Leila's Journey

My Slideshow

2008-12-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

and here's the youtube link to the same video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eDrcLl1ys4

The end of this journey

2008-12-11T04:21:00.001-08:00

I'm home. It's been over a year since I started this crazy adventure and I'm finally back. As some of you may recall, I'm not supposed to be home quite yet, I'm supposed to be in Thailand. Unfortunately for me and thousands of other people, there were huge dangerous protests going on in Bangkok right around the time I was supposed to fly in and they shut down the airport, so I cancelled my flights and my tour was cancelled right around the same time. As you can imagine, this was a bit of a hassle for me, I had to cancel all my flights, find new ones, and be put on hold more times than any normal person can handle (I am not abnormal, I just couldn't handle it). I was supposed to fly to Bangkok on December 4 and back to America on December 20, I ended up flying to America on December 8 instead. This of course meant extra time in Japan.

As some of you may have read in my previous posts, I was planning to spend the last week or so of November traveling and that's what I did. After that I stayed with my friend Eimilly for a few nights, I couldn't ask her to let me stay four extra nights, but I stayed one extra and then just did a little more traveling... works for me! I ended up going to the places I'd originally planned, Matsushima and Nikko in November, and then Hakone in my last extra days since I hadn't ended up having enough time to go there before hand. All three places were beautiful and truly made me appreciate up until the very last day how extraordinary Japan really is. This is what I saw while looking out the window on the way back from Hakone:

Matsushima, one of the three views of Japan, really was breathtaking. The islands there were just so cool and I took a cruise around the bay to see a bunch of them. They shot out of the ocean in so many interesting formations and had beautiful pine trees growing on top of many of them. I also crossed a long bridge and got to walk along the paths that filled one of the bigger islands. Matsushima also had amazing food, I think I mentioned this previously, but Japanese people tend to identify particular cities or regions with particular foods. Matsushima is known for its oysters, which my students had told me, and its cow tongue, which they hadn't. I tried both and they were both quite delicious, although I only liked the fried oysters, the steamed ones were not for me.

I spent what I thought were my last traveling days in Nikko. I stayed in what could quite possibly qualify as the scariest hostel EVER, it was on a back road, perched on the side of a cliff, run by a nice but slightly creepy old Japanese couple, and filled to the brim with junk, as an example I will present you with the masks hanging in the lobby:

Nikko itself was beautiful and beyond the cliff where my hostel was perched was a river with many flowing waterfalls, and beyond that were lovely snowcovered mountains. Nikko is known for some of its shrines and temples. The one it is best known for and that I decided to visit is Toshogu Shrine which is actually a large and very ornate masoleum. This shrine is also well known for having a stable that displays the carvings of the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys that are still so popular today. While I was in Nikko I also visited Kogen Falls, a very high rushing waterfall on the top of a very cold mountain. Apparently there are supposed to be monkeys living on the mountains in Nikko but I didn't see even one and I was a little bit disappointed.

I spent two days in Hakone and then came back to Tokyo for my last day so that I could pick up my luggage and say goodbye to my closest friends. Ivan, Eimilly, Eimilly's boyfriend, and I had a picnic in Yoyogi Park to end my year. The park was filled with yellow gingko trees and just like when I went there last year, the foliage was spectacular. Eimilly and Yuki, her boyfriend, had made us really lovely japanese foods like onigiri (rice balls with fillings, e.g. tuna salad) and sushi rolls and other splendid things. We had a lovely time eating and throwing leaves at each other and being joined by a random drunken guy from South Dakota, overall, it was the perfect ending to an extraordinary year.

And now I'm back. I'm just now recovering from jet lag, it took 3 days before my ears unblocked from the pressure on the plane, and I haven't gotten up the nerve to try driving again because it's been raining non-stop since I got home. Still, I'm so so glad to be back with my family and now I'm just waiting to see my sister who is still at school and my friends who are scattered around various states. I will of course be job hunting some more, but right now it's nice to just relax and enjoy being back in a world where I fit in.

The top ten

2008-11-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

I am officially done teaching English! It's crazy to think a year has gone by already, when it seems like just yesterday I was stepping off the plane feeling completely bewildered and lost. I don't feel lost anymore, but I don't feel like this is home either. There are some people who come to Japan and feel like they fit in here, like this is where they belong, but I don't feel that way. Living here for the time that I have has been so incredibly amazing, I've seen and experienced so many new and interesting things and I feel quite sure that I have changed as a person because of those experiences, but I think if I stayed here for too long I would lose the admiration I have for Japan and its culture. My highest level student wrote to me in a card, "You have adjusted perfectly, it seems to me, and have kept a good balance of working and playing. You are not a visitor, or sightseer. You have lived here. That's important." Her message made me really happy and I am glad that she does not just see me as a tourist, because I certainly don't feel like one. Some people have mentioned experiencing "reverse culture shock" upon returning to their home countries from Japan, but two of my friends have told me that it really doesn't take long at all before things that are different from Japan seem normal again. I don't think it will take me long to adjust back to the way things were "pre-Japan" but there are some things I will miss, these are the top 10:

10) The crepes from Harajuku

9) Standing to the left on escalators to let people in a hurry get by

8) Receiving omiyage (souvenirs/gifts) whenever people come back from a trip

7) Always removing our shoes at home and at traditional style restaurants

6) Hot cocoa in vending machines from October-March

5) Reliable public transportation, specifically, the trains.

4) The beautiful shrines and temples that are all over Japan

3) The random acts of kindness from Japanese people that I meet. Just two days ago an old man and his wife paid for my entire meal at my local sushi place.

2) My bike, Clementine. Yes... I named my bike. I sold her yesterday. Clementine, I will never forget you.

1) My amazing friends, whom I will also never forget.

I still have about two weeks left before I leave Japan, but if a year can go by so fast then two weeks will literally be nothing. But hey, a lot can come from nothing.

All good gifts

2008-11-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I've been slacking on my blog lately, I haven't ventured out into the city much or done anything particularly exciting as of late since I want to try and save some money for my travels. I have 3 DAYS of classes left, YESSSSS!!!! I will miss my students, well, some of them (especially the ones who gave me presents!!), but I'm ready to move on to something new and of course I'm ready to see all my friends and family back home! I have been checking higher education job sites like crazy for the last few weeks and have applied to a few jobs already, so I'm hoping that getting a head start will help me to land a job not too long after I get back to CT, but heaven knows what could happen with the terrible job market these days.

For the time being I'll just focus on the more near and certain future which includes lots of packing and lots of traveling! I'm so incredibly psyched about my trip to Thailand and I'm also pretty excited about the time I'm going to spend just traveling around Japan a bit more. I'm going to visit Nikko, Hakone, and Matsushima, the last of which is another of the three views of Japan (in my post before this I spoke of Miyajima, one of the other three views). A few days ago I went over to Akihabara a.k.a Electric Town and bought myself a new digital camera which will be reimbursed to me as a Hanukkah present from my parents when I return. I am now the proud owner of a beautiful white Casio Exilim EX-Z77... looking back at this last sentence it sort of sounds as if I've given birth to a camera, well, you get the idea. So now I'll be able to take pictures of all the beautiful places I go without lugging around my 100 pound lump of metal considered by some to be a camera.

I mentioned in the first paragraph that some of my students have given me gifts. I should also mention that two of them have treated me to meals! One student took me to a lovely traditional style Japanese lunch at the Tokyo Dome Hotel. The meal had maybe 5 or 6 courses and each one was presented absolutely beautifully, which of course is the Japanese way, everything from food to gardens needs to be aesthetically pleasing. My other student and I went out for Thai food in Ikebukuro, we'd gone to the restaurant once before with Jenn, but Jenn could not come because she ended up flying home last month for surgery on her wrist and is currently residing in Georgia. My student and I had a good time together though, she is really a lovely person, I'm definitely going to miss her. In addition to my meals I've received a traditional Japanese bag that the first woman who took me to lunch bought for me, some lovely hand made stationary and paper holders, and today one of my students brought me a GORGEOUS hand painted ornamental fan. I'm seriously in love with this fan, I had been thinking of buying a nice one for myself but I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on something like that, but now I'll have this one, which is so much better because it will have the memory of my student attached to it.

My absolutely beautiful fan:

This weekend I'm going to farewell parties for two of my friends and the next weekend is my party. Saying goodbye to everyone is going to be sad, but knowing I'm coming home to so many amazing people certainly makes it a lot easier. I am just counting down the days! One month and six days to go!

Photos that go with the previous post

2008-10-25T07:14:00.001-07:00

The A-dome

Sadako and her crane

A crane of cranes

Just a few of the cranes

The Cenotaph

A beautiful mural at the Youth Hostel

YH Mural

Hiroshima YH Mural

In front of the torii gate

With my friend and a deer

Walking toward the shrine and torii gate

The gate at dusk

Better late than never...

2008-10-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

This is now my second (or maybe third) attempt at trying to finish this post over the past two weeks, it just seems that every time I sit down to finish it I am bombarded by distractions, these distractions go mainly by the names of Facebook and Youtube. I also happened to come across a great position as Travel Abroad Manager at one of the SUNY schools that will be opening in January, so I decided to apply for it, which resulted in the slightly more productive, but far less entertaining distraction of writing a cover letter and updating my resume. But that's all done now and I'm finally going to tell all of you about the trip I took about 3 weeks ago to Hiroshima and Miyajima. Of course, I've done more things since then, but nothing pops up in my mind as being blog worthy besides my trip, which was amazing, so I definitely don't want to hold out on my dedicated readers by failing to give details.

Since my memory is starting to fade a little, I'm going to look through my photos to help jog my memory... for once in my life I actually remembered to take my camera and to actually use it! So, first I took the Shinkansen into Hiroshima. When I left Tokyo it was beautiful out, but when I reached Hiroshima four hours later it was all crappy and rainy. I decided to think of the weather as "setting the mood" since my first stop was the A-dome and Peace Memorial Park. After getting off at the bus stop I immediately saw the dome looming over the trees. I walked over to one side of the dome to get a better look and came across a group of western students (American I think) standing in front of the fence. I decided to take advantage of English speaking people while I had the chance and asked one of them to take my photo in front of the dome. Immediately after she took my photo I was hit on by a weird Japanese guy. I thought this was incredibly inappropriate considering where we were, but he asked if I'd take a photo with him and I agreed because the girl who'd taken my photo a moment ago had done a bad job and I thought I might be able to crop out Creepy McCreeperson if this one turned out better. After he got his photo with me he gave me his contact information (I did not ask for this) and I gave him a fake number, which I normally would feel bad about, but in this case I just wanted him to leave me alone.

I continued on around the dome. The building itself was mesmerizing, I just could not stop looking at it and I think I took far more pictures than what was actually necessary. It's just amazing how a place can be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. In front of the building was a big plaque explaining what had happened, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, then the A-dome itself is worth a million. The dome is located alongside a river and I walked down the path and crossed a bridge into the peace park where the Children's Peace Monument and Memorial Cenotaph are located. I went over to the children's monument first. The monument is a giant bell with a statue of a girl standing on top with a folded paper crane rising above her. The statue was modeled after the story of Sadako Sasaki, a little girl who suffered from leukemia brought on by the radiation of the atomic bomb. Sadako believed that if she folded a thousand paper cranes she would get one wish, to be cured. She died, at age 13, before all the cranes were completed, but her friends and family continued making cranes and the movement spread. Now, children from all over the world send cranes to the peace monument and many of them are put on display in waterproof cabinets that surround the statue. From there I walked over to the cenotaph which is covered by a large arch. If you stand directly in front of the arch you can see the A-dome through the center and the peace flame that stays continuously lit. By this time my shoes were completely soaked because it had been raining the entire time, so I headed in to the Peace Memorial Museum to dry off. The museum, as I had expected, was not an easy thing to experience. I saw scale reconstructions of Hiroshima before the bomb and the very little that remained of Hiroshima after the bomb. I saw models of people with their flesh melting off their bodies and a stone step with a white body sized mark where a person had been instantly burned to death while sitting outside the library. I sometimes have difficulty imagining and fully comprehending the terrible things that have happened in just the last 100 years. Going to places like this, like the Holocaust Museum in D.C., Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and Ground Zero, make history real for me and they are what remind me of how important it is to remember what's happened in the past and to learn from those mistakes. It's a shame that not everyone has the opportunity to visit these places, I think maybe if they did then there would be greater motivation among members of society to enforce change in how things are done today.

After I left the Peace Memorial Museum I decided to head over to my youth hostel. I am a big fan of HI (Hosteling International) so I had booked a room with the Hiroshima HI Youth Hostel a few days before my trip. I had to take a bus and then walk up a big winding hill to get there, which was a bit of a pain since it was still raining, but the hostel was comfortable and on the first night I was the only female guest so I had a big room all to my self. I also had the bathroom to myself. It is rather common for hotels and hostels in Japan to have a public bath area, so, just like at the onsen, all the women bathe in the same room in front of each other. I've been to several onsen at this point so I'm not too uncomfortable with the whole nudity issue anymore, but I have never actually gone to one without a friend, and being the only gaijin in the room has the potential to be a little awkward, so I was quite happy that since I was the only female at the place there was no one else in the bathing area.

The next day I took a ferry out to Miyajima, a beautiful mountainous little island that is overrun by small friendly deer that come up to you if they think you have food. Miyajima is most famous for Itsukushima Shrine and its floating torii gate. The torii gate does not actually float, but it is built in the water so that at high tide it appears to be floating. The large orange torii gate with the shrine and mountainous backdrop really is quite breathtaking and has been designated as one of the three most scenic views of Japan. The shrine itself is also quite extraordinary because it is built on beams above the water. As I was standing on the boardwalk of the shrine taking pictures, something crazy happened, I heard someone say my name. As I was traveling alone and hours away from Tokyo, one can understand why I would be rather shocked to hear someone calling me. I turned my head and standing next to me was a friend from college who I had not seen since we graduated. I had known she was in Japan teaching for another big eikaiwa (English school) but I had no idea where she was living and we had made absolutely no plans to meet up, so running into each other on this tiny island was truly one of the strangest things I've experienced. She was there with her Japanese co-worker and I ended up spending the rest of the day with them and doing much more on the island than I ever would have had I not run into them. First we got lunch at a little restaurant that I never would have discovered since it was off the main route and then we decided to climb the island's highest mountain, which I was planning to just go up to via cable car. The view from the top was spectacular and there was a very old and very beautiful shrine at the peak that I really loved and would not have seen had I come up by cable car. The entire day was wonderful with great weather and great company. At the end we came back down the mountain by cable car which we had to sprint to in order to catch the last car in time. At nightfall we got to see the floating torii gate being illuminated, it was lit so beautifully that it seemed almost as if it were glowing.

