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July 10th, 2005
08:43 am - friday
More all-day group sessions the rest of the week, but Friday was an off day. Oh yeah, Wednesday I went and bought a cell phone at Bic Camera, it's lime green and very cute, with a camera and radio and I don't even know what other functions because I can't read the manual, but the phone itself is bilingual so you can set it to display in English. It was kind of a challenge asking questions about the phone because they guys at the store spoke about as much English as I speak Japanese, haha. But it worked out. My phone is the basic 1 yen model. Yes, 1 yen, and yes, when you buy it you have to hand the guy a one yen coin, haha. Coolest thing I ever bought for less than a cent. The plan I got is a really basic one, it's 1995 yen a month and you get 50 minutes free, 20 yen a minute after that and incoming calls are free too. I figure I'll be able to meet up with people more easily this way since I don't live in the dorm with the majority of the girls here, plus I can contact my host family without deciphering a public phone. But back to Friday. I slept in again and decided to go to Nagata in the afternoon to try and find the largest of the Mandarake (anime chain store) locations. Well it's located in a mall where Mandarake owns about 1/4 of the stores I'm guessing, maybe a little less. So it's not one store but a mall full of small stores that specialize in different things....DVDs, manga, artbooks, cosplay items, collectibles, soundtracks, cels, and other stuff. Unfortunately for me I have no interest in DVDs or manga because I can't read/understand them, the cosplay items are insanely expensive (but fun to look at), and I'm not a cel collector. I do buy anime soundtracks but I couldn't think of one I particularly needed, plus it's hard to navigate a Japanese CD store because again, I can't read Kanji and all the Japanese kind of blurs together because I'm much slower at reading Kana than at reading roman letters. So that left collectibles, they did have tons of these things, action figures and capsule toys and statues and such, but they were mostly collector's items (meaning old things from old series), and a lot of it was American stuff. After all it is geared towards Japanese collectors so understandable but not what I'm looking for. They had a ton of capsule toy machines though, so I spent lots of money in those buying One Piece and Naruto toys. I got lucky on the OP toy machine, I kept buying from it trying to get the Sanji toy, ended up getting 5 different characters with the last one being Sanji, so I have the full set in one try. Nice! I was on an anime kick that day so I got on the train planning to go all the way to Akihabara which is on the opposite side of the city, but it was getting late and I changed my mind and decided to check out Ikebukuro since I've never been there. There's a Japanese craft center and two of the largest department stores in the country, but not a whole lot else for tourists. I checked out the craft center, they had stuff from all around the country and it was high-quality and probably reasonably priced for what it was, but still out of my price range, so I moved on. Someday I'll come back and buy lacquer or some other fancy stuff to display in my house, when I have a house. The only department store I ended up going to was Seibu because they had a Seibu Loft store inside. Loft is a more inexpensive department store aimed at young people, I went to a couple last year when I was in Kyoto/Osaka. I bought some pretty stationery, cool anime postcards I plan to put on my wall at school, and a brown rabbit plush from Sanrio that's the same color as Mellon. They're new Sanrio characters, Sugarbunnies. There's a male brown one and a female white one and they work in a bakery making cakes or something like that. There's cute TV commercials here which is where I first saw them. Also I guess they speak French. Haha..
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08:18 am - tuesday
Sooo let's see, what happened this past week? Monday was more group session, all day so not much to say about it. Tuesday we had a half day (yay!). We got out around 1:30 and I went to Harajuku with Julia and her ex boyfriend Trevor. I guess they broke up the day before but apparently they're still friends, so that's cool. Julia wanted to go to Jonathan's for lunch and there was one in Harajuku so we ate there. I had bacon pizza and it was actually pretty good. Bacon was the only kind of pizza they had but it tasted like normal pizza so yay. Jonathan's is kind of like Japanese Denny's. Yes they do have Denny's here too but it's different, they serve Japanese and western food and the food isn't gourmet but definitely better than our Denny's. So Jonathan's is like that. Trevor went back home after lunch (it was 3 by the time we finished, oy) to study, so Julia and I wandered around Harajuku trying to find Takeshita-dori, which we eventually did. There's 2 main streets in Harajuku and that's the cheap one, the other one is all designer stuff. Takeshita-dori is more funky, there's tons of thrift stores and things. Japanese trendy thrift stores are funny though, I swear it's mostly American clothes. Every single one of them, it's crazy. That would be fun, importing stuff from America and running a store in Japan, hmmm....haha. I hadn't told my host family I was missing dinner so I had to take off around 6, I didn't get as much time as I would have liked to explore that street since it was 5:30 or so by the time we wandered over there, I'll have to go back. I did find another Banana Fish store though so yay! I bought another shirt, I may go back and buy more later since I'm doing really good on money right now. Oh yeah there was also a really bizarre costume shop on that street. It kinda looked like showgirl outfits but without the enormous feathery headdresses and things, and more Japanese. I couldn't tell if these were actually supposed to be costumes or normal wear, I managed to take a picture of the outside but you weren't allowed to take pics inside. So many stores have that rule, it's a shame because there's such interesting stuff in them.
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08:05 am - correction
Ok I lied. Saturday after the field trip I slept obscenely late and then went to meet my mom in Tokyo for dinner because she was leaving the next day. I remembered this after I finished my entries last night. I gave her the kokeshi doll and we went out to eat okonomiyaki at this place in Ginza that was fairly good but really loud. Okonomiyaki is pancake-like batter with cabbage and stuff in it, you can order different kinds with meats and stuff in it (squid, pork, cheese, yakisoba, etc.). It comes raw in a bowl, you stir it up and pour it on the griddle in front of you and cook it yourself then put sauces on it. I accidentally overcooked mine, aw. I think Americans are louder than Japanese people in general, but Japanese people are louder when they're out in groups at restaurants drinking. Seriously, they're loud. Especially teenagers but this really applies to all age groups. After dinner we went to this frozen yogurt place my mom reeeally liked so she could have one last fro-yo. It tastes like Japanese yogurt, like yogurt you have for breakfast but more tart and less sweet. Anyway my mom digs it so we went again. Sunday was the day I slept obscenely late and then did laundry.
