't actually see much. It was ridiculously hazy, but some photographs that we decided not to purchase informed me that you can see the Tokyo city skyline from the mountain. It's just too hot and hazy in Japan right now. I'm gonna say it was probably almost 90 degrees fahrenheit.

At the top of the chairlift, we also found a map that revealed the presence of some temples and a waterfall on the mountain,. We eagerly set out to find them. We wandered our way through the mountainside through charming little town-lets that were delightfully rustic and old-looking. We saw a lot of interesting new vegetation, impressive trees, old thatched roofs, old buildings, old machinery, old ladies, and a huge group of children all wearing identical little blue hats and devouring big slices of watermelon. I really wanted to steal it from them. It was also pretty much one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

That was, until we came across another huge group of children. They were sitting on the ground watching each other take turns trying to take a baseball bat to a watermelon. The watermelon was placed in the middle of a big blue blanket, and they had to attempt to smash it after donning a blindfold and being turned in a circle three times by some motherly-looking woman. It was quite an odd sight, especially as they were sitting in front of building that looked like an old temple.

After a long hike through bits of forest, winding cobblestone streets, and mazes of children taunting us with their watermelon, we found the temple. Well, you know the drill: the usual temple stuff. It was red, it was pretty. It had funny roofs. Lots of white paper fortunes were tied to wooden things. There were statues.

We soon started looking for the waterfall. We walked down a ridiculous number of wooden steps, thinking to ourselves we'd probably have to climb back up them again soon. Boy, were we painfully correct. The waterfall wasn't the most impressive, but I quite enjoyed it. I can't say I've really seen that many waterfalls, so I was pretty excited about it. I enjoyed it so much I even took my feet for a dip. Here's proof:

Then we had to make a mad, crawling dash back up those treacherous wooden steps that wound up a densely forested and brutally steep hill. We badly wanted to catch the last cable car down the mountain, so that we could then catch the last bus back to the train station. We were not about to walk all the way back to the station again. Those stairs nearly killed me. If I really want to think about climbing Mt. Fuji sometime soon, I better start getting more exercise. And I was even employing the ever-handy Rocky Mountain step I had learned from my superiors back in the day at camp. Supposedly it saves energy if you lock your knees at the end of every step. Well, it probably did work, but I just didn't have that much energy to begin with.

Anyways, as we boarded the train we were totally drenched in sweat and totally gross and totally proud of ourselves by the end. It was a very peaceful, refreshing trip to the countryside. I was really happy to get out of Tokyo for a day. And there were barely any tourists around. Absolutely none of them were foreigners, other than us, of course. It was quite a satisfying day, if I do say so myself.

Day in Shinagawa

2008-07-16T05:49:00.001-07:00

Last Tuesday I went to an area of Tokyo called Shinagawa. Since it was a disgusting Tuesday, my buddy Adam was obviously there as well. He had read about the graves of 27 samurai somewhere in his guidebook and was slightly intrigued. As we had nowhere else to go, away we went.

It turned out to be mildly interesting. Shinagawa is not that exciting a place, but we found an English brochure which gave us more background on the story of the 27 samurai. I honestly don't remember it very well, but it had to do with some rebel samurai leader challenging the Shogun or someone important like that. He led a rebellion and was killed. His followers then carried out a revenge attack on his killers. They, in turn, were all executed and buried in this spot at a shrine in Shinagawa, all 27 of them. We took some nice pictures, but I was honestly more interested in Shinagawa's more modern architecture, which contrasted nicely with the shrine's. Here are some pictures:

After the shrine, we ended up at an amazing aquarium, also in Shinagawa. I initially found it amazing because earlier that morning I was sitting on the train watching the advertisements on the little TV screen. I saw an ad for some place called the Epson Aqua Center. I'd never heard of it, but thought it looked rather fun, seeing as it had a dolphin show. I didn't even know where it was located, but I filed its existence in the back of my mind, never actually expecting to go there. Later that day, now in Shinagawa, we came across none other than the Epson Aqua Center. I just knew we had to go there. It was a sign, or whatever you want to call it. I absolutely adore aquariums. This one was not that large, but it had a great selection of creatures- many things I'd never seen before. Most intriguing were these strange orange fish that have huge suction cups on their undersides. There were tons of them in this one tank that was filled with balloons tied to strings that were weighed down by sand at the bottom. The balloons were covered with these little suction cup fish. It was pleasantly odd.

The aquarium also had a big tank where you could stand in a tunnel and watch sharks and huge sting rays swim over your head. In that tank was also an enormous manta ray. I was honestly shocked. I didn't know they could get that big. They also had some of the biggest crabs I've ever seen. Again, I didn't know they could get that big. I mean these things' bodies were literally bigger than my head. Amazing. I couldn't help but think about how much delicious crab meat was probably vacuum packed inside that thing. I thought about how it would taste in a vat of butter sauce. It made my mouth water.

The best was yet to come. We saw a dolphin show, and that was pretty damn impressive. I won't say much more because we all know how smart and talented those dolphins are. We all know they are capable of doing fancy tricks and synchronized jumps in groups four and all that stuff.

Next was the best part: the sea lion show. There were two sea lions that crawled out onto the stage through a door. They did amazing tricks like balancing chairs on their noses, or a plate, a cup, and a ball all at the same time. They encouraged us to clap for them as they flapped their fins together. It was all very cute and impressive. But seriously, the next part just dropped my jaw.

After the show, Adam and I were wandering the corridors taking a few last peeks at our favorite creatures before we skedaddled. Suddenly, we came upon a large crowd in the hallway. We made our way to the front and found one of the sea lions sitting on the floor in the middle of the aquarium hallway, amidst all the tanks of fish. He was sitting there barking and clapping his fins together, trying to get applause. There he was without a leash, well-behaved, and thoroughly enjoying himself. Soon he decided to take a walk around the aquarium. He began to drag himself with those beefy fins down the corridor alongside the shark tank. So the other human visitors wouldn't slip on a wet floor, two aquarium employees kindly followed him, mopping up his watery trail. Eventually he stopped by the dolphin tank to pose for some pictures. The whole thing was pretty bizarre. Sadly, my camera died so I didn't get a picture of it.

On the way back from Shinagawa, we were rushing to get a spot on a very crowded train in Shibuya. We saw a car with a bit a space and made a dash for it. Suddenly there was a very pregnant silence in the car. Adam sniffed the air, smelled the overpowering presence of perfume and whispered, "Um... I think we're in the "women only" car." I looked around and realized that every woman on the train was giving him the evil eye. Some were just surprised, but some of them were utterly horrified, perhaps afraid he might try to grope them. We immediately shuffled off the train. As we exited, the doors began to close before we could get into another car. The train we had rushed so desperately to get on, left without us.

That was my first and only experience on the women only car. The trains in Japan have women only cars during rush hour times because apparently they've had problems with groping on the super packed trains. I can't imagine them ever being able to organize and enforce something like that in New York City, but here, people take it very seriously.

And now for my favorite picture of the day:

Well. I'm a grandfather.

2008-07-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I was hanging out in the lounge one night, eating my dinner. I was making an effort to try to talk to people I had never spoken to before, especially Japanese people. There was this really cute Japanese girl making funny faces for her friends, including a monkey face. So I finally joined in and did a monkey face with her. It turned into a face off and we kept trying to top each other's faces. That kind of ended when I revealed the infamous "old man face" that was once in such high demand when I was in high school. The Japanese girls pretty much couldn't get over it. They kept asking me to do it again, and trying to take pictures with me while I made the face. At one point, I jokingly pointed to myself and said "ojisan," meaning grandfather. Well, that did it. I dug myself a hole right there.

For the rest of the night I was "Ojichan." Everyone called me Ojichan and gave me hugs and requested the face over and over again. I'm pretty sure the name is gonna stick, too. The foreigners living in the guest house were not so opposed to calling me Ojichan either. One Japanese girl called me "Catojichan," which I found pretty clever.

All in all, I can't say I feel too upset about being called the grandfather of the guest house. I've made quite a few new friends and acquaintances in the guest house as a result. I really am starting to feel a part of the place. I quite like living here and think I may stay for quite awhile. Not only is hanging in the lounge a great way to socialize, but it's a great way to ensure that my Japanese improves. I have become very determined to learn as well as I can. It is probably my major goal of my time in Japan. If I have to stay an extra year or two to really get my Japanese down, I may do it.

Last night, my guest house had a big party because a bunch of people are leaving the guest house soon. Some are Japanese, but many of them are foreigners that have been studying Japanese as full-time students at ICU, an international University nearby. They have been here for a year and now they are all leaving Japan. Three of them are British and one is American. They are really nice people and I am sad to see them go. I had a great time at the party though. I got to practice my Japanese a lot, and it was fun to be at a party. I hadn't been to a party in ages. This one Korean guy who works at a cake shop, who everyone calls Kim Pan because he used to work at a bread bakery, made a HUGE cake for the party. It was amazingly huge and delicious. It was decorated with fruit in the shape of a British flag, cause most of the students leaving Japan are British. We ate through that entire thing with no problem. Well, I was impressed.

Oh, another nice thing earlier this week: I went out to dinner with three of the foreign students who are leaving soon. We went to this Okonomiyaki place where you make it yourself! It was tabe ho dai, which means all you can eat for 1500 yen! (Tabe is short for Taberu, the verb for to eat.) That's fifteen dollars, for all you can eat. And eat we did. We ordered a lot of food. We got traditional okonomiyaki, where you mix cabbage and egg and flour and meat together to make a sort of omelette pancake thing. Then we made yaki udon, fried udon noodles with meat and vegetables. All of it was really good, though maybe it didn't look that nice cause we were rather new to cooking our own okonomiyaki. At the end we made dessert okonomiyaki. They brought us a cup of butter, whipped cream, corn flakes, a whole banana, almonds, chocolate, and who knows what else. We dumped it onto the fryer and heated into a big gooey yummy mess. It was dee-licious.

The place was pretty interesting, too. The restaurant was in the basement of a building and it was totally packed. Half of the place was traditional Japanese style where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor. You huddle around a low table with a burner in the middle of the table, where you cook your food. We sat in the other half though, where we sat in chairs at the table. I couldn't believe how packed it was, though. And, literally EVERY customer looked like a young 20-something. It was unbelievably noisy in there. All in all, definitely a very interesting, new experience.

Non food news

2008-07-02T06:08:00.001-07:00

Teaching is going alright. I can't say I'm a perfect teacher, but I do my best to teach the kids the best way I know how. I also try hard to make them like me, which means making them laugh a lot. Usually I'm pretty successful. It's not that hard. All I have to do is pick up a fake apple and pretend to gobble it up noisily like Cookie Monster would. Or, I can jump up and down like a monkey, making monkey noises and scratching at my armpits. It's gets them every time.

However, one little girl didn't like my monkey routine last week. Instead of laughing till she fell over like all the other little 6 year olds in the room, she sat there and frowned at me. Then, she pointed at me, which is apparently very rude in Japan, and yelled "hen," which basically means weirdo in Japanese. The little girl called me a weirdo!! What? She's like six, she's supposed to like this kind of ridiculous humor. What a tough crowd.

Here I am...

But I have no problem making a fool of myself if it makes the kids relax and laugh a little. Recently, in one class where the kids were maybe, oh say eight years old, I was teaching them parts of the body. In the lesson plan it said to sing the Hokey Pokey, dance moves and all. I was pretty sure the activity would fall flat with most of the students and we would have to move onto something else pretty quickly. Well, would you believe it, the kids actually loved it! They couldn't stop laughing. Honestly, I think they just enjoyed it because near the end you have to "put your bottom in, put your bottom out, put your bottom in, and shake it all about..." Yeah, you can imagine. They really got a kick out of watching me put my bottom in and out, and of course, shaking it all about. They liked it so much that they all stopped dancing just to watch me, in all my ridiculous glory.