On my last day in Hiroshima I decided to do one more thing before getting lunch and taking the shinkansen home. I settled on visiting the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art because it was very easy to get to by cable car. There were some interesting exhibits and I actually just wish there'd been more to see because I got through the gallery a lot faster than I thought I would. As I left the museum and began walking down the path towards the road I stopped because I suddenly realized there were about ten cats meandering around the little area I was standing in. I'd noticed before that Hiroshima seemed to have a lot of strays but I hadn't quite realized the extent of the situation until that moment. Normally I absolutely love cats but being surrounded by that many wild ones is a little unsettling, on a side note, Hiroshima cats have abnormally short tails, so that was a little strange too. After getting some Indian food for lunch (Japan has absolutely amazing Indian food) I headed back to Hiroshima Station and took the shinkansen back to Tokyo.

I took the next two days off for Yom Kippur, which I spent a ridiculous amount of money on for tickets to services and a seat at the breaking of the fast, but I'm glad that I did. Living in Japan as a foreigner you feel exactly that, foreign, so sometimes it's nice to go back to what's familiar. One thing I've really come to be thankful for, especially since moving to Japan, is how being Jewish brings culture and tradition into my life. Japanese people have such an incredibly rich culture full of cherished rituals and festivals and it's made me realize that a lot of Americans don't have that. Luckily for me, Jews do, and I feel really thankful that I'm not missing out on the opportunity to feel connected to others by following customs that have existed for thousands of years and keep our identity as a people (the CHOSEN people) alive.

Go Fish!

2008-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday evening I received a voice message from Jenn. I was expecting her to call me back about some plans for the weekend, instead she informed that she had fallen off the ladder to her loft, which is 8 to 9 feet high. Luckily, a friend of hers was there to take her to the hospital... unluckily, she broke both her wrists and got a black eye. I stayed at her apartment for the weekend to help her out, but she actually was/is functioning quite well despite having ridiculously limited use of her arms and hands. Since the friend who was with her at the time of the fall was actually visiting from America, we didn't want to make him just sit around, so we actually ended up doing quite a bit over the weekend despite Jenn's injuries. On Sunday we went to Shibuya for ramen from my favorite ramen shop (the one where I took my parents) and then we went to Harajuku to see the rockabillies and cosplay (the people wearing crazy costumes). That night we hung out with some people at Jenn's local favorite, K's Cafe, and while we were there we decided to stay up all night and go to Tsukiji Market first thing in the morning.

Tsukiji Market is a huge, famous fish market in Tokyo and if you get there early enough you can watch the tuna auctions. I had heard about it quite a bit before but I had never gotten around to going because frankly, I'm not a morning a person. Staying up all night was definitely a better idea and going with other people was good too. We left Jenn's apartment around 4:30 to 5 am and caught the first train. It took about 20 minutes to get there but finding the actual market was a bit of a challenge. Jenn knew the general direction of the place but not where the specific building was so at one point we stopped and I asked a woman, in Japanese, "Where is the big tuna?" because I didn't know the words for auction or market. She pointed us in the right direction and we knew we were in the right place when we had to start praying for our lives. Tsukiji Market has a reputation for being quite dangerous and rightly so! As we walked into the giant warehouse speeding fish carts of death came careening towards us from all directions, it was terrifying. We walked along, dodging the carts and following people who looked like they knew where they were going, because we still hadn't actually seen any fish. Eventually a man told us where to go and when we arived we were pretty surprised. In the guide books and excerpts online it is normally made to sound as if there is a viewing area set off to the side specically for tourists... this is not exactly accurate. There are actually just big open doors, like the giant garage doors at a car dealership, they have signs on the side of them that say DO NOT ENTER, we stood on one side of the door and the fish lay on the other side. We were kind of in the way but busy workers just ran and drove around us, apparently used to obnoxious tourists standing near their fish. Now let me tell you about these tuna... they were ENORMOUS. Picture an elephant, now a picture a fish the size of an elephant, that's what these tuna looked like. Okay, so I exaggerated a little, but seriously, these fish could eat you whole... if they weren't dead... It was amazing and we were standing right next to them, I could have the kissed one of them had I developed some abnormal fish kissing desire, or if it were my birthday (I apologize, only people who went to my camp will understand that). In another part of the market we also saw lots of other exotic varieties of fish and seafood, some of which were still alive. I used Jenn's phone camera to take lots of pictures since I hadn't brought my own camera and I will try to post some soon.

Tomorrow I leave for Hiroshima! I'm really excited about this, it will be the farthest from Tokyo I've gone since coming to Japan and I'm traveling alone so it should be an adventure! I'll let you know how it goes when I get back!

A weekend in the country

2008-09-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Most of the teachers who work for my company (including me) get Sunday and Monday off, so since it was a national holiday this past Tuesday we had a long weekend. To take advantage of the extra time off, a group of my friends and I decided to go on a camping trip in the Okutama region on the border of Tokyo. A lot of Americans don't realize that Tokyo is not actually a city, but a prefecture, so while part of it is made up of major metropolitan areas, there are also extremely rural, mountainous areas that are still technically part of Tokyo as well. Okutama is located within these beautiful green mountains and it only takes about an hour and a half to two hours to get there from Shinjuku Station. We stayed at a campsite called America Camp Village in a lovely little log cabin with a river running next to it. Truthfully, our weekend can't really be called "camping" because the cabin was fully equipped with a full size refrigerator, stove, microwave, tv, and beds; I think it would be better to just refer to it as "a weekend in the country" (which, by the way, is a Sondheim song that is now stuck in my head). I was extremely thrilled to sleep in a real bed for an entire weekend, since back at my apartment I sleep on a fairly uncomfortable futon that is only about 1.5 to 2 inches thick. I was also happy to have other people cooking for me, though I did contribute to the meals by washing dishes and helping to cut vegetables. On the first evening we played some games and talked for a while, we also went for a little walk to check out the area. At the other end of the camp ground we came across a group of college age Japanese guys playing the Japanese version of break the piñata. One of them held a big stick and wore a bag over his head while the others sat on the side and shouted directions at him so that he could try to break a melon lying on the ground. We stood by and watched their numerous drunken attempts until we finally heard the guys shout "Yatta!" - "Alright!" signifying that one of them had finally pierced the melon. After heading back we headed to bed. There were 6 girls and 3 guys on the trip so the girls slept upstairs in the beds and the guys slept downstairs on futons. This separation resulted in endless girl talk and I felt like I was 12 years old again at a sleepover party, it was a lot of fun.

On our first full day in Okutama a bunch of us decided to try a HUGE assault / obstacle course at our camp site that was built along the side of a mountain. It was an amazing course with rope ladders, zip lines, wooden bridges, and tons of other stuff. Some of these obstacles were practically suspended off the mountain in some areas, if that sounds dangerous to you, it's because it was. We would NEVER have been allowed to do a course like this in America, because within one week someone would be suing the camp due to injury and/or death. Not only were we not wearing any protective gear, but it had also been raining so everything was extremely slippery. Add the slipperiness to the barbed wire conveniently located beneath a number of the obstacles and it was just a lawsuit waiting to happen, good thing this is Japan though, not America, because the course was AWESOME! It took over an hour to complete and was quite the workout, but it certainly gave all of us a sense of accomplishment once we finished! That night we relaxed and watched some movies, for those of you who haven't seen Iron Man, you should check it out. On our last day we visited an onsen down the road from America Camp Village. It had both an indoor tub and an outdoor tub that looked out over trees and mountains. It was really beautiful and fun going with friends, though it still took me a little time to get used to being naked in front of so many people since I had never been to an onsen with more than one friend at a time before this. After the onsen we took the train to Mitake where we had Chinese food for lunch. In case you were wondering, Chinese food in Japan is not quite like Chinese food in America, but there are some similarities. I was fond of the restaurant because they gave us Coca Cola in glass bottles, which in my opinion adds some rustic charm to a place. After lunch we took a bus and then a cable car/train on a really really steep track up Mount Mitake. The view was gorgeous and we arrived in the late afternoon so we got to see the mountains in golden hour, my favorite time of day. I was sad to return to the city, but when we got back we had dinner at a fairly authentic and pleasantly quirky American burger restaurant, so at least that made coming back to the endless buildings and air pollution a little bit easier.

On a bridge in Okutama

Our cabin

Dressed up for the matsuri (last post)

Posing with the world's cutest little girl

My matsuri

2008-09-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

This time of year, late summer/early fall, is a very popular time in Japan for festivals. These festivals, known as matsuri, are celebrated in different ways depending on where you go, but many of them include the carrying of portable shrines around neighborhoods. This weekend, I got to take part in a small matsuri and help carry a shrine. This is not an activity that gaijin normally have the chance to take part in, but my friend Eimilly is dating someone from the neighborhood, so he invited her and she invited me. It was an amazing experience, but one I do not want to repeat any time soon!

I woke up early, or earlier than I'd have prefered on a Sunday, since I had to be in Naka-meguro, where the festival was being held, by 10 am and it takes me an hour to get there. When I arrived, however, I discovered that the first hour or two was really just a time for socializing in front of the little restaurant where everyone was meeting to get ready. Jenn, her sister, and her brother-in-law also came to take part in the festival and while we were all standing around waiting for things to get going we were introduced to lots of people and offered enormous amounts of fruit. At one point we were led by some people to a blue tarp that was laid on the ground and instructed to sit, which turned out to be a little awkward since no one else came to sit with us. Eventually we got up and of course immediately after doing so everyone else went to sit down because it was time to eat some special sticky rice with red beans that is traditionally served on special occasions. Shortly after eating the rice, Eimilly and I were summoned to go get changed. We went to the back of the restaurant and had various items of clothing thrust at us by the mama-san. The traditional clothes included happi, a lightweight cotton jacket that wraps around like a robe, a sash called an obi, and a strange pair of white shorts that were impossible to put on without assistance. We were definitely "assisted" though, I felt like a doll being dressed by a little kid as multiple women tugged, pulled, and tied my shirt and shorts. The shorts seemed to have been specifically made to sag in the butt but be tight everywhere else and based on the women's actions they needed to sag in just the right way. After what seemed like ages of being manhandled by the mama-san, Eimilly and I finally emerged from the restaurant in our clothes and two toed sandles called tabi. A moment later though we were called back into the restaurant to have our hair done by the mama-san. After experiencing how rough she was while dressing us I was not particularly thrilled to know she was about to get hold of my hair. I became even less enthused as I watched her do Eimilly's hair first, in addition to nearly brushing her scalp off, she also latherd Eimilly's hair with 3 giant fist fulls of palmaid. Now, Eimilly has short straight hair, so that's pretty easy to work with, but anyone who has ever witnessed the long curly nightmare that is my hair, knows that it is NOT easy to work with. When I sat down in the chair and took my hair down all the girls in the room oohed and ahhed over it, and even the mama-san seemed surprised, but that didn't stop her. After a moment of thought she got to work and remarkably after 5 minutes, a handful of bobbypins, and a disgusting amount of palmaid my hair was good to go. She tied on a headband and that was it! Eimilly and I went and presented ourselves to Jenn and her family who sadly did not end up taking part in the festivities because they had tickets to see sumo later in the day, but they did get to see us all dressed up and take lots of pictures! (Don't worry, I will post the photos soon)

Finally our whole group walked across the street to where the shrine was being kept. I hadn't realized until then that there were actually other groups meeting us from adjoining neigborhoods, so over all it was quite a significant amount of people. After a few minutes we all gathered around the mikoshi, our portable shrine. When I say "portable" please don't equate that with being "easily carried" because moving this thing was anything but easy. It was not that big, maybe the size of an oven, but it was made of gold and supported by long crisscrossed beams, so it was insanely heavy. According to Eimilly's boyfriend it weighed about 2 tons, that is possibly incorrect, but I don't think he was too far off. We all found spots to carry the shrine from, then we lifted it up and we were off, chanting and marching our way down the narrow streets. We chanted different words, I couldn't hear all of them and sometimes they changed, but a lot of times it just sounded like SA SA SA, so that's what I said. I was told that at most matsuri people chant WASHOI, but we didn't for some reason. After a few minutes we made our first stop, since it was such strenuous work carrying the shrine we would stop periodically to be provided with food and, more importanly for most, beer. I felt ok at the first few stops, but it didn't take long before my shoulders were ready to fall off. As we walked down the streets we would sway the shrine back and forth, but whenever we passed a business we would stop and wildly bounce the shrine up and down in front of the building to bring good luck and prosperity to the business. This was great fun, but it was difficult to avoid having the large beams smash into my shoulders as the shrine bounced around. I also tried to help support the weight of the shrine by resting it on my shoulder, but I could only do this for minutes at a time since it was so heavy and also killed my shoulders. The parading of the shrine went on for 4 or 5 hours and despite the pain and exhaustion it was really an amazing experience. I have never seen people be more spirited and enthusiastic about doing something together, even at the very end not a single person seemed to lose enery or motivation, they were all so extremely positive and focused.

After the festival was over a group of us went to a local onsen to clean off. It was nothing like the lovely onsen I visited in my area, this one was indoors, old, and crappy. After washing off in the shower area Eimilly and I climbed into the tubs. A moment later an old woman approached us and in Japanese started interrogating us about whether we had washed off properly before getting in the tubs. As I have mentioned before, cleanliness is extremely important when bathing in onsen and apparently the woman proved that point. After asking Eimilly (who speaks much better Japanese than me) three times if we had washed off she decided we were clean. Eimilly and I ended up only staying in the water for a very short time because it was so hot, hotter than my local onsen I think. After getting dressed we headed back to the restaurant where we'd all met in the morning and had a big end of festival meal. All the food and drinks were free and eveyone was extremely friendly. I finished the night by meeting back up with Jenn and going out for karaoke, so all in all it was a very tiring, but very spectacular day!

More things I've come to expect - for my mom :-)

2008-09-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

- If I go to a store then every single person working there should welcome me as I walk through the door.

- If I am walking down the street there will be at least two trucks (most often garbage trucks) that will "speak" to me over loudspeakers as they drive by

- If I am standing near something even remotely cute every girl or woman who passes by will comment on the cuteness (I once watched two girls proclaim "kawaiiii" - "cute" about a bush in a park)

- If I watch a Japanese person eat they will inevitably do everything humanly possible to keep from physically touching their food with their hands, even sandwiches and chicken wings.

