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Josiah's Japan Travelogue
Part 4: November 2007
Part 3: October 2007
Friday (2nd): Not My Day

Ever have one of those days where, although nothing major happened, enough little things went wrong to make it an overall lousy day? Well, I had one of those days today. And, even though work is over and I'm back in my apartment now, it's not getting all that much better. Therefore, I'm not in the greatest mood and that'll probably be reflected in the rest of this post.

So, I've been in Japan since the middle of August and I've been working as an ALT for a little over two months but there's still one very important question that I've been unable to find the answer to. HOW THE HECK DO SO MANY MOSQUITOS KEEP GETTING INTO MY APARTMENT? I mean seriously, I'm killing between one and three of them a day and I still get bitten just about every night. How do they keep getting in? My door and windows are closed most of the time so that can't be it and, as I already said, there's a really steady supply of the pests. Is there a mosquito spawn point in here or something? (That last sentence was video game humor, if you don't get it sorry but I'm not in the mood to explain.) Anyway, since bug spray would probably do more harm to me than the bites do (I'm rather sensitive to certain chemicals), I can only hope that, since it's been getting colder, they'll all die soon.

And now for another complaint about my apartment. In Japan, lots of buildings don't have central heating and air conditioning. My apartment is one them. Such buildings use small wall mounted heating and air conditioning units that naturally only cover about one room each. Mine is mounted near the ceiling of the main room in my apartment (the living/dining/bed room). The problem is, the temperature sensor (the one that tells the thing what the current temperature is in the room so it can adjust itself accordingly) is mounted on the device. Now this wasn't horrible when I was using the air conditioning, although it did make things way colder than you wanted since cold air falls and the temp sensor is above the cold air and therefor it doesn't realize just hold cold things are on ground level where you're standing/sitting. Still, I could work with that by turning the the temperature gauge a bit higher than the actual temperature I wanted (and by shutting the thing off if it got too cold). The main problem was that, being a little wall mounted thingy, it really only hits that one room so the kitchen and bathroom were still burning up.
Now however, I'm starting to use the heater and that's a real pain. Once again, it only has an effective range of one room. Or, more accurately, the ceiling of that room. See, hot air rises. So it comes out of the heater, rises a couple inches, hits the temperature sensor, the sensor thinks everything is nice and warm, and the heater shuts off. And, though I'm sure the ceiling is all warm and toasty, the floor area definitely is not. Turning up the temperature setting doesn't help much, it just makes the difference between the ceiling and the floor more pronounced (I can seriously stand on my bed, reach my hand up, and feel just how large of a difference in temperature there is). Right now I'm hoping that if I leave it on long enough they'll even out a bit. So far, it doesn't seem to be working...

As long as I'm in the complaining mood, here's one more. When I was ranting about my internet before, I believe I mentioned that the cable connection appears to be shared with the entire apartment building and therefor there's some lag during the evening and night when everyone is at home and online. Allow me to share how bad that lag can get. See, last night I wanted to buy a couple of MP3s so I got online, hit the link for a music store, and waited, and waited... A couple minutes later the main page came up. Wasn't sure how to spell the title of the song I wanted so I searched for the group. A couple minutes later the page loaded where I could confirm which group I wanted. Several minutes after that I finally got a song list. But it was sorted by popularity and the song I wanted wasn't up on top so I had to resort by alphabet. A few minutes later they were resorted and I realized that I would have to go to the next page... Naturally that took another couple minutes. At this point I finally found the song...but there were several versions of it and I wasn't sure which one was the original so I decided to listen to the sample clips. Yeah, that wasn't exactly instantaneous either and that's not even mentioning the time it took to go through the checkout process to buy the song or the download (which lagged out and had to be restarted several times). Fortunately the internet isn't that bad every night but it happens often enough. And that is why you really shouldn't ever have more than a few people on a single shared cable loop.

Ok, that's all for now. I could probably mention a few other things but I'd kinda like to do something besides complain about stuff tonight so I'm off.

