Christmas

I am off to Borneo today. I hope you all have a great holiday experience!

Winklepickers

One big problem of living in a country with loads of little people (other than smashing my head on door frames) is finding clothes that fit properly. I buy XXL sizes but still the shirts only come down to my waste and the arms are an inch too short. I went to J Crew for some pants but they barely fit over my skinny legs.

Shoes are another problem. They all seem to stop at size 9US. I am a size 11, so this really sucks. The strange thing is 90% of the Japanese men I see have shoes almost twice as long as mine! The current style is "clown" but known as "winklepickers" in the UK, or so I am told. (A winkle is a small shell)

These are a size 9 (10.5 inches) but are 17 inches long!!

The most interesting thing is the way that their toe curls u after some extended wear. It reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the East just before she is sucked under the house.

Maid Cafe

I am on my knees

As my contract winds down I am trying to get in all of my Japanese experiences. I have purchased hentai manga (porno comic books that businessmen read on the trains), been to karaoke, visited a hostess bar, and now I can check off "Maid Cafe"!

I went with a Japanese girl who was also really curious about them. We headed down to Akihabara (Electric Town) which is the hotbed of maid cafe action. There were tons to choose from and many girls standing on the street corners dressed as very cold maids were handing out fliers. We chose one with cute enough girls but when we got to the building, there were actually three different ones to choose from. We went with a different one than we originally planned because they offered beer and for 500 yen you could play a Nintendo DS game with one of the maids.

We rode the elevator to the 5th floor and were shown a lackluster room. Nothing special in any way other than the waitresses dressing up and shouting "Welcome home Master" to us as we entered.

After ordering a beer we (my friend and I) pulled out our DS' (her's is pink!) and just decided to play against each other rather than pay one of the waitresses. I felt very Japanese. I was drinking at beer in a maid cafe and playing video games against a Japanese girl and I was beating her! Yata!!!!

Some guys playing PSP in KFC

Me and the maids (one photo costs 500 yen)

Fooling around on the internet this weekend I came across a way to do time lapse from my webcam. This was Monday afternoon outside my window.

Thank you weak Korean economy!

Thanks to the strong Yen and the weak Korean won I was able to pick up a new Canon G10 on the cheap side of "Yippie"!! I went around town taking some pictures and trying it out.

It was cold but this was all she was wearing

He was maybe a meter off the ground

building

Bridge...kind of looked like Busan

Building

Strange girl singing and playing with birdies

Fried curry

Ready for a fight

Ginza

Ginza girls

Pod apartment

US?

Ueno

Tokyo Metro poster

Ginza

Ginza

A Greaser's girl

Harajuku

Shibuya boys

Shinjuku

Shinjuku

Loser

I had a student ask me today if I wanted an American friend from Canada. She said that he lives nearby and I should give her(the student) my email.

I got home tonight to the following message:

Hello there...My wife is a friend of one of your students...I have heard that you are new here and you are feeling lonely...I don't usually talk to people I don't know, but my wife is twisting my arm...And since I don't know you, would you mind telling me about yourself?

Wow, is that how I look to my students? What did I say to give them the idea that I am a poor lonely man?

And what the hell is wrong with the guy writing an email like that? "I don't want to talk to you but my wife is making me...Let's be friends."

A day in my life.

backpacks

One thing you will see around Japan are lots of kids. They are everywhere. Even when you think they should be at school, they are running around in the school uniforms. They are wearing those things 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

One of the things I really like is the elementary kid backpack. It is required gear at many schools. It just has a classic look.


The other day I saw the price for the bag...$360!!!! What the hell? I guess it is to pay for great advertising.

Quantum of suck

I have to say I am quite disappointed. I have been waiting for this film to come out for quite awhile. I saw that they had the Japanese premiere this week so I was really excited to go drop $20 on a ticket. I looked everywhere for movie times before I found out that it isn't being released until January 24!! I am sad today. I will buy some Krispy Kreme to make my weekend a little more enjoyable now.