- If I ask my students what their hobbies are I will always have at least one student who includes drinking as his or her (more often his) number one activity.

- If I need to throw something out then I will have to carry it with me until I find a vending machine or a convenience store, they are the only places that provide proper trash / recycling bins (good thing there's a vending machine every 10 feet!)

- If a store sells an item that I like, e.g. cranberry juice, then I should stock up because there's a 95% chance that they will stop selling that item by the next day.

- If I see a dog it should be wearing a t-shirt or sweater (depending on the weather).

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure I'll come up with more later on.

Adjusting to normality

2008-09-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

It recently occurred to me that things here don't seem as weird as they used to. Of course, there are still plenty of Japanese oddities to keep me amused, but just the feel of everyday life in Tokyo doesn't seem as distant or foreign anymore. What was once a new and interesting thing to see, like the yakiniku stands coming out in the evening or the wannabe thugs break dancing in front of my train station, is no longer new but just endearing because it's become part of life (but the thugs do still make me laugh). It's amazing how I've come to expect certain things that I never even knew existed before traveling to Japan. Here are a few things I've come to expect:

- If it is raining everyone MUST have an umbrella and there should be either an umbrella rack or a machine providing umbrella "condoms" outside of EVERY store or restaurant

- If I am thirsty there should be a vending machine within a 10 foot radius of anywhere I stand (yes, I exaggerate, but only a little)

- If I am walking on the street in front of my school then there should be instrumental show tunes or Disney movie songs playing over loud speakers at all times for no particular reason.

Despite those expectations, I am always seeing and discovering new things, so Japan never gets old. On Monday I went to Shinjuku with Ivan and saw my first Japanese transvestite / transsexual people, or as Ivan put it "She-he's". They were all just standing around showing off their ugliness... now I know that not all transvestite/transsexual people are ugly, but the ones in Shinjuku ARE. I asked Ivan if they were hookers, but he said that prostitution is illegal here, so I don't really know what the purpose of them standing there is... apparently it's a daily event.

I also made an interesting discovery while at my local movie rental store the other day. On previous visits to the store I had noticed that while there is an adults only section, based on some of the dvd covers I'd seen there seemed to be random bits of porn scattered around in the normal sections as well. On this last visit, however, I happened to see the cover for a movie that I actually own, Almost Famous. I was shocked, because at first glance of this Japanese cover anyone might think Almost Famous was some sort of soft core porn, it was ridiculous and really had very little to do with the actual storyline. It occurred to me then that all those bits of porn I'd seen around the shelves were actually just normal movies that had purposely been given covers to make them more (very much more) related to sex. It's amazing to me how a culture that is often seen as being so traditional and conservative actually has an entirely different side to it that revolves around sex. You see it not just in movie stores, but in newspapers, magazines, manga, and of course the ever intriguing love hotels. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised considering I myself attended a Penis Festival earlier this year, but it's still something that I had NOT expected and that continues to occasionally catch me off guard.

AMERICAN COVER

JAPANESE COVER

I just wanna dance!

2008-08-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

I had a great night out last night / this morning. It was a friend's birthday so a big group of us met up by Hachiko (the dog statue) in Shibuya to go to a bar and then go clubbing. I was really looking forward to the club because I love dancing and I hadn't been to one in a while, not since that dreadful night with James and his girlfriend at that shit hole GasPanic... god I hate that place! Thankfully, this night was WAYYYY better. When the evening first started off I felt a little uncomfortable because I really didn't know many of the people I was going out with and those I did know I had only met briefly at other events, even the birthday boy I'm not really close friends with. It turned out fine though because I just started chatting with the people I didn't know and they were all really cool, I also talked to a bunch of random people at the bar we went to, so that was fun. I had a few people talk to me because of my tattoo, it's funny the amount of attention it attracts here, at one point I turned around because a cute guy from New Zealand was literally poking me in the back because he wanted to know what it meant (it's a Chai - the word for life in Hebrew... having it is kind of sacrilegious, but I don't care).

Later on my closer friends who I actually do know showed up, so I was really happy to see them. One of them had just flown in from visiting her family back home in Washington state so she was incredibly jet lagged! After everyone had arrived we left the bar and headed to Pure, a club that I particularly like because the cover charge is 1,000 yen less for women and it's "nomihodai" - all you can drink! I had a great time dancing, I danced for a while with a guy who works as a body guard for Japanese diplomats, etc. so that was sort of cool and I appreciated the fact that he was willing to actually dance with me rather than just try to grope me the entire time. Later I unknowingly started to dance with a creepy groper and I was actually really impressed because one of the security guards just saw the look on my face and immediately asked me if I was okay. I said I was and then I just pushed the guy off of me, that felt good! We danced all night and into the morning until they stopped the music and turned on the lights, then a bunch of us went to complete the sacred post-clubbing ritual, eating breakfast at McDonald's. When we reached the steps up to McDonald's there was a tiny old woman shuffling about and speaking to us in Japanese. None of us knew what she was saying and she was clearly a little out of touch with reality, so when she addressed me directly I just said in Japanese "I'm sorry, I don't understand" she looked at me and started to pass by but then all of a sudden she hit me on my back! It didn't hurt because she was so small, but I was pretty shocked since it's not like I have random Japanese women slapping me all the time. We decided she hit me because a) she didn't like my low cut clubbing shirt, b) she was insane, or c) all of the above. After McDonald's I went home and collapsed into bed and didn't wake up until my stupid doorbell / visual security system randomly started going off for no reason, I'm still tired, I think that I might actually go back to sleep for a while now... we'll see.

An Okinawan Friday night

2008-08-23T22:43:00.001-07:00

On Friday night I went back to the Okinawan place that my former co-worker took me to. I had been meaning to go back but had been afraid to return by myself since my Japanese is so terrible. Most sensible people, therefore, would conclude that on the next trip I took someone else who could speak Japanese fluently, but in fact I took my new co-worker who knows NO Japanese besides konichiwa- hello, and kampai - cheers, two important words, but they can only get you so far. When we got there we barely made it through the door, because the tiny little restaurant was packed and there was nowhere to sit. As we stood in the doorway trying to decide what to do next, some people noticed us standing there and kindly moved down to make room for us to sit. As we walked in I literally heard the word "gaijin" float around the room, everyone seemed so surprised to see us.

As we went to sit down I wasn't sure if the people who had moved over were going to acknowledge or ignore us, but to our delight they initiated conversation. Of course, the first question every foreigner gets in Japan is always "Where are you from?" after establishing our respective nationalities we will usually explain that we're English teachers and it goes on from there. Our neighbors were so friendly and inviting, they shared their food with us and even bought us drinks at one point. They spoke very little English, so I had a great opportunity to practice my Japanese and I was actually able to understand some of the things they said to me if they spoke slowly enough. The woman sitting next to my co-worker told me in Japanese that her childhood friend had been from England and I actually acted as a translator to tell my co-worker what she said, that was pretty awesome. One guy, an incredibly drunk university student, came down to our end of the table just so he could talk to us. His English was no better than the others' but he and my co-worker seemed to hit it off and they chatted for a while about sports and music. The mama-san, owner of the place, also came over to say hello. She recognized me of course and gave us a sliced dragon fruit to share.

This Okinawan place has lots of regulars and you can tell who they are based on their bottles of alcohol. All along the wall of the restaurant are shelves with decorated bottles, the bottles have the names of the owners written on them in gold and silver and many are decorated with charms and little figurines like you'd see on a key chain. When people finish off the bottle they just refill it and put it back on the shelf when they leave. Several of the people we were sitting with had their own bottles with little cartoon characters dangling from them, leave it to the Japanese to make even drinking cute.

My co-worker and I stayed until about 1 in the morning, but since we had to get up for work the next day we eventually decided to call it quits. We told our new friends that we will return next Friday, so both of us are really looking forward to that. We are both thrilled to have somewhere fun to go on a Friday night that is only a five minute bike ride from our school. The Mama-san also charged us very little for the amount that we ate and drank, so saving money is always a plus too! I wish I had found out about this place sooner, but now I will definitely have to take advantage of it.

Jam (and jelly) packed week

2008-08-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a little while, but these last couple of weeks have just been so jam packed that I have not had the energy to actually sit down and write about them. I woke up a little earlier than usual though, so I'll do my best to fit everything in before I have to go to work.

So last Saturday our new teacher arrived from England. He seems like a really nice guy and he appears to be very excited about working with us at Takashimadaira. He arrived at our school the same day that there was going to be a huge fireworks exhibition so I invited him and the sub-teacher helping him with the transition to come watch them with my students, Jenn, and me. None of my students actually showed up so it was just the four of us. We climbed to the roof of our school and had an AMAZING view. The fireworks did not start until about 7 pm, but there had been hundreds of people milling around the streets in Yukata (traditional Japanese robes, sort of like lighter, cheaper versions of kimono) since about 4 pm, so we knew that the riverside where they were actually being held would be packed. The fireworks were spectacular and there were ones I'd never seen before, including a few in the shape of Hello Kitty's head... the whole stereotype about the Japanese obsession with Hello Kitty is not too far from the truth. The show lasted for two hours, when it was over we tried to find an izakaya to get some drinks at but they were all packed and you couldn't get in anywhere without a reservation. It was so extremely strange having so many people in my neighborhood since usually it's so quiet and empty! We ended up getting some food and drinks at Sukiya, a chain beef bowl place down the street from where I live. Afterwards the guys took the train back home and Jenn stayed over at my apartment where we stayed up late and watched Terms of Endearment like the true girls that we are.

We slept in the next day and then got some sushi for lunch. I went to the welcome / farewell party for my co-workers after that and it was a lot of fun. A bunch of of students came to the party and some of us went out for karaoke afterwards. We had a choice of two karaoke places in the area and we ended up at the one that I hadn't been to before. Really though, most karaoke places look pretty much the same on the inside. We ended the night with my amazing choice... Living on a Prayer - Bon Jovi, best group karaoke song ever, it's true.

Not so much during the work week of course, but I did go out to my kaiten sushi (revolving sushi) place with all my co-workers for the first time! I was very excited to bring them there and they all seemed to enjoy it. It was the first time I ever sat in the booth section at the back of the restaurant since I'd never gone there with so many people.

On Saturday I went to what I thought was going to be a party with Jenn and some other people, but there were actually only 4 other people there, one of whom I really don't care for so much. I was exhausted because I'd gone out with a friend the night before and ended up missing my last train, so I'd gotten very little sleep as a result. I was very relieved, therefore, when we called it an early night and Jenn and I went back to her place to crash. We got up the next morning and went to Enoshima for my now ex-co-worker's Sayonara Beach Party! It was a little bit cloudy and not too hot, so in my opinion good beach weather, nevertheless I still got a bit sunburned even while wearing sun block. I also was stung by three jelly fish! I'd never been stung by a jelly fish before in my life, so I guess they wanted to get their revenge. They were impossible to see in the murky water and they hurt a lot! I had a huge red welt on my back and two smaller ones on my arm and leg, all of which are still visible on my body two days later! Despite the jellies, I still had a fun time and we went out for Italian food afterwards so it was a nice ending to the day.

Yesterday I went indoor rock climbing with my friend Eimilly and her friend. It was a lot of fun and I definitely want to go again at some point. Granted, my arms feel sort of like they're going to fall off today, but I've been stretching them and that's helped. Well, time for work now, hopefully it will be another fun week!

Dragons and dolphins and bugs, OH MY!

2008-07-31T07:27:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, I can't believe that July is already over! Time could seriously not be going by any faster! Last week I handed in my official letter of resignation and I know that the next 4 months are going to whiz right by so I'm already starting to anticipate "the end" of this adventure. Speaking of which, my co-worker just finished his last day with our school yesterday! He's going back to university in England and we're getting another British guy to replace him this Saturday. I'm going to miss my old co-worker, as he's very cool and he helped me a lot over the last eight months. Last night after work he took me to this awesome Okinawan restaurant about a five minute bike ride from our school. We ate SOOO much food and we each had multiple drinks, but because the owner knows him she only charged us each 1500 yen (about $15)!!! It was great and I tried a few new foods. The first food was this really unpleasant and bitter vegetable called Goya mixed with eggs, tofu, and spam (the latter were nice, just not the Goya). The other new food was an awesome looking fruit called Dragon Fruit, the skin of "the dragon" is bright pink and scaley... the name is fitting, right? The inner flesh is what you eat, it's white with loads of little black seeds and it comes right off the peel. The dragon fruit was good, it had a rather subtle taste, but I was mainly just excited to be eating something that was A) Very exotic and B) Named after a mythical creature! I was particularly happy because my co-worker told me the owner said I was welcome to come back, she said this to him in Japanese, but she gave both of us gifts of some canned beverage as we were leaving and walked us out. I do plan to return, though I'm a little nervous since, unlike my co-worker, I can't speak Japanese, but now I have even more of a reason to practice and someone nearby to practice with at least a little bit.

My awesome dragon fruit!

On Monday I went to yet another fun and interesting place with Jenn, Tokyo Dome City! This is a large complex with a big dome where baseball games are played, restaurants, shopping, a spa, and an amusement park! Of course, Jenn and I came for the amusement park. We expected that we would have a good time, but the park totally exceeded our expectations. It had an absolutely amazing roller coaster. This coaster had huge drops, freakishly scary turns, and towered high above the buildings of Tokyo. What was the coaster named? The THUNDER DOLPHIN... because god knows nothing is scarier than a noisy porpoise. We rode the Dolphin three times and also went on a number of other rides multiple times because there were virtually no lines. The price was really good and the park is only 25 minutes from where I live so we are definitely going to return to TDC. I also would like to see a baseball game there, because while I'm not really a fan of baseball normally, I've heard that baseball games in Japan are really spectacular mainly due to the ecstatic fans.

Posing with some cartoons

Help?

The THUNDER DOLPHIN!!!

This Saturday there is going to be a really big fireworks display on the river near my school. Since I teach until 8 and the fireworks (hanabi - flower fire) start at 7, my students and I are going to go watch them from the roof of my school and then I'm going to walk over to the river once my students leave. I've invited Jenn to come watch them too since on Saturdays she teaches in Ikebukuro, which is not too far away from Takashimadaira. On Sunday we're having our farewell / welcome party for my old and new co-workers so it should be a somewhat busy and eventful weekend... just 2 days to go!