Loretta Lynn

Let's see. The band is doing fine. We've been practicing together for about a month now, I guess? We practice for about four hours every Sunday night and we now have seven songs. Two of them are covers: the Loretta Lynn song, "Fist City," sung by me, and a song by Nick Cave, sung by Daniel. The rest are Blazing Cranes original songs. The last song is still a bit of a work in progress, though. Andy wrote the guitar and bass parts initially and then I tried to write lyrics and a melody on top of them. I've never written lyrics to anything before, so I don't know how good they are, but it was fun to try. Since I wrote the lyrics, I also get to the sing the song which is always fun. However, we all keep feeling that something is missing from the song. We keep changing things every week about it. It's frustrating, but at the same time it's nice to all be working on a song together as a band. The first line of the song is, "I wanna be as big as a pony..." That's all I'll tell you. I'm looking into buying a second hand electronic keyboard so that I can practice on my own between our usual weekly practices at the studio. I also think it would help me in writing more lyrics or melodies in the future. I am wishing I hadn't quit my piano lessons quite so eagerly back in middle school.

I've had fun being in this band not only cause I enjoy music and singing, but because I've enjoyed getting to know the other band members a bit. I've also been getting to know a lot more people in my guesthouse, which is nice. I've even begun talking to the many Japanese people that so intimidated me before. It was tricky cause most of them don't know much English and until recently I didn't know any Japanese. But my Japanese is slowly improving and I'm trying to practice by talking to more people. I started talking to some Koreans who live in the guest house, cause their Japanese is really really good and they're really friendly. I was amazed at how much I was able to say to them in Japanese. They were pretty surprised and impressed, too, I think.

Shimokitazawa ( i didn't take this picture)

A few weekends ago I went to a club in Shimo Kitazawa with Andy and Daniel from my band and another Japanese guy from the guest house named Shin. The club was having a 50s/60s night. So the music was all American 50s/60s style. It was all really obscure, amazing stuff. We couldn't stay very long because of how early the trains stop running, but we had an awesome time dancing our hearts out to the music. We did the twist, we did the-- well, I don't know the names of the moves, but we did them all. The place apparently filled up after we left, but while we were there we were the only people dancing. The walls were lined with awkward Japanese people dressed in 50s attire. Apparently they asked our Japanese friend if we were comedians from a TV show or something. They couldn't understand why a group of people would dance in public so vigorously and unabashedly. Crazy foreigners.

Anyway, Shimo Kitazawa is a cool place. Reminds me a little of the village in NYC. Here's a link to an article on Shimo Kitazawa: http://krax.typepad.com/krax/city_tokyo/index.html

Not much else. Recently made plans to visit Kyoto in early August with my mother and grandmother who will be visiting. Really looking forward to that. I also enjoyed using as much Japanese as possible to speak to the travel agent when I was reserving the package tours for Kyoto. She knew a lot of English, but still seemed to prefer speaking Japanese to me, so I just rolled with it. I understood quite a bit more than I expected to.

I also recently bought a plane ticket to attend the wedding of one of my very best friends in September. I'll be using four of my 5 paid vacation days available. I'm extremely excited. I get to be a bridesmaid for the first time. I get to wear a fabulous orange dress. I get to see my family, and her family, and a bunch of my closest friends from home. I get to be present at a very important day in a good friend's life. What's not to look forward to?

This week's food column:

2008-07-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

So I did go to Disneyland back awhile ago and it was very strange because there were moments when I thought to myself, "Have I been here before?" The layout of the place was often identical to the layout of the Disneyland I went to in Florida when I last went in middle school. Of course, it seemed much more exciting back then. Most of the rides are the same as they were back then, but this time most of them seemed pretty tame. Luckily, I still like good old fashioned fun for children, so I had a good time. Space mountain was still pretty scary actually. More than once on that ride I was sure we were either hurtling into real outer space or a wall. Either way, I was fairly petrified. Turns out that rollercoaster has some wickedly fast turns. Woopee. We also had a huge buffet dinner for like 20 bucks. It was awesome. And it was served on Mickey Mouse shaped plates:

About a month ago I had dinner at my boyfriend's family's apartment. We had a fabulous home cooked meal provided by his mother. I hadn't eaten such good food in quite awhile. We had this one dish that was a bit similar to the kind of stew we'd make back in the states. In Japan it's called niku jaga, meaning "meat potato." Niku is meat, and jaga is short for jagaimo (potato). The ingredients were mainly beef, potato, onion, and carrot. But the beef was that thinly sliced beef that is so commonly found in Japan, that is not quite so common back home. The sauce was what really hooked me though: mirin or cooking wine, with brown sugar, and soy sauce. Amazing. Sweet, salty, and delicious. His mother told me how to make it and a few weeks later I tried it. I swear, I'm not a good cook but it was the best thing I've ever made, in the kitchen at least. I definitely plan to make it again. Perhaps we'll make a good cook out of me yet. Anyway, back to the dinner. It was a couple days before my boyfriend's birthday so we had cake, and jeez was it the best cake I'd ever had. I don't know how to describe it: light, fluffy, creamy, with strawberries on top. The cakes are really good here cause they aren't too sweet like desserts back in the states. Oh what a meal. I'm still dreaming about it.

Another recent food adventure I had, faithfully embarked upon on a Disgusting Tuesday, was eating escargot! I had always (never) wanted to try it, but lately I've been able to try almost anything. In fact, I am decidedly on the lookout out for new, disgusting, strange foods to try. So when my friends Adam and Amanda and I were trying to find a place to eat the other night, we happened upon an Italian restaurant chain called Saizeriya. We'd never been there and so we we peeked at the menu that had been helpfully parked outside on the sidewalk. I admit it was not a very impressive menu, but the moment I saw escargot on it, I knew we had to eat there. Here was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. It came out on a round platter, with little craters in the dish, each containing a little snail swimming in a pool of garlic sauce. I don't usually even like garlic very much, but these things were surprisingly delightful. They had a pleasant taste and texture. I couldn't believe it. I'm sure escargot must be even better at a more expensive restaurant, or perhaps in a more appropriate place such as oh, I dunno, say, France?

Honestly, I shouldn't have been eating at such a boring, low quality food establishment. Personally, I think the Italian food in Japan is pretty bad. Or maybe it's not bad but it's just very different from any Italian food I've ever eaten, especially from the Italian food I've eaten in New York or Italy. It's just extremely Japanized in a way that I cannot appreciate, as of yet. In addition, I shouldn't have been eating at such a place because I was in an area called Shimo Kitazawa. In Shimo Kitazawa, probably any restaurant would have been better than Saizeriya.

I recently discovered Shimo Kitazawa in the past few weeks and I've gone back there quite a few times. It's a bit like Harajuku, but bigger and better... and less strange. Harajuku is the place where people dress like crossbreeds between Little Bo Beep and Marilyn Manson.
There are always tons of young people in Harajuku, and lots of interesting and exciting clothing shops, cafes, and restaurants. Shimo Kitazawa has less weirdos, and more vintage clothing stores and record shops. It also has lots of cheap, interesting, amazing, and delicious resturants, bars, and cafes. It also has a lot of live music venues.

I went back there again this past Saturday with my boyfriend and we found an old vintage toy shop that sold every toy imaginable from the past. It was wonderful. I admit I bought a few things. They had really nicely made figurines of literally every Disney character that ever existed. Even the unimportant characters that you never see toys made of. Like the owl in "The Sword in the Stone."

After that we had Okonomiyaki for dinner. It's a famous Japanese dish that I badly wanted to try. Usually you make it yourself, but at this place they cook it for you. It's basically a savory pancake made of flour, fried in a pile of noodles, egg, cabbage, carrots, other random vegetables, meat, huge delicious prawns, and some amazing brown sauce smothered on top of it all. It's just a big, gooey pile of goodness and they cook it on a big flat metal table in front of you. We ordered one plate and shared it between us, cause the servings were enormous. The place was a tiny crappy little hole in the wall, and it was super crowded. But, boy, was that food delicious. We finished the night with some Baskin Robbins ice cream (yes, they have it here. they have everything here, and more.) Again, I must relate the deliciousness of the ice cream. I ordered a new flavor called Blueberry panna cotta. Hot damn. If it's available in the states, I recommend you get over there immediately and try it.

P.S. This blog is becoming a bit like a food column in a magazine. I do apologize if you are not as into food as much as I am.

If you don't wanna go to Fist City...

2008-06-11T20:05:00.001-07:00

My Japanese class is going really well. Every Tuesday after class, there is another optional hour and a half of extra class where a bunch of volunteer teachers come in and split us into groups. I have had the same lady to myself every week and it's been great. We try to talk to each other using things I've learned, and then she teaches me new useful sentences. As we talk, I ask her how to say a lot of things in Japanese. Then she makes me write everything we say down in my notebook in hiragana or katakana. Only foreign words can be written in katakana. You must never write Japanese words in katakana, or foreign words in Hiragana. Which is annoying because you have to know two different characters for every phonetic sound.

Anyways, I really enjoy these optional lessons because I get to learn whatever I want and have real conversations with someone. I learned that my teacher used to live in the States for quite a few years. She's lived in New Jersey and California, I think. As a result, she knows some English, which helps when I don't understand what she's asking me, or I want to know how to say something. The really exciting part, though, was when we realized that her son and I both graduated from Washington University in St. Louis! He graduated almost 10 years ago, but he got a degree from the architecture school. He lives in Japan now. I thought that was an amazing coincidence.

This past Tuesday we had another lady sit in on our lesson. I think she is studying to be a volunteer Japanese teacher too, so she wanted to watch. We ended up including her in the conversations and she was also really nice. They taught me a lot of useful art-related vocabulary, such as art museum, painter, painting, modern art, sculptor, painting. It was fun. Afterwards, the lady who sat in on our lesson ending up walking with me back to the station. She was extremely cute and old, and literally half my height. I had to bend down to speak to her. She doesn't know much English, so I was trying to talk to her in Japanese. As we were walking, she asked me to have coffee with her. We stopped at a coffee shop where she treated me to an iced latte and we shared halves of a sandwich. While it was difficult and I'm sure I said a lot of strange things, we managed to have a conversation. We talked about our past travel experiences, where I wanted to go in Japan, what movies we liked. I told her about my plans to go to Kyoto with my mother and grandmother in August. It was quite fun to really try to have a conversation with someone who didn't know English. She seemed to really enjoy meeting me, too. I don't know what it is about the older Japanese ladies, but they really seem to like me. It's really cute. They're really cute.

In other news, I have started a band with three guys from my guest house. Our band's name at the moment is Blazing Cranes, but I'm not sure if that's the final name or not. All of us are foreigners. Leo is Asian-Australian and he plays the drums. He's pretty quiet, so I don't know him that well. The other two are both English teachers at the same company as me. Andy is from Glasgow, Scotland and Daniel is Canadian. The two of them switch roles back and forth playing guitar and bass.

Our first practice was last Sunday. We found a nice studio in Tachikawa, a few stops away from our guest house on the Chuo line. For about 25 bucks each, the four of us can rent the studio and all the instruments and equipment we need for four hours. Not bad, I think. We rented a full drum set, a guitar, a bass, amps, microphones, a fancy electronic keyboard, and maybe some other equipment too, but I don't know anything about that stuff.

Andy and Daniel had already written a few songs since we had first decided to form a band, so we practiced those. Since they had been practicing the songs in their rooms with their own voices, they decided to sing their own songs themselves. I played the keyboard and did backup vocals. However, as my strengths lie mostly in singing, I hope and expect to be given more of a singing role. I played piano as a kid and took lessons for a long time, but I honestly don't remember much. I never got very good cause I never wanted to practice. But at least I can remember what key is which note. I also have pretty good pitch so it's easy for me to match notes.

Anyway, I really enjoyed practicing with these guys. We seem to have similar tastes in music and all have quite a broad range of tastes, too. So far our music seems to have a bit of a folk, punk, post-punk, slightly country feel. Some of it reminds me of the Velvet Underground, Beat Happening, and... not sure what else. But I like it. I really enjoyed being able to improvise my own parts. They would play me the guitar parts of a song, and tell me what notes/chords they used and then I would come up with a keyboard part. It was all very simple, mostly ambient chords and such, but it sounded pretty nice. Gave the songs a richer, fuller sound. I also enjoyed coming up with some backup vocals for a few songs.

Since I don't really know how to write music, the guys suggested I come up with a cover song or two that I'd be interesting in singing. Last night we decided to do a cover of Loretta Lynn's "Fist City," at my own suggestion. I played the song for them and they really liked it. They tried playing it on guitar while I sang and it worked quite well so we are all very excited about it. I am pretty excited to be singing again, too. So we'll work on that this upcoming Sunday. The plan is to practice every Sunday night.