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July 9th, 2005
08:09 am - sleep
I'll write about the rest of the past week tomorrow maybe. It's midnight now and I have to be up at 6:30 so bedtime for me. Wow, those were long entries. The rest of my week wasn't nearly as eventful. Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, I just write these entries start to finish without stopping, as it comes to me. So they come out in a ginormous block of text that is probably hard to read...sorry about that, haha.
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08:05 am - second day
To continue. We woke up the next morning at 6:30 and had to be at breakfast at 7, so not much time for anything but changing and washing up. Breakfast was the same format, traditional, ten different plates of stuff, I don't remember everything we had for breakfast but it was stewed tofu in a hot pot, miso, rice, pickles, a little grilled fish, and some other stuff. I actually like eating this sort of food for breakfast, I'd rather have it than bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc. I remembered to take my motion sickness medicine at breakfast, phew. There were some announcements made by Tanaka, one of the student coordinators, at breakfast, one of which was not to take the yukata and towels because they belong to the hotel. We left at 8 or so, the aforementioned nice Japanese ladies had laid out everyone's shoes in the genkan, and when our bus left they waved goodbye to us with these traditional hat things, they look like small, slightly domed round straw things with silk flowers on top. Later I heard that some of the people in the program stole the yukata and towels. 9_9 How could you do that to the nice Japanese ladies? At least be a courteous guest, fuckwads. I hate it when people do that kind of thing, especially if they are part of a group I also happen to be in, because I really try to be polite and courteous especially when visiting other countries. We Americans have a bad enough rep, we don't need more people acting like assholes fucking it up for everyone else, seriously. I can't say I was surprised though. You can't have a group that big of college-age people and expect it to be fuckwad-free. Sigh. Well anyway the next stop was Yamadera, a temple on the side of a mountain. We didn't actually go to the temple, we just looked at it from across the valley. Apparently there's over a thousand steps to get to it and it takes hours, but it was pretty anyway. The tour guide said something about Basho, the famous Japanese poet, writing a poem about Yamadera and burying it. There's now a monument over the spot, but the interesting thing about this fact was the guide mentioned that some people think Basho was a NINJA. Because he was born in an area known for ninjas (Iga prefecture I think, I googled him) and he wandered around the country writing poetry, which is what ninjas do, travel around the country gathering information. So cool! Next up was cherry picking, Yamagata is known for cherries (sakuranbo), so we stopped at a cherry grove to pick some. We couldn't take any out of the orchard with us, we were supposed to just pick enough to eat, which was disappointing because I was expecting to be able to fill up a container with them and bring them back like you do when you pick fruit in the states. The trees were very pretty though, Japanese cherries are smallish and yellow, they turn partially red when they're ripe so they kinda look like Rainier cherries and taste similar but a tiny bit more tart. They're good. We stopped at a cherry stand right after the cherry picking where you could buy some to take with you, I bought a small bucket for 1000 yen (little less than $10), which is actually not a bad price for cherries in Japan. I thought my host family might appreciate them since fruit is expensive and all and Yamagata is famous for them. Omiyage are usually things that the region you are visiting is well known for, you give them to your family, friends and sometimes business associates like your boss. Every region in Japan has multiple things it's famous for so it's not hard, haha. I guess Yamagata is also known for making shogi pieces. Shogi is Japanese chess, and we went to a workshop where they made these things right after the cherry stand. All the sets were pretty insanely expensive and I don't know how to play shogi anyway so I didn't buy anything. We stopped at another Japanese rest stop to have lunch, I just bought some yakisoba from a snack stand. I was afraid of getting sick again so I didn't want to eat very much, but I was fine the whole day, probably because of that medicine I took. Afterwards we drove up to a volcanic lake called Okama, but it was completely foggy, cold and drizzly and we couldn't see anything. I guess it's supposed to be perfectly round and that's why it's interesting, they had pictures of it at the gift shop. How disappointing though, oh well. The rest of the day was spent visiting various gift shops, we went to a lot of these, haha. First was a kokeshi work/gift shop. Kokeshi are traditional Japanese wooden dolls, there was an old man making them that you could watch, it was pretty neat. Some Japanese tourist asked him how long he had been making kokeshi and he said "I don't remember". Tanaka said that's the attitude of a true master, haha. I bought a couple of them and gave one to my mom before she left. Next stop was Zao dairy, I dunno if it was one of those dairies you can tour, but we only went to the gift shop part of it, where they sold different kinds of cheese. Most of them were cream cheese-like stuff in different flavors, they also had a "cheese drink" we sampled. Sounds scary but it tasted kind of like creamy Calpis to me. If you've never tasted Calpis it tastes sweet and fruity, I don't know what kind of fruit, it's fruity in the way that Fruity Pebbles are fruity. They had samples of the different cheese spreads out on tables with crackers, we all "sampled" the entire time we were there, haha. I felt bad not buying anything though and I would have, but I didn't think it was a good idea to buy anything that was supposed to be refrigerated and let it sit for hours on the bus. It was good though. Last stop of the tour was a sponge cake shop, they also had samples and they sold two flavors, plain and green tea. Both kinds had little specks of gold leaf on the top. Fancy! It was very good sponge cake but kind of expensive and I'd already bought two things for my homestay family already so I didn't get any of it. After the cake shop, a 4 hour drive back to Tokyo. We had a tv screen on the bus (and tiny flat chandeliers, crazy), so we watched Totoro and Laputa. I don't really like Laputa as much as Miyazaki's more recent movies so I slept through a lot of it. We ended up at Shinjuku station and I got on the train and went straight home. After two days on the bus and an hour or so on the train I was tired so I basically just crashed and slept obscenely late the next day. I didn't do anything but sleep and do laundry. All in all it was fun, but I really wish I hadn't thrown up on a bus in front of people. Yuck.