Sushi in Zushi and other marvolous things

2008-07-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went with Jenn and Ivan to watch a beach concert in Zushi, one stop away from Kamakura. One of my students is a FANTASTIC musician (T-cophony) and he was performing, so I wanted to see him play his guitar. Unfortunately, the map he sent me was kind of terrible and the beach was farther away than we'd anticipated so we got there late. My student was opening for the other bands so I was freaking out that we'd miss his performance, luckily we made it in time to see him do his last few songs so I was very relieved. The rest of the bands were really talented and all of us had a wonderful time. This was my first time going to a beach in Japan and the one in Zushi was lovely. It was lined with rolling green mountains and the water was absolutely perfect. None of us brought our bathing suits but we waded a bit and decided to come back on a Monday sometime in August. The beach was very crowded and while the majority of beach goers were Japanese there were also a lot of guys from the U.S. military soaking up the sun. I think that there's a military base not too far from that area so I wasn't too surprised to see them there. The beach is lined with little open air bars and restaurants and at one point when we stopped to look at a menu, a big military guy noticed us gawking at the words (we were trying to make out the katakana) and helped us out by calling the owner over and asking in Japanese what food was available. The military guy's Japanese was very good so we were pretty impressed, especially since members of the military have a somewhat negative reputation for not taking much interest in learning the language despite being stationed in Japan.

(this is Zushi Beach - I took the pic from someone else's blog)

On the subject of learning Japanese, I was somewhat unhappy to learn that last Friday was my last Japanese lesson since I only get six months worth. I will do my best to practice what I've already been taught and build up my vocabulary. I'm still pretty terrible about speaking and I get really nervous whenever I try to communicate in Japanese, but I have started being able to sometimes pick out bits and pieces of conversations that I hear, so that's kind of cool. When the military guy asked what there was to eat at the restaurant I realized that I actually understood what he asked, in fact, I probably could have asked it myself. The problem a lot of the time is that I forget the words when I actually need them and also understanding whatever the answer is, but I actually understood most of what the restaurant owner said on this particular occasion.

This week will mark 8 months that I've been living in Japan. I am required to send a letter by Thursday informing my company of whether I plan to renew or resign at the end of my contract in November. While I do plan on going home to America at the end of this year, it was a much more difficult decision than I had thought it would be. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me that I might actually make friends in Japan who would be difficult to leave at the end of the year, turns out, I have. The thing I keep reminding myself of is that there are plans I have for when I come home and while I am so extraordinarily glad to be here in Japan, I am not so passionate about teaching and I know that there are other jobs that I am better suited for. Still, as a guy I met recently phrased it "I've caught the travel bug" and knowing that I have to eventually come home and quit exploring new places is not an easy thing. I have hopes for more travel and eventually a job that incorporate traveling into my duties, however, so I should survive. For now, I still have 4 months left to see new things and visit new places. I want to go to Hiroshima to see the Peace Park and Miyojima to see the floating torii gate and all the little deer (shika). I also plan to visit Nikko and possibly Okinawa, and eventually, once my contract ends, THAILAND! I am very excited about Thailand, I am quite sure it will be amazing.

Disney Sea photos and stuff

2008-07-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, thought you might like to see some of the photos Jenn and Keisuke took while we were at Disney Sea. I've posted a few of my favorites here on the blog, but you can see them all at this website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16084122@N00/sets/72157606099994702/

Jenn also sent me a couple of videos, so you might enjoy those as well:

Riding a Gondola:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2889484648842417268&hl=en

Japanese Tower of Terror:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6310399271619019398&hl=en

Jenn and I being "perky" before the Aladdin show:

Keisuke and Cruela, possibly one of the funniest pictures I've ever seen:

Jenn, Aki, and I heading home on the monorail:

Hey Mickey!

2008-07-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been really good and I've been keeping quite busy. On Friday I went down to Shimbashi, where Jenn teaches, and went to an izakaya (Japanese style bar/restaurant) with her and some of her students. They were all really nice and one of them worked for Phillip Morris, so when we sat down he reached into his bag and pulled out at least ten packs of gum and a few packs of cigarettes. Jenn and I don't smoke but we took some gum, I still have two packs in my purse. After the izakaya Jenn and I headed to K's Cafe, a little "American" cafe not far from where Jenn lives. We met up with our friend Dan to have some drinks in celebration of the Fourth of July. I had work the next day, but I decided to stay over at Jenn's apartment and then just catch the train back in the morning since I didn't want to have to rush to catch the last train that night. We hung at K's for a while and talked to some Japanese girls who kept asking us WHY? Why did you come to Japan? Why do you like Japan? Why is New York so great? Why? Why? Why? It got annoying because they kept asking the same questions (mainly those three) over and over. When we got back to Jenn's apartment it was so incredibly hot, I am so relieved that I have an air conditioner that actually works!

On Saturday I worked and then that evening I went home and cleaned like crazy because James and his girlfriend were coming to visit and asked if they could crash at my place for the night/morning. Of course I said they could, but as usual my apartment was a complete wreck so I was scrambling to get things back to what normal people would consider a civilized standard of living. After I finished cleaning I got ready and just barely caught the last train to go and meet them in Shibuya for a night of clubbing. By the time they arrived at Hachiko (a dog statue that is the central meeting point of pretty much anyone who visits Shibuya) it was already 12:45 am and I was ready to go out, but they were hungry so I took them to the really good ramen shop down the street. Then we tried to find the club that James wanted to go to. It was called Nuts and though I'd heard of it, I had never been there and had no idea where it was. James had not written down the address and all he had was a picture of the map that he had taken with the camera on his cell phone. He refused to stop and ask for directions, we wandered around for over an hour, and we never found Nuts. At one point we passed a bowling alley and James half suggested that we go bowling instead. Needless to say, I was not fond of that idea. I had come out specifically to go clubbing and that is what I intended to do. Finally, I suggested that we head back toward the main part of Shibuya and just find a different club. This, however, was no better than being lost in the middle of nowhere because James and his girlfriend refused to pay a cover charge any higher than ¥1000. The standard cover for most clubs in Tokyo is at least ¥3000 and as usual, you get what you pay for. We ended up at a club with no cover called GasPanic. I hate GasPanic. I'd been there once before and I didn't like it then either. The guys there are really sketchy and I'm always being chased by either the one creepy guy that I really don't want to dance with or a Gaspanic employee trying to get me to buy another drink. I ended up just sitting down for the majority of the time because on this occasion the guy I'd been dancing with had started sticking his tongue out in such a provocative way that I'm sure had I opened my mouth to cough (or gag) he would have started making out with me within half a milisecond. Gross right? Finally we left, took the train back, and crashed at my place. The one plus of the night was I had barely drank any alcohol at all, I don't even think I made it through one can of beer, so getting up the next day was significantly more pleasant than my usual post clubbing wake up experiences.

That evening I went to my co-worker's little wedding party at a yakiniku place a couple of stations down. It was fun and while I was there I met a Filipino guy who's been living in Japan for the past 13 years. He invited me to a barbeque his friend was holding on Tuesday (yesterday) and also told me that his wife owns a summer home out in the country and invited me to come spend a weekend there sometime next month maybe. At the time I wasn't sure if he was saying that just to be friendly or if he really meant it, but on Monday evening I got a call from him asking if I still wanted to go to the barbeque. The time of the barbecue actually worked out perfectly with my schedule, so of course I said yes!

On Monday I went to Disney Sea with Jenn, James and his girlfriend, and two of Jenn's friends who are both Japanese managers for the company we work for. In Florida's Disney World there's the Magic Kingdom, MGM, Epcot, etc. In Japan there's Disneyland and Disney Sea. It is named Disney Sea because the park is literally built right along the coast and on one side of it there's actually a dam to keep the real sea from drifting into Disney Sea. The park is gorgeous and just like every other part of Japan, it's immaculately clean. We had a really fun time, there was just one little thing that caught me off guard. I experienced some pretty blatant racism... from Mickey Mouse! As we walked through the entrance gates we saw a bunch of the characters greeting people and I asked Jenn to take my picture with Mickey. I walked up to him and waited for him to finish having is picture taken with some Japanese women, but when my turn came he turned and had his picture taken with some other Japanese girls. At first I thought he just didn't see me, but after he did this several times I just gave up and walked away. Obviously, not having my picture taken with racist Mickey is not the end of the world, but it was a bit of a shock. I mentioned it to Jenn and she agreed with me, but we didn't bring it up anymore because we didn't want to offend the Japanese friends we were with. Overall it was a really fun time, and I am completely obsessed with the Tower of Terror, it's the best ride ever!!!!

Yesterday I went to the barbeque I mentioned before. The barbeque turned out to be on a lovely rooftop apartment right down the street from Tobu Nerima Station, the place I biked to last week. It was a really fun time and all the people I met seemed really friendly. The majority of guests were Japanese and we did our best to talk with each other, there were also a few English speakers there, but I was the only one who was not fluent in Japanese. I feel so embarrassed, or maybe even guilty, when I try to speak to Japanese people because while I AM studying Japanese, I know that I could be studying a lot more. What it basically comes down to is the fact that I'm lazy. Still, I am slowly making progress and chatting with people is very helpful because it helps me practice and remember vocabulary. In addition to meeting people, I also ate some really fantastic food. The woman hosting the party either owns or works at the yakiniku restuarant where I met my Filipino friend who invited me, so she is obviously a good cook!

Things have really been looking up lately, so I'm quite happy about that. I was thinking about the months I've spent here and I realized just how busy I've been! I love the fact that more often than not I'm out doing stuff with friends or going to interesting events or places. During the week I tend to stick around my neighborhood, but on the weekends I'm out and about and I love it. I hope that life continues at about the same pace for the remaining time I have left here, if it does everything should be just fine.

(Please note the Minnie Mouse ears I'm wearing. In America you can only wear mouse ears if you're under the age of 10, in Japan females of every age wear them, so Jenn and I joined in the fun!)

A better day

2008-07-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

This last week I struggled a little bit, nothing really major happened, but various circumstances just put me in a slightly less cheerful mood than I'm used to. I'm feeling better now though. This weekend I went and saw a play written and directed by one of my cast mates from Ring Round the Moon, some other people from my show were there, so it was nice seeing them. Then last night I met up with Jenn in Ikebukuro and we went out for Thai food. Jenn also had a pretty tough week, a lot more difficult than mine actually, so we spent a lot of time talking. Before we came to Japan, our trainer in Canada told us that a lot of people struggle after they've been in Japan for about 4 months because it's not so new and interesting anymore, so the excitement starts wearing off and people feel depressed. Jenn and I both decided that this is what's happening for us, it just took a lot longer to hit us than it does for most people. I'm glad it worked out that way, because it's rather easy now to tell ourselves, ONLY 5 MONTHS LEFT! That's really no time at all considering we've been here 7 months already, 7 months that seem to have flown right by! It's July for goodness sake, how did that happen?? Actually, I think another reason I was a little down this week is because this is the first time in 10 years that I am not spending my summer at camp. Obviously I knew this time would eventually have to come, but 10 years is a long time, it's longer than some of the campers have been alive, so not even being able to visit is difficult. I sent a care package to some of my friends there with all sorts of crazy toys and candy inside, so I hope they enjoy it. I also hope that it actually gets to the camp... whenever I mail anything from here I worry that it will get lost somewhere along the way.

In order to keep myself in a better mood it's essential that I keep myself busy. Since I don't actually teach any lessons until 6 pm on Tuesdays, I've decided to try and use those days for exploring. Last week I went out to Harajuku and visited Meiji Shrine, since somehow I had not actually visited it yet. Today I decided to ride my bike out to a train station called Tobu-Nerima Station. I hadn't actually been to this station since my first week in Japan and I was curious to see how long it would take me to bike there from my neighborhood. For those of you who came in on this blog after I first arrived in Japan or if you just forgot, I stayed in an incredibly awful hotel, called Weekly Mansion, during my first week in Japan. While I was there I had to take a train from the station near my hotel to Tobu-nerima Station, where I then caught a bus that took me to my school. During my first week, when I was still extremely disoriented, confused, and jetlagged, I accidentally got on an express train that went by my stop and took my straight into Ikebukuro. My hope for today was that it wouldn't be too long of a bike ride because then whenever I wanted to go to Ikebukuro I wouldn't have to transfer trains and it would be a little bit cheaper. It ended up taking me maybe 15 to 20 minutes to bike to Tobu-nerima, however it was slightly uphill on the way there, so it took a bit less time to get home. It takes me about 2 to 3 minutes to ride over to my local station and then about 25 to 30 minutes by train to reach Ikebukuro, so unfortunately Tobu-nerima is not really so convenient. What IS convenient is SETY, a 5 floor shopping center right across from Tobu-nerima, which I had completely forgotten about. I had passed it every day during my first week, but I never actually went inside, so today I decided to. In Japanese department stores the bottom floor is always devoted to food (gormet food) and then as you go up each level you find clothes, appliances, etc. SETY was similar except that it had a food court, a Starbucks, and a movie theater on top! I was particularly excited about the movie theater and went up to check it out. I didn't have time to actually watch a movie and I have never in my life gone to the movies alone, but perhaps in the future I'll make an exception. I was quite disappointed to find that there was not a single poster up for the Sex and the City Movie. Instead, Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda seem to be taking the stage, although neither of them are actually out yet. I was also surprised to see that August Rush was playing in one of the theaters, because it came out ages ago and I'm pretty sure it's out on DVD already in the states.

I think that's about it. This weekend I'm going to a party for my co-worker because she's going up to Hokkaido (northern part of Japan) to celebrate her wedding ceremony. The actual reason I went to Ikebukuro today was to get her a present. It should be fun and I'm sure I'll post about it sometime next week. Until then, take care everyone!

I need a haircut, you need 'em all cut!

2008-06-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

This has been the first weekend in at least two months that I did not have any plans. It was so nice being able to relax and SLEEP as much as I wanted. Don't worry though, the weekend was not a complete waste. During one of my Saturday classes a student mentioned that there was a firefly exhibition that was being held in Shintakashimadaira, the neighborhood I live in. It seems that Japan used to be inhabited by a large number of fireflies, but for some unknown reason they have started dying off and now they are far less common. The Japanese are quite fond of fireflies and for the slightly older members of the population the bugs represent a sort of nostalgia. I thought it would be fun to see the fireflies, so I asked my student for the specific location and last night I took the 5 minute walk from my apartment to the firefly sanctuary. Normally this breeding facility is only open to the public during the day, but for the last 3 days they have opened it up at night. First we walked down a little path and then we entered a big green house inhabited by hundreds of fireflies. It was really cool, but I felt quite lucky because back home in CT I've laid in fields that are out in the open with just as many of the little glowing bugs flying around me. Fireflies, yet another of many things I've always taken fore granted.