Japanese Drinks

After hearing about Pepsi's cucumber flavored drink introduced for the summer of 2007, I have been on the hunt for something interesting to try. There is no more cucumber, and this past summer's special was Blue Pepsi, which was just a Hawaiian blend. This fall they introduced Pepsi White and you can see the taste test below. I also found a curry flavored drink which can also be seen under the Pepsi video.

I looked everywhere for Eel juice, but I only saw one guy drinking it, and I was a bit intimidated by his Yakuza tattoos and large entourage to make a feeble attempt at Japanese and ask him where he got it. That was an ugly sentence. Enjoy.

t-shirts

I have seen a few strange t-shirts in my time overseas. If you look at the top of your browser window you may see a strange sentence, that was from a t-shirt. I saw these 2 letters on one elementary student's shirt and it reminded me of a former roommates favorite website.


I hope those that celebrate it have a nice Thanksgiving. I had my own little meal a little while ago. I took pictures, so you can relive the experience anytime you want.

UPDATE: My boss asked me to take the video down until I can edit bits out, like the location of said nutjob neighbor. So until I get around to it, you will not be able to see it again and again.

Well, here it is! The long awaited neighbor video. I am only showing the part where she is accusing me of taking "drags". I feel like this is my Medellin, lots of hype, but will fall way short of expectations.

Soy Sauce

The other week a elementary student missed my class because she had to go on a field trip. When I found out where she went, I felt bad for her. I think there would be tons of places for kids to go, maybe a whale blubber factory, or a geisha training class. This poor girl got stuck going to a soy sauce factory.

I go to Japanese class once a week. I am not learning much (due to my complete lack of interest) but I feel like I am being productive, so I continue to go. The class is given by the community center and only costs $10 a month, I m losing money by not going (actually, that arguement only seems to work when talking about drinking beer in Czech). As it is a community center class, they also want to introduce us to Japan and all things related to it. We were told that there was a field trip planned, can you guess where we went?

After an hour or so train ride that consisted of people trying to speak Japanese to me before giving up and using their broken English (which is pretty good) to talk with me or just moved on to someone else, we arrived at the Kikkoman Soy Sauce factory.

The town smelled of soy sauce, and looked like a sad little area whose day had long since passed. We made our way into the building pausing along the way for many group pictures. When we got inside we were greeted by a large soy sauce server thing and the gift shop which sold horrible soy sauce candies. I thought about buying some, but after having a sample quickly changed my mind. If you want to recreat the experience, just put a small marble and a spoonful of soy sauce in your mouth and swish it around for a few minutes. Yum.


Everyone was soon ushered into a small theater where we got to watch the miracle of soy sauce making. The movie was more scary than interesting, but I did learn that 100% of soy sauce making material comes from North America.

I hit a button by accident and cut off the best/scariest part of the whole movie

After the movie we got the grand tour which was basically walking through cream painted hallways of nothingness.

The creaminess is blinding

I did get to see some bits and pieces of the soy sauce making process, but none of it was running at the time, so it was just looking at a big machine doing nothing. I was hoping to see some assembly line magic: smooth, glistening virgin plastic bottles flying down the line, empty one second, filled tagged and ready to ship the next. No such luck.

The only real positive about the entire trip (if you don't count the free bottle of soy sauce) was that I got to better know the cute Filipina girl who is in a different class.

Yay! Free stuff!

The class "shufus" (housewives)

Birthday

After I have had a week to clear out the cobwebs, I can now write about what happened.

First I met 2 of my friends for some "happy time" drinks at a bar. It was billed as drinks at ½ price, but after we got there found out that it was one drink at ½ price for every plate of food you ordered. We promptly left and headed over to a Japanese style bar called an izakaiya.

An izakaiya is a stale place where you sit in small booths with doors. It feels more like a restaurant than a bar. The only good thing about it is most have buttons on the table that you press to call the waitress. Izakaiyas are everywhere.