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07:18 am - backtracking
Blah I'm so behind writing in this thing, I haven't done it in a week. But I have time right now so here goes. So the field trip last Thursday and Friday. We went to Yamagata prefecture, which I *think* is northwest of Tokyo, but I'm not sure because as you know I have no sense of direction whatsoever. Anyway it was about a 3-4 hour drive from Shinjuku where my school is. Shinjuku is on the west side of Tokyo if you were wondering. Let's see if I can remember what we did...ok so first we drove for 3 hours or so, stopping at rest stops for bathroom breaks and stuff. Japanese rest stops are much, much nicer than American ones. The bathrooms aren't disgusting (not pristine either but that's ok), and they each have souvenir shops, food stands and lots of vending machines, mostly for drinks but some of them have food, there's one that stores frozen food and heats it up for you in about 30 seconds when you buy something, it's so cool. Anyway the first stop was at Aizu village, which has a 57 meter tall statue of Kannon (Buddhist goddess of mercy) with stairs inside for non-lazy people to climb. Other than the statue they mostly just have nice scenery, an artificial stream going through the center with one of those red Japanese bridges over it, lots of koi, and lots of flowers (irises, hydrangeas and azaleas). Right now it's the end of the iris season and the middle of the hydrangea season, but I didn't see many hydrangeas blooming. They had a big field of irises though, very pretty. We had lunch at Aizu village but we only had about 40 minutes total to spend there so not much time for exploring. The schedule I saved says we went to Kashiwaya next, but I can't remember what that was. Oh wait, I think it was a manju shop. Ok yeah I'm pretty sure it was. Manju is a kind of Japanese sweet, red bean paste inside cakey stuff, it's good if you like the red bean paste, which I do. I bought a box for my homestay family as omiyage (souvenirs). Next was Goshikinuma, numa was translated as "swamp", so the name would be 5-color swamps, but i think maybe they meant more of a body of water bigger than a pond but smaller than a lake, because they weren't very swampy looking. Anyway so there's five of these things (5 major ones) and they're each a different color, but we only had time to see two of them. The first one was a deep blue color kinda like the deep ocean in tropical areas, there were enormous koi in there, about 2.5-3 feet long, and the whole area was nice and green with trees and ferns and things, very pretty. We took a hike around part of the first swamp to the second one, which was supposed to be red. Well it was kinda rusty-red, but only around the edges. The middle was the same blue as the first one. I think the rusty color was algae or something but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway this place was up in the mountains, and to get there you had to deal with winding mountain roads. I get motion sickness easily on winding roads (ugh). I'm not sure how this happened but I managed to make it up to the swamps and back down again by trying to nap, but I woke up when we had finally gotten out of the mountains, and it was at this point that I threw up. On the bus. Why? Yeah I don't know either. I wish i knew, it was embarassing. I managed to catch most of it in the barf bags they provided (at least I know I'm not the only one with this problem), but some of it got on the floor and my shoes. Ick. Yeah so next time I travel I should take some Dramamine or something with me. Now I know. The tour guide gave me some motion sickness medicine to use for the next day since we were pretty much out of the mountains. The next stop was a winery. I didn't see too much of it because I spent most of the time cleaning puke off myself and the bus. Fortunately not much of it got on my clothes and none of it got on the seat, just the floor which was linoleum so all was well. They had wine you could sample at the winery, I had a few tiny sips because I was curious (but I was careful not to have much, after all I did just vomit). It seems they sold several types of white wine, and then some fruit wines like cherry and pear. All the wines were very, very sweet. I decided not to buy any because I don't know who I'd give it to, wine is heavy and I didn't want to drink a whole bottle myself. There's me being practical again. The last stop of the day was a big souvenir shop, not much to say about it other than it was a big souvenir shop, haha. I bought one of those little solar powered sunshine buddies that nod their heads around, I already have a plain one but this was an onsen themed one! I've never seen one like it, so of course I had to buy it because I like onsens. Speaking of onsens, the final destination for the tour that day was our hotel, which was a traditional inn (ryokan), with a bath and everything. I don't know if it was actually an onsen or just a sento, but it was in an onsen area so I'll assume it was one. I've never stayed in a ryokan before, so this was really neat. Our rooms were very traditional, well the whole inn was very traditional of course. You took off your shoes at the entryway (genkan) to the inn, and wore slippers the whole time you were inside the hotel, then the rooms had their own genkan where you took off your slippers and stepped barefoot (or in socks) up onto the raised wooden and tatami floors. The toilet area had its own set of slippers as well, these slippers are only worn in the toilet area. Thankfully the toilet itself was western-style, because I hate j-style squat toilets. It seems like all the toilets in hotels are the fancy western style ones with warmed seats and butt-rinsing and bidet action. They have these sometimes in nicer public bathrooms as well (like department stores), and sometimes there's a little machine tacked onto the wall that plays a water sound to hide the sound of your functions, I've seen ones that also dispense air freshener automatically. And of course flushing is also automatic. The toilet at my homestay is of the butt-warming/washing variety and it also has a sink on top of the tank. The tap goes on automatically when you flush the toilet and drains directly into the tank to fill it. How genius is that? You can wash your hands then use that water to fill the toilet up. Those Japanese and their crazy high-tech toilets. I feel that American toilets are sorely lacking. While I'm on a tangent I'm also gonna