Sunday (4th): Tokyo Shopping Day
Despite the title, I've actually done pretty much all the serious shopping I wanted to do since coming to Japan. However, after reading the list I did a few posts ago about stuff I missed from the US, my uncle and a friend of mine who lives in Northern Japan suggests some places where I could find some of the things on that list. In addition, there were a few places in Tokyo I'd been wanting to stop at in the near future anyway. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great day for photos but I did get a few.
First off, I noticed that the always cool O-keibo-jo Flea Market was being held that day so I figured that, as long as I was in the area, I might as well stop by and take a look. Like the last two times I was there, it was fun and there was a huge variety of stuff for sale (clothes, old toys, antique stuff, tools, electronics, video games, books, music, etc, etc, etc...). I picked up a few old classic Gameboy platformer games (Mario Land 2, Kirby's Dreamland, and Kirby's Dreamland 2) for a grand total 300 yen, which was a great deal, especially since those game have hardly any text in them so language isn't an issue (and Nintendo's handheld game systems aren't region locked). I also found some stuff my dad wanted.
Next stop was Shibuya where I went to a Kinokunya bookstore, a chain that both my uncle and friend said carried some English books. They didn't have a ton but they did have a lot more than any other regular Japanese bookstore chain I've been in and the prices were actually pretty equivalent to the US prices so I got a few for when I need something to read. While I was there, I discovered that Hachiko (which I talked about on a previous visit to Shibuya) isn't the only statue outside the station, there's also this weird thing. I also should probably tell Silver and Kaida (who are hopefully reading this), that I found One Piece! Oh wait...darn. So close... So instead of a ton of pirate treasure I get a British style cafe. Who would have thought there'd be such a big difference between One and Two?
Next up I headed to an area not too far from Shibuya to check out a grocery store my uncle had mentioned that sold imported food. It didn't have anything I was looking for but while I was walking around the area I stumbled across a health food store where I was able to find decent peanut butter, among other things. I didn't get a lot (both cause of the price and cause there was a limit to how much stuff I wanted to lug around Tokyo) but what I did get should last a while and it'll certainly be nice to have.
Next stop was Jimbocho (FYI: this photo is of a side street, not the main road).  Kinda like Akihabara is the electronics area of Tokyo, Jimbocho is the book area, although the size and scope is really nothing like Akihabara. I went there to look around a little, both cause I like books and cause Jimbocho is a key location in the R.O.D. anime, which I've been watching lately. Anyway, there's a lot of bookstore ranging from tiny places crammed full of books to larger fancier shops. Some stores focused on a particular type of book (I saw one that was all graphic novels) and others were more random. Many seemed to focus on old books, some of which are no doubt pretty rare. Of course, if you can't read Japanese or don't collect rare books then most of the stores probably won't interest you too much although I did find one store that specialized in English books (mostly of the old and somewhat rare variety but there was some newer stuff too) and since I only went in a few of the stores, I wouldn't be surprised if there's another English bookstore or two somewhere in the area.
Finally, I headed to Akihabra. I didn't do a whole lot of browsing this time. As much as I enjoy it, I didn't want to get home too late and my backpack (stuffed with several books and the stuff I got at the health food store) was putting a serious kink in my back (note to self: if I ever need to buy food in Tokyo again, try and make it the last stop). Anyway, last time I was there I'd seen some posters for the then upcoming Final Fantasy Trading Arts Mini figurine set and wanted to get a few. And, while I was looking for those, I stumbled across the new and extremely cool Final Fantasy Tactics Trading Arts set, which I liked so much that I got the entire set. Too bad there's hardly any decent spots in my apartment to put figurines. I miss my AZ apartment, or even my room at my parents' house (well, before it got filled with boxes when I moved back there from AZ, it's pretty cramped right now, although there I've got the entire rest of the house as well so it's still pretty good).
And, aside from getting dinner at the food court in Yodobashi Camera, that's about it. Not a particularly exciting day but I got a lot done and found some useful places.

Wednesday (7th): Nogi Elementary Halloween Party
Did I mention that Japanese people like Halloween? Or at least they like the decorations and themed stuff at shops and restaurants that goes up a couple of weeks before. There's no trick or treating although I think there are some costume parties (Japan is the home of cosplay and tons of crazy fashion styles so they do like dressing up). A lot of schools have Halloween parties but they don't seem to be too picky about the dates. I don't think of the schools in Nogi actually had their party on Halloween (heck, one decided to wait and combine it with their Christmas party).
Anyway, Veronica-sensei (one of the other Nogi ALTs) came over to help me with my party. We did all six grades pretty much back to back (it was a really busy morning). Cause of time and space constraints, we split each grade into two groups, Veronica and I each took one group for about ten minutes then switched. After that we gave the kids their candy and quickly straightened things up for the next grade. Speaking of candy, the kids got one piece each, which seems pretty miserly compared to back home. But when you consider that the Nogi Board of Education only gave us 1300 yen per school for candy (about $10), the kids were lucky were we able to get enough cheap candy for everyone (I feel sorry for the ALTs at the bigger schools, they probably had to pay for extra candy out of their own pockets).
Veronica ran a sort of Halloween matching game for the kids. I'd tell you how it worked but I really have no clue since she planned that one herself and I was way too busy running my game to take a look (the picture was taken by one of the teachers, who I passed my camera off to for a little while). I was also running around too much to take pictures myself. I did manage to snap one of the 4th graders (the only grade that really got into the costume thing) but once again this was a rush rush type of thing so I snapped it really quick and caught about half of them completely off guard. My game was a modified version of fruits basket. Um, now that I think about it, do they play fruits basket in the US? Basically there's a circle of chairs with one less chair than there are people. Each person has a card (there's usually several different types like apples, oranges, cherries, and grapes). The person in the middle calls out a couple of types of cards and people with those cards have to get up and try to grab a new chair before they're all taken (the person in the middle is trying to do the same). It's a game that gets used in a lot of my lessons although it's not always 'fruit' basket (there's been vegetable basket, school items basket, etc). Anyway, aside from making the game Halloween basket (with black cats, witches, jack-o'-lanterns, and bats) I decided to make things more interesting by randomly removing chairs. If multiple people were left chairless they had to play rock paper scissors with the loser getting knocked out of the game. Last two people won. Simple enough but the kids had a lot of fun with it. Here's a couple of pictures of the game. You can spot me in both of them in my Halloween getup, which I got during my visit to Tokyo Disneyland.

