KitKat

I found a few flavors of KitKat to try. I heard about Japan having a lot of interesting alternative flavors, so I was on the hunt for the past couple weeks. I found the ones in the video, but for all I know they may be regular flavors in the US now. I am out of the KitKat loop.

Not sure why everything shows up backwards in the video, if you get confused just hold the monitor up to a mirror.

Snow

It's snowing and actually sticking to the ground!







And this is what my students are wearing when it is snowing. Notice the wool lining to keep them warm. (this is a 12 year old, but my 8 year olds also wear hotpants!!)

Yokohama

Went to Yokohama this Saturday. It is Japan's second largest city, but basically it is just an extension of Tokyo. It is known for its US military base, Chinatown and that's about it.

Had a good time wondering around town and people watching with a friend. Ended the evening with mediocre Mexican food and a cold walk back to the train station.

6 months of Japan

Click on the pic to make it bigger!

One of the best places in Tokyo to relax and people watch is Yoyogi Park in Harajuku.

You will see all types of people dancing, practicing martial arts, playing games or just lounging about. Here is a great video showing one of Yoyogi's subcultures.



Actually, I really like the song as well.

Here is a video I made awhile ago of other Yoyogi dwellers and the surrounding area(repeat).



Thanks!

Short skirts survive the deep-freeze in Niigata

In this snowy area along the Sea of Japan, it has long been a mystery why high school girls insist on wearing their school uniform skirts so short, exposing bare thighs to freezing air.

The skirts round here were so mini that four years ago, a photo weekly magazine proclaimed Niigata Prefecture schoolgirl skirt lengths to be the nation's shortest.

The battle over hemlines is now heating up again between teachers and students.

The rest of the story can be found here. Via.

And a special thanks to Super Punch for letting me see the proper way to credit sites.

My Apartment

Now that I am less than a month from vacating it, I have finally gotten around to posting pictures of my apartment. Not in its cleanest state, but here it is.

The entry and kitchen

My tiny bathroom in which I cannot even stand up straight in nor close the door when I am doing my business

Dirty kitchen with one electric burner and no oven

Living room. Had more pictures up but the adhesive didn't like the wallpaper

Living room. Ladder going up to the bedroom

The bedroom.

Jobs

I was offered a job in Shanghai last week. I decided not to take it. Here is why.

I love conveyor belt sushi.

Asakusa

My students have been hounding me to go to Tokyo's premiere temple in Asakusa. It is one of the main tourist destinations in the city and I put it off for too long. I headed out by myself (not so much fun after finding a good travel partner) and was surprised at how close it was to my apartment.

Once getting there I noticed everything seemed a bit dirty and old. I think this area remained pretty untouched during the Allied bombings of WWII. I nearly split my forehead open a few times on the incredibly low exit signs placed throughout the station.


Once getting to the surface I was surrounded by throngs of people of every size and color. At the front of the Temple area there is a big gate with a big red lantern. Just behind that there is a narrow passage lined with souvenir shops selling little cell phone charms of naked babies dressed as strange things (I have one dressed as a cucumber) to overpriced kimono to overpriced plastic Anpanman (Bean-filled Breadman) masks.


Getting to the temple (at least 100 meters through souvenir alley) proved a bit challenging due to all the people walking in all directions. Once I did arrive, it seemed like the shopping was the only thing worth seeing.



I tried a different route out and ended up on some nearly deserted streets (in Tokyo, nearly deserted means that you aren't having to keep your head on a swivel looking out for bikes and scarf clad school kids) to wander around. I came across an old amusement park that didn't look too exciting. It cost 900 yen to just get in, then more for each ride. I decided it was better to head in the direction of the huge cloud of smoke.



When I reached a very large nondescript gray building I was able to see the source of the smoke. Thousands of old disheveled men (and a few even worse looking old women) were reading small looking newspapers quite intensely. After milling about inside I was able to figure out that this was a horse betting hall. This was probably the most depressing place I have seen since I have been here. I was by far the youngest adult there, and probably had more teeth then the entire hall put together.

I did see one boy sitting outside, probably waiting for grandpa. I thought this was sad, but later that night a friend told me about how her father always took her to the track when she was a kid. She said most times she would sit there and do her homework, but sometimes her dad would teach her about playing the odds. Dad, why didn't you ever take me to the track?


I wandered around a bit more and found a lot of wig and sock shops. Japan must love socks and wigs.

Crime

Police box on a Friday night, completely empty

One of the best things about this country is the near complete lack of crime (against me). Being nearly a foot taller and 40+ pounds heavier (I am 6'3", 190 cm and weigh 190lbs, 86kg) helps keep the riffraff away I am sure. Actually, the only people I see that really give me a second glance (if you don't count the millions of beautiful girls who can't keep their eyes off of me) are the police, then again, they might be wondering why I keep looking at them.