The important parts of culture: food and the words you need to know in order to acquire it

2008-06-06T07:12:00.001-07:00

Well, some new strange foods I've tried are the following: pigs ear, and frog legs. Both of which I happened to eat at two different Okinawan restaurants. Okinawa, if you didn't know, is one of the most famous tropical Japanese Islands. It's a very popular vacation spot.

Anyway, pig's ear is apparently an Okinawan culinary delicacy. I ate it when I was attending a company party. The individual branch schools often host parties for their students, Japanese staff, and teachers to attend. I don't technically have to attend, but let's just say you win your staff's favor by attending their school parties. Sometimes these parties are held in the actual schools. This party, however, was held at a restaurant. It was a set meal for everyone, so someone ordered a bunch of famous Okinawan dishes for everyone to try. This just so happened to include pig's ear. Even the Japanese students were telling me I shouldn't eat the pig's ear, because it's basically just cartilage. I tried fried chicken cartilage once, also in Japan. It was awful. I have to wonder, why would someone choose to eat such a thing? "Oh, waiter, I'd like some fried chicken please, only please hold the meat." I guess some people like a good helping of crunchy bone-like substance every now and then. Anyway, I was glad to find that pigs ear wasn't quite so terrible as chicken cartilage.

As for the frog legs... well, you know what they say: it tastes like chicken! There's not much more to say, except that it was hilarious seeing how the legs were still attached. They were also disturbingly muscular looking. It was very bizarre because it was obvious that what we were eating had once been a frog. Much rude picture taking ensued at the dinner table. Here's a nice example:

Eating frog legs is just one of many strange eating experiences I've had with my friend Adam. (See earlier blog entry on eating scorpions). We both have Tuesdays off, so I end up hanging out with him a fair bit. Luckily, it turns out he's a pretty good eating partner, and I'm always looking for more of those. My criteria includes the following: they need to like many different kinds of food. They need to be adventurous and willing to try strange, new things. They need to love eating out. They can't be picky. They need to love meat. That last one is probably the most important, actually. Anyway, as a result of all this, Adam and I have made a pact to try a new and possibly disgusting food every Tuesday. We call it: Disgusting Tuesdays. Lovely.

In other news, I started Japanese lessons a few weeks ago. The class is held two days every week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings. There's about 15 people in the class. The teacher speaks a little bit of English, which is nice and helpful for me, being the only native English speaker in the entire class. There are no other Westerners really. There’s a bunch of Chinese women, three women from Laos, one from India, one from Indonesia, a girl from Thailand, two Korean women, a doctor from Colombia, and a younger guy from the Philippines. It’s quite interesting to see what problems people from different countries have with Japanese pronunciation. Though it can be rather frustrating when the Chinese students have a much easier time with pronunciation, and the reading and writing of Japanese script. It's also annoying cause some of them are rather cocky about the fact that they are better than other students. Whenever we have to read something out loud in class, and someone like myself is reading a bit slowly, they will blurt out the answers before I can come up with them myself. It's not that it's embarrassing really, but I don't like that they deny me the chance to figure things out for myself. It's very annoying, because I know I'd be able to get the answer if they just let me.

I admit I am still VERY slow at reading and writing. But I have been learning quite a bit and I am very excited about it. I've really been getting into it, trying to study a lot on my own time. Just in the first week I learned how to write and read in Hiragana. The Japanese use three different writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Kanji are the ancient Chinese based characters which are much more numerous and complex than the other two writing systems. Katakana is a phonetic writing system, mostly used for writing foreign words that use sounds that are not familiar to Japanese people. Like hamburger becomes "hanbaagaa," ice cream becomes "aisu kurimu," salad becomes "sarada," and so on. Hiragana is also phonetic, but used for Japanese words. It is much easier to learn than Kanji anyway. So my teacher started us on Hiragana. After a week or two she started us on Katakana. I can now officially read and write in both Hiragana and Katakana, and I am extremely surprised and proud of this amazing feat. Though I read like a small child; I'm constantly sounding everything out. Nevertheless, it is amazing to look around on billboards, the train, or in restaurants and be able to read things finally. Once I read a word, I may not know what it means, but at least I can look it up in a dictionary.

Unfortunately, the Japanese use all three writing systems together at the same time. So all three could be used within the same sentence, which can get rather confusing. It also means I can often only read parts of sentences. Well, hey, it’s a start. I’m very excited to be learning something again. I didn’t realize how much I missed being in school and using my brain and learning things. Sometimes I think about quitting the job and going to school again to learn Japanese full-time. But, that would require money I either don't have or can't afford to spend. So, I will satisfy myself with a mediocre class taught by volunteer teachers for free. At least it's two days a week! But man, oh man. Sometimes I just want to learn faster! I really want to be able to converse with people already. Sadly, I still have a long way to go... but I shall persevere.

Anyways, more to come later. I must divulge the dirty details of my splendid visit to the extremely tame and child-friendly Tokyo Disneyland. I faced Space mountain for the second time in my life and I am thoroughly proud to say that this time Space mountain didn't conquer me, I conquered space mountain! Oh yes, that's right. I even sat in the front row again. (God that was terrifying as a child...)

Earthquakes and ice cream and other nice things...

2008-05-19T10:16:00.001-07:00

Last week I went to Ikebukuro with my friend, Amanda. In Ikebukuro they have an earthquake center where you can learn what to do in disasterous situations. Sadly, most of it was in Japanese so I’m not sure how helpful it really was. Honestly, I was interested in going because it was free and my guidebook’s description made it sound like those simulation rides at Universal studios. In reality, it was a bit less exciting, but still rather impressive.

First we attended a workshop addressing the proper ways of "escaping" a room on fire. They had created a smoke maze made up of many little rooms connected by closed doors. The first room was completely filled with a smoky substance that smelled rather sweet, like the stuff they released on the dance floors at Barmitzvahs when I was thirteen. It definitely did the job though, because it was impossible to see anything in that room. It was rather embarrassing because Amanda and I weren't totally sure what they were telling us to do, and each separate party had to go through the smoke maze while the rest of the group watched them on a screen. Amanda and I, the only foreigners in the room, were very conscious of the fact that we were being watched by a large group of Japanese people. I couldn’t see anything, so I crouched down low and followed the wall with my hands and eventually found a door. We made it out okay, but pathetically we managed to disobey most of the directions. We failed to cover our mouths properly, Amanda didn’t bother crouching down low, and we forgot to close all the doors behind us. Big F for the foreigners.

Next was the earthquake room. Each separate party got a turn in the earthquake room while the rest of us watched on a movie screen outside. When it was our turn we were paired up with another Japanese couple, making us a group of four. We earthquake room was made up to look like a kitchen. There was a fake stove with a pot and a kettle on it. We were told to sit at the kitchen table and wait. On the table were four cushions, one placed at each seat. As the room began to violently shake we had to cover our heads with the cushions and hide under the table. We were told to hold on tight to the legs of the table. The simulation was pretty creepy. They had simulated fake debris falling outside the windows of the room and the teakettle flew off the stove and onto the floor next to our table. Obviously they had lots of sound effects, as well. Luckily the kettle was actually attached to the wall by a metal wire, so it couldn’t actually hit any of us. After what felt like 3 or 4 minutes the simulated quake stopped and we were allowed to come out of hiding.

I now know exactly what to do if I am sitting at a table that has a cushion on it and an earthquake hits. Sadly, if I am anywhere else when the next earthquake hits, I will have no idea what to do. It was a nice idea, but not sure if they needed to spend all that money creating this earthquake simulation room just to give us some very simple and rather impractical information.

Seriously, though, I would really like to know more about earthquakes because the week before I visited Ikebukuro’s earthquake center, there was an earthquake in Toyko. It was sometime in the middle of the night, so I was rather groggy when I woke up. My bed was shaking quite a bit, the clothes in my closet were swishing back and forth, and the lamp on the ceiling was shaking. I was so sleepy, I don't think I realized how strong it was. While earthquakes are rather common here, this one was a fairly strong one I hear. The epicenter was actually pretty far away, but people seemed very surprised that we could feel it so strongly in Tokyo. It was about 6.8 on the richter scale. I hear Japan is long overdue for another huge earthquake, having had a massively destructive one back in the 20s. Here is an informative passage I stole from a 2004 BBC news article:

~~~

“Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, perched on top of several converging tectonic plates.

Geological instability causes around 1,000 tremors in the country each year, although many of these go undetected by the public.

Every time they do strike they are a reminder to the country's capital, Tokyo, that it is long overdue "a Big One".

The last major quake in the city was in 1923, and records suggest the geologically precarious Kanto region - where Tokyo in located - will experience one of a similar size about every 70 years.

The 1923 quake, known as the Great Kanto Earthquake, killed more than 100,000 people. Although building and safety standards have greatly improved since then, experts predict that a major quake in the capital could still kill several thousand people and shake the world's financial markets.
…

The urban density of Tokyo - home to more than 12 million people crammed into an area of just over 2,000 sq-km - therefore puts it at great risk.

A government earthquake panel said in August that there was a 70% chance of a quake around magnitude 7 hitting Tokyo in the next 30 years. The city government has predicted a quake measuring 7.2 could kill more than 7,000 people and injure around 160,000.”

~~~

Pretty scary, eh? So now I can see why most Tokyoites are so nervous about earthquakes. I still have to get over my tendency to think that being in an earthquake would be exciting. Sometimes I almost wish a big earthquake would strike just so I could see what it’s like. I remember loving that movie “Twister” because I had never experienced a tornado. I thought the idea of trying to escape a natural disaster sounded so romantic and exciting. I know it's silly, but I still think that way sometimes. Since the awful earthquake hit China last week though, I have realized the seriousness of our situation in Tokyo. Who knows when the next big one will be?

Anyway, enough about earthquakes. Let’s talk about ice cream! Following the earthquake center, Amanda and I went to a large mall-type complex called Sunshine City. It has tons of clothing stores, a little theme park (of sorts) called Namja town, an observation tower with an aquarium in it, and a place called Ice Cream City. Ice Cream City turned out to be a mini museum about the history of ice cream in Japan. There was an arcade as well, as there often are everywhere in Tokyo. Lining the place were vendors selling packets of astronaut ice cream, strange flavors of Gelato, such as black sesame (the ice cream was actually black), and stretchy ice cream. The list of strange ice creams continues. I liked that everyone let you taste flavors before buying. We walked around and tasted all the flavors that a.) looked tasty or b.) looked really odd and possibly disgusting. There was also a room of freezers stocked with little cups of the strangest flavors of ice cream I have ever seen. A few examples are squid, octopus, shrimp, crab, curry, corn, and chicken. I, of course, just had to try one of these disgustingly strange ice cream flavors. After much deliberation, I chose chicken flavored ice cream. Well, here’s the thing… never eat chicken ice cream.

Chicken ice cream is basically bland, white ice cream, with minced fried chicken chunks mixed into it. The ice cream was boring and tasteless, and didn’t even taste like chicken. How utterly disappointing! (And those minced chicken bits sure didn’t do the ice cream's texture any favors). I’m pretty sure I remember finding a bit of cartilage in there, too.

After this exciting edible adventure, I settled upon a nice cup of gelato to calm things down a bit. I ordered a cup of two flavors: blueberry and rare cheese. Now rare cheese sounds pretty strange too, but it was actually amazingly delicious. The two flavors went together extremely well.

After Ice Cream City, we wandered Namjatown. I'm not sure how else to explain it except that it was kind of like an indoor theme park. There were no rides, but there was tons of food, such as Gyoza town. Gyoza town was filled with tons of vendors all selling their own versions of those tasty Japanese dumplings. There was also a three-story maze of many elaborate theatrical themed sets: a Florentine town, an Egyptian tomb, a haunted forest, and so on. It sure reminded me of Disneyland. I wasn’t really sure what the purpose of this place was, but people seemed to be playing some kind of game that involved wearing a big plastic cat on a string around your neck, sticking it into these little portals around the maze of theatrical sets and pressing buttons a lot. We foreigners, as usual, had no idea what was going on. We just enjoyed admiring the amazingly extensive detail put into the theatrical sets.