Friday (9th): Janken & All About Restaurants

Random Japan Comment: Janken
Janken is the Japanese name for the Rock Paper Scissors game, which I'm gonna assume you're all familiar with. Although for some strange reason, in Japan it goes rock scissors paper. Anyway, in the US if a couple of people are trying to decide on something they might flip a coin or maybe do 'eeiny meeny miney moe'. In Japan they use janken. School kids use it to decide just about everything (which team goes first, who gets to do something, who wins in a tie, etc, etc, etc) and even adults will resort to it from time to time (often in the type of situations were we'd go for a coin flip). Now in the US I've seen about 20 different ways of doing RPS (the basic rules are always the same but there's lots of different ways to start out). In Japan it looks like there is a set method in what you say and the way you move their hands before throwing out your rock, paper, or scissors (at least, that's what it looks like to me). A little hard to describe in words but basically you show each symbol once, bring your hand back (often shielding it with your free hand) and then throw out whatever you chose. While you're doing this there's a little chant. I'm not sure of the exact words since I've never seen them written down but it sounds something like: "ro sham bo" (while you're doing the rock, scissors, paper) "janken" (when you pull your hand back) "poi" (when you show what you chose). The whole things goes pretty fast and, unlike the US, where I've never seen more than two people play RPS at a time, in Japan it's quite common for several people to play all with once (sometimes it keeps going until one person beats everyone at once and sometimes people drop out as if they failed to beat anyone that round and lost to someone else (like when two people do paper and two rock, rock would drop out since they lost to paper and didn't have any scissors to beat).
Keep in mind that most Japanese people probably wouldn't know what you meant if you said rock paper scissors, to them the game is just janken (they probably don't even know that it didn't come from Japan). However, teaching kids how to play in English (where the chant goes something like "rock scissors paper, one two three, show") seems to be a pretty common English class activity so if you're gonna be working with school kids in Japan, you should probably brush up a bit on your RPS before hand.