One of my schools is next to a koban (police box) which is more like a 2 story shed with little police mopeds next to it. I have to cross the street at a crosswalk but I seem to be the only one who waits for it to change. I will wait and wait as many Japanese will just walk on through while the police do nothing but look at me. I have not been harassed by any of them though, so that is a plus. I have read stories (which may just be that) about police stopping foreigners constantly asking for ID. I think my admirers are just that, checking out my smooth silky walk that I walk so well.


The police don't seem to be very adept at catching things though. Many high profile criminals are on the lam for years before being caught (and it isn't like there is a huge backlog of criminals to catch). Mostly they seem to catch the perverts trying to take pictures of girls panties while riding the escalators or on overly crowded trains.

I always see people sleeping on the trains with their purses wide open and their expensive keitai (cell phone) balanced precariously on their knee. I guess I am not the only person that has noticed this as my coworker was recently relieved of her bag while she was taking a train nap.


At least they use hi-tech methods for finding criminals.

I have been racking my brain for souvenir ideas over the past couple of weeks. Fianally, thanks to Gizmodo I was able to find something for my brother, who is about to have his first kid with this girl he knows. Now he won't have to stop playing Rock Band™ or get up from his "job" when the kid is in need.

Ghibli

Saturday I headed to Kichijoji station to meet my friend and go to the Ghibli Museum. Ghibli is the Disney of Japan which created Totoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo. After a Kilometer walk through a park we reached the museum. Our tickets were for 2:00 PM, so we had to wonder around for a few minutes befor we could get in.


You have to buy the tickets in advance and they are usually sold out a couple of weeks beforehand. The only place to buy them is at a Lawson's convenience store kiosk. The kiosks are only in Japanese and even when I had my Japanese friend get the tickets, she was struggling with the system. Maybe that is why I saw only a few foreigners there.


The ticket they give you at the museum has a little piece of film with 3 shots (?) in it. Mine was from Totoro, we couldn't figure out what movie my friend's ticket was from.

A closeup of the ticket

The museum itself contains a a small theater where they show a 15 minute cartoon. The one we saw was "Koro no Oosanpo", about a puppy getting out and wondering the city. At one point it was found by a huge breasted Japanese student. Oh Japan, is there any time when you aren't perverted?

Unfortunately they are pretty strict about not taking photos, and I wasn't in top physical condition (see previous post) or mood to try and sneak some. There were a lot of interesting exhibits about how they layer the cells and different types of animation before cartoons. Everything was in Japanese, so reading was not required. One of the most interesting things was looking at the animators desks. You can walk around quite freely and almost nothing is roped off. On one of the desks was an ashtray loaded with cigarettes. I am glad Japan hasn't completely whitewashed cigarette history (we won't get into their whitewashing of other historical events) like the US seems to be doing (erasing cigarettes from old movies and photographs).


Another interesting thing was the exhibit where the model in the picture above would start spinning backwords and then a stobe light would turn on. It gave the effect that the pieces were realling moving (the jumprope was realling going around and the rabbits were really jumping). Picture taken from here.


On the roof is a giant robot from the movie Laputa, Castel in the Sky. It was hard to get a picture because of all the Japanese girls posing and having to get a shot with everyones camera and have different sets of people in each shot.



I could probably do a nice long post on Japanese girl photo posing, but I am just not able to wrap my head around it. The girl in the blurry photo just above purposely made her leg go into some weird bent out of shape way in an effort to look "cutie". I guess having a mangled looking foot is the cool thing these days.


These girls seemed to be in front of us much of the time, each needing about 5 pictures infront of everything.

A girl posing in a flooded park.

Some graffiti

A baby chair in the restroom. Don't point at the chair!!!!

Watch your head... or die.

Drinking

I tried to make another video of me drinking something strange from Japan, but I failed miserably. My drink of choice was Asahi beer. I know that it is not a strange drink, but what was unusual was all the variety of cans that you are able to buy.

The one that first caught my eye was the behemoth 2 liter variety (2 liters is about 5½US cans of beer).

After that I found the 1 liter



The 500ml



The 350ml (regular American size)



The 250ml (size of the small sodas served on airplanes, and cost 4£ on budget European airlines)



And the baby 125ml (size of a Mott's apple juice)

My goal was to finish them all, but I failed to add it all up and see that I was trying to drink 12 US sized beers in one go. I rarely drink here in Japan, so this was quite impossible from the get go. I did manage to get 3.sdfsfbmfdk liters done before 11:52 when everything went blank. I know it was 11:52 because I was having a few conversations with friends on the ol' internet chat and they all ended at 11:52. It was like looking at the broken clock in a movie showing exactly when the earthquake (or in my case, tsunami) struck.