mention that I'm really going to miss Japanese trains and subways, except during rush hour. They're almost never late and are sparkly clean compared to American ones, some of them have video monitors inside or displays with lights showing you the entire route and what stop is up next, in English and Japanese. It's so nice, especially compared to Chicago subways which are kinda grungy and tend to attract some creepy people. Anyway back to the hotel, when we got to our room, "we" being myself and the four other girls I shared a room with, there was a low table and those chairs that sit directly on the floor, on one end of the table there was a container full of hot water and a tea box with loose tea, cups and a teapot. There were even some sweets to eat with the tea. How nice! So we made tea and sat down on the little chairs to drink it before dinnertime. Then we discovered the yukata the hotel provides you to wear while in the hotel. You can wear this anywhere in the hotel...to dinner, to the baths, in the halls, to bed, it's very practical. So we all decided to wear ours to dinner and invented creative ways to tie the sashes since we didn't know the proper way. I actually don't think it matters for that type of yukata. They came with jackets too so we wore those over them. Then a guy came and told us dinner was ready so we went downstairs to the dining room. A lot of people from our group decided to wear their yukata to dinner also. I dunno, I like yukata and it was nice to change out of our sweaty clothes, plus it's cool feeling all traditional. Dinner was, of course, also very traditional. We sat on zabuton (cushions) on the floor and ate at little tray-like tables, and there were about 10 different plates of food on the trays, little plates with little portions of course, but it was still a lot of food. There was a small piece of fish and beef, some kind of stewed potato dish in a hot pot, rice, pickles, grated daikon (japanese radish) with tiny mushrooms in it, a cup of pickled seaweed in liquid, and some fried tofu. There were probably a couple other things I'm not remembering. Oh wait yeah, there was konnyaku, which is a really firm kind of gelatin-like substance that comes from yams, and miso soup of course. I wasn't a fan of the seaweed-in-a-cup stuff or the konnyaku. Dessert was a small cube of green tea custard. Wow, I have a good memory, go me! Nice old Japanese ladies served us dinner, did I mention they also laid out all those pairs of slippers I mentioned earlier in the entry? Anyway after dinner we went back to our room and wow, the table and chairs were gone and futons were all laid out. I suspect the nice old Japanese ladies, someone else in my room said it was kind of weird and seemed like elves had come or something, haha. It was too early for bed though so...bathtime! Everyone in my room happened to be adventurous and up for communal nakedness, which was great. Two of us, me and another girl, had done it before so that probably helped. I had to explain to some of the others how to do the bath thing and decipher which of the bottles were shampoo, conditioner (they sometimes call it "rinse" here) and body wash, luckily there was some kana on the bottles so, saved. Some of the girls from one of the other rooms thought you could wear a towel in the bath like in anime (haha), we had to inform them that they do that in anime for modesty and in reality you don't bring towels into the water at all. You can bring your washcloth and rest it on top of your head if you want to, I like to soak it in cold water and wring it out before doing this, because my face sweats easily and I'm sitting in hot water. The water felt good after a long day on a tour bus, I had a knot in my shoulder the entire day, which was balls. Nothing much happened after the baths, we were all tired so we went to bed. The futons were quite comfy and we wore our yukata to sleep in, but I was kinda hot the whole night. In the morning we discovered the air conditioner we didn't know was there. Oy.
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June 29th, 2005
06:21 am - nothing much to report
Another all-day group session exactly like yesterday. One of the teachers complimented my Japanese though, ohoho. He said it sounded natural. Now if only I knew more of it. I doubt I sound like a native speaker though, he might've meant in comparison to the other people in my class, I dunno. Sushi and gyoza for dinner, yum. I think it was because it was Makoto's day off and they all went out shopping all afternoon so no time to cook (it was store-bought), but I can't complain, because....sushi! After dinner they went to Makoto's parents' house. Yuko said they wanted to invite me but they know I have to get up ass early tomorrow for the school's field trip. I'll have to leave the house at 6:30, ugh. Shoma asked his mom if "neesan" was going (oneesan means older sister but is also a way to refer to any young woman/girl), still....awww. I still can't understand much of what he says because he talks like a 3-year-old and also the three of them use very casual language to talk to each other. You never learn those forms in class unfortunately. Anyway the trip is overnight so no LJ tomorrow. Full report on Saturday since I get back late Friday night and will probably be tired.
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June 28th, 2005
06:37 am - p.s.
Yuko says they just call them towels (say it like a Japanese person). We had a separate orientation for homestay students today after school. They told us, among many other things, not to use the telephone or internet at our homestay houses. I started to get worried because why would they say such a thing? To prevent us from monopolizing the family's computer? Because it costs the families a lot of money? I was especially worried about that one but this is a cable internet connection and that wouldn't make any sense since you know, it's always on anyway. Then they mentioned something about how not every homestay family or dorm has internet so they want to be fair to all the other students. Haha, sucks to be those other students. They can go to internet cafes, I'm not going to turn down internet in my room, that's crazy talk. I guess I'm just not that noble of heart, haha. Also I was talking to some of the other students about the 4-6 hours of studying thing, pretty much everyone feels the same way, so I feel better.
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06:18 am - oh Japan, what will you think of next?