Random Japan Comment: Restaurants Redox
I already did a RJC about restaurants but that was a while ago (shortly after I arrived in Japan) so now I've got a lot more to say on the subject.
1. Finding a Restaurant: In most areas, finding a place to eat is quite easy, at least assuming you don't wonder off into the middle of a big residential district or something like that. If you're around shops, businesses, or tourist attractions you can bet that there will be restaurants and/or snack stands (more on snack stands another time) nearby, and probably quite a lot of them at that.
2. Japanese Restaurants: The vast majority of restaurants in Japan serve Japanese food of some type (seems obvious enough although, when you think about it, I'm not sure I could say that the vast majority of US restaurants serve American food...). Some Japanese food restaurants have a very diverse selection but many specialize in one type of thing. Common Japanese restaurant types include: ramen (Chinese noodles in a broth with various other things mixed in, there's about a million different types. Ramen restaurants are very common and are usually little more than stands or small restaurants where everyone sits at a bar.), udon and soba (Japanese noodles. Soba is buckwheat noodles sorta like spaghetti. Udon are the same shape but they're very thick and made of wheat. Udon are typically in broth with stuff (kinda like ramen). Soba is sometimes like that but often come on a plate and can be dipped in stuff. Like ramen, there's a ton of stands and small restaurants with these.), kaiten zushi (Conveyor belt sushi. Cheap and fun.), yakitori (Pieces of chicken on a skewer. Cheap, fast, and often served in very small cramped restaurants.), curry, cutlets, and omelets (A lot of restaurants that have one of those have all of them which is why I'm listing them together. Japanese curry is brown and much thicker than Thai and most Indian curries (and also not nearly as spicy). It's pretty good, usually has chunks of vegetables and meat mixed in, and is served with rice. Cutlets are fried breaded cutlets of meat (usually chicken or pork) or fish. However, a lot of the time you might as well say they're mystery meat since many restaurant menus and grocery store labels just call them cutlets and don't both to say what type of meat it is (doesn't matter if you can read Japanese or not). At first glance omelets look incredibly fat but they're actually just laying on top of a large pile of rice. The omelets themselves tend to be thin, a tad runnier than most places in the US make them, and often have cheese mixed in.), and traditional Japanese food (this varies from restaurant to restaurant but in a normal non fancy place you'll typically get a tray with rice, soup, a small vegetable dish or two, and fish or some other kind of meat or seafood as a main dish). Naturally, fancy restaurants are a lot different but the only one I've been to so far was for the Nogi Elementary School Festival after party (talked about that in depth a few weeks ago) so I'm not all that knowledgable about them.
3. Foreign Restaurants: If you don't want Japanese food you do have other options. Indian restaurants are sorta common (at least in the bigger cities) and usually pretty authentic (because they're usually run by people from India). A few minor changes aside, the Indian restaurants I've been to in Japan have been more or less comparable to the ones I've been to the US (although without quite as many lunch buffets). Korean restaurants also pop up from time to time and are usually run by Koreans and therefore very authentic. Chinese restaurants actually aren't all that common (at least outside of a few areas such as Yokohama's China town) and from what I've heard usually aren't all that great either (unless you're in a place like Yokohama's China town). Italian restaurants are something you'll see a decent amount of although the authenticity is questionable at best. Spaghetti dishes and pizza seem to be the staples (not quite sure what happened to lasagna, ravioli, and all the other Italian foods that are so popular back home) but in most restaurants they've been heavily Japanified. It's kinda like a Japanese person who never had real Italian food heard about Italian food somewhere and decided to try and recreate it on his own without bothering to track down any authentic Italian recipes. The spaghetti dishes are basically big plates of spaghetti with a variety of different toppings (often seafood based), most of which I don't recall ever seeing in US Italian restaurants (or in Italy for that matter). Pizza is...well it probably deserves its own Random Japan Comment. For now let's just say that the pizza at your average Japanese Italian restaurant has a very thin crust, a somewhat different cheese, often lacks sauce, and comes with some of the strangest toppings you can imagine. So yeah, if you've had real pizza, Japanese pizza isn't all that great. Interesting though. American restaurants are probably the most common type of foreign restaurants. The first type is the burger joint. McDonalds is quite popular here and there's some similar Japanese based chains like Moss Burger and Lotteria. You can get an fairly authentic US fast food style burger at any of them. However, if you look at the menus you'll find a lot of weird burgers too (ranch dressing and cabbage, soy sauce and soft boiled egg, spam, etc). The other major type of American restaurant is the family restaurant (think places like Denny's). Actually Japan has a lot of Denny's, as well as some Japanese based copy cat chains. I think Denny's is fairly authentic (although I haven't been to one yet) but many of the others are sorta Japanified like the Italian restaurants. You'll find steaks, burgers, and all that kind of stuff but there will be a lot of minor (or sometimes major) changes so it's never quite like what you'd get if you ordered that stuff in the US. Fortunately, the changes usually aren't too major or weird. Finally, aside from the widespread McDonald's and Denny's (and Starbucks, but that's not really a restaurant) you can find a lot of other big US chain restaurants in Japan as well (I've seen places like TGI Friday's, Sizzler, and Subway) but they're very rare (often just a handful of places in the entire country) and usually can only be found in big cities. The real advantage of going to any US chain restaurant is that they all seem to have English menus. Other foreign restaurants like Thai and Mexican do exist but they're very rare and I don't know if the few that exist are all that authentic.
4. Going to an Restaurant: Once you've found a restaurant there's a bit more you should know. For example, how are you going to order? Many restaurants have a collection of plastic food (often representing everything on their menu) displayed right outside so you can look at the display and see what they have and decide if you want to eat there or not. Picture menus are also pretty common. English menus are moderately common in some of the big tourist areas but don't expect them. If you can read at least some basic Japanese you might be able to look at a plastic food display or menu and tell the waiter what you want. If you can't read the name (cause you can't read any Japanese or you just can't read the kanji used) you can point to what you want on a picture menu or (if there isn't a picture menu) take the waiter outside the restaurant and point at the plastic food (some plastic food displays also have all the food numbered so you can just say what number you want as most Japanese people can understand English numbers). However, some places don't have plastic food or picture menus so if you end up in those and can't speak or read at least a little Japanese...well there isn't a whole lot you could do except point at something on the menu at random. So try to stick to stick to places that has plastic food and/or a picture menu displayed outside.
5. Paying for Your Meal: There are a few different ways to do this. First there's the pay before you eat restaurants. At these places there will be a menu on the wall or something like right outside or right inside the restaurant. You look at that to decide what you want then you'll tell the person there and pay them. They'll give you a receipt or ticket and then you can take a seat and wait. Some of these type of places actually don't have a live person to take your order. Instead, there's a machine that you put money in and push a button for what you want. The machine gives you a ticket which you then present to the person inside the restaurant. At the pay after you eat type of restaurants, you'll be seated and make your order. Sooner or later you'll be given a receipt (often at the same time your food comes) and then once you're done you take the receipt to the counter and pay (keep in mind that many places only take cash).
6. Prices: Fancy restaurants can naturally be quite expensive but your average Japanese restaurant is usually fairly inexpensive. It's very easy to get a decent meal for under 1000 yen (around $8.50) and if you're not all that hungry, you may even be able to get by on 500 yen at some places. If you want to go a bit nicer (and/or get a bit more food) but still stay out of the fancy restaurants, expect to pay anywhere between 1100 and 2200 yen. Eating out in Japan is really quite affordable.
7. Other Important Things to Know: First off, most restaurants don't give you napkins and the smaller places often don't have rest rooms where you can wash your hands. Instead you'll get a moist towellette or wipe of sorts (usually in a little sealed plastic wrapper). Use that to wipe you hands before you eat then fold it (don't crumple it) and set it aside. Do not use it to wipe you face. Second, never leave your chopsticks sticking vertically in a bow
l of rice. That's something that's done at funerals and it's bad manners at a normal meal. Third, if you're eating with other people and getting food out of a shared bowl or try, reverse your chopsticks, using the opposite ends to pick up the food and put it on your plate. Then turn them back to their normal position before picking up the food to eat it.

Sunday (11th): Earthquakes

So, I had this whole day trip planned out for Sunday but the weather report was showing a 90% chance of rain for pretty much the entire day and since a lot of my trip involved walking around outside, I decided to put it off for a week. Instead, I hung out at my apartment most of the day. It was a nice break and I got a lot of things done that I'd been meaning to do for ages but it doesn't make for a very interesting post here so I guess it's time for a Random Japan Comment.

Random Japan Comment: Earthquakes
Japan is in an area with lots of seismic activity so earthquakes are kinda common. If you're in Japan for a fairly long period of time, there's a decent chance you'll experience an earthquake (well, I haven't looked up any statistics but that's the way it seems from the time I've spent here). While kinda freaky for those of us from earthquake free parts of the world, they're really not that bad once you get used to them. Of course, a serious earthquake would be a whole different story but it takes a pretty big one to do any real damage, especially when construction is done with earthquakes in mind (like it is in Japan). So while you might feel the ground shaking (depending on how strong the quake is and where you are at the time), that's about all that happens. I've been through several since coming here and I'm kinda sorta used to them now. As long as a whole bunch of stuff doesn't start falling over, the quake probably isn't anything you need to worry about.