What really surprised me though, was the bathroom. In the last stall there was a large scary face sculpted onto the wall behind the toilet. When you sat down and closed the door, a trap door snapped shut on the top of the stall. The lights went out, thunder noises commenced, and a loud, booming voice began to yell threatening things in Japanese. Flashing blacklights revealed skeletons painted on the walls in glow-in-the-dark paint. What could be more frightening than sitting on a toilet in the dark, not sure what’s about to happen to you?

Nijima Island

2008-05-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

During April, I had about ten days off for Golden Week. It was a bit random because the new school year had only started just two weeks before. I was not really in need of a break at all. Nevertheless, I went to Nijima Island with my friend Chani for about four days.

Nijima is a volcanic island south of Tokyo and the mainland. It is one of the many Izu Islands, which are administered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. You can get to Nijima in two hours by speedboat, but most tourists take the ferry. The ferry takes seven hours from Takeshiba port in Tokyo. The ferry is also cheaper than the speedboat, so we chose the ferry. Our boat departed at 10pm and arrived in Nijima the following morning. I was quite excited because I’d never been on such a large boat before. There were even different levels for different prices of tickets, which made us feel as though we were commoners in the third class lower level. As we had little knowledge of or experience with large boats, we couldn't help comparing everything we experienced to the Blockbuster hit movie "Titanic."

Our reserved "seat" on the boat was actually was a human-sized rectangle of space marked out by masking tape on a red-carpeted floor. We were given pathetic little round pillows the size of a bean bag. At 11 o clock they turned out the lights and told everyone it was bed time. It was amazing. There were rows upon rows of these masking tape rectangles lined up side by side on the floor, filled with snoring human beings. Luckily we had sleeping bags because we were planning on camping out in Nijima.

When we arrived in Nijima we weren’t sure how far it was to the camp site but we had a lot of stuff with us. We were picked up by a really nice taxi driver who didn’t speak a word of English. He kept stopping along the road to show us things, saying in Japanese, “this is a restaurant,” and "this is the grocery store.” Note I say THE grocery store, not A grocery store. Nijima is a very small island. It probably takes roughly 5-10 minutes to drive from one side of the island to the other. Of course, that’s the short distance. The Island is a bit oval-shaped, so the other distance is much longer. There’s another town on the other end of the island that can only be accessed by driving through a tunnel through a mountain. You are prohibited from walking or riding a bicycle through the tunnel. Apparently it’s very long and uphill. What's really crazy is that as you get closer to the middle, there isn’t very much oxygen. It could be very fatal to someone that tried to pass through the tunnel NOT in a car. We decided not to enter the tunnel since we didn’t really have access to a car.

Ah but, anyways, back to the taxi driver. I found him very funny because I honestly think he may have been the ONLY taxi driver on the island. Everywhere we went we were constantly running into the guy. We’d be biking down the road and hear a honk honk and there’d be the goofy taxi driver waving frantically at us. If we were lost, we could count on him to suddenly show up and tell us where to go. Awesome guy.

The cab driver dropped us off at the campsite and sped off to find his next customer. It was a really nice campsite, set on a softly sloping hill that led up to the mountains. These were the most carefully planned and manicured campgrounds I'd ever seen. Of course it fits in with the Japanese stereotypes. There were little plots marked out for each group, with little concrete bbq grills to make fires in and cook food on. Of course, we hadn’t really brought any food with us, just some bowls, chopsticks, cups, dish soap, and a bit o charcoal. There were even metal sinks with running water placed every fifty feet or so, making it easy to wash dishes or brush our teeth. There was also a bathroom at the bottom of the hill with working toilets and sinks.

When we first got to the campsite we were super hungry because it was about 10am and we hadn’t had breakfast yet. Our campsite was on one side of the island close to Habushiura beach, so we walked to the other side of the village where the port was, in hopes of finding some food. It was a pretty long walk, perhaps 40 minutes, so we were starving by the time we found any shops. We went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of vegetables to cook on the fire: already cooked corn on the cob sealed in plastic, pumpkin, red peppers, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes (for making baked potatoes). Well, here's some advice: don’t ever try to cook pumpkin on a crappy little charcoal fire. I’m sure our fire making skills were lacking, but pumpkin also takes a ridiculously long time to cook. We ended up tossing it in the bushes. The peppers cooked nicely, at least. The sweet potatoes were not so lucky, however. We wrapped them in tinfoil, placed them in a bed of glowing charcoal, and promptly forgot about them. Later on we unwrapped the tinfoil to find large burnt lumps of charcoal. Blech. We didn’t bother trying to cook the regular potatoes yet. The corn on the cob was okay, but since it was already technically cooked and had been sealed in plastic, it was rather like eating warm, canned, corn on the cob. It was quite the unfulfilling dinner. Let’s just say we didn’t make any more fires that week.

Luckily there were other English-teaching foreigners staying at the campsite that WERE good at making fires. In the tent right next to us, there was a duo of male English teachers who had both been in Japan for quite some time. One had married a Japanese woman and was due to have a baby soon. They were nice enough and let us share their fire. We were especially grateful for its warmth. The final night we met a more interesting group that was cooking large quantities of steak and sausage on their grill. They also gave us noodles. We supplied skewers, green pepper, and baked potatoes with salsa and cheese on them. (Yes, I know, salsa… weird. We needed something to flavor them!) Anyway, they were fun people.

Now for activities: the first day we rented bikes. I was very glad about this, as the 40 minute walk became more like a 15 minute bike ride. One day, we rode over to the port side to explore. As we passed a little shop on the side of the road, some old man on the porch motioned for us to come over. He gave us little cookies with pictures of Nijima on them, and made us sit down. Immediately he began feeding us rice, sashimi, and other random Japanese foods. He kept trying to make us drink beer even though it was only about 10:30am. I’m guessing he was probably drunk already. We kept wondering if it was a trick. I was sure he was going to feed us and then demand large sums of cash. He kept inviting other young Japanese travelers passing by to join our feast, too. After awhile we determined that he probably didn't intend to charge us anything and began to enjoy ourselves a bit. He even had a little fire on a grill going and he gave us pieces of meat to cook on it. We were totally stuffed by the end. The man was actually quite entertaining, though. He was very fat in a jolly sort of way, and kept pulling up his shirt to show us his perfect, bulbous belly. He kept rubbing it and cackling, “BAYBEEE! Hah hah hah." He motioned for all of us to touch it, but only one Japanese girl was brave enough to reach out and pet it. Hilarious. Though, it a was a little less hilarious when he asked us to meet up with him later around 6pm for some Karaoke. We pretended we didn't understand because we were slightly creeped out about the idea of hanging with this guy at night.

My favorite part of the trip was when we went to this Izakaya (bar/restaurant) that was owned by a middle-aged couple. It was rather late, so after serving us food they sat down at the table next to us to eat their own dinner. The guy kept taking his sushi and putting it on our plates and making us eat it. We didn't refuse, as again, he wouldn't let us refuse. He didn’t know any English really, but the wife knew quite a few words. It seemed like maybe she had studied it at some point, because she had one of those electronic translators that all my students have. So, using our minimal Japanese and her minimal English we managed to have a stilted, but rather satisfying conversation. We learned that they had two kids around our age: a daughter who was 23 and a secretary, and a son who was an intern at an architecture firm, I think. They woman was especially sweet to us and kept giving us extra food, free of charge, and asking us all about ourselves. She even tried to teach me some Japanese, and showed me how to read some Kanji from the newspaper. Then they asked to have a picture taken with each of us. Adorable. I want copies of those pictures.

What was amazing is I think they kept the place open late, just so they could continue talking to us. After awhile, everyone else had left and we were the only customers. Eventually they said, Um…. Is it okay if we go home now? We are a little tired, but really sorry! We were like, um, what? Yeah, of course. Don’t let us keep you open! Anyways, this experience really made me want to learn Japanese even more.

We also hung out in the Island’s onsen (hot spring) a lot because it was free, and right on the coast. It also required bathing suits which made us foreigners feel very comfortable. The onsen was built to look like old Greek Ruins or something which was kinda cheesy, but funny. Around dusk you could sit in the onsen and watch the sun go down behind another smaller island off in the distance. It was gorgeous because the sun turned completely red. It looked like a big red ball sitting on top of the other island in the middle of the ocean.

On another day we hung out on the beach. We collected rocks, got sunburned, ran away from huge scary waves and watched the surfers do their thing. The island is really popular with surfers. It’s a tiny island and there aren’t many tourist attractions other than the scenery. But that was sort of what we liked that about it.

We spent a lot of time riding our bikes around the island and exploring. Sometimes we abandoned our bikes and hiked up in the hills, hoping to get some good views. It was nice to be walking, except that there weren't any trails. The trail was just a paved road going up the mountainside. As a result, the actual walk wasn’t very scenic and we often had to stop to let cars go by. One exciting moment was when we found a large dead snake in the middle of the road. We took many pictures. We also enjoyed making our walking sticks out of bamboo that we found along the side of the road. Only in Japan… We also checked out the green glass museum and the Nijima Museum, which basically gave us the history of the Island. Like Australia, Japan used these little Islands to exile criminals for a long time. There was apparently an old execution square somewhere but we didn’t find it. Anyways, all in all, a rather relaxing camping trip. Except for the part where I got really sick and then a huge tropical storm blew in on our last day. That was fun. I really enjoyed being sick on the 7 hour ferry ride home. Good fun.

Oh my god

2008-05-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

Well I just got a panda foot in the mouth...

chew on this: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080501a3.html

I can't believe it. The one time I joke about a panda dying...

-----------------------------------------------------------

[RIP LING LING the PANDA]

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Ling Ling the Panda,

I'm sorry. I wasn't really mad at you for being sick that one time. I was just disappointed. That's all. I'm sure you're a great Panda. Honest. So... come back, okay?

X.

Pandas, Pangolins, and Scorpions... oh my.

2008-04-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

Last Monday night I went to visit my boyfriend in Yokohama. We ate dinner at a diner near his apartment. The atmosphere and décor felt a bit forced, but it I suppose it generally captured the idea of the American diner. It was more expensive than the average American diner, and much classier and cleaner. It had booth seating, like in a real diner, except the booths were made of an antiqued wood that was painted white. It felt like I was in a fancy country restaurant in New Hampshire or Maine or somewhere equally as quaint. There were old-fashioned kitchen appliances lining the shelves on the wall, such as blenders and toasters. Even the floor was checkered black and white.

Most importantly though, they had every kind of food you’d expect a diner to have: Italian, Mexican, Greek, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, salads. The food I was most excited to encounter was a fabulous Oreo milkshake. Except for the smaller size, it was just as good as any milkshake back home. Oh, diners, how do I miss thee.

On Tuesday, I went to the Zoo in Ueno Park. Yes, that’s right. Adam and I went to the very same zoo that we couldn’t find the entrance of last time. I was so sure we needed to enter by some kind of magical wizarding process, but turns out, we walked right by the entrance. This time, of course, we found it right away.

Our main reason for visiting this particular zoo was to see its famous Giant Panda. Imagine our major disappointment when we read the following notice immediately after purchasing tickets:

Ling Ling the panda is not available today. On the morning of April 22nd,
Ling Ling the Panda had stomach pains and went to the hospital.

Boy, were we pissed.

Geez, Ling Ling, why did you have to have stomach pains on the very morning that we were coming to enjoy your company? (I’m sure I’m going to regret this statement when I read a news article about the tragic death of Ling Ling the Panda later this month).

Nevertheless, it turned out to be a pretty fabulous zoo. They had every animal you’d ever want to see, including elephants, lions, tigers, monkeys, owls, and bears…oh yes. We even watched a lion roar. The most exceptional thing about this Zoo experience, however, was that I learned about the existence of at least two new animals. (That’s how many animals this zoo had).

Usually at the zoo I see the same old animals. This week, I learned that there exists a strange nocturnal animal called the Pangolin. It has large scales on its body and looks like this:

Woah!

According to Wikipedia, Pangolins are also called “scaly anteaters.” Pangolins are mammals. Pangolins live in Africa and Asia. If you want to learn more about Pangolins: click here!