First day of group session today. Group session is....hm. Well I guess it's speaking practice or a review of lessons or whatever. The first week we only have group session, no regular classes. Not as nice as it sounds, group session this week lasts all day (6 hours total), while classes will last for 3. This is a full immersion program which means no English is spoken at all. Fine for me since I have a little bit of Japanese knowledge and have no problem understanding the teachers at this level, but I feel bad for people who don't know a word of it, it must be hard not understanding the instructions and explanations and whatnot. Granted they do use a lot of gestures to indicate what they're talking about, but I can see the confusion on other people's faces, haha. I'm probably the best one in the group but again, it's because I know some Japanese and I watch lots of anime (sometimes). Not that that's unusual, probably 2/3 of the group also watches anime and most also have studied Japanese before a little bit. I don't know...maybe I'm just that smart. Hahaha. There's a few couples enrolled in this program, I'm jealous of their togetherness. But not much else, the people that comprise these couples are very nerdy, or at least that's how they look, I don't know them well. I'm so mean. One of the couples is a really fat girl who wears bad makeup and has hair down to her butt (I don't know, I don't think hair that long looks good but a lot of nerdy girls seem to like it), and a kinda nondescript skinny dude with dyed burgundy hair. The other one is a tall geeky looking guy with curly hair and glasses and a girl, she's not bad looking and she seems nice, but she has super hairy arms, haha. I feel like such a bitch being so superficial, but you know everyone thinks things like that anyway and it's my blog so fuck you. Anyway on to the interesting stuff. Another day battling for survival during the morning rush. There is a job that exists for the rush hour and only in Japan, I don't know what their actual name is but they're station worker men with white gloves on and I just call them pushers. Because that's what they do, they help people pack onto a full train by shoving them into the car. They also will help should any part of you or your belongings get stuck in the train doors as they close (happens way more often than you'd think given the overstuffed nature of the trains). I don't think I can emphasize enough how stuffed these are. Stuffed to the point of literally not being able to squeeze even one more person into the car, you're pressed up against people and you really can't decide where to go, you're caught in the tide and you're pushed along wherever the majority goes. Which means if you try to stay on the train when it stops and you are anywhere near the door, you're pushed out forcefully by hundreds of pounds of human in business suit. And then you step back inside to be shoved up against the opposite wall (or more often against other people) by the wave of new passengers. Anyway yeah, pushers. I sweat like the people in a gatorade commercial during this time, it's hot with so many people in the train and it's already hot outside to begin with. Which brings me to my next point of interest: designer sweat rags. I bought one today. Japanese women never seem to be sweaty, but I know their secret. They all carry around either a handkerchief or a little towelly thing, same size as a washcloth, made of towel material. This thing is a sweat rag. Men carry them too, you use it to dab the copious amounts of sweat off your face. Well I decided I needed a handkerchief for this purpose because tissues weren't cutting it, so I went to a department store on the way home and there I saw a display of designer sweat rags. The towelly things. Burberry and Anna Sui make sweat rags? Yes, yes they do. But only in Japan would you find these things. I must have missed them last year. Actually Anna Sui seems to make everything. Sweat rags, parasols, jewelry, yukata...in addition to the stuff you can buy internationally (clothes, makeup, perfume, etc.). I've never seen so much of her stuff anywhere, it's all over the department stores. So I bought an Anna Sui sweat rag because hey, why not? It was $6. A lot for a washcloth-like thing but it's not breaking my budget or anything. Besides, it's interesting and useful. It would work well in a Chicago summer too I'm sure. By the way I have no idea what these things are actually called. I call them sweat rags because really, they are.
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June 27th, 2005
01:29 am - oh yeah
And I found out last night that my host "mother" is 26. So I feel funny calling her my host mother, that's weird. She said she sometimes thinks she got married and had a kid too early, because I guess her friends go out partying and stuff and she of course can't go. She said she got married at 22 (I feel so old...). But it's nice that I'm living with people close to my age, I think if they were my parents' age or older I would worry a lot more about offending them accidentally. Apparently Yuko's husband called her 3 times yesterday asking if I was doing ok. He doesn't speak any English at all and Yuko says he's shy, but awww. That's cute. Haha...
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01:23 am - orientation
So as the title suggests, I had orientation today. I had to be there at 9am, so I woke up at 7, showered and stuff, and left around 8:05. I meant to leave at 8 but I was running slightly behind. The sheet they gave me said the commute was 50 minutes, including walking time, so I figured I's be ok. Well leaving at 8 means you're right in the middle of rush hour. Everything you've heard about rush hour in major Japanese cities is true. It's pretty hellish. You really ARE squashed in a train car with literally no space in between you and the people around you. You couldn't get closer if you started spooning these people, I'm serious. It sucks. A lot. The good news is, I'll be having class in the afternoons, which means I won't have to travel during rush hour after next week, but the bad thing about that is that you can't do much sightseeing if you have afternoon class, seeing as things open around 10-11 and class is from 1:30-4:45. Ugh. Oh and also they said they recommend....wait for it.....4 to 6 hours of study. A DAY. I don't study that much for finals, let alone for daily lessons. I wonder if they give us an astronomically high estimate in the hopes that we'll actually do about an hour or two of studying, or if they're literally serious about that. I don't know if I need to study *that* much, maybe if it's a hard lesson but still. I ended up testing into level 1, go me. I think I'm like a level 1.5. I definitely do not have one full year's worth of college-level Japanese behind me but I already know a lot of the basic crap like numbers and "Ohayoo!" and stuff. Re-learning all that is going to be boring (but at least I won't have to study 6 hours a night for it, haha). Well at the end of this program I should finally be ready for level 2 Japanese. Which is kinda funny since I technically started studying it 6 years ago, but in reality I usually don't count the class I failed at Brown when I was a freshman, because shit, I failed it. So I obviously didn't learn much of anything, haha. Anyway I ended up being a little bit late to orientation because the commute took longer than they said it would and I got a little lost once I reached the last station and had to find the school, but lucky for me a host mother just happened to be walking by while I was asking some guy where the place was, and she showed me. The placement test was hard, I couldn't do much of it and it was full of scary kanji, and the tape they played for listening comprehension had people talking way too fast, although that was the part I did best on. I always do best in listening/reading comprehension in language classes. Well not reading in Japanese because like I said, I don't know kanji. Details details. After orientation we had the afternoon off, so I decided to head to the Edo Tokyo museum, which supposedly has reconstructions of Edo-period buildings that you can walk in. I'm sure it's awesome, but it happened to be closed today. Some kind of holiday, or so says a random old Japanese guy who was walking by. I'll have to come back though, I really want to see it. I went back to Ginza to Hakuhinkan Toy Park, the largest toy store in Tokyo. Lonely Planet makes it sound enormous, and it is 9 floors, but really only 5 of them are toys and the building's footprint is kinda small so it's not that big square-footage wise. They had tons of Miffy stuff. Japanese people love Miffy. I may post some pics later, they had that girlfriend lap pillow, which you may or may not have seen on the internet, but it's a pillow shaped like a woman's lap that you can lay your head on if you don't have a girlfriend and are tragically desperate (and don't mind other people knowing it). I mean really. Only in Japan.