Today I went and got my first haircut in Japan. I know I waited a bit longer than I should have, but I had been putting it off for as long as possible because of all the Japanese haircut horror stories I'd heard about. It's not exactly that Japanese hair stylists are bad, it's just that they're good at what they know, and they do NOT know foreign hair. Unfortunately, my hair is the epitome of "foreign". Unlike all the lovely Japanese girls with thin, stick straight hair, my hair is freakishly thick and ridiculously curly. Add the summer humidity and there's also the infamous frizz that all curly haired people know and dread. Never the less, I felt that I could not put it off any longer. Of course, in addition to the dramatic hair differences, there's also the ever present language barrier. While I have been going to my Japanese lessons weekly for the last few months, my lessons have not yet included necessary haircutting vocabulary, so of course I headed for my number one cultural resource: Google. I looked up "just a trim" and found what I was looking for on japanforum.com in addition to instructions on how to indicate "this much" while showing with your thumb and index finger the amount of hair you want cut off. I wrote down the key phrases and then headed toward the several hair salons conveniently located directly behind the school I work at. I scanned the prices posted on the windows outside the shops and chose the one that looked like it might have the lowest prices (I couldn't be sure since I wasn't able to read all the Japanese next to the prices). Upon entering the shop I did my best to explain what I wanted via the phrases I'd jotted down and the universal hand scissor motion. The girl seemed to get the general gist of what I was saying and replied "cut-to cut-to?" so I nodded. She gave me a form to fill out, which I was miraculously able to complete with little difficulty, despite it being in all Japanese. The only thing I wasn't sure of was whether the section with the date kanji was asking for today's date or my birthday, and I was so pleased because I actually knew how to ask that question (Kore wa tanjobi ka kyo desuka? - Is this birthday or today?). Granted, my grammar was probably way off, but I got an answer (tanjobi - birthday) so that's all that really mattered. After waiting for just a minute or two, a guy came and brought me to have my hair washed. Not only did he put the drapey thing over me to keep my clothes from getting wet, but he also covered my legs with a nice blanket and put this soft cloth over my face to keep the glare of the light out of my eyes (at least I think that's what the cloth was for). After washing my hair and leading me over to the chair, a new guy arrived to do the actual cutting. I showed him with my fingers how much I wanted cut and he seemed to understand. While cutting my hair he asked, actually more like he insisted, that I would have my hair blow dried and straightened. I wasn't wild about this idea because it takes ages to straighten my hair, but since it was included in the cost and he seemed rather adamant about having it done, I agreed. As soon as he finished cutting, two new people came over and started blow drying my hair. Using the two person method was definitely a wise choice, because my hair does not dry quickly. They continued the two person routine as they started to straighten my hair and they would alternate, so all in all I think I had at least six different people work on my hair today. As I predicted, the straightening took forever, I'm surprised none of the stylists "accidentally" burned me for making them work with such terrible hair. In the end though, it came out looking very nice, and while the straightness won't last more than maybe half a day due to the humidity, now that it's trimmed my hair will curl better once I wash it. Overall, it was a far less overwhelming experience than I had expected and I feel that I definitely got my money's worth.

The real surreal life

2008-06-14T22:49:00.001-07:00

What do a dominatrix, a naked pick up artist, and some hardcore drugs all have in common? They were all at the birthday party I attended this past Saturday. It was a party that will go down in my personal history as one of the most surreal experiences of my life. The party was held in the Presidential Suite of the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills. The suite alone was enough to make anyone loopy, as it was the most gorgeous and luxurious place I have ever set foot in. The suite took up the entire 21st floor, which one needed a special key to access. It had its own private outdoor heated pool that was heated to 104 degrees and just the bathroom alone was about twice the size of my apartment. About 10 minutes after we had arrived and settled down next to the pool, the birthday boy approached our table and cheerfully informed us that they were about to do some X if we'd like to join, then he turned to Jenn and said, "Oh Jenn, there's also coke, speed, and acid if you're interested." We quickly exchanged nervous glances and then politely declined the invitation. It was honestly like a scene out of a movie, a movie that I never expected to play a part in.

The next scene took place in the bathroom. Jenn's friend informed us that they had lugged 200 pounds of ice into the hotel, which had all been deposited into the enormous bath tub where the numerous cans of beer and bottles of Don Perignon were being stored. As we sipped our champagne and chatted with one of the guests, he informed us that there was a dominatrix attending the party. She was not actually in her dominatrix garb, but he showed us her card, and she was indeed a dom (that's the slang they use in those kinky dating adds). My friend got incredibly excited, because as she had previously explained to Jenn and I, she used to be goth... a goth? I'm not sure of the correct wording... Anyway, she immediately went to find the dominatrix so that she could find out about some good goth punk clubs in Tokyo. Later we were introduced to her, so now I am proud to say that I have met a real live dominatrix.

After retreating back to the poolside table with Jenn, we discovered that there was yet another interesting guest at this crazy party. Walking among us was a pickup artist... what might you ask IS a pick up artist? It's a man who makes a living out of teaching men to attract and get with women, and Jenn and I had just read an article about him the week before. He and his associates were featured in a popular magazine called Japanzine, in an article discussing their company and the weekend bootcamp/workshops they hold for some obviously desperate Japanese men, this is the article: PICK UP ARTIST. When Jenn and I found out he was there we got really excited, despite being told some fairly negative things about him. Jenn's friend explained to us that basically everything he does and says is a setup, it's not real... I didn't have to wait long before I got to experience this firsthand. Within just a few minutes of being told he was there, Kid44 (as he is called in the article) was over at our table introducing himself (I know his real name, but I don't have his permission to use it, so he will remain Kid44). He was extremely, almost overly, friendly and actually kissed my hand upon meeting me, clue number 1 of the underlying sleaziness. Still, I was intrigued, this guy was not that incredibly good looking, so I really wanted to know what it was that allowed him to seemingly get any girl he desired. A few minutes later Jenn and I were in the pool and were once again approached by Kid44, except that this time he was completely naked. Okay... I can handle nudity, no big deal... we started chatting with him, and of course the fact that he was naked came up in conversation and then the next thing we know Kid44 was giving us an up close and personal look at his genital piercing. That was something I had not expected, but I think Jenn and I played it off well, acting as if this was a completely normal situation. Despite the slight awkwardness of examining a random penis, I continued talking to Kid44 (please note I had no interest in hooking up with him, because by that point I had come to the full conclusion that he was a complete sleaze ball, but I still thought he was interesting). I asked him about his personal life and about some stuff he said in the article. He told me that he is only attracted to bisexual women and then gestured to some girls in the corner of the pool and said "Those are my girls over there." I asked him how long he'd known them. "The one on the left a year and a half, the one on the right 3 hours." He explained that the girl he knew long term was his "wing" and he was leaving her and the new girl to have some fun together. Then he told me that he'd had sex with thousands of women, but that he never had one night stands, which I still don't believe. This led me to ask about the end of the article, which he knew I'd read, because in it he mentions that he does not feel ashamed of manipulating women because he's manipulating them into having wonderful lives with amazing men. I addressed this and asked him "What about the guys who are just interested in sex?" He told me that for some reason those men don't attend his workshops... and that statement confirmed my decision that he was full of shit.

The night went on, until eventually it was morning again. It was strange to leave the 21st floor and literally step back into reality. I know some people would love to live like that forever, but I'm okay with living a more ordinary life, because it makes the experience so much more thrilling. Many people actually flew in from the U.S. to attend that party, so I remind myself that to them maybe my life seems a little thrilling because I'm LIVING in TOKYO! What they only get to experience for a week or two, I'm actually living... or at least that's what Jenn and I told ourselves to keep from being embarrassed about being English teachers around all these freakin' rich people! And the Birthday Boy? Well, I guess he just gets the best of both worlds.

Speaking of birthdays, I actually went to another birthday party for a couple of my friends the next night. It was far less glamorous, but I was just happy to be with my friends. We went for drinks at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel and then ate dinner at TGI Fridays... yes, we have TGIF in Tokyo, it's the closest we can come to eating American food once in a while. The next day I went to Disneyland with the birthday boy and girl and another friend of theirs. It was fun, pretty much the same as Disney World in Orlando, except that the rides and songs were in Japanese, which was pretty amusing. Imagine riding along Splash Mountain listening to Zippity Doo Da in Japanese. While trying to google the Japanese lyrics of Zippity Doo Da, I actually came upon another person's account of Tokyo Disney. He completely nailed the essence of the place and he's a really great writer (far better than me), so you should definitely check this post out: Happiest Place in Asia. Well it may be the happiest place in Asia, but currently my happiness is being overthrown by sleepiness, so I will overthrow Disney and end this with the eternal words of Porky: That's All Folks!

Showtime and shopping!

2008-06-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

We did it! We performed our play this weekend and it went really well! The first performance was on Saturday night. It was a good, solid performance, but we were a little discouraged because the audience was DEAD! This was a comedy, yet they hardly laughed at all the entire time. We decided this was mainly because it was a primarily Japanese audience, and the Japanese don't tend to laugh very much during performances (I believe I discussed this a long time ago in reference to movies, but apparently it carries over to live theater). The next day we had a much better audience, since that's when a lot of the cast's friends came, including mine. My coworker and student came, as well as Jenn and my friend Eimilly (I sort of lost touch with Eimilly for a while, but she's a really wonderful person so I'm very glad that I've been seeing more of her lately). Before the Sunday performance I called Jenn and told her that if something was funny she should laugh, because I think part of the problem is that people are nervous to laugh if no one else is laughing with them. I believe some other cast members also asked their friends to laugh at the funny parts, so Sunday's show was a much more enjoyable experience for both the cast and the audience! Jenn filmed a few scenes from the play, so once she sends those to me I'll post them up here. I am so glad that I had so many people come to see me, they seemed to really enjoy the show (even though they're obliged to say that to me, I think they really did) and I was overjoyed because they brought me flowers! Afterwards, I went out for dinner with Jenn and Eimilly and then we went to this sort of bar/lounge where Eimilly's trainer from work was DJing. There were a lot of teachers and staff from our company there and Jenn and I ran into our trainer (our boss) and talked to him for a little bit. I was pretty glad that the lounge closed early because I was quite exhausted after all the acting and commuting back and forth from my home to Yokohama over the last two days. I had also missed my last train the night before and had to take a taxi back from Ikebukuro, which was a huge pain in the ass because taxi's after midnight are exorbitantly expensive. For a 20 minute taxi ride home I had to pay about $45, and that actually was cheap compared to some of the taxi horror stories I've heard from my students. I DID NOT want to pay another $45, so going home at a decent hour last night was definitely a plus.

Today I slept in and lounged around, but in the evening I met up with Jenn in Ikebukuro. We decided to go clothes shopping because we have been invited by Jenn's super rich friend to a pool party at the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills (a very upscale area) next Saturday, and we didn't really have anything good to wear (we don't plan on swimming, but we needed some classier clothes). I am also going to a friend's birthday party the night after that and I just found out that we are supposed to wear formal/semi-formal attire, so I needed something for that as well. Jenn didn't have much luck, but I actually found something to wear for both nights. For Saturday I got this long red shirt/dress that I'm going to wear with black leggings and for Sunday I got a black and white patterned dress. I still am in love with the amazing customer service in Japan! Everyone is SO helpful and the way they package up your clothes is just amazing in itself, they even have plastic things to go over the regular bag to protect it from the rain! Once I'd paid and they were finished wrapping everything up and putting it in a bag, they didn't just hand it to me, they actually escorted me out and carried it to the door for me. The second girl actually escorted us out of the department store and then directed us to the correct train line (even though we actually knew where it was). I think that going to stores without being waited on hand and foot will take some getting used to once I return to America!

A different world

2008-06-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

One week left until the show. I think I'm ready, I hope everyone else will be too, because I really want this to be a performance I can be proud of. There were a lot of problems throughout the entire rehearsal period, but I'm still going to hope for the best. Even with all the issues, when I'm actually on stage playing my part I have so much fun... everything else fades away and I get to be crazy Capulet, the spinster woman stuck in a fantasy world that revolves around fluff like rainbows and romance novels. I was implicitly told by my director to overact because Capulet is just sooo over dramatic, so I really don't hold very much back. I jump around and flail my arms when I'm excited, I scream and cover my eyes when I'm scared... I'm absolutely ridiculous! When I was first cast as Capulet I couldn't stand her, she was just so obnoxious and I was not thrilled about having to play such an annoying character. I've changed my mind though, because while Capulet does live in a complete world of her own, she always sees the positive, dreamy side of things and I don't think that would be such a bad world to live in. In reality most people can't stand the real life Capulets, the ones who always seem to be happy and unaware of all the negativity and bad things in the world, but maybe... maybe the real reason is that we're jealous because we can't live in that world too.

The previous sentence just reminded me of something that I found out about when I first arrived in Japan, but had since forgotten to mention. The section of Tokyo I live in, Takashimadaira, is not very well known because it's small and on the outskirts of the city, but when people have heard about it there is normally one main reason why: suicide. Because of all the earthquakes in Japan, Tokyo in general has fairly low buildings, but Takashimadaira is a very residential area and for some reason it has unusually tall apartment complexes. As multiple people have explained to me, people would come from all over Tokyo to kill themselves in Takashimadaira by jumping off the tall buildings. To put an end to this incredibly awful problem, iron bars and grates were installed over all of the windows that line the open air corridors that people walk along to get into their apartments (and I'm assuming entry to the roof tops was blocked as well). As a result, all of the big apartments have an eerie prison like feel to them, and when I see the rows and rows of them as I ride by on the train I still get a little creeped out. I'm not sure if this is a well known fact outside of Japan (I forget whether I knew before hand), but Japan has an extremely high suicide rate, one of the highest in the entire world actually. I think there are a number of factors that play into why, but the majority of suicides are by middle aged business men, so it's pretty clear that the cultural attitudes and expectations regarding work values in Japan are pretty intense.