The other animal I discovered was the Secretary bird. It looks like someone crossbred a chicken, an eagle and maybe a heron, or some other long-legged bird. The long legs really confused me. I was sure someone had taken an unsuspecting chicken and taped on a heron’s legs. It looks so out of proportion, and walks more like a chicken, well, than a chicken does. Anyway, a secretary bird looks like this:

After the zoo adventure, Adam and I checked out an area called Ikebukuro which, according to Bobby, the owner of Bobby’s bar in Ikebukuro, has the largest underground train station in… well, Tokyo, and maybe all of Japan. It's certainly one of the largest stations in the world. Ikebukuro is a big college town and has a lot of restaurants, bars, shops, etc. They have a great bookstore with a huge English book section, which I love. Anyway, we happened upon Bobby’s bar when a guy with a native English speaking voice handed us a Bobby’s bar flyer and begged us to come inside and talk to him. His name was Nathan and he was a friend of the owner. He was desperate for someone talk to, so we finally agreed. Inside, we met his family friend, Bobby. I’m not sure where Bobby was from, but he looked like he could be Middle Eastern, European, or South American. I honestly wasn’t sure. He had a thick accent when speaking English, though. Nathan was from Toronto apparently, and was visiting for a couple months while he helped Bobby out at his bar. We had a nice chat with Nathan and Bobby, and then went along our merry way because we had to catch the last trains.

Before meeting Bobby and Nathan though, we ate dinner at an Izakaya. As I was chattering away about work or something equally as boring, Adam suddenly had a funny look on his face. I looked around to find that he was staring at a platter on the table behind me.

“My God, are those scorpions!?” cried Adam in his splendid British accent.

“Hai. Yes,” replied the grinning middle-aged couple.

“Ugh! Wow,” we giggled in disbelieving unison.

The woman warmly gestured at the scorpions, “Dozo.” (Please, go ahead.)

“Um, really? Seriously?”

“Hai, eat-o.”

“Well, um okay.” Adam clumsily picked up one of the leggy creatures with his bare hands and brought it slowly to his face. “So… stinger and all?” he asked nervously.

“Hai, hai!” the couple nodded eagerly. “Dozo, dozo!”

He stuffed the scorpion into his mouth, stinger and all. “Delicious!” he cried after a moment. He pushed in a few straggler scorpion legs hanging awkwardly from the corner of his mouth.

Then it was my turn. I refused quite a few times. For starters, I couldn’t believe we were grabbing food with our fingers off of a strange Japanese couple’s table. Wasn’t that unbelievably rude in Japan? Then I noticed that neither of them had eaten more than one scorpion each. Maybe they wanted to get rid of them. Maybe this was a new, exciting food for them, too. “Really? Are you sure?” I asked repeatedly. “Dozo, dozo,” was the reply.

“Oh, what the heck.” I gave in and picked up a scorpion tentatively with my chopsticks. It was crunchy, and spindly like a spider. What if the stinger stings me as I chew?

In one hurried movement I flung it into my mouth and chewed vigorously. I felt the delicate spidery legs breaking off and pasting themselves to my teeth, my tongue, the roof of my mouth. It suppose it tasted okay; it mostly tasted fried. There wasn’t much to chew, honestly. There isn’t a lot of “meat,” per se, on a scorpion. Nevertheless, I took a large swig of water to clear out any remaining parts of this terrifying creature I had just consumed.

Throughout the rest of the evening, we periodically stopped and smiled at each other in astonishment.

“We ate scorpion.”

I really just had to share this...

2008-04-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

You know how I mentioned that every subway station in Tokyo has its own little tune that it plays as trains arrive or depart? Well, I just found a website that lists information on many of the subway lines and stations in Tokyo. Among the information listed is the "departing melody" for each stop, that plays as trains pull away from the station. It even tells you which specific variation of the melody is played at which train track. You can click on the provided links and listen to recordings of many of them.

For example, here's the link that goes to the song that plays at Musashi Koganei, the stop where I live:

Official Subway Song of Musashi Koganei

Now you know what I listen to EVERY day. Please go to the actual site and enjoy the many varied subway songs of life in Tokyo:

Listen to more Train ditties!

(Click on the track numbers next to the words "departing melody").

wow, pretty cute

2008-04-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

There's this couple living together in the same shoebox-sized room in my guesthouse. I couldn't imagine sharing my room with someone. It's tiny.

The more amazing thing is that he's some combination of Asian-Australian and his native language is English. She's Korean, and doesn't know a word of English. And, of course, he doesn't know Korean. I found out last night that they both learned Japanese so that they could be together. Neither of them is totally fluent in Japanese, but they can communicate well enough to be in a relationship. As my friend Chani put it, that is pretty frickin' romantic.

It was awkward when a bunch of us went out to dinner last night though. The guy's girlfriend came for a bit and we were all speaking in English. None of us can speak more than a few phrases of Japanese. When I found out she didn't understand our conversations at all, I felt kinda bad for her. I know how it feels. I remember that time last summer when I went to an Izakaya with my boyfriend and like 10 friends of his from middle school that he hadn't seen in eight years. None of them spoke any English except one girl who knew a few of the usual important phrases like "I'm a student." The whole night I just sat there pretending to follow the conversations around me. What else can you do in a situation like that?

Anyway, I find it amazing that they learned Japanese for each other. What devotion, man. It's a tough language.

I'm gonna learn some Nihongo!

2008-04-15T04:20:00.001-07:00

wahooo. I just signed up for free Japanese lessons at a nearby Community center. They are every tuesday and friday morning from 10-11:30am. I have tuesdays off and then I don't have t be at work until like 2:30 on fridays, so this is totally doable. And they are FREE. I'm super excited. Maybe my Japanese will improve a little faster now. The classes don't start until May 13th so I have like a month til then. I wish they were starting sooner.

I learned about the classes from a student of mine though. She's Indonesian, but her English is pretty good so she's in the highest level English classes with me. She actually teaches English to little kids for the same company as me, but they are required to attend FTL classes with native speakers to keep up/improve their English. She works for the program where Japanese housewives (sorry, I mean homemakers? that's what they're taught to call themselves in English class) hold classes for children in their own homes.

Anyway, she's married to a Japanese man and they have a couple kids, so she's been living in Japan for about 8 years. I guess she was working at a Japanese company in Indonesia and she met her husband who was also working there. They eventually moved here and she's been taking Japanese classes at this Kunitachi Community Center a few stops near where I live. When I asked her how she liked living in Japan and how she learned Japanese she told me all about it. So I went out there today to find out more details. It took me a long time to find the Kominkan (community center) because, of course, it's name is written in Japanese. When I finally entered the place, it was a bit of a struggle to find the front desk cause it was actually a couple floors up, not on the ground floor. Very strange. The lady who helped me sign up didn't speak much English but she had a packet of phrases that she might need for this exact occasion, so we worked it out, at least, I think. She was very nice about it and showed me the rooms where the clasess would be held and everything. Apparently there is a book I have to buy which is roughly $25, but that's okay cause the classes are free!

Anyways, feeling good about it. Very excited to learn more Japanese.

speaking of fish...

2008-04-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

So I’ve really been getting into learning how to speak Japanese. I’ve been teaching myself during my free time, on days off, in between classes, on the train. I bought a CD that has recorded dialogues in Japanese. You can listen to it for pronunciation and speaking practice. I’ve been reading through the grammar section of my phrase book and writing copious notes in my little notebook, and every time I learn a new word or phrase I faithfully write it down. I carry this notebook with me everywhere I go. It’s amazing how I’m sitting on the train and suddenly something clicks in my head and I understand what something means. A phrase or word I’ve heard over and over again suddenly means something to me. It’s a wonderful feeling.

It’s also awesome when you finally get to use a phrase you’ve learned in a real-life situation. For example, the other day when my friend Emma was visiting and we were out for dinner, I was able to tell the waiter that we were done ordering. “Sore dake desu.” (That’s all.) It’s not much, but I tell you, it beats waving my arms and grunting. I felt like a human again.

Now for a series of random thoughts on the past couple weeks:

Some of the students I meet are really interesting. For example, I taught this old guy last week who manages a grocery store. He hates riding in trains or driving cars because he’s claustrophobic. He rides his bicycle everywhere, except for longer distances when he takes his motorbike. One time, he rode his motorbike across the country, refusing to take the train. One of the lesson’s suggested discussion topics was, “What’s the strangest place you’ve ever fallen asleep?” His answer: “on a motorbike.” After riding 26 hours straight, he just fell asleep.

This is also completely unrelated, but the saying “April showers bring May flowers” really rings true in Japan. It has rained on almost every day off of mine lately. It has rained almost every day, in fact. I can’t wait until that’s over. Apparently it’s not even the rainy season yet. By the time it’s over, Tokyo is going to be disgustingly hot and humid. We’ll all be soaked in sweat anyway.

In other news, my long-time family friend Emma, who’s like a cousin, came to visit last week. She stayed at a hostel in central Tokyo cause my guesthouse has crazy rules about guests, and I had to work a lot. We got to hang out a little bit before work one day though. Then Saturday night I took her to an art opening at my boyfriend’s gallery. It was quite an event because the Tokyo Contemporary Art Fair was going on and people from important art organizations from all over Japan were in town. There were a few celebrity sightings. The best was famous conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, who we learned about back in art history class. This was his most famous piece:
One and Three Chairs. That was exciting.

On the following Monday, Emma and I went to Kamakura, where I’d been once before. It was raining—big surprise, but we saw some impressive temples and I sampled not one, but two intriguing ice cream flavors: sweet potato and cherry blossom. The sweet potatoes are purple here, so the ice cream was purple. It was wild. It also tasted great.

I also showed her the wonderful world of Japanese department stores where you can find anything and everything you need in twenty different varieties, shapes, and sizes. We enjoyed the costume section where I felt we needed to try on a giant fish head. I really wanted to buy it.

Speaking of fish, there are these fancy stickers that are made specifically for decorating cell phones. I bought a fish sticker and put it on my phone. My phone is officially tacky and very Japanese. I love it. I also put one of those dangly things on my phone that everyone has here. I may have to take it off though. It’s starting to bother me. It’s amazing though; even stern Japanese businessmen have them on their phones. They are purely decorative dangly things that you loop through a little hole in your phone. There are whole sections in the department stores that sell every kind of dangle you can think of. Figurines, bells, fake food, cartoon characters, fuzzy teddy bears. They’re like key chains only much more popular, and on your phone. I don’t know why this happens, but it does.

Another thing. Why do people think it’s okay to spit in public here? I often have to step around huge spit wads on the sidewalk on my way to the train station. The other day I was standing on the busy platform in Shinjuku, and this guy in a suit just hawked one on the ground right next to someone’s feet as he waited for the train. Gross, man.

A very pleasant train line.

2008-04-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

This past week was eventful. I live off of the Chuo line, which is a very pleasant train line, except that it's infamous for being catastrophically delayed. There could be an accident, a suicide, a fire, or an overabundance of passengers that causes severe delays, stranding tons of people and making them massively late to work. I’ve been living here for about two months and haven’t had a single problem with the Chuo line until this week.

It was just fabulous because it was my first week of the new school year. It caused me a lot of problems getting to work. Last Saturday I was twenty minutes late. It took me about two hours to get to the school when it should have been more like 40 minutes. Luckily, when the trains are that delayed the train staff hand out late slips explaining that the train was late. It’s understood that certain train lines are often going to be delayed, so people take these slips and give them to their employers. At least I wasn't really in trouble for being late. It wasn’t my fault. Still, it wasn't a pleasant way to start my first day at a new school. Also, everyone tells me that being late to things in Japan is a really big deal. It’s just not something that's done.

This past Thursday I woke up to the continuous roaring of airplanes flying low over my guesthouse. I immediately thought, are we being attacked? Then I thought, perhaps it’s this Japanese guy living in my guesthouse who claims to be training in the American Air Force at the base in Tokyo. I figured he finally went crackers and tried to fly his plane over the guesthouse so he could say hello and throw down American candy and other essential provisions by way of parachute. He’s always coming into the kitchen as I’m making dinner. He kind of hovers over me for a bit and watches me cook. I ask him what’s up and he says, not much. Then he continues to stare. Eventually he says, “Oh! I have a present for you!” I wait, expecting something rather creepy (this guy has a reputation for being a bit odd). A few minutes later, he comes running in with a fistful of starbursts and milky ways screaming, ‘American candyyyyy for youuuu!” Apparently he has access to top-secret stashes of "American" candy at the American air base.