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June 25th, 2005
08:32 pm - host family
Well, so I'm here at my host family's house unscathed. They seem like nice people. It's a 3-person family: Yuko, the mom, Makoto, the dad, and Shoma the son. He's actually 3, not 1. Which is good, I can deal with a 3-year-old. The only person in the family though who speaks any English is Yuko, which means I can't really talk at all to Makoto or Shoma, and that's kind of awkward. I wish I knew more Japanese, but like Kyle said, that's what I'm here for. I have my own room here but I do have to sleep on the floor, haha (on a futon). It's not bad, and pretty normal for Japan. Today I have a free day. I'm sitting in my room on the computer (cable internet IN MY ROOM!). I feel like I should go be social but I can't understand much of anything when Yuko and Shoma talk to each other in Japanese, and also Shoma really, really seems to like this home video of the Main Street Electrical Parade which I guess they saw last year at Tokyo Disneyland. Well it's been playing all morning. Shoma seems to know how to work the video camera perfectly (it's hooked up to the tv), and he periodically will go rewind it a bit and then let it play, so it's neverending. Right now I can hear "It's a Small World" playing from the other room....as far as I can tell it's been playing for at least 15-20 minutes, haha. Wow. Yeah so I feel bad for being antisocial but at the same time it's either that or sit watching a neverending Main Street Electrical Parade home video while feeling uncomfortable and out of place sitting there uselessly. I wonder if I should go out sightseeing or something. I'd like to, but it's already 12:30 and it takes an hour to get to Tokyo from here. It doesn't bother me but should I be back here for dinner? Is leaving way too antisocial? Grah I don't know. At least they liked the gifts I brought (a box of See's chocolates and an Elmo doll). But really who doesn't like chocolate, and what 3 year old doesn't like Elmo? You can't go wrong. This 3 year old likes both chocolate AND Elmo, so score. Supposedly Makoto smokes but the house doesn't smell like smoke at all. Maybe he does it outside. I guess he's a car salesman for Nissan but luckily he doesn't seem like a slimy one, haha. The parents are really young, probably only a few years older than I am, and they're both really skinny. Yuko's like a size -1. She's even skinny for a Japanese woman (Note to Margot: she's about as skinny as Devon Rogers but taller). I felt kinda bad having them help me carry my crap up and down the stairs in the train stations. They said they wanted to come pick me up in their car but the program coordinators asked them to go by train. I don't know why, it's a pain in the ass. Maybe so I would be familiar with the trains or something, I don't know. Their apartment complex is really nice and new though, which is good. I'll be fine for 7 weeks here.
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12:02 am - a wasted day
Blah. Today was boring and stupid. My mom and I both had to do laundry so that's what we did this morning. It took so fucking long though because Japanese dryers suck ballsack (in my experience anyway), and it took 2 hours of drying to achieve a mostly-dry but still kinda damp stage. During this time we just sat there. I brought my mp3 player but still it was boring. We were supposed to go see Batman Begins at 12:45 but of course we missed it due to the aforementioned stupid fucking dryers. Oh and I fought with my mom over stupid crap on the ride over to the laundromat. At least lunch was good. I had banana curry udon, which turned out to be just curry udon with fried bananas on the side. I dunno, maybe you're supposed to put the bananas in the curry udon? I just ate them separately because fried bananas are delicious. Then when we got to the hotel again the maid was cleaning the room so we had to sit and wait for half an hour, blah. And I finally get to use my own computer, jesus christ it takes my mom forever to write email. I'm sure my dad got a full report of my terrible behavior or whatever. I'm supposed to go meet my host family today in 2 hours. I really hope they don't suck. Also I found out that there's classes in the morning and afternoon both for this program. I don't know if that means each person either has morning OR afternoon class, or if everyone has Japanese class for 6 hours a day. I really hope it's not class for 6 hours a day. For one thing I want to go do stuff around Tokyo, and also 6 hours a day of language class would melt your brain I think. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
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June 24th, 2005
11:51 pm - Nikko
Well yesterday we took a bus tour to Nikko, which is about 2-3 hours drive away and known for temples and...nature I guess. We only saw one shrine/temple, but it was a complex made of several temples/shrines so I guess we actually saw a few more than that. Anyway it was Toshogu shrine, which is supposed to be Tokugawa Ieyasu's mausoleum. It was pretty impressive as these things go, lots of nice carvings and traditional architecture. I'm making it sound boring but I enjoyed seeing it. Not much to say about it other than it's a temple and it's pretty though. The tour also stopped at a waterfall, where the guide warned us about monkeys that will attack you if you're carrying food. I wanted to see these vicious attack monkeys but alas, there weren't any around. I did see one briefly walking on the side of the road on the trip back down the mountain though, greyish monkey with a pink face, it was cute. More boring bus riding after that, they showed a taped sumo tournament on the bus' tv on the way back, so that was kinda interesting. We got back to Ginza around 7:30 or so and picked a random sushi restaurant near where the yakitori stands are. The sushi was pretty cheap, just over $30 for two people, but it was really good. They sold it by the piece though, which you don't really see in the US where it's two to a plate when you order something. So I thought I was getting a lot more sushi than I actually was, but this was easily fixed by ordering another round. Yum. These two salarymen sitting at the table next to ours started talking to us randomly, one was probably a little younger than my mom and the other one was probably around my age, and they probably both were a little drunk. They told me I have to "find Japanese boyfriend!" if I want to learn Japanese, hahaha. Well I have American boyfriend but I couldn't say that because of course my mom was sitting right there. I don't think I've ever actually talked to salarymen before, except for this one drunk guy in Kyoto when Ele and I were looking for geisha and Ele was giggling for some reason as he walked by and he stumbled over and was like "what you laughing at?!?!", and that was a little scary. But these guys seemed nice, haha.