Sorry for the morbid subject matter, but living here forces me to think about things like this and I need this blog to help me make sense of my thoughts. Maybe living alone has actually caused me to think too much, to the point where I just over-analyze everything. Actually, I think I might have done that already, because my sister used to call me out on it. I was going to say that I could take my mind off such unpleasant thoughts by reading, but ironically, the book I just started is In Cold Blood, so perhaps not... Well either way, it's time for bed. I hope you all have a splendid week!

Birthdays, picnics, and Oktoberfest... in May

2008-05-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

I had a really nice weekend. I know the weekend's been over for a few days, but nothing particularly interesting has happened since then, so I will write about the weekend. On Saturday night I went to the birthday party I mentioned before. A few of my friends were there and I also met some new people, so that was fun. The only thing I did not enjoy about that evening was this one really touchy-feely (sp?) guy. He seemed okay at first, but then just became plain old creepy and started hanging all over me and saying how if he didn't have a girlfriend he'd be kissing me... yuck, back off dude! Upon thinking more about that evening I'm somewhat annoyed with myself for not having actually told him to back off, but at the time I didn't want to cause any problems since he was friends with the birthday boy. I was fairly relieved when he moved on to some cute Japanese girl, though I felt a little bad because I think he was making her equally uncomfortable. Japanese people (not all of them, but the majority) don't tend to show much physical affection or expect any in return until they get to know you, but despite being here longer than me the guy seemed unaware of that fact. Everyone else at the party seemed pretty cool and a few of them want to come to my play, so I'm very happy about that! I crashed at Jenn's place for the night and then had rehearsal all day Sunday. We're all freaking out a bit because the show is on June 7 and 8 and it just hasn't come together the way it should have by now, there were cast members who weren't off book and the blocking is still not completely settled... but, I still think that we can pull it off if everyone puts in the effort that they should. One of my students is coming with her sister to see me perform and I think there might be other students who come too, in addition to my friends who I know are coming. I'm so excited that I have people here who want to come see me perform!

On Monday I met up with one of my castmates, Shinako, to practice the scenes we have together. We decided that since we were meeting in Hibiya Park we should also have a picnic. It was a gorgeous day and Hibiya Park is beautiful, so having a picnic was a fabulous idea. To make things even more amusing, in addition to our rehearsal, Oktoberfest was going on. I'm quite pleased with the fact that I can now say I celebrated Oktoberfest in May in Japan... there are very people who can lay claim to that interesting little tidbit. We sat by a big fountain and ate and talked for about two hours before we realized that we hadn't actually done any rehearsing! When we finally got around to practicing our scenes it was a little embarassing because people were walking by us the whole time, but we figured it was just as well since we're not going to have a test run with an actual audience. There's also this thing that a lot of Japanese people do, which Shinako even brought up, that makes things significantly more awkward. When something strange or embarassing happens most Japanese people will just pretend that nothing is going on. I'd say that the majority of people who walked by us just kept looking straight ahead or only peeked at us from the corner of their eye, which I think is rather different from most Americans who would probably stop and gawk, or laugh as they passed by. Jenn and I had previously discussed this obvious lack of reaction when Jenn told me how she accidentally set off a really loud alarm in a store and no one even looked at her, which only added to her embarassment. I still love being able to see all the cultural differences between Japan and America, it helps to make life continuously interesting even in what would usually be considered normal interactions or situations.

This week has been fairly average, the rainy season is beginning, and after that it will just be deathly hot. These next few months might be a bit more of a struggle for me, but I'll do my best to think happy thoughts and find the best in life, as I always strive to do!

Time to jump the slump

2008-05-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

I think I've hit a little bit of a slump in the last week or two, which may have had something to do with my slightly less than optimistic post from a few days ago. It's not that I'm unhappy, it's just that things haven't been as exciting as they seemed to be previously. I guess that's sort of a good thing, if life is so interesting that you actually notice when it's not. I think it's mainly because I had my parents visiting me and then my birthday and then Golden Week with Ashley... all this fun stuff all at once and now it's just sort of back to normal. I've literally started looking for reasons to celebrate or go out with friends. For example, this Saturday is the six month mark of my stay in Japan, so in my mind it was truly a perfect excuse to go out. I called Jenn and made plans to go clubbing with her, since she's been here the exact same amount of time as I have since we met in training. As it turns out, her friend Dan, whom I have met a few times and hope to become better friends with, is having his birthday party that night, so we're going to celebrate his birth on the six month mark and then go out the weekend after that to celebrate Jenn and I making it halfway through this extremely fun and crazy journey! In order to survive out here I need to have things like this to look forward to, to keep me going. Actually, I think I sort of need them no matter where I am, just more so in Japan. Writing this is actually making me feel better because it's reminding me of all the things I have to look forward to. There's the birthday party; the club, I truly love going out and dancing; the play, which has taken over my weekends and my wallet (transportation costs) but I'm still really excited about; and in the slightly more distant future, my sister, Hannah, coming to visit me (sometime around July or August I think). I'm still waiting to hear whether I've been accepted for a training program I applied for at work. If I'm accepted then I will get to go to South Korea for the first training session, so I really really hope that I make it and that the training dates don't conflict with the performance dates of my play. I was told that the training was scheduled for sometime in early June, so I'm assuming we'll find out fairly soon if we were accepted... unless I just wasn't accepted and they only told the people who were, but I don't think that's the case, because my company sends emails about EVERYTHING.

This weekend I formed the beginning of what I hope will be a new friendship with a member of the cast from my play, so I'm really happy about that. We went and saw a different play, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, that another cast member from our show was performing in. It was really wonderful and I had a great time, I was so excited to see a theatrical performance, since I hadn't attended one since before coming to Japan and I especially love musicals! My friend is very involved with the Tokyo theater community and he introduced me to a bunch of people which was really cool. It's really frustrating for me because I would LOVE to get more involved with the Tokyo theater scene, but my schedule makes it so difficult. Most people are only available to rehearse and perform nights and weekends, but I'm available only during mornings/early afternoons and I work Saturdays. When I go home I also won't be able to get involved with theater activities for a while because I want to work as an admissions counselor at a college and that involves lots of traveling, so rehearsals will be impossible. Hopefully in a few years though, when I have a more normal work routine, I'll be able to find a nice community theater to get involved with, I'd really like that.

Trying to be rational

2008-05-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

So lately I've been freaking out a little over earthquakes... and by a little, I kind of mean a lot. Every time I feel any sort of vibration in my apartment, I think "Is this it?" and then I wait for a few seconds to see if the rumbling will increase. Unfortunately, I live right next to an elevated highway, so my apartment vibrates every time a truck passes over, which means that I'm pretty much in constant anticipation of THE earthquake. For those of you who don't know, Tokyo is currently overdue for the Tokai Earthquake, aka Huge Freaking Earthquake, and I'm really not so happy about that fact. As I'm sure all of you are aware, a few days ago there was a terrible 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China. Thousands of people were killed and just thinking about it is really upsetting to me. I've actually been avoiding the news about it to some extent because it's just too scary. Until this point I wasn't really that bothered by the earthquakes, even though I knew about the prediction of the Tokai Earthquake, but just a few days before the quake in China there was also a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the ocean off the east coast of Japan, which I felt here in Tokyo. It wasn't really that strong here, but just the fact that there were two big earthquakes within a week of each other is enough to make the possibility of one happening here seem real.

Now for those of you who may be concerned about me and how I'm going to cope, don't worry, this is not a debilitating phobia that will keep me from functioning and enjoying my time here, it's just a concept that I've become more aware of over the last week or so. I think it's perfectly okay to have fears, especially ones that have a completely rational basis. If anything, I'm more annoyed by my irrational fear of cockroaches. Last night I had a dream that I was a member of the Duggar Family and there were enormous cockroaches disguised as ugly brown birds invading our home. I'm not sure which part was more terrifying, living in a house with cockroach birds or living in a house with 16 siblings... I didn't make that up, by the way, my dreams really are that weird. I often wish that I was as creative in the real world as I am in my dream world.

Well, I know this was an insanely short post compared to most of my others, but it's almost 3 am and I really just don't feel like typing anymore. I miss comments, feel free to leave some. Thanks!

Glorious Golden Week is over

2008-05-06T03:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, I know it's been AGES since my last post, but with Golden Week over it's been a struggle to gather up the motivation to write about the entire week, I will do my best now though because I don't want to start forgetting stuff. Golden Week was very fun and very busy and I wouldn't have had it any other way. Ashley arrived on Monday, April 28 and stayed for a week and we did a lot, but we had a few relaxing days thrown in there so that it wasn't too overwhelming. On her first night in Japan we went with my coworker and one of his student's to what we thought was going to be a Japanese drag club, but it turned out to be this tiny dive bar that was just owned by a couple of gay guys. Needless to say, we were somewhat disappointed since we'd been expecting Tokyo's version of The Birdcage, but it was still somewhat amusing and now I can say I've been to the gay area if Tokyo! On Tuesday I took Ashley around Tokyo and showed her some of the sites, we also bought our shinkansen tickets for Kyoto. It's really amazing just how fast the shinkansen, aka bullet train, can go. We left for Kyoto on Wednesday morning and arrived there only 2.5 hours later, if we had been riding on a normal train it would have taken 8 to 9 hours to get there.

Kyoto was so incredibly beautiful and like a completely different world when compared with Tokyo. The night before we arrived in Kyoto I called and was able to make reservations at Kyoto-Kiyomizu YH, a youth hostel owned by Hosteling International (my go to source for hostels). The receptionist barely spoke any English, but I was able to get the point across with a mix of English and Japanese, luckily I knew the word for "tomorrow" -- ashita! Besides the slight communication barriers, I thought the hostel itself was fantastic. It was brand new, having only opened in April and was located in a traditional style Kyoto home that had just been renovated. Ashley wasn't completely thrilled with the fact that we had to share a room with another person and tried talking me into staying at the Hyatt, but since there was no way that I was going to pay for a room there and I doubted they'd have rooms available anyway, I pretty much forced her to stay at the hostel for the night. I was a little surprised to find out they had a 10 pm curfew, but I didn't really mind and I thought it was really cool that they had tea time after 9 pm in a traditional room with sunken tables and tatami mats. The hostel was just a 5 minute walk from Kiyomizudera, so that was the first temple we visited. Kiyomizudera is built on the side of a mountain and is well known for the very high wooden terrace that extends off of it. While walking up the steps to the temple we saw a group of maiko, the apprentice geisha! Everyone was taking pictures of them and Ashley even got one of them praying, which was a little rude, but also a really amazing photo! After the maiko sighting we walked on the terrace and then around and down a path so we could see the temple from a distance. When we were finished with the temple we headed for our hostel and ended up having to have someone show us where it was since it was hidden on a side street. When we got there we discovered that check in wasn't until 4, so we headed down hill to search for lunch and other places that weren't too far away. We found a cafe, then made our way to Gion, the district of Kyoto that is well known for geisha and shopping. We didn't actually see any more maiko or older geisha, but we found some pretty temples and lots of shops. We also saw a man with tiny day old kittens in a box. I'm not sure what the man was doing with the kittens, I don't think he was selling them, but I wanted to take them with me because the poor things looked so hot lying out in the sun... it was HOT in Kyoto! After we checked in at the hostel and relaxed for a little while, we headed back out and took a taxi to Nanzenji Temple which I thought was the beginning of the Philosopher's Walk. It turned out the Philosopher's Walk actually began a little ways down from the temple, so we had to walk to The Walk. The Philosopher's Walk is a path that runs alongside a canal and some pretty houses and buildings, it was nice, but I am disappointed that I was not able to see it during cherry blossom season which is when it is supposed to be most beautiful and impressive. After the walk, we walked some more in search of a place where we could eat dinner. It was mind boggling to me that we actually had to search for a restaurant, since in Tokyo I'm so used to literally having one available to me about every 5 feet or so. We wanted revolving sushi, since I had taken Ashley to the one in my area the day before and she liked it, but instead we ended up at a little yakiniku place. When we arrived back at the hostel we met our other roommate, a little Japanese woman. I have no idea what her name was. She told me once, but I'm really bad at catching Japanese names the first time I hear them; I need to have the name written down for me to pronounce it correctly. The woman was very friendly and very talkative, except half the time she spoke in Japanese so I really had no idea what she was saying, it was kind of like she was talking to herself. She told me in English that she was 42 years old (I think) and that she was a high school teacher. When Ashley came into the room she gave both of us bananas, I don't actually like bananas so I was glad there was a no eating policy in the room so I had a polite reason to put it aside. A day or two before Ashley arrived, the cold I'd had a few weeks before returned, so unfortunately I was coughing and sneezing through the trip. When our roommate heard me hacking away she became very concerned. The next morning she kept questioning if I was sick, if I needed medicine, and she even felt my forehead to check for a temperature. A few minutes later the woman who works at the hostel came up. I thought she was just there to tell us we had to get up so she could make up the room or something of the sort, but after a minute I realized that our roommate had actually gotten her to come check up on me to see if I needed medicine or anything. After figuring out why she was there I told her "daijobu!" - it's okay - because I already had taken some Sudafed and I didn't really want the hostel people getting all concerned because of a little cold. After it was established that I was going to live through the day our roommate continued chatting with me and asking me a number of random questions as I was still lying in bed trying to demonstrate that I was tired (it was only 7:30 in the morning). After a few minutes she paused and went back to her things, then a minute later she came over again and asked "Do you love your family?"... it was so odd, of course I immediately responded, "Yes, I love my family very much," and then she just went back to her things and that was the last thing we really said to each other besides saying goodbye.