Wednesday (14th): A Bit About Wednesdays
I just got a package from back home with some stuff I'd asked my brother to get for me (since I can't buy it over here). I got DBZ Season 3, and Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea for my PSP, all things I've been looking forward to for quite a while. So I'm gonna keep things short and just talk a little bit about what I do on Wednesdays.
Like every Wednesday, today I had a long bike ride to down town Nogi where I went to the Board of Education. Then it was off to my first preschool where I play with a bunch of three year olds for a while then give them a short English lesson. The three year olds are cute and they seem to really like me for some reason. They also love climbing all over me. It's kinda fun for a little while but I don't think I could deal with them all day every day like the teachers do. They're also a bit too young to realize that I can't understand everything they're saying, which can be both amusing and annoying at time. The class itself is really short so I do a couple of songs (ABCs and Head Shoulders Knees and Toes), a quick game, and then something short and easy like directions or some simple body parts.
After that it's off to my second preschool where I teach two classes, one of four year olds and one of five year olds. They all seem to really like me as well, but they're a bit better trained than the younger kids so they don't all jump on me. Classes are a little longer so I can do a bit more. I still do the same two songs (the Board of Education actually asked me to teach them all the same songs), quiz them on the ABCs, and then I do a couple of games. One is my surprisingly popular start and stop game which basically involves the kids moving around when I say start and stopping when I say stop. Last one to stop is out. In case you never noticed, little kids can be fiercely competitive. There's also the newer janken game which is a sort of rock paper scissors tournament (in English of course). After that I'll do some teaching. That varies by week but I'm currently doing things like body parts and colors.
Next is my lunch break so I usually swing by the grocery store and grab a bento lunch (look for a RJC on those sometime) then head to the park to hang out and eat.
After lunch comes the newest addition to my Wednesday schedule which involves going back to the BOE and hanging out with some special needs kids. There's only a few kids and they seem to be either older elementary school or younger junior high school students (not sure which). Not really sure why they're in special needs though, they all seem perfectly normal to me. There's always one or two Japanese teachers hanging out with the kids so I let them choose what we do, which generally involves very little in the way of teaching. Most of the time we just play games and have fun.
Finally there's the weekly meeting with all the ALTs and someone from the BOE. These meetings are typically fairly pointless ("Is everything going ok? It is? That's good. How about you?") but they're usually pretty short as well and if we get done early we can go home early so I can't complain much.

Sunday (19th): Kawagoe
Since the weather improved a lot over last weekend (although the temperature took a big drop), I headed to Kawagoe. Originally I was going to go there last weekend but ended up staying home because of the rain.
Kawagoe is a large town (or maybe a small city) that about an hour or so out of Tokyo. It was an important place during parts of Japanese history and is called Little Edo due to its similarities to old Tokyo (Tokyo used to be named Edo). Most of the main things to see in Kawagoe are on or around one part of the town, which turned out to be quite a ways from the train station. Fortunately, thanks to a map board outside the station and a handful of signs along the way I didn't have much trouble finding my way. I walked up a nice long shopping street on my way there (the US has malls and plazas, Japan has shopping streets (and malls and plazas too, but shopping streets are far more common)) so I got to browse a bit. There was one bookstore that had probably a thousand plus graphic novels on sale for 105 yen each (as in, less than a dollar). If my Japanese was a bit better (and I didn't have to worry about how the heck I'd get a huge stack of graphic novels back to the US) it would have been hard to resist going on a spending spree. Not that I mind graphic novel prices in the US ($8-$10 for a book seems reasonable enough) but here even the retail price for a manga graphic novel is only about 1/4th of what I pay back home. I can imagine how much money I'd save...or more likely how many more graphic novels I'd buy with that money. Anyway, back to Kawagoe...
My first stop was the Kurazukuri area. Kurazukuri are an old type of storehouse building made primarily out of clay (I think). They used to be really popular a few hundred years ago. Now there's only around 30 or 40 left, most of which have been converted into shops and the like. It's a nice area to walk around and there's also some other things to see like an old bell tower and some museums. One of the old buildings was turned into a museum, or maybe more of a walk in display so you can could go inside and see what they used to look like inside. I also went in the festival museum. Turns out Kawagoe has a pretty big festival every year. Unfortunately, I missed it but the museum gave me a good idea of what it's like. They also had some of the festival floats on display. I know the picture is a bit dark but said floats are both extremely ornate and a good two stories high. Really neat. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn my camera settings back to normal after leaving so the rest of my pics look a bit grainy.
Once I'd finished up in that part of town, I headed to the nearby Kashiya Yokocho, which is a small side street full of candy shops (there was other food too but the candy is what it's known for). Since I hadn't spotted any particularly good places to get lunch nearby, I grabbed a few things and just kinda snacked instead. Didn't actually get any candy though. There was one guy selling cucumbers on a stick so I got one of those, although I had kinda been expecting a pickle, not an ordinary cucumber. I also got a couple things that I can't remember the Japanese names of. One is a fairly popular snack food, a sort of rice cracker covered with soy sauce. You can get bags of them in grocery stores but if you get them off street stands the crackers are dunked in sauce, cooked on a grill for a minute or so, then given to you with a piece of nori (the seaweed used in sushi) to hold it with. The other is a fish shaped pancake like bread that you can get stuffed with different things like cheese, chocolate, azuki, etc. I also got fu (or hu depending who you ask). Took me forever to figure out what it was. Seemed to half the stores on the street were selling it and lots of people were walking around with it but I'd never heard of fu before plus it was kinda hard to spot the name on the package. Anyway, I finally asked what it was, which was when I found out the name. According to my electric dictionary, fu is a 'breadlike substance made of wheat'. That actually sums it up pretty well. It's kinda a dry bread stuff that's slightly sweet. The fu there was also kinda sorta french bread shaped and most of it was around three feet long. So I've got about two and a half feet it sitting in my kitchen right now.
Moving on, I stopped by the Kawagoe City Museum. Originally I was planning to skip it, but I was making good time and it was right on the way to my next stop so I decided to take a look. Glad I did. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed. Anyway, turns out Kawagoe has a lot of interesting history and a decent amount of the signs had been translated into English. There was also old artifacts, art, etc from various points in Kawagoe's past.
Next was Honmaru Goten, the only surviving building from Kawagoe Castle. So I got to walk around inside and outside there. It's interesting how much different Japanese castle's are from European ones. In Europe you either had stone fortresses or opulent palaces. In Japan, on the other hand, they seem to go more for elegant simplicity. At least that's how the ones I've seen are. Haven't seen any of the really big Japanese castles yet so they could be different.
Finally, I headed to the area around Kitain Temple. Although the original was burned down long ago, it was rebuilt shortly after using some of the buildings from Edo Castle (not sure how they transported them considering that this was hundreds of years ago). So anyway, I got to walk through that and see some things in the surrounding area like a smaller part of the temple, a flower show that was being held outside, a collection of 538 stone statues (all different), and the nearby Toshugu Shrine (kinda like the Toshugu in Nogi but not quite as impressive).
After that, although I slowly made my way back to the station. Could have hung around a bit longer but I'd pretty much seen everything and the sun was going to be setting soon anyway so that's it.