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June 23rd, 2005
04:39 am - Asakusa
So today my mom had flower class again. This time I elected to stay in the hotel, I had to brush up on my kana anyway before the placement test thing. I spent most of the time writing those other LJ entries though, haha. Her class was supposed to be out at noon but she said she got done early yesterday and to meet her at 12:15 down in the mall that's under Shinbashi station (which is across from our hotel). So I went a little early, around noon, thinking I'd only have to wait 15-20 minutes. She finally showed up at 1, I guess her class ended late today or something. I was kinda cranky because no one likes waiting and especially not for an hour, oh well, at least she apologized. I dunno what happened but after sitting doing nothing for an hour I suddenly got really tired, it was weird. Well we were supposed to leave for Asakusa right after lunch, but I needed a nap so I took one and we ended up leaving later, which was fine. The main attraction in Asakusa is a big buddhist temple and a smaller shinto shrine behind it, and there's a street lined with souvenir shops leading right up to the temple gates. It's a more traditional area of Tokyo with Japanese craft items and snack foods and stuff. I saw a lot of shops selling rolls of kimono and yukata fabrics, I'm thinking of going back before I leave Japan and buying one because I'm sure I could find a use for it in the next 3 years. I dunno how expensive those things are though, none of them had price tags, although it probably varies with the quality. Oh!! I found that ramen place I ate at last year, it's actually really easy to find and not far off Nakamise-dori, I think I'd been wandering in circles in that area last year and got disoriented because I thought it was a lot farther away. Anyway what I had last year was negi miso ramen (negi=green onion), there was a model of it in the window. I'll have to go back and have that one day. Speaking of plastic food models, there's a street in Asakusa that's full of restaurant supply shops that sell those food models. I wanted to see it but we didn't have time today. I didn't see it last year either. I bet my sister would like a plastic food model.
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June 22nd, 2005
06:42 pm - ohh yeah
I forgot one other thing. After dinner I dragged my mom to a sento because my muscles were tired and my feet were hurting after walking around all day. The book said it was an onsen, but the book lied. It was definitely a sento, just a regular neighborhood bath house like the ones I went to in Osaka and Azabu-Juban. Now I'm wishing I had written a travelogue like this last year when I actually did all that stuff. I would have if I'd had a laptop last year. Oh well. Last year I stayed in youth hostels my last week in Osaka and Tokyo. The one in Osaka was really strange, it was in an office building in a space that I guess used to be an English language school before they turned it into an extremely cramped weirdo youth hostel. It didn't even have a bathroom really, there was a sink and toilet outside in the hall that probably just belonged to the office building it happened to be in, and it was a gross bathroom that smelled like piss. Yuck. Also the place wasn't even open when I got there, I had to wait an hour for someone to arrive while this Japanese lady talked to me about what I thought about American foreign policy. I had to convince her that not everyone in America is a raging nukulurr cowboy or whatever. Haha.. so anyway I had to go to a sento nearby to bathe and stuff, this experience was nothing new. (Difference between a sento and an onsen: an onsen uses actual hot spring water with minerals and stuff, sento is just regular tap water). The water was incredibly hot, I mean scalding hot, so hot it almost felt cold. I couldn't stay in the soaking tub very long, but wow. It feels great on your muscles.
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06:18 pm - Harajuku
So yesterday was Harajuku. My mom had ikebana class in the morning from 10-12 so I decided to head to Shibuya while she was in class since it was only another stop away and I didn't want to sit and watch people arrange flowers for 2 hours. Well it was raining the whole day and even though I had an umbrella I got soaked wandering around Shibuya trying to find the Don Quixote the map said was there. It wasn't. Maybe it closed down, I dunno, those stores are usually pretty conspicuous and the map placed it across the street from 109, which you really can't miss unless you're blind. Also I discovered the stores don't open until 10 or 11, which sucked because I had nothing to do. I hung out in a Starbucks for half an hour or so until 10, and I found out that in fact they sell green tea frappuccinos all over Japan, not just in Kyoto. How gloriously wrong I was, those things are great. So I had one. My precious, how I missed you so. Then I left and wandered around some more before coming to the realization that most of the bigger stores there don't open until 11. Blah. I wanted to go to Parco I and II, since we only saw III last time (it's a department store, where I bought those shoes I mentioned, there's 3 of them in Shibuya, just named Parco parts I, II and III. Actually there might be a fourth one but I can't remember.) Instead I went back to Tokyu Hands (nother department store) since it was open. That place sells pretty much everything besides clothes. Even party costumes. They had these black vinyl beetle hat costumes, there were 2 different kinds, a stag beetle and some other kind of beetle, so you and a friend can each wear one on your head, dress all in black and BATTLE. Hahaha, awesome. I wanted to take a picture but there was a sign outside that said no pictures. Damn. I bought a little fridge magnet of Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle, it's cute. Anyway so I went to meet my mom after that. Her school is near the Omote-sando stop so it's really closer to Harajuku though I guess technically still in Shibuya? I don't know, that's what the information they gave her said. We walked from there all the way up Omote-sando (main shopping street in Harajuku) almost to the park, because Lonely Planet said there was a ramen place (Jangara Ramen, I guess it's a chain) up thataway. Which there was. Yum. I had some kind of ramen I can't remember the name of, but it had thin noodles and thick spicy broth, and pork and a boiled egg on top, and it was pretty good. Not as good as the ramen I had last year though at some random place I found in Asakusa, that was spicy with thicker noodles and the top of it was covered in shredded green onions. Too bad I can't remember the name of that place or even where it was, that area's kind of just a warren of shops and stuff. But we're going there today so maybe I'll find another good restaurant by accident. After lunch we just shopped back down Omote-sando because it takes you back to the station. I bought a couple of used obi and scarves at a cool thrift store, but not much else. Actually my mom bought those for me. I've hardly paid for anything this week, she must be feeling generous still (woo!). Ohhh yeah, and I have to mention what I had for dinner. It was lamb shabu-shabu and it was pretty much the greatest thing ever. I've never seen lamb shabu-shabu before, I think it was just some special thing this particular restaurant had. It wasn't even a shabu-shabu restaurant, it seemed to serve mostly grilled stuff and that was the only kind on the menu. Now I'm all sad though that I'll never be able to have that again at home, unless I make it myself. God it was so good.