So I've digressed a bit. The reason there were a ton of planes flying over my guesthouse was because there was a fire at the train station one stop away from mine. The Chuo line was completely down from roughly 8am to 4pm. This was a very, very bad thing because the ONLY train line that stops at my station is the Chuo line. It is impossible to get anywhere from my place if the Chuo line is down. And, yet, my fellow teachers and I are still expected to at least try to get to work. Some gave up and went home, while others attempted to take the bus, which was very brave in my opinion. I, however, was confident that taking a taxi would be the obvious easy solution. This particular school was only four stops away from where I live; in New York, the distance wouldn’t have cost more than about 15 bucks (1500 Yen). Smugly impressed with my own cunning, I gleefully hopped in a taxi without consulting headquarters.

BIG MISTAKE.

(At least I got to practice my rudimentary Japanese with the taxi driver.)

Either the guy took an unnecessarily long route because I was foreign, or taxis are just ridiculously expensive. It may have been both. I ended up getting to work only five minutes before my shift started. The school was happy that I wasn’t late, but they obviously thought me an idiot. One staff member cried, “What!? Don’t ever take a taxi!!” It cost me 4,700 Yen, so almost 50 US dollars. I couldn’t believe it. My company usually reimburses us for all travel expenses to and from work, but I was sure they would never agree to pay for this. In the end they essentially said: “Okay, we’ll pay it this time, but NEVER do that again.”

The kicker was that as I sat down with my first student of the day, I began my warm-up by asking her where she lived.

“Oh, I live in Kokubunji,” she replied.

“Um. Wasn’t there a fire at Kokubunji? How did you get here!?”

“Oh, the trains are running again.”

…

“No.”

…

“Yes.”

...

If I had waited for the trains to start again, I probably still would’ve made it to my first lesson. And it would’ve only cost me $2.

A great day.

2008-04-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I went to Ueno Park. Tokyo has so many amazing parks; this park is huge and has a zoo, tons of museums and a nice, big lake. I spent the day there with my buddy Adam. We wanted to go the Zoo, but somehow the location of the entrance continued to elude us, which mostly had to do with the fact that we couldn’t read the Japanese maps. I came to the conclusion that the only way into the Zoo must be by apparation (Harry Potter style). We could tell the Zoo was there and that it was quite large. We could hear animal sounds, mostly birdcalls, and we could even see cages through the vegetation, but alas we could not find a way inside. As we muttered to ourselves one last time, “how the heck do you get into this blasted zoo!?” a passing Japanese man barked in a loud monotone, “on the monorail!” Well geez, now where do we find the monorail? Forget it. It was closing in thirty minutes anyway.

We desperately wanted to feel as if we had accomplished something during our time in the park. Rather impulsively, we rented a swan-shaped boat for a mere 700 yen ($7) and paddled around a big lake lined with cherry trees. It was the most hilarious thirty minutes of my week. We had to pedal with our feet, as if riding a bike. It was very tiring and we weren’t very good at steering the thing so we almost rammed a few swans-full of disgruntled Japanese people. I was quite tempted to pretend we were in bumper cars.

After our thirty-minute swan ride, we strolled along a lane filled with vendors selling delightfully strange foods. I don’t know what it was called but we ordered a pile of Japanese pancake, egg, meat, vegetables, and sauce. It was just too delicious. We stood in the middle of the crowded lane and devoured the plate with our chopsticks in two minutes. Then we ate meat on a stick that was definitely an animal part I had never eaten before—I’m guessing some kind of internal organ, perhaps heart? We also considered buying a skewer of whole squid, meaning tentacles, head, and all. After imagining biting into that plush round head with the little squid eyes we ran away disgusted (and feeling bad for the cute little squid).

We also ate many delectable Japanese pastries, such as pancakes in the shape of fish filled with chocolate. I ate an entire banana on a stick covered in chocolate. You can imagine how good that was.

In the evening we wandered the park, admiring what seemed like miles and miles of cherry blossoms and gawking at the staggering numbers of people out drinking and picnicking on a weeknight. I've never seen anything like it. People of all ages, young and old. Grandmas, men in business suits, families. No one would do this back home, except maybe teenagers. But I can totally understand why they do it here. The cherry blossoms really are gorgeous at night. Please to see for yourself:

stuff i did.

2008-03-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

Well a couple weeks ago I had my first Karaoke experience (ever in my life). In Japan Karaoke doesn’t involve standing on a stage in front of an entire room of people [thank goodness]. Japanese Karaoke is about sitting in booths around a table in a little room with a TV and a bunch of friends. The staff immediately brings more drinks the moment you hit a button. Accompanying the music on the TV are "music videos" of Japanese couples taking long walks on the beach. There are microphones. That’s about it. Karaoke bars are open 24 hours, so it's the perfect thing to do if you miss the last train home (which is easy to do cause the last trains are usually around midnight). You sing your heart out in a Karaoke room until 6am when the trains start running again. Hopefully you haven’t lost your voice at that point. I surely did. Of course, I was more into it than some people. We sang songs by David Bowie, the Spice Girls, Kate Bush, Weezer, Madonna and other random artists. Loads of fun. I guess the all-nighter is a common thing in Tokyo because of the train situation and the fact that a lot of people live far from central Tokyo. I have finally been initiated into the all-nighter club. Splendid.

About a week ago, I went to Yokohama with my boyfriend and his parents, to help him look for an apartment. Yokohama is a big city on the coast of Japan almost directly south of Tokyo. It’s been a famous port city ever since 1852 when Commodore Matthew Perry ended Japan’s isolation and opened up trade between Japan and the U.S.

Here's an excerpt of the Wikipedia entry on Yokohama:

“Yokohama was a small fishing village up to the end of the feudal Edo period, a time when Japan held a policy of national seclusion, having little contact with Western foreigners. A major turning point in Japanese history happened in 1853 and again in 1854, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived just south of Yokohama with a fleet of American warships, demanding that Japan open several ports for commerce. The Tokugawa shogunate agreed in 1854 by signing the Treaty of Peace and Amity.[2] It was initially agreed that one of the ports to be opened to foreign ships would be the bustling town of Kanagawa-juku (in what is now Kanagawa Ward) on the Tōkaidō, a strategic highway which linked Edo to Kyoto and Osaka. However, the Tokugawa shogunate decided that the location of Kanagawa-juku was too close to the Tōkaidō for comfort, and port facilities were built across the inlet in the sleepy fishing village of Yokohama instead. The Port of Yokohama was opened on 2 June 1859. The Port of Yokohama quickly became the base of foreign trade in Japan.”

So, as a result, there remains evidence of many Western influences in Yokohama, including a few western style buildings. The majority have been replaced by more modern Japanese buildings, but there are still quite a few old Western buildings.

Looking for apartments was interesting. First, we had lunch in Chinatown, which is nothing like NYC’s Chinatown because it is SUPER clean. It had great food though. I had scallop dumplings. They were so damn tasty. Then we met up with the real estate agent who took us on a walking tour of the area. We looked at about seven apartments. It was extremely awkward and slightly humorous for me because I’m pretty sure the real estate agent had no idea who I was or what I was doing there. They didn’t explain, and she didn’t dare ask. She kept stealing furtive glances at me, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing following this Japanese family around as they looked at apartments. It was also funny, and slightly annoying, because each time we came to another apartment, we had to take our shoes off before entering. We took our shoes on and off over and over again. Many of the apartments were in the same apartment building, so as soon as you finally had your shoes on properly, you had to take them off again. Ridiculous. The real estate agent had to wait for me struggle to get my cowboy boots on and off, over and over and over again. Poor lady.

After a few hours of this, Yu’s parents went home and left us to explore Yokohama and have dinner. I found Yokohama very interesting. It reminds me a lot of Chicago, because it’s on the water and also quite windy. They, too, have a huge ferris wheel near the water, like Navy Pier in Chicago. Of course, it was absolutely required that we take a spontaneous turn on the wheel at 10pm on a Sunday night. It was very quiet, and eerily beautiful. Yokohama just has a similar feel to Chicago somehow. It’s not as huge or crazy as New York or Tokyo. I liked it. And that’s good, because Yu is moving there and I will probably be spending a lot of time out there over the next year or so.

In other exciting news, the cherry blossoms have bloomed this past week! It’s very important to get to as many parks as possible over the next week or so because the beauty of cherry blossoms is fleeting, you see. The wind blows the blossoms away after only a week or two and they are gone forever until the following year. How dramatic. The name for cherry blossom viewing is Ohanami. I went to one park with some people I met from my guesthouse on Thursday. The place was extremely crowded. The custom is to put tarps down on the ground and have huge picnics under the trees, no matter how cold it is. My favorite part was seeing how all the Japanese people took off their shoes and lined them up on the ground neatly along the edge of the tarp. Even on a picnic, they don’t wear shoes on the picnic tarp. Of course. Why didn’t I expect that? At this particular park the cherry trees lined the edge of a big lake. Everyone was paddling around in boats that were in the shape of huge swans. That's normal, right? Also, the weather was gorgeous. (and yes, there is a cat licking itself in that picture.)

Today was quite a bit colder, but I still went for a walk around Koganei park which is the huge park near where I live. There were a ton of cherry blossom trees there. When there is a huge mass of them all close and tangled together it’s really stunning. The trunks are so dark they almost look black and the blossoms are so white that the contrast is just fabulous. It looks like snow. The pictures I’ve taken don’t even begin to do them justice.

On Sunday, I went to the annual Anime fair in Tokyo. Lots of anime geeks wandering around ogling pretty Japanese women posing in ridiculous (and often revealing) outfits. There was also a good amount of people dressed in big fuzzy cartoon animal suits. Very cute. I liked those. I know nothing about anime and had no idea what was going on, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing lots of cute things. Also, a lot of Japanese female cartoon (ahem, excuse me, anime) characters have extremely large busts. It’s, well, odd. And… that’s all on that subject.

The new school year starts on April 1st. In Japan the school year is from April 1st to March 31st the following year. So this week I will be starting my own new classes that I will teach for the rest of the year, meaning until next April. I have NINE kids classes in my schedule every week. That’s a lot of kids classes. The maximum a teacher can have is 12 kids classes. Most teachers usually have around 3-5, but I have 9! (Geez) I guess they really did like my demo lesson during training. I hear it's good to have lots of kids classes though, cause if you are teaching too many adult Free Time Lessons (FTLs) it gets repetitive and boring very quickly. I am enjoying the FTLs so far, though. One student told me this week that she found my lessons really helpful and that the notes I wrote out for her were really clear and easy to understand. I couldn’t believe it! She even asked me what schools I’d be teaching at, starting in April, so she could go to those schools and sign up for my lessons! I was very flattered. [Someone actually enjoyed my lessons. wahoo]! Anyway, I’ll be teaching at a different school every day of the week. So five schools in total each week. Some schools are ten minutes from my guesthouse, while others are about an hour from my guesthouse. Here it goes... Wish me luck y’all.

St. Patricks' Day in Tokyo!

2008-03-17T05:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was Sunday and I spent a lovely day with my boyfriend and two buddies of mine from my training group. For brunch we ate at this organic restaurant about an 8 minute walk from my guest house called Broom & Bloom. It was unbelievably cute. The table was an old door and all the furniture was tastefully mismatched. There was bossanova music playing in the background and everything tasted wonderful. They only serve four different things, today’s special meal, today’s vegetarian special meal, a really good Japanese chicken curry, and the quiche of the day. All fantastic.