Wednesday (21st): Grocery Stores

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US. Wish I could celebrate it but Thanksgiving doesn't exist in Japan so I've got to work plus turkey and all the other Thanksgiving type foods are pretty hard to find here so I guess I'm just gonna have to skip it this year. Sigh... Anyway, I'm trying to get a whole lot of things done right now so let's do one Random Japan Comment and leave it at that. And, since I just game back from grocery shopping...

Random Japan Comment: Grocery Stores
The first thing you'll notice about grocery stores in Japan is that they're a lot smaller than ones in the US. Now that's to be expected in places like Tokyo where there usually just isn't enough room for a giant store. However, even in places that have plenty of space (like the town where I live) the biggest grocery stores are still only around 1/3 - 1/2 the size of your average Safeway, City Market, Fry's, or any of the other big US grocery store chains. The stores aren't the only thing that's smaller. If you go into any US grocery store I'm sure you're all used to seeing two things by the entrance, those plastic hand baskets you can use to carry around groceries if you don't plan on getting much and the nice big shopping carts. Japan has the plastic baskets (which are pretty much identical) but carts are completely different. A Japanese shopping cart is nothing more than a small metal frame with wheels that you can use to hold one of those plastic baskets (some may also have a lower shelf you can stick a second basket on, kinda a pain to get to though). So, unless you want to try pushing multiple carts around at once, your entire purchase is limited to what you can fit in one (or maybe two) of those plastic baskets. Now I can't imagine that people in Japan eat a whole lot less food than those in the US so you've got to wonder about the reason for the tiny baskets. It could just be because Japanese people like small and compact things, or that no one ever thought of making bigger carts, or it could be that the stores figure that if you can't by a whole lot of food when you visit the store you'll have to come back more often which may make you spend more money there in the long run. And, as long as I'm talking about size, it's worth noting that food often comes in smaller packages than in the US (for example, I already mentioned ice cream sizes in my ice cream RJC).
Naturally, Japanese grocery stores sell mostly Japanese food (big surprise there) although you can find some American and Italian stuff (just don't expect much of a selection) and some Japanese knock offs of said American and Italian stuff (which are typically cheaper but usually doesn't taste the same). They also have a large selection of cheap boxed meals, or bento, which are very popular both with commuters and some school kids. Bento come in all types but a few common kinds include sushi, onigiri (rice balls), noodle dishes, and the like. Many grocery stores also have their own bakery inside. Japanese bakeries are a lot different than US ones but I'll be giving them their own RJC another time so for now suffice it to say that said bakeries include mostly buns, pastries, and snack type breads (it's important to note that most in store bakeries require you to pay for your bakery items in the bakery instead of with the rest of your groceries). Another thing many grocery stores have is little sweet shops that sell small cakes and the like.
Prices really depend on what you're getting. Some things like sea food are very cheap (at least compared to the US) while others are extremely expensive (fruit is generally the worst offender here). Speaking of produce, make sure you don't get the regular fruit mixed up with the gift fruit. Gift fruit is typically very big, very nice looking, and very very expensive. As the name suggests, you get it to give as a gift, not to eat yourself, and is typically sold in packs of one or two. Might go more into detail about what makes it so special another time.
When you're ready to pay for your groceries you go to the cashier, takes your plastic basket off your cart, and stick it on the counter. The cashier then scans your items (reciting the price of each as he/she does) while putting them in a new plastic basket. Then, while you're getting your money, they'll stick some plastic bags into your new basket (the magic number of bags seems to be two, at least that's the amount of bags I get 95% of the time regardless of how much I buy). If it looks like you're getting something that you might be eating soon (say a bento box or an ice cream cup) they'll stick in chopsticks or a spoon as well. After paying, you take your basket to a nearby bagging table, which is basically a counter or table where you can put your basket while you transfer the contents from it to your bags. Said tables usually have a damp cloth you can use to wet your fingers if you're having trouble getting the bag open and a place to put your basket once it's empty. After that, you're ready to grab your bags and head out (if you had a cart, remember to wheel it back to its place by the entrance).
And that's how you buy groceries in Japan.