On our second day in Kyoto we visited a number of places. The first stop was Kinkakuji, a breathtaking golden temple surrounded by a beautiful lake and traditional Japanese gardens. Ashley and I were really stunned by just how lovely and regal the temple was and even with a number of people there I felt that there was a certain calm and serenity in the air. We then traveled to Ryoanji, which is very famous for its large rock garden. To tell the truth I didn't find it quite as impressive as I thought I would. For one thing, I thought it would be bigger, and I also think that with so many people around it took away from the meditative atmosphere that should surround such a place. Our next stop was Nijo Castle, a HUGE one story palace built and inhabited by Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the most powerful men in Japan during the Edo Period. This castle was really cool not only because of its size, but also because the wooden floors made a squeaking noise that sounded like a nightingale singing. The floors were built this way on purpose in order to alert residents of intruders during the night. Our final Kyoto destination was Fushimi Inari, and it really was the grand finale! This shrine is specifically known for its massive number of orange torii gates. If you have ever seen the movie Memoirs of a Geisha then you have seen what I am talking about. The part where the little girl runs through all the orange gates was filmed at Fushimi Inari. I had known there were going to be a lot of gates, but "a lot" is an understatement, these gates cover an entire mountain... which we climbed to the top of. The view was unbelievable and we even found a hidden overlook that was even better than the one on the main path. After reaching the top of the mountain we continued on, and I proceeded to get us lost in the middle of the woods. Well, we weren't exactly lost, if we had decided to turn around we would have been able to just go back the way we came, but instead we trecked on and after a little while the torii gates were replaced by trees. I figured that since the path we were following was made of gravel, eventually it would lead us back out to civilization, and I was right... it just led us to civilization about 2 miles down the road from where we started. We came out behind some houses in the middle of nowhere. There was an old man working in his garden and he seemed a little surprised to see two white girls suddenly wonder out from the middle of the forest. Ashley was pretty angry at me for taking us so far off the main path, but I thought it was an adventure and even while she was glaring at me I didn't mind too much, because I knew she would see the humor in it later and be happy that she'd have a good story to tell about getting lost on a mountain in Japan. Seriously, how many people can say that's happened to them? After emerging from the wilderness we walked down the road for a bit and eventually made our way to a train station, it actually worked out nicely because it was one station closer to where we needed to go. Finally, we arrived back at Kyoto station, waited around for a little while, and then took the shinkansen home. (Here is the lyrical rendition of our Kyoto mountain adventure: Leila's Kyoto Adventure you all wish you were as cool as me...).

On Friday we decided to take it easy and visit the onsen (hot spring) that I went to a few months ago. We sat in the spring for about half an hour and were cooling down in the cold water tub when a woman who works at the onsen approached me. She said something in Japanese then motioned at my tattoo and said "no tattoo". I said ok, and motioned towards the door to see if I should leave, she just continued talking. After a minute of this I just got up and went into the changing room. She followed me in and continued talking, which really confused me because I just couldn't understand how there could be that much to say. I tried to tell her that I was leaving, but I just had to get my friend, since Ashley was still in the main onsen area. At this point, a woman who was drying her hair nearby approached me and asked in English if she could help. I said yes and then I think the woman tried to negotiate with the worker because it went something like this: No tattoo - but small tattoo, ok - no tattoo - cover with clothing - no tattoo - small tattoo - cover with bandage - no bandage... AHHHH!!! Eventually, I gestured to Ashley to come out and we just got dressed and ready to leave. When we got to the front lobby though the woman who worked there was waiting for me with a man (I'm guessing the manager). He said something to me in Japanese and then he took both our electronic bracelets that are used to pay and let us go free of charge. It was pretty nice because we had been just about finished anyway, so we actually benefited from being kicked out. After that Ashley called me a felon for the rest of her stay, because clearly I'm a dangerous member of the Yakuza, you should all watch your backs when I'm around! That night we went out for dinner with Jenn and Ivan, then we met up with a bunch of people and took a bus to a really big dance club called Ageha. I was really excited because I'd heard great things about the club, but when we got there I was disappointed to find that the DJ in the main dance area was TERRIBLE! We seriously heard more of his stupid voice than any of the songs, he would not shut up! Ashley and I were not too happy, but then my friend told us to come outside to the dance floor around the pool on the deck. We followed her out and started dancing in the rain. The DJ outside was much much better and after that it was great, very fun and very wet! I normally hate getting wet when I have clothes on, but after a little while I didn't mind any more, however I was a little nervous that I was going to fall in the pool, so I tried to stay as far from the edge as I could. We danced all night and then took the train home in the morning. I slept through most of the day while Ashley meandered around my park for a while and people watched. We spent the last couple of days seeing a few more places around Tokyo and eating good food like sushi and Gyukaku. The day Ashley went home I met up with James and visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art where we walked through an exhibit displaying various pieces of art that were of or related to Paris, France.

I spent my final day off just relaxing and people watching in my park. Going back to work was not fun and I'm really quite glad that I only have one day left before it's the weekend again. Tomorrow we are celebrating Jenn's birthday in Shibuya at a themed restaurant called The Lockup. I'm quite excited because the whole place is supposed to be like a jail and you get seated in a cell where they do stuff like shackle you to the table and give you test tube shots. I think it's also sort of like a haunted house, so the lights flicker and stuff. It should be fun and afterwards we'll probably go out for karaoke or something. I'm going to stay at Jenn's so that I can go from her place straight to play rehearsal the next day which is a lot more convenient than schlepping there from where I live. Well, I think that's just about everything that matters from the last couple of weeks, I'll do my best to update more frequently now that I'm back to a fairly normal schedule.

Birthday fun and anticipation!

2008-04-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

Hello hello, sorry for the delay in posting. I was quite busy toward the end of last week/beginning of this week and subsequently got distracted from my blogging responsibilities. I met up with my parents again last Friday and took them around to a few new places. That night we went to karaoke again, but this time my parents brought some friends who they had met on their tour and it was really fun. On Saturday we went to Yokohama since I had my play rehearsal that evening. Unfortunately, my parents only got to watch my rehearsal for about five minutes because everyone showed up ridiculously late and my parents had to meet a friend, but I'm still glad they got to see at least a little of the show. After I finished with the rehearsal I also met up with my parents and my dad's friend. My dad met this guy in Connecticut. He's a long time listener of my dad's radio show, but he has lived in Japan for ages - 11 years I believe. I can't even imagine living here for that long, just the idea of it seems insane to me. It's not that I don't like Japan, it's just that it's so different, I can't fathom ever really considering it "home". My dad's friend seems to really love it here though. He has a Japanese wife and he actually works for a subsidiary branch of the corporation I work for, except he teaches English to workers at big companies like Nissan. The day after my parents left was my birthday. It fell on a Monday, which is kind of an unfortunate day for a birthday, but I do have Mondays off, so I met up with Jenn for my birthday dinner. Now normally I tend to frown on going to foreign countries and then eating at American/Western restaurants, but since it was my birthday and I missed home I decided to make an exception. We ate at Outback and it was delicious. First and foremost, I wanted the bloomin' onion, which we discovered has been given a name change in Japan, here it is the "typhoon bloom". Whatever, it's still an onion deep fried in fat, so clearly I'm all for it. When we ordered, our waitress, who spoke very good English, informed us that because the onion is very fatty and heavy maybe we should just get the half size. I was a little surprised by the waitress's suggestion. Jenn and I both agreed that in America no waitress would ever say such a thing for two reasons, 1) A half size costs less money, which in turn would decrease the waitress's tip, but in Japan there are no tips so it doesn't matter 2) It is viewed as completely normal for 2 American women to order a gigantic fried onion and eat the entire thing. I hate it when stereotypes turn out to be kind of true. Oh well, it still tasted good despite its heavy fattiness. After dinner we met up with Ivan to watch a movie, but since he had to be somewhere at a certain time the movie times didn't work out. Instead we went to an arcade and got photos taken in these crazy photo booths that are always impossible to figure out (I've been in three of them and I still get completely lost each time I attempt to use them). Eventually we did get the pictures, however, and they turned out very cute. Once I get the scanned bigger versions back from Ivan I'll try to remember to post them here or on webshots.

I know some of you may be disappointed by my lack of birthday excitement, but not to worry. Tomorrow night I'm going to go out with some more people to celebrate my birth Tokyo style aka clubbing or karaoke. I'm sure it will be fun, but what I'm REALLY REALLY REALLY excited about is Monday because that's when Ashley arrives!!!! YAY!!! For those of you who don't know her, Ashley was one of my college roommates and she is my first friend from home to visit me here! She's coming during Golden Week, which is a set of national holidays that all fall within the same week, so I have the entire week off to spend with her. We are going to have so much fun and a bunch of us are going to visit Kyoto on Wednesday which I'm sure will be amazing. I'm sure after Golden Week I will have LOADS to write about so be ready!!

P.S. The photo below is from the Penis Festival in Kawasaki that I wrote about a few weeks ago

The country girl in me is smiling

2008-04-15T06:41:00.001-07:00

After work this past Saturday I took the train to go stay with my friend, James, who lives a few hours away in a little town called Kuroiso. We actually spent the first night clubbing in a city called Utsunomiya, a city which according to all my students is best known for its amazing gyoza (Chinese dumplings). This seems like a strange claim to fame, but in Japan it's fairly common to define areas by the types of food they serve. Really though, gyoza is a pretty simple food, so I can't quite figure out what it is that would make Utsunomiya's particularly special. I didn't end up trying the gyoza, but I did go to a yakiniku restaurant that served some pretty tasty food. Yakiniku is grilled meat and vegetables served on skewers, you can go to restaurants to eat it, but you can also buy it from little stands on the streets in a lot of places. After Yakiniku we went to this fancy shmancy overpriced bar that James's friend had suggested, we stayed for one drink and then left because there was hardly anyone there and it was ridiculously expensive. We ended up at a fun dance club that played good music and had a big crowd. There was an interesting mix of people at this club. Unlike the last one I went to in Tokyo, this one did not have too many westerners. I think the majority of clubbers were Japanese or half Japanese (James called the mixed race Japanese people "Half Breeds" but I didn't think they'd particularly appreciate being referred to as if they were dogs). There were also a number of Brazilians and this random group of Afghani men who seemed to be the VIP's of the club with their own private table and endless drinks. I had originally thought the "leader" of the Afghan Clan was a bouncer because he looked so scary and menacing with his shaved head and sunglasses. James seemed to have some sort of irrational hatred for this man. I danced with a couple of guys and unknowingly started dancing with one of the Afghani men (I didn't find out their ethnicity until later). He bought me a couple of drinks and then a little while later invited James and I to sit at the "VIP" table. While sitting at the table we ended up talking to the man with the shaved head and shades. He was actually quite friendly despite his initial scariness and he bought both James and I a number of drinks. Apparently, all the Afghanis worked in car sales and exportation, which I am thinking must be a fairly lucrative business! The Afghani guy I danced with seemed to really like me, no, not "seemed to"... he did really like me... then he told me he had a wife. The small detail of marriage did not stop him from proclaiming how beautiful and amazing I was and how he wanted us to be good friends. It was a strange situation, but based on the reactions of his friends (which were similar to his) I got the feeling it was not so much him being drunk and creepy, but more of a really big cultural difference, I think these guys really did want me to be their friend.

After spending all night at the club, James and I emerged from the building into full daylight because it was actually about 8 in the morning. I had not actually wanted to stay that long, but when the Afghani man found out that James is Filipino he introduced him to a Filipino girl and then James ended up spending hours talking to her. After finally leaving we took the train back to James's town and slept for a while, then James cooked us some really good spicy food. The majority of Japanese people seem to have an aversion to spiciness, so it was a nice change for my tired little taste buds. After relaxing a bit more we went out to see Sakura (the cherry blossoms) because they were still in full bloom. The cherry blossoms bloom a few weeks later in Kuroiso than they do in Tokyo because Kuroiso is farther north. We walked through the park which was strung up with thousands of beautiful pink and blue lanterns weaving through all the cherry trees. After reaching the end of the park we decided to climb down a maze of spiraling stairs that led to a little lake. Upon reaching the lake we discovered another gorgeous park with a traditional Japanese garden and beautiful ponds and waterfalls. The whole time James has lived in Kuroiso he's complained about how ugly and boring it is, so he was thrilled to find something that made the town seem worthwhile. Since it was already night time when we found the lovely park we decided to return the next day so that we could see it in day light.

The next day we found our way down to the park with our bikes (James had an extra bike for me to ride) and we also decided to explore the river that runs along side the park. After spending months living in a world of brown and gray concrete I had been yearning to be immersed in nature and beauty, pretty parks just weren't cutting it anymore. When we reached the river I was overjoyed to find what I had been looking for; I never dreamed that Kuroiso would be anywhere near as beautiful as it actually was. The river was just gorgeous, it was scattered with grey stones and lined by cliffs and towering forests. The water was immaculately clean and the current was very strong due to the rain we'd had over the past few days. We biked along the river for a while and discovered yet another pretty garden/park and a very lovely camp ground overlooking another small lake. James and I decided that we definitely have to come back and go camping or have a cook out this summer. We headed back to the park with the cherry blossoms and got lots of food from the many vendors selling all types of deliciousness under the trees.

After forcing myself to leave the serenity of Kuroiso I headed back to Tokyo and at the transfer station for the shinkansen (bullet train) a Japanese guy started talking to me... in Japanese. We sat across from each other on the train and did our very best to converse, but with his extremely limited English and my even more limited Japanese it wasn't easy. Still, we managed to get major points across and I think he asked me if I wanted to get a drink with him. I couldn't since I had already paid for the full trip, but it was still pretty nice (if that's what he actually asked). When I got off the train in Itabashi I got a little lost and another guy helped me find the nearest station. Not only did the man walk me about 5 or 6 minutes out of his way to the station, he actually walked me down into the station to make sure I got onto the correct track. The benevolence of Japanese people never ceases to amaze me.

Phallic fun... and my parents (creepiest title ever!)

2008-04-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday was highlighted by two very exciting events: Kanamara Matsuri, more commonly known as the Iron Penis Festival, and the arrival of my parents at Narita Airport. At this point I'm sure you're all very curious about the first event and if you're not, well, you should be because it was the coolest festival I have ever attended! Warning: It's important that you have an open mind and a sense of humor while reading about this (and looking at the pictures) because clearly it's a little... different. The penis festival is held at a penis-venerating shrine in Kawasaki where prostitutes used to go to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. Now people go there not only to pray for protection against std's but also for fertility and the money raised during the festival is used to raise money for HIV research. Every April the local transvestites sponsor this ridiculous festival during which people ride wooden seesaw like penises, carve turnip penises, eat lollipop penises, and parade gigantic penises down the street. There was a huge pink one that was at least 6 feet tall and a very revered black penis that was at least 5 feet tall and extremely heavy because it was made of stone or metal and carried on a giant wooden boat like construction. I went to the festival with Jenn and some other friends and while we were there Jenn and I decided to buy the 6 inch brown sugar lollipops. I have never felt more popular, actually, more like a celebrity, in my life! EVERYONE was taking pictures of us eating our lollipops, there must literally be hundreds if not thousands of photos of us now floating in both real and cyber-world, in all of which Jen and I are posing over these gigantic candy penises! People actually came up to us and asked if they could take a picture WITH us. We also got interviewed by a guy from CBCN (Canadian News), so there is a possibility that I was on a bunch of Canadian televisions waving around a huge brown penis pop. The whole thing was just so funny and amusing and unique that we sort of forgot to be creeped out and instead just let our inhibitions go and had a good time.