Next, we went to Harajuku, the area famous for youths wearing ridiculous clothing, often in the syle of Victorian Goth (ever heard of Harajuku Dolls?). We watched the St. Patrick’s Day parade nearby. It was the best parade I’ve ever been to for many reasons: 1.) We had an incredibly good view. 2.) I was incredibly happy in general to be spending a lovely day outside with some good friends on a beautiful early Spring day 3.) There were Japanese men wearing kilts and playing bagpipes. This one was especially interesting looking:

Enough said (And yet, I will go on...). It was really strange to see an Irish parade in Tokyo. There were lots of adorable little female Japanese baton twirlers, Japanese marching bands, Japanese fiddle players, Japanese Riverdancers. There was a fair amount of foreigners (i'm assuing Irishmen) in the parade, too, but it was surely a very strange mix of cultures. There was even a troop of American girl scout brownies. They had their little brown vests on that said, “Girl Scouts USA.” One little blue-eyed-brownie caught my eye and she could tell by the excited glint in my eye that I had once been one of their kind and so she waved to me with a matching gleeful expression. ALSO, there was a plethora of CUTE dogs in the parade. One type of dog in particular makes me squeal every time, and they are ALL over Tokyo:

Dachshunds! Sooooo cute. This one's pretty cute, though a lot of them in Tokyo have longer hair and are a little fluffier which I enjoy even more. I just can’t get enough of these little dudes and they are everywhere.

Following the parade we went to Yoyogi park, which is right near Harajuku, where there are often lots of people dressed up, doing odd things on Sunday afternoons. For example, this time there was a large group of Japanese men and women dressed up in 50s clothing inspired by the clothing worn in the movie Grease. Poodle skirts, saddle shoes, leather jackets, leather pants, crazy greasy hair in a weird doo. And they were dancing to old 50s music. They weren’t particularly good at dancing, or staying synchronized for that matter, but no one seemed to care. They had a very large audience surrounding them, which I should add was made up largely of foreigners and tourists. It was a sight, I do say.

There was also a group of about 10-15 people playing African drums in a circle. There was one black guy with long dreads surrounded by a group of Japanese guys, all playing drums. They, too, had quite a large audience. Not too much earlier, something possessed my friend Chani and I to purchase animal costumes from a 100 yen store. She was a little monkey, with monkey ears, nose and tail. I was a little pig- with yes, ears and a nose. And so, as little animal friends, we danced to the drumbeats. All the Japanese girls that passed us squealed and cooed the word “kawaiiiii”at us, which basically means, “Cuuuuuuute!” A lot of them asked to take a picture with us. What could be better than two blond-type-blue-eyed pale foreign girls dressed as a little piggy and monkey? Then we played some frisbee in the park with frisbees that had also been recently purchased at the 100 yen store. 100 yen is equivalent--very roughly--to one American dollar. Then we went to an Izakaya and ate tons of meat. It was an extremely weird, and totally amazing day.

If you're happy and you know it...

2008-03-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

So, this morning as I was brushing my teeth, I heard another song tinkling by the window. Once again, it sounded a bit like an ice cream truck. It was the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands…” I was tempted to clap my hands with a foamy toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, but I refrained seeing as it’s a shared bathroom space.

Another strange phenomenon I’ve encountered is that sometimes a truck will drive through town with a very serious male voice blaring from a loudspeaker. Of course, I have no idea what they’re saying, so to me it could be anything: a bomb threat alert telling us to take cover, or “we know you’re in there, come out with your hands up!” The first time I heard it I had no idea, but it sounded like this guy meant business. So my first instinct was, oh no hide under the table! This happened during the first week of training and everyone else was going along their merry way, prancing around pretending to teach non-existent Japanese kids English. There I was cowering in the corner, wondering what they wanted from us. I was sure we were in a police state or something. It was a very “Big Brother” moment. It was only until a few days later when another truck came by emitting a loud, but very cute Japanese female voice that I decided maybe these voices weren’t meant to be threatening.

Now on to the teaching. Oh teaching is fine. I am almost done with my second week as a bonafide English teacher. The Free Time Lessons (FTLs), where the students are high school age and up, are going pretty well. The students can be housewives, breadwinners, college students, you name it. The lessons can get kind of formulaic, but at least you have the slight thrill of not knowing what lesson you’re teaching until you look at the students’ “passports” and figure out what lessons they haven’t done. The lower levels are a little frustrating because the point of the class is to get them to have conversations in English, but these people are beginners and can’t say much more than “My name Mariko. I am office worker.” Before I came to Japan, whenever I asked someone what they did for a living, no one ever replied, “I am an office worker” and left it at that. As if that’s a satisfying, complete answer. Great, where does the conversation go now. I guess I better ask you what office you work at. But every time I ask a student “what do you do?” they reply “I am office worker.” Why not just say, I work at so and so company? I’m guessing this is something they’ve learned in English classes.

You also spend most of the lesson trying to work on their pronunciation. But it must work somehow, cause when I go into a higher level class, the pronunciation is so much better. It's amazing. Something just finally clicks I guess. Suddenly the r's are no longer l's, they can pronounce F, their V's don't sound like B's anymore, and their t's aren't unnecessarily over-pronounced. I'm not sure what makes them eventually get over that final hurdle, but I am duly impressed. In those lower level classes, it's a struggle.

The higher-level adult classes are pretty nice though. You do a quick vocab or grammar lesson from the book with them, and then you have a conversation with them for like 20 minutes. It can be extremely painful if they just don’t want to talk, cause they’re too shy or whatever, but often the students are eager to chat and it can get interesting.

Kids classes. Oh man. The first few kinda sucked. I didn’t know what I was doing, and the kids just sat there and stared at me. I thought they could tell that I had no idea what I was doing, but turns out they didn’t understand a word I was saying. They kept trying to talk to me in Japanese and I was like, um… you do realize I don’t know a word of Japanese? That’s the point, I know English, I teach you English. We’re not supposed to speak Japanese in this classroom. Turns out, the classes I was taking over for the month of March were all usually taught by this one guy who just speaks Japanese to his students all the time (which he isn't really supposed to do). So when I came in there, they were like…. Um, why doesn’t she know Japanese? What the heck is she saying? They were also unbelievably shy and wouldn’t say anything. So you can imagine that we didn’t get very much done in those first lessons.

The next few lessons I taught were much better. I still need some work figuring out how to discipline, cause when there are just one or two naughty kids they can really disrupt a lesson. In other classes, the kids are just angels and play all the games I tell them to and learn the vocab. I think they actually have fun (woah). There was the class where I taught the kids how to say “brush your teeth” while jumping up and down and pretending to brush their teeth like a crazy person would. Everything must be exaggerated. For “wash your face," I had them rub their hands all over their face with a blissful smile on their face like they were REALLY enjoying it. For "brush your hair," I, of course, pretended to brush my hair and look in a mirror and go “ooh la la." Man, the kids just ate all this up. They loved it. They couldn’t stop falling over with laughter. That was probably the most fun I’ve had in a kid’s class so far. Sometimes I think we aren’t really educators, we’re entertainers. I heard one teacher call us "edu-tainers." That’s about right. Basically we play lots of games with the kids and try to make them laugh and have fun. Maybe throw in a few vocabulary words in there, maybe numbers, the alphabet.

Let’s see, what songs have I taught the kids… London Bridge is falling down, and Here we go round the Mulberry bush. Of course there’s always the alphabet song. Which by the way, they’ve changed to make it easier for the kids. It’s “ABCDEFG, HIJKLMN, OPQRSTU, VW, XYZ, I can sing my abc’s, next time won’t you sing with me?”

If you recall, back when we learned the alphabet in the U.S., we learned it as “ABCDEFG, HIJKLMNOP, QRS, TUV, WX, Yand Z, now I know my abc’s, next time won’t you sing with me?” Apparently, we native English speakers say the “LMNOP” way too fast and it confuses the Japanese students. Maybe it confuses American kids, too (it probably does). But anyways, because of this problem, they've changed the spacing of the pauses in the ABC song! It totally throws me every time I have to sing it with the kids.

I just want some ice cream...

2008-03-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

Every morning for the past month I have woken up to what sounds like an ice cream truck passing by. Every morning I've dreamed of running outside and joining the neighborhood kids as they get some delicious ice cream. And now every morning I have to remind myself that it's not an ice cream truck, it's a garbage truck.

I'm crushed.

Why does the garbage truck play a sweet little tune that sounds appropriate for an ice cream truck? I don't know. I do know that they seem to be very fond of playing little ditties whenever possible here. Each subway station has it's own cute little tune that plays-- sometimes multiple tunes depending on what's happening. Oh, the train is pulling in- play one tune. The train is leaving, another tune. A train should show up eventually but not sure when, who really knows?, play another. They often sound like video game versions of traditional Japanese songs.

There's also a song that plays every time the walk sign lights up at this intersection near where I live. So as I'm crossing the street every day, I rock out to a digitized version of an old traditional Japanese song. It's splendid.

How many papayas are under the tree?

2008-03-06T06:43:00.000-08:00

Apparently my school finds it of the utmost importance that children learning English at a young age learn the following vocabulary words:

mangoes
papayas
pineapples
coconuts
bananas
guavas
persimmons
litchis
mangosteens
rambutans

um... i have no idea what the second half of that list even meant, but apparently Japanese children learning English need to know these words in case they just REALLY need to use them in conversation. At least three lessons, meaning a whole three weeks, are spent covering this extremely important and obviously relevant vocabulary. what the heck?

I mean, just look at this picture. Would you ever want to eat this?

yeah... I didn't think so. Me neither.

Repeat after me: Explore, Explore, Explore.

2008-02-26T09:50:00.001-08:00

So a lot has happened this week. I’m making another post about some fun things I’ve done recently. My training group had Saturday, Sunday and Monday off, which was pretty wonderful. Saturday was a day of recuperation from the exhaustion of jumping around like a five year old all week. I admit I had way too much fun pretending to be a little Japanese kid when participating in other people’s demo lessons. Perhaps I got a little too into it. Let’s just say my performances were unnecessarily complete with child-like voices and Japan-ized pronunciations of vocabulary words.

Saturday night, I went out with the majority of our 15-person training group. We found some seedy bars playing American pop music in Roppongi Hills. I have never seen so many foreigners in Japan at one time before. I went home early to meet up with my boyfriend so we could hang out at the guest house and watch some movies or something. However, I had stupidly put my room key in my coat pocket, and proceeded to lose it somewhere in Roppongi. I didn’t realize it until we got to my guest house. We spent a good hour or so wandering Koganei-shi (my area, or city, whatever you’d like to call it) looking for a place for me to stay because the guest house office had been closed since 6pm. Apparently no one ever needs a place to stay out here in Koganei. At this point, the trains back to downtown Tokyo had all stopped running, that included any trains back to his home, as well. So we hailed a cab and we went to a nearby town/city called Kokobunji (sure I spelled that wrong.) After wandering and being turned away by three hotels in a row, the fourth time was the charm. The next morning I had to go buy a new key from the guest house’s office. Let’s just say that the night was a bit adventurous, shall we? I don’t like to use the word stressful if I can help it.

Sunday was much better. Wandered Shinjuku (where Tokyo’s “Times square” is located) with the boyfriend, learning about Japanese department stores that carry every product you could ever want or imagine. Amazing. Nobody does department stores better than the Japanese. He also showed me a good bookstore that carries a lot of books in English. Then we went over to an area called Ebisu that had a lot of foreign cuisines: Mexican, Italian, Indian, Chinese. We chose Mexican at this place called Zest Cantina. The interior was basically a saloon. It had balconies that would have been perfect for some cowboy to begin a duel with some of the tougher looking diners below. Lovely ambiance, great food. Extremely un-Japanese. Although, the Japanese version of Mexican food basically means American food. I’m pretty sure Chicken pot pie doesn’t count as Mexican food…not even Tex Mex.

On Monday, I went to a place called Kamakura with four other people from my training group. It was about an hour South from the center of Tokyo, towards the coast. It’s famous for it’s large number of ancient religious temples and a HUMONGOUS Buddha statue. We ended up taking a detour through a long hiking trail. We weren’t exactly prepared for this adventure, but it was pretty beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise and just being out in nature again. We probably should have had some lunch before undertaking such a trek, but we weren't that smart. After a few hours of getting lost in the woods and trying to work our way southwards towards the great big Buddha, we hopped on a train to a place called Enoshima. There’s a bridge from the mainland to an island where there are many restaurants and you can watch the sun set over the sea. You can also see Mt. Fuji across the water in the distance. It was absolutely stunning. The day ended with a very satisfying Japanese meal at an Izakaya- basically a Japanese sit down bar with really good food. One delightful discovery: REAL Japanese gyoza (dumplings) are a million times better than anything you can get from your freezer, or even a restaurant in the U.S.