Friday (24th): Hanging Out With a Friend
As I might have mentioned before, today is Labor Thanksgiving day in Japan. No relation to US Thanksgiving day, it's actually more like Labor Day. Anyway, long story short I had the day off and spent most of it with an internet friend of mine who lives in Akita (a city several hours north of where I am). He had to come down to this part of the country for a business meeting over the weekend so he came a day early and we hung out, walked around Akihabara, etc. Didn't leave me with a whole lot of time to update the site though so I'm gonna leave it there.

Saturday & Sunday (25th-26th): The Ameya Beatles Club

This weekend was kinda interesting. As previously mentioned Friday was a holiday and I got to meet and hang out with a friend of mine who is also teaching English in Japan (although he's been doing it for years). It was fun and also pretty interesting. See, although we've been talking via e-mail and IM on and off for...*checks old chat log* a little over 8 years (wow, it really has been a long time), this was the first time we've met in person. Not often I get the chance to meet people I've only known online (since we're kinda scattered all over the planet). Although there are some friends of mine that I met in person to start with but mostly got to know online after that (once again since they live pretty far away). Wonder if I'll ever get a chance to meet my friends from the PV forums... Maybe if the comic gets really popular I could hold a convention or something. I mean, Penny Arcade does it, but they probably have a hundred times as many readers as Pebble Version does. So, if you all go out and make a hundred friends and then get each of them to read Pebble Version...

Ok, moving on. I didn't do anything all that interesting on Sunday. Had been planning to but I ended up getting back to my apartment pretty late Saturday night (I'll go into the why in a bit) and I was dead tired, especially since I'd been getting to bed a bit late that entire week for a variety of different reasons. Combine that with the fact that my afore mentioned plans involved catching a really early train, and I decided to just sleep in and hang out around Koga. So I hung out, got some work done, played some games, and biked around a bit (the original plan was to go get groceries but I ended up making some other stops while I was out). Highlights (such as they were) included visiting a Denny's (my first time going to one in Japan), which was good but had a much more Japanese menu than I was expecting (not sure if I could call it Japanese food or highly Japanified American food, although there were some things that were more or less authentic), and winning another PS2 game from that claw machine at the nearby (well, kinda sorta nearby) game store. If you're curious, it was Tekken Tag. Not really sure what I'm gonna do with it since I'm not a huge fighting game fan (plus that's a pretty old version of Tekken anyway) but multi-player is kind of fun (not that I really have anyone here to play non-online games with).

But enough with that, Saturday night was a whole lot more interesting than Sunday. So, as you may already know, every Saturday I go into Tokyo for religious services. This time, the congregation's guitar player invited me to go with him afterwards. He speaks hardly any English but I was able to work out the gist of where we were going (if not all the details). Long story short, he's a member of a group that call themselves The Ameya Beatles Club (Ameya is a shortened way to say Ameya Yokocho, the big market street area in Ueno that I've mentioned before). Basically, it's a bunch of Japanese people who meet (couldn't figure out how often) in a restaurant in Ameya and take turns playing and singing various Beatles songs. You kinda had to see it, or hear it anyway, so I took some videos. There was somewhere around fourteen guys. They all took turns singing and playing and ended up playing in a whole lot of different combinations. So, on with the movies (speaking of which, I decided to try posting my movies as WMVs instead of Flash movies this time around, if you have a preference feel free to let me know). Here's the opening group playing Ticket to Ride, here's the guy who invited me doing Yesterday, and another group of four doing Twist and Shout. All in all, I think this guy was the best. He also did a good Bob Dylan (actually it's a Beatles song but he was purposely doing it with a Dylan voice for some reason). Overall, the songs were kinda hit and miss. None were horrible but some were definitely a bit off. Still, it was fun and everyone (both the regulars and the people who just heard the music and came in off the street) really got into it.

Wednesday (28th): Tea & Bikes

Random Japan Comment: Tea
Tea is very popular in Japan and not just as a drink, it's also a very important part of the culture. There are many kinds of tea in Japan. Traditional Japanese tea is known as ocha. Actually, the word for tea is cha, the o is an honorific, you'll see it placed before words to show extra respect. It's often used with titles such as okami (kami is the word for god or deity) and also some important items such as ocha and osake (sake is Japanese rice wine).
Anyway, ocha is traditional Japanese green tea and comes in a lot of different varieties. It's usually made with leaves or powder (not bags). Depending on the type and how it's prepared it can be pretty mild or very bitter and the thickness varies as well (although most of the time it's no thicker than your average cup of tea, coffee, or whatever. Other types of tea that are popular in Japan include Japanese barley tea (which I can't remember the name of right now), ice tea, and oolong tea.
Back to the cultural stuff I mentioned earlier. There's the tea ceremony or sado (sa is another word for tea and do is way, so it's literally way of the tea). This is a long and elaborately prepared ceremony where fresh ocha (usually a pretty thick variety) is made and served to guests along with traditional Japanese tea sweets. The tea ceremony has been a part of Japanese culture for a long time and while it's certainly a lot less common than it used to be, there are still schools that teach people how to preform it. Now a days, you can get a little bit of the tea ceremony feel by going to a tea house, which are places designed to give people a peaceful relaxed environment to enjoy a cup of ocha.
Putting the ceremony aside, ocha is a popular morning drink in Japan, although some people prefer coffee these days. It's also often served at meals. Polite hosts will also serve ocha to guests, and I'm not just talking about at homes, ocha is also served at business meetings and the like.