One friend suggested we go to a Filipino bar that has all you can drink for $20 an hour. I was game so he hopped on he train and headed to the bar. Turns out it was a hostess bar. Hostess bars are places where men go and where women who work for the establishment talk to you and get you to buy them overpriced drinks. My friend suggested a Filipina bar because they speak English. After 30 minutes the girls get up and move to another table, only to be replaced with a fresh set of girls. Most of the girls I talked to said they didn't like the job and were searching for a factory job or something else. Nice girls, I hope things get better for them.

It is supposed to just be talking, but once it was known we were leaving (after a couple hours there) they started to get a little frisky and and ask us if we wanted sex. This would happen in a Japanese hostess bar...or so I was told. I said "no" to the offer.

I missed the last train home and had to sleep on some Japanese guy's floor. I just met the guy that night, but he paid for all of the Filipina bar expenses (such as buying the girls overpriced drinks). My old apartment was twice the size of his.

Not the best post, but watching football (Tech is getting destroyed) is not helping my concentration.

I found this video on Japan Probe (a great site for the likes of me who can't understand the language so well yet). The video gives a small taste of what fashion life is like for Japanese shufu (housewives). Just ignore what has got to be the most boring reporter ever.

My favorite comment about the their stress packed lives was this:

Life of the average nihonjin [Japanese]:
6am wake.
610 eat rice and miso soup
620 poop
630 run to train
645-750 sleep on train
800 punch in and stare at desk for two hours
1000 bathroom and vending machine break
1010 do one hour of real work
1110 stare at desk and wait for lunch
1230 lunch time (sleep on a park bench or in car)
1330 return to desk, stare at it for one hour
1430 bathroom break - run to combini[convenience store] for a bento[boxed lunch].
1445 return to desk, eat bento
1515 time for another hour of work
1615 bathroom
1620 40 minutes of work
1700 stare at desk and wait for the manager to go home
1900 manager leaves
1901 run to train
1915-2020 sleep on train
2022 get picked up at local station by family member
2040 eat dinner and watch TV
2130 bath
2200 go to bed.

Still at it

I had an interesting night out for my birthday, I will write more about it in an upcoming post. I want to make sure what really happened, did actually happen before I put finger to keyboard.

I am completely moved in and at some point will give you the grand tour sometime in the near future. But for now it is nice not having to hear the old woman jumping about. Instead I get to hear her calling my school!

That is right, Kusobaba called my school the past two evenings. She was ranting on about all types of things, but the key bits were that my boss (55+ year old grandmother) is my girlfriend and that she smells the drugs I am taking. The strange thing is that she is smelling it even though I already moved out. The boss is recording her phone calls and has her say the date and time when she smelled me doing the deed. Unfortunately I had been moved out for 3 days by that time. Today's call had Kusobaba saying she will call all of the other schools in the company and tell them I do "drags" and am dating my boss.

I think I would freak out if I tried to do drugs in this country. Have you seen what some of the people look like?

It's my birthday

So enjoy these puppies.


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Moving

I finally get to move, and it is not soon enough. The kusobaba has been quite energetic lately. I found that she seems to make more noise after I cook some chicken in my toaster oven and turn on the fan. I think she can smell it. Can you smell what theSkaht™ is cooking?!

I should be all settled in by Sunday. My boss has a little car that we are going to have to make many trips in to move my few belongings. I guess that is better than putting the fridge on my back and carrying it Sherpa style.

I tried to get a bank account this week but ran up against the racism wall again. I was told that since it was a small bank this was excusable. While trying to do anything but study Japanese I came across this site. On it is posted a scanned high school yearbook from 1944-45. It is from a Japanese internment camp in California. Even the US has its growing pains.

My week in pictures

Dad stopped by the country for a few fun hours.

I am being stalked by a crazy woman.

Salarymen like to pick their nose and flick it anywhere.

I was in need of soap. This is the only kind I could find.

What I carry with me everywhere.

What could the answers be to the crossword at the bottom?



Another McDonald's photo- her eyes, they follow you.