Anyway, today was the first day of training for teaching classes at the adult/higher levels. So far, so good. I had to go observe a current teacher while he taught two classes this evening. I sat at the table with him and his four students and basically watched. He let the students try to ask me some questions in English, but they were pretty shy. The age range was about 20’s to 50’s I’d say. Observing the two classes, one after another, was extremely helpful though. Seeing as we don’t actually get to work with any real Japanese students until AFTER training is over, I am very glad we at least get to observe some real classes taught by real teachers to real Japanese students.

After observing the classes, I met up with Yu who invited me to a secret opening at a gallery for a show of collaborative works by Yoshitomo Nara and another Japanese artist named Sugito (I think?). Probably most of you Wash U art kids already know this, but Yoshitomo Nara is an internationally famous Japanese artist. He is represented by the gallery that Yu works for. One of the former employees at Yu’s gallery opened up her own gallery about a year or two ago and tonight she had this show for Nara and Sugito. It was very exciting to be in on this secretive opening. I even got to talk to Nara himself and have my picture taken with him. He knew a bit of English, but Yu says he’s much better at German. Well, who cares, I got to meet Yoshitomo Nara. Take that! Oh, and the art was pretty good too…

One week down, one to go

2008-02-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

I have now completed one week of the two-week training session for ECC. Our training group of 15 is apparently abnormally large and so we were split into two smaller groups. My group began with Kids English World (KEW) training. KEW classes are for children from ages 1.5 to 12. For the past week the people in my group have gotten to know each other fairly well, considering it’s only been a week, because we've been forced to make complete asses of ourselves in front of each other.

In kids classes it is important to have a lot of energy and enthusiasm, or else the kids won’t have any fun. And, I suppose it goes without saying, neither will the teacher. We learned how to teach simple vocabulary words, grammar and sentence structures among other things. We learned a plethora of ridiculously annoying, nonsensical, sometimes catchy, but more often extremely awful and non-musical songs, complete with a whole routine of gestures. (I don’t dare call them dances). There was the “make a pizza” song, the hello song, goodbye song, let’s have fun at ECC song, Old McDonald, Itsy Bitsy spider song, etc. I had to do a demo lesson where I taught the other trainees how to sing “Old McDonald...” If I hated that song before, I really do now. It’s an awfully difficult song to teach to people without actually speaking much English. We’ve had to rely on gestures and flashcards, because in the real classes if we try to explain anything in language more difficult than cave-man talk, they won’t know what the HELL we’re talking about. Of course, these songs are for classes with kids ages 1.5 to about 6.

Truthfully, I actually loved Kid’s training. It turned out to be a lot of fun because… oh yeah, I forgot, I think singing and dancing and being a goofball is ridiculously fun and always have. I suddenly have a hunch I may not be so bad with children after all. (Now I’m wondering why I was so adamant about turning down babysitting jobs as a kid.) Granted, I haven’t actually taught any real classes yet, but my last demo lesson on Friday kind of, well…kicked ass, I think. The other trainees had very positive reactions, such as “your demo was the best one.” (That means something, right?) Even the Kid’s class trainer said it pretty much rocked. I was rather shocked by the whole thing. I was pretty nervous about it, but as soon as I began it was totally fine. I suppose I did a lot of preparation the night before due to this nervousness. The lesson I prepared for the demo was for ages 4-6. A lesson for that age group involves making absolutely everything seem new and amazing and exciting. For example, when teaching vocabulary words you must sound like this: “Oh my god!! I can’t believe it, what is this?! Ohh wowwowwow this is so cool!!!??!!! What is it? YES! It IS an apple! Amazing! Well done! Good job little Yuki! High five! Woooweee. Can everyone repeat that? Apple? Good. Apple. Good. I can’t hear you! Ohhh gooood job, aand high fives for everyone else too! Wahoo wahoo” and so on.

And the weird thing about the really young kids’ classes is that their parents attend and participate in the class too. So you have to make an effort to include the parents: “Mrs. Matsuki, since your two-year-old is still a slobbery teething creature that doesn’t even know what the hell is happening and doesn’t know what letter this is, can you tell me what letter this is? YES! Wow, great. It is an “A”! You got it! Good job, high five Mrs. Matsuki!” It’s ridiculous. And it’s really hard to keep up this level of over-excitement when you are doing a demo lesson with other trainees pretending to be the students and parents. They are tired from training, feel awkward about having to sing dumb songs in front of everyone else, and are not excited about your lesson at all. I also had to teach them the retarded Goodbye Song. Imagine as you will.
I also had to teach them words like apple, cake, egg, ant, the letters A through F of the alphabet, and of course, the whole alphabet song. The kids bring in these foam alphabet letters and you have to think of silly things to do with them while you teach them the alphabet. "Okay what letter is this? A! that’s right. Let’s say A over and over again and then put the foam letter A on our heads and then shake it off like a dog and then take letter B and throw it at the door! Quick! Yeah yeah yeah!" Kids apparently go gaga over that stuff. Who knew? They also like it when you teach them how to say vocabulary words in funny voices and do silly gestures that act out the meanings of the words. I actually really enjoy doing all of these things. This is good because after my demo lesson on Friday a couple of us trainees were assigned a bunch of kids classes to take over immediately after training ends. I guess some people need to leave Japan early and break contract, so people like me, who come in near the end of the school year, can take over their classes for the last month or so. As a result, I have at least three kids classes starting soon, not sure how many in total. The three age ranges I’ll be teaching are 4-6, 6-8, and 9-12. I think the 9-12 will be the most challenging because that’s the age when kids are no longer interested in learning and are suddenly very interested in impressing their friends. This includes making fun of their teacher and not doing their work or participating. I think this also may be the age range where the occasional kancho may be bestowed upon poor unsuspecting foreign teachers. If you haven’t heard, kanchoing is when Japanese kids find it hilarious to stick their fingers up their English teacher’s butts through their pants. My kid’s trainer actually warned us never to turn our backs to our students. Oh dear.

Well, here it goes...

2008-02-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

[I apologize in advance for how long this post is].

Well, I am adjusting to this new life extremely quickly. I suppose visiting Japan this past summer allowed me to get the culture shock thing over with. I also think studying in Italy for a semester gave me previous experience with setting up a new life in a new country. I was expecting to be super lonely, terrified, homesick… those things. But honestly, things have been going very smoothly.

I also feel like I’m learning Japanese phrases pretty quickly. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly good at learning languages, but in the past couple days I’ve learned a lot. Already I can get around fairly well--or, at least, I am very good at buying things. Anyway, I feel good about it because only a few days ago I remember being at a restaurant when the waitress was chattering away at me. I had no idea what to say, I didn’t understand her, and I didn’t know how to say anything in Japanese that was appropriate for the situation. I also either felt it was rude/inappropriate to try using English… or, I momentarily forgot how to speak my native tongue. Either way, I was a deer in headlights. I suspect she thought I was mute. Regardless, the Japanese must think Westerners are pretty darn weird.

On another note, exploring is my new favorite pastime. I’ve begun walking for long stretches of time, sometimes up to 4 hours. I just pick a direction and start walking. If I see a street that looks interesting in anyway, such as attractively bustling and colorful, or intriguingly quiet, I walk down it. I can’t stop walking. I don’t want to miss anything. There might be something really great just a few blocks further. It’s amazing how one area or stretch of a road can be really noisy and busy and then you walk a couple minutes and suddenly the streets are empty and it’s almost disturbingly peaceful and quiet. Anyway, I love getting lost and trying to get home a different route than I came. I did that often when I lived in Florence. By the end of the semester I knew Florence like the back of my hand. I had a complete mental picture of the city in my head. Of course, Florence is nothing compared to Tokyo in size, but I was still rather proud of the feat. I’m also relieved to find that I actually have quite a superb sense of direction. For about, oh, twenty years I thought I had a terrible one. Turns out I just had a short attention span.

The guest house is pretty cool. The place is really cold, though. I have to work the heater in my room by feeding it with coins. It’s roughly $1 for 3 hours of heat. Weird. Another strange thing is if you have a guest in the building—even for 5 minutes, you have to phone the office and tell them in advance. If a guest arrives after 8pm, they are automatically considered an overnight guest. If you have overnight guests more than twice a week, the third time you are charged for their stay. There are a lot of rules. Another crappy one is that I’m not allowed to use Skype because it slows down the free Internet that barely works half the time anyway. All in all, people are pretty nice here at Big World. There are about 60 rooms. I’d say about half the tenants are foreigners and the rest are Japanese. Everyone is in their 20s & 30s and there are a bunch of us who work for ECC. There are three of us new teachers living here, so the other two will be in my training session.

On Friday night, I went to an art opening with my boyfriend. A friend of his was having a show of her work. It was really nice to be mingling in a casual setting with young Japanese artist-types. The food was also fabulous and there was an abundance of wine. The art was pretty interesting, too. The most impressive piece, called "Man Globe," consisted of a HUGE knitted globe that had motion sensors on it. On each continent, there was an eye that would open and close every time someone walked by. So basically, a huge knitted globe of fuzzy yarn that winked at you. The best part, though, was meeting a friend of my boyfriend who had learned English studying in Australia. She spoke with an Australian accent and was really bubbly and talkative. We talked for most of the opening. I learned that she has an acute fondness for beer. She has also been on the curator career track, but is slightly cynical about the art world, which allowed us to bond over being young and confused and annoyed by the art world. She also told me a lot about her confusing love life.

Let’s see... I have a kitchen in my guest house, but I haven’t really tried buying groceries, let alone trying to cook. I share a kitchen with 59 other people, and apparently I am a little apprehensive about cooking in front of other people. Perhaps it has to do with my embarrassing tendency to overcook things and fill the sink with an unnecessarily obscene amount of dishes (Hey, I’m still learning). I really need to avoid falling into the habit of picking up ready-made food at the many Konbini’s nearby, though. A konbini is a Convenience Store, such as Seven Eleven—which they have many of here. Of course, Japanese people can’t say "convenience," so they changed it to Konbini. Of course. Another thing I eat a lot here which is awesome: pumpkin. It’s amazing when fried in tempura batter. Also, my favorite seafood is officially eel (unagi), especially when it’s raw. Who knew? Sadly, eel is not in season right now. I didn’t realize that meat or fish could be in season, like a vegetable(!), but this is what Yu says, and apparently eel tastes much better in the summer. Well, fine, but I still think it’s tasty. I like to think of eel as the duck of seafood. Duck is such a rich, fatty, juicy meat, (here I go with my weird meat obsessions again, it’s just so damn tasty) and Eel possesses these same delicious qualities, in a fishier way. Another interesting development—at least to me—was that as Yu and I were sitting at one of those sushi places where the sushi goes around on a conveyor belt in front of you, I realized that for the first time I was licking my chops at the sight of raw fish. Now, when I was in Japan back in August I remember having to really talk myself into eating raw fish. I knew it might taste good, but it looked so unappetizing. When we went to the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo this summer and my boyfriend told me that even just looking at a live fish swimming around a tank was very appetizing to him, I thought he was crazy. They made his mouth water while mine, on the other hand, wanted to vomit. I also can’t stand the smell of fish, dead or alive. However, this discovery suggests that I am slowly becoming a bonafide seafood lover.

On a more serious note, training starts tomorrow and lasts for two weeks. I’m looking forward to meeting more English teachers and making more friends that I can hang out with during days off. And I’m, you know, also hoping to learn a bit about teaching... I know I always say I am interested in teaching at the high school level someday, but I'm actually really looking forward to the kid’s classes. I can’t wait to jump around and play games and be goofy with kids. That just sounds terrific. I’m also looking forward to being able to post hilarious Engrish phrases that my students come up with on here. Stay tuned.

Big World!!

2008-02-08T13:26:00.000-08:00

This is where I'm staying for the first month in Tokyo.

http://www.guesthouse.co.jp/ENGLISH/location/location_i.htm

I love the website. So japanese. Hilarious and wonderful. After the month is up I can either move to an apartment set up by ECC, the company I'm working for, or I can stay at Big World, the "artistic" guest house. Maybe it's artistic because all the furniture is mismatched and the walls are painted garishly bright colors. lovely. I hear there's 24 hour internet access though.

2008-02-04T21:20:00.000-08:00

welcome to my blog. i leave for japan in exactly a week. extremely excited + nervous. what else would you expect?