Random Japan Comment: Biking
Biking in Japan is a pretty major form of transportation. There's still plenty of cars but in many parts of the country parking is very limited so it's easier just to bike. Not to mention that bikes don't require gas, pricey inspections, and the like. Combine that with Japan's massive public transit system, and you'll find that in many places it really isn't that hard to get by with only a bike, at least most of the time. Actually though, quite a lot of people (at least outside of the big cities like Tokyo) have bikes and a car and decide which to use based on the situation. As such, you'll be seeing quite a lot of bike parking and the like.
Bikers generally don't bike on the street unless they absolutely have to. Most roads don't have bike lanes (although you can usually find at least a little bit of a shoulder that works if necessary). The preferred place to ride a bike is typically on the sidewalk. As such, walkers and bikers do need to keep an eye out for each other (not to mention the occasional poles and posts that seem to dot most sidewalks). Unfortunately, the Japanese people as a whole can't seem to make up their mind which side of the road (or even which side of the sidewalk) people should be on when going in any given direction, which makes paying attention even more important. Another problem is that some "sidewalks" are so thin that there's literally not even enough room for two people to walk next to each other, which can be a real problem when you're biking and another biker or walker is coming at you from the opposite direction.
Your average bike only has one gear (in many parts of Japan there's no real need for more), many have lights, and most have a basket or two (for carrying around shopping bags or whatever else you need to transport). A lot of bikes also have a little bell to let people know when you're coming...but people hardly ever use them. Another thing that doesn't get used much is helmets. Of all the people in Japan I've seen riding bikes, probably less than 3% of them were wearing helmets. Kinda odd compared to the US where bikers are constantly reminded to wear helmets. Wouldn't be surprised if fashion is at least one reason for the lack of helmets. All the bike helmets I've seen in Japan have been plain boring white bowl shaped things, nothing like the fancy colorful ones back home.

Friday (30th): Pizza in Japan

Random Japan Comment: Pizza
While certainly not as popular as it is in the US, or Europe for that matter (where I couldn't seem to go five minutes without seeing a pizza place), pizza is still fairly popular in Japan. Actually, when I polled one of my elementary school classes about their favorite food (from a list of 20 or so foods I was teaching them the English words for), pizza tied with rice for the number one spot. A bit surprising, especially considering that Japanese pizza really isn't all that great...
As previously mentioned, when it comes to foreign foods, most Japanese restaurants are anything but authentic. Pizza is no different. Naturally, this varies by restaurant. Toppings are the main issue but I'll get to them in a minute. First off, I should mention that there aren't a whole lot of dedicated pizza restaurants in Japan (at least not that I've seen) but a decent amount of Italian and American style places have it on the menu. A lot of the pizzas I've seen at places like that have a very thin crust (although with a different consistency than a thin crust pizza in the US) and many lack sauce. They're usually moderately priced though, which I can't say some of the dedicated pizza restaurants.
Then there's the toppings. The afore mentioned restaurants have lots of really bizarre types of pizza. Even Pizza Hut (which, for the record, is ridiculously expensive in Japan), falls prey to the crazy Japanese toppings (although it looks like they managed to retain the correct crust and sauce). For the record, I haven't actually gotten a Pizza Hut pizza in Japan yet, partially cause of the price, and partially cause Pizza Hit pizza really isn't all that good (at least in the US). However, I do have a take out menu so I'm gonna list some of the weird pizzas they have.
Out of the 18 pizzas on my menu, around a third could be considered more or less normal (aside from the addition of a lot of black pepper on a couple). Moving on to the rest of the menu, we've got things like the Hamburg Pizza, which might also sound normal until you see that it's covered with a combination of mini hamburger patties, red peppers, corn, and peas. Then there's Tuna Mild, featuring tuna, Mayonnaise, bacon, onion, and corn; the Seafood Mix complete with tuna, Mayonnaise, shrimp, squid, onion, and broccoli; the Super Korean Purukogi with Mayonnaise instead of tomato sauce and a whole bunch of weird toppings that that I can't quite identify; and the Idaho Special with a mix of tomato sauce and Mayo, bacon, parsley, potatoes, corn, and black pepper. And you want to know what the two top pizzas on the menu are (not sure who chose them though)? At number 2 it's...the Mochi & Shrimp Chili Pizza (mochi is a type of glutenous Japanese rice cake). And at number 1...the Mochi, Mentai & Potato Pizza. I'm not entirely sure what mentai is but said pizza also includes lots of other weird things I can identify like Mayo and seaweed.
Well, I didn't list everything on the menu but that should give you a basic idea of what to expect of pizza in Japan. Namely, lots of bizarre toppings, lots of seafood, and lots of Mayo... Definitely not things that belong on a pizza. From what I've heard, there are a handful of real pizza places scattered around Japan but I haven't managed to find any yet.
And that's pizza in Japan. Sometimes ok but definitely not all that great or authentic. When I return to the US in April, I am so going to NYPD my first night back for a real New York style pizza.

Part 3: October 2007




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