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June 21st, 2005
06:48 am
Oh yeah! and I forgot to add I saw Diesel stuff but it was fully twice as expensive as in the states. $300+ for a pair of jeans, dayum. Coincidentally I was wearing a pair today, haha. I must look like I gots the monay. So I guess that's why Japanese people go crazy shopping in America. It's like the world's biggest half price sale.
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06:44 am - Ginza
So today we went and explored Ginza. Our hotel is in Shiodome but it's right next to Ginza so the day required no subway/trains. Which was nice because the subway system is confusing to navigate, especially if you can't read kanji, and stressful because my mom and I always have differing opinions on which way is the right way. Anyway today we just walked. Ginza's known as an upscale shopping area with a lot of well-known department stores. We went into a few of them, they seemed to have mostly designer items from mostly Western designers, in other words the same stuff you can buy in upscale stores in the US. I did see some items from these same brands that they don't stock in the US, however. I saw some Anna Sui parasols. I didn't even know she made parasols. I suppose there's a need for rich people who hide from the sun to do it in style. I'm no sun worshipper but wonen here are almost fanatical about it since white skin's the traditional beauty ideal. I should buy some sunscreen, I bet it's good stuff. 50-80 spf is pretty common here, haha. It's mostly the older women who are carrying parasols and covering every inch of skin while outside though, and it's not like every older women does so. It's a relatively small proportion. So we went to a few department stores and this really cool famous art supply/stationery store called Itoya. So many Copic markers! Maybe if I have money left at the end of the trip I'll buy some. I use mine all the time now for fashion illustration so it wouldn't be frivolous, even though they are expensive. About the same as Prismacolors though. We ate dinner in Yurakucho yakitori alley. It's under an expressway...this is really cool, this freeway is elevated off the ground, right? But instead of just having pillars underneath it's got stores under it. Such an efficient use of space. American cities are pretty bad about that. Anyway we had different kinds of yakitori and vegetables and it was very good. Which reminds me while I'm on the subject of food, we ate at this really fantastic udon place for lunch called Sakata (it was in Lonely Planet's Tokyo guidebook, that's how we found it), there was a line out the door when we got there, and I can see why. It was certainly the best udon I've ever had, and the guy, Sakata-san, was extremely nice. They didn't have English menus but he spoke decent English so we just had him make whatever for us, and then he kept bringing us free food so we could sample other things. My mom wants to go back, I think we should give Sakata-san a present or something since no tipping. My mom and I are getting over jet lag finally and she seems to be liking Japan more and more, which is great because when we first got here she seemed certain she would hate it. Oh yeah and I saw live fugu (blowfish...you know) in a tank when we passed a fugu restaurant. I've never seen a live one before. I shoulda taken a picture. I didn't see any spines on them though, I thought they had them.
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06:18 am - Hakone
So, where did I leave off? Well it took about 3 hours to get to Hakone from our hotel, door to door. We thought it would be half that and were planning to do the whole circuit around the mountain the same day we arrived (the circuit takes 4 hours). Instead we just went to a begonia garden that was 5 minutes from the hotel, and checked out the souvenir shops near the train station. The regional specialties of Hakone seemed to be kamaboko (boiled fish paste) and little baked sweets with red bean paste inside, since that's what all the shops were selling. And hydrangeas, there were tons of those blooming. It's a mountainous area with a river and forest, so it was quite pretty. After that we just hung around the hotel. My mom fell asleep for about 3 hours because she hadn't slept the night before, and I just read. Afterwards she said I shoulda woken her up...how would I have known that? Haha... After dinner we went and did the onsen thing. I enjoyed it, you know how I feel about baths, even though it requires being naked in front of other people. Oh well, if you don't make a big deal of it you'll notice no one's staring at you anyway so who cares. The next day we got around to sightseeing, which like I said is a circuit around the mountain. First you take a scenic train ride up the mountainside, then switch at the end of the line to a cable car, ride that to the end of the line and switch to a "ropeway" (like a ski gondola). The midpoint of the ropeway is Owakudani, which is a bare, steamy dirt valley in the middle of a forest (it looks out of place), where it looks like people harvest sulfur, there's buildings and vats of bubbling yellow mineral looking stuff. Then you get back on the ropeway and continue on to Ashinoko, which is a big lake. You ride a pirate ship from one end of the lake to the other (why a pirate ship? I don't know. Because it's cool I guess.), and at the other end of the lake is Hakone Sekisho, a recreation of one of the checkpoints on the road to Edo. Just like Blade of the Immortal! Cool! Apparently there's historical reenactors in costume on weekends and holidays, it was Monday so we just missed it, which is sad because I bet that would have been awesome. There's also a 2km stretch of the old road lined with huge old 300+ year old cedar trees they planted to shade travelers. I kept thinking of BOTI the entire time, I'm such a nerd. That's pretty much the end of the circuit, you just take a bus back to the starting point.
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