After the phallic fun was over I headed to the airport to pick up my parents who were arriving that evening. Clearly I was very happy to see them and they were thrilled to see me. Schlepping to my apartment from the airport was not quite so thrilling, but we stopped in between and ate lots of meat at Gyukaku, so my parents' first Japanese meal was definitely a good one. We spent Monday and Tuesday traveling all over Tokyo to places that I've written about previously in my blog. We went to Ueno to see the cherry blossoms, but unfortunately they were pretty much all gone due to the rain from the night before. We also went to Akiba so that my parents could experience a maid cafe, and it was once again a strange experience. I took them to Harajuku and Shibuya which would have been a little more pleasant if it hadn't been raining the entire time, but they still seemed to enjoy themselves. We finished off the night with karaoke in Shibuya. I'm not going to lie, it was a little weird going to a karaoke room with my parents, but we all had a good time, actually my parents had a great time, they both asked if we could do karaoke again when they return from their tour next week. I am slightly relieved that next week when they return they will both be staying in a hotel, rather than on the floor of my apartment. It was great seeing them, but it was just so cramped and messy with the three of us living in my tiny little room that I was going nuts. I think I've become rather used to living on my own so it was kind of weird having my parents around constantly, but they were so grateful to have me to show them around. They were really happy that I was able to take them to some places that weren't really recommended in the tour books (like Gyukaku, the best ramen shop ever in Shibuya, and sketchy maid cafes on the back streets of Akiba). Next week I plan to take them to Yokohama and to my local supermarket in addition to other places that have not yet been decided. For now I am going to get ready for work and hope that the sore throat/head cold I have developed over the last couple of days goes away, because it is important to be able to speak in my particular profession and currently my voice is sounding a little frog like.

Food, fun, and cherry blossom bliss

2008-04-02T01:48:00.000-07:00

Life lately has been pretty nice. The cherry blossoms are out, it's getting warmer, and I finally feel like I have a bit of a social network. This weekend I went to a birthday party/gathering for a friend of a friend's. We went out to a couple of bars and to a club called Pure, in Shibuya. It was fun, I love dancing to really loud music. There was a rugby player from New Zealand who seemed to fancy me so we danced together for a good portion of the time and I just had a really good time. I also witnessed professional pole dancers for the first time, they were amazing! I never knew it took so much talent to pole dance, those girls are freakin' strong! Anyway, we stayed out all night and I finally crawled into bed around 6:30 am on Sunday just to crawl back out two hours later to get to play rehearsal in Yokohama at 11 am (a little under a 2 hour commute). By the time I returned from Yokohama I was pretty much dead so I slept for a very long time. On Monday my coworker had a Nigerian food party (he's originally from Nigeria) and it was quite splendid. He said that since his food selection was somewhat limited the dishes were more fusion than true Nigerian since he had to improvise a bit, but it still tasted great, very spicy!

Yesterday I didn't have to be at work until 6 pm so I decided to visit Ueno Park. The park is known for its spectacular cherry blossoms so I definitely wanted to check it out. I thought that since I was visiting on a Tuesday there might not be too many people but I was very wrong, apparently there are a lot of people in Japan who don't work during the day! Japanese people love to have cherry blossom viewing parties called Hanami and there were lots of them going on. Basically Hanami consist of a tarp on the ground under the trees, food, and lots of alcohol. I've also heard that some people bring mini-karaoke machines to these parties, but I didn't see any. In the park there was one path that was lined with hundreds of trees and that's where the majority of people had set up their tarps, which were blocked off by ropes. Other people just grabbed pieces of cardboard and set up makeshift parties wherever they could find space. I didn't join any parties, but I did take about five million pictures of the blossoms and people partying beneath them. I also went to Ueno Zoo which is within the park because it was said to be a very good zoo. I didn't really find it to be that spectacular, but I like animals so it was nice for a little while and there was a beautiful pond surrounded by cherry trees and willows so I took lots of pictures and walked around it. On my way out of the park as I walked back along the blossom covered path a Japanese man asked me in English if I wanted to have my picture taken. I said sure and chatted with him for a bit after he took the picture (actually, he didn't really take one, but I didn't bother to tell him since I already had enough). He told me he'd been to the U.S. five times and had visited San Francisco, Cape Cod, Wisconsin, and some other places that I can't remember. When I told him I was from Connecticut he said, "Oh, do you know Hartford? I've been there." WHAT??!! I was so shocked, because honestly, out of the entire country he had visited a city twenty minutes from where I grew up! He told me he had a friend who lived there so he went to visit him. Crazy crazy crazy! Living so far from home makes me forget sometimes what a small world this really is. Well, home will seem much closer this weekend because my parents are coming to visit and I'm so excited! Now I just need to clean... ehh, it'll happen... eventually.

Adventures in Akiba, Horror in Harajuku, Heaven on Earth

2008-03-25T06:25:00.001-07:00

Hello hello! Well to start off with I should probably share that I'm currently slightly buzzed off a bottle of sake that a random couple bought for me at my sushi restaurant. It is crazy how strong that stuff is, the bottle is smaller than a can of beer yet I am feeling loopy! I stole the bottle because I think it's pretty and would make a nice vase. Anyway, I have been meaning to post in my blog for the last few days because I visited a couple of cool places this past week.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had this past Thursday off because the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring) is celebrated as a national holiday in Japan... a holiday which the Japanese celebrate by going to parks and getting drunk. Unfortunately for them, it was sort of a crappy day, definitely not a good drunken park day. Jenn, her friend who was visiting, and I still decided to take advantage of our time off by going to the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku. To be honest I'm not really a big museum person, but this one was pretty cool, they had full size models of houses from the Edo period and some cool life size dioramas. After we finished at the museum we decided to go to Akihabara a.k.a Akiba a.k.a Electric Town. The Japanese kids usually call it Akiba, so I'll stick with that. Akiba is basically the video game/manga/anime Mecca for all the weird Japanese guys who are completely obsessed with that stuff (they are known as Otaku). Upon entering Akiba we set out to find three things: 1) A maid cafe 2) Creepy vending machines that sold stuff like used underwear 3) Crepes. The first two were specifically related to Akiba, as Metropolis magazine explains "Tokyo's Electric Town is a place where dreams and fantasy become reality," now I'm not exactly sure if I would consider skanky maids and used underwear my "fantasy" but they did seem awfully amusing! For those of you who are wondering what a maid cafe is, well, it's pretty much what it sounds like. You go to a cafe and the waitresses are dressed in slutty pastel colored maid costumes. The maids are extremely accommodating, and will sometimes go as far as to mix people's drinks for them at the table and even spoon feed customers if asked! After a little bit of a search we arrived at a shop that was chock full of toy dispensers, the kind you would see in front of a grocery store selling balls and stickers for kids. These machines, however, were not selling stickers, instead they were filled with plastic figurines of female manga and anime characters. The store looked sketchy enough that we thought there was a possibility that they might sell used underwear in the back. We headed toward the rear of the store and the farther we went, the more risqué the figurines became. We did not find any underwear but we did find big chested naked figurines and weird model butts that were just 2 inch segments of the human body (from the waist to mid thigh) that displayed various types of sexy plastic lingerie. In addition to the crazy pornographic toys in the back we also discovered an elevator. We looked at the floor listings and discovered that there was a maid cafe on the top floor. We decided to check it out, but when we got up we were disappointed to find maids dressed in floor length black dresses in what appeared to be a very dainty and proper little cafe. That was far too normal and unexciting for us, so we left and decided to look for a more interesting maid cafe. After a short search we found what we were looking for, an entire building devoted to maid cafes! There was a different cafe on each floor, so of course we had to check all of them. The first one looked a little boring, so we headed up, when we reached the top we found the quintessential maid cafe but it was just too weird! It looked like a lounge with modern white leather furniture, it was very brightly lit, and besides the maids it was all young guys. Jenn and I felt like that was a little TOO sketchy, so we tried one that was sort of in between, but they wouldn't let us in. We settled on Royal Milk, the first one that we originally thought looked boring, upon a second look we saw a sluttier looking maid so we were satisfied. It was fun and our maid seemed excited to have Americans at her table. At one point she randomly drew a picture of a popular Japanese cartoon character for us on the back of a napkin and explained that his name was Doseisan (Mr. Dosei) and that he lived on Saturn. I kept the napkin as a souvenir. As we headed back to the station we were content to have found 1.5 of the things we were looking for (we figured plastic butts came close to used underwear) and as we talked we came upon a crepe cart! Crepes are quite popular in Japan and you can get them stuffed with basically anything, I like chocolate and whipped cream personally, but at some places you can even got lox and cream cheese crepes! They don't call it lox though... Anyway, it was truly a perfect end to the day.

A few days later after my play rehearsal I met up with Jenn and our friend Ivan for a picnic at Yoyogi Park in Harajuku. It was so cool because on Sundays there are all sorts of performers and people dressed in crazy costumes. My favorite is the Tokyo Rockabilly Club that congregates in the front of the park and dances to music from the fifties. All the guys wear black leather jackets and black leather pants or tight jeans, they have huge CRAZY hairdo's, and tons of tattoos. The women wear poodle skirts or fifties style dresses and cute little cardigans. There was also a group of people holding signs that said "free hugs" so I went and got a free hug, actually, I got two. Jenn took pictures, so I'll post them on my webshots once I get them from her. This was Ivan's first time in Harajuku so we took him down the main, trendy street, Takeshita Dori, that's very popular with the Japanese youth. I have never in my life been on a more crowded street. Getting down the street was okay, but coming back up to get to the train station was insane. We got to a point where we literally couldn't move... at all. We were just stuck in the middle of a sea of thousands of people who seemed to not know how to move and that cliché "I felt like I was in a can of sardines" never seemed more true. Sometimes people would try to push through and then you would hear screams and everyone would just go toppling into each other, I was literally holding up the girl in front of me. She was so short I was afraid she might fall down and get crushed by a stampede of people if we actually started moving. We managed to escape into a weird photo booth shop and when we emerged a few minutes later the crowd had thinned out a tiny bit and we managed to squeeze our way through to the station. Needless to say, I will not be going back to Takeshita Dori on a Sunday any time soon, being trapped in the crowd was fairly unpleasant.

One more thing before I go, the CHERRY BLOSSOMS ARE OUT!!!!!!!! I saw the first blossoms today and I got so excited! I'm planning a cherry blossom viewing party for my school, but unfortunately the only available date that we can do it is after they bloom, so I'm hoping they won't all be gone by the time we have the party. They are only in bloom for about 10 days, so I'm going to try to visit as many parks and take as many pictures as I can during this time. They truly are so beautiful, if I had my own personal heaven it would be filled with streams and waterfalls and cherry blossoms that were always in bloom.

Awesome Asakusa!

2008-03-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

So for the past couple of weeks I had been meaning to visit Asakusa, the site of Senso-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple (side note, in Japan temples = Buddhism, shrines = Shinto). I had been putting it off mainly due to laziness and stinginess. I really hate spending money, but I am willing to let some of it go for stuff that's worth seeing or doing, and Senso-ji is one of the most flocked to places by tourists, so I figured it must be good. On Tuesday I finally dragged myself out there because I really did want to see what all the fuss was about. I am SOOO GLAD I waited!! I'm not sure exactly why this happened, but about a half an hour after I arrived I heard drums and gongs sounding from the front of the temple. I wandered over and discovered a parade of children dressed in robes and headbands carrying sticks with bells on them, behind the children were about 15 men carrying a giant golden dragon on poles, and behind them was a cart with about 5 geisha playing instruments like wooden flutes and shamisen (a stringed instrument). Everyone made a giant circle around the performers. First one of the geisha sang a traditional song and played her flute, then the dragon men made the dragon dance. I got some of this on video, but since I had no idea this was going to happen I hadn't left a lot of room on my memory card and ran out of space kind of quickly. The temple itself was also amazing. It was freakin' HUGE and it had a massive lantern that hung in the front entry way. Some of you may have seen pictures of this giant red lantern because it's "one of Tokyo's most distinctive sights" as my guidebook, Time Out: Tokyo, explains. After I looked around Senso-ji and watched the demonstration I walked down the main street in front of the temple. This was by far the most touristy place I've been to so far since coming to Tokyo. It had all the tacky souvenir shops that sold stuff like cheap unauthentic kimonos and those paper sun umbrellas that kids love (I know I loved the one someone brought back for me when I was 8 or so, I think I still have it somewhere!).

Tomorrow I have the day off because in Japan the vernal equinox is a national holiday. Yay Spring!!! I spoke to Jenn on the phone because we plan to do something together then and it turned out that she was actually in Asakusa at Senso-ji at the exact same time I was. We both watched the show and went up and touched the dragon afterwards (all the Japanese people were touching the dragon, so I guess it must have been for luck or something), but we must have been standing on opposite sides because we never saw each other once! I'm glad she was there though because it was a really cool performance and prior to discovering she'd attended I'd felt kind of badly that the rest of my friends had missed it.

Okay, enjoy the videos and check out my webshots http://community.webshots.com/album/562001252ChqhIm?start=120 because I added a BUNCH of new photos from Asakusa and Tokyo Daibutsu (Big Buddha from last post). Enjoy!

Lovely days with James Brown and Buddha

2008-03-11T09:33:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been really good. On Saturday night I stayed with Jenn and we met up at her favorite place, K's American Cafe, a restaurant that is about as American as I am Japanese. This was my third time going to K's because Jenn loves it and has formed a friendship with K, the owner of the restaurant. While we were eating, some guys and a woman all came in together carrying instruments. They didn't talk to us at first, but right as Jenn and I were getting ready to leave they came and sat down next to us. They attempted to speak to us in their very limited English and we tried talking back to them in English and our even more limited Japanese. It turned out that these guys were in a James Brown tribute band and one of them actually did look slightly James Brown-ish. Despite the fact that "James Brown" was clearly from Japan, ethnically he was either not Japanese or only half Japanese, because he had rather dark skin and an afro. These guys, especially James Brown, were freakin' hysterical. They didn't exactly mean to be, but the things they said and did were priceless. The fun began when we introduced ourselves. Jenn told them her name and then I told them mine, when they heard my name one of them said "Like Eric Clapton!" and he and another one of the men simultaneously burst into song: "Raaaay- raaa, got me on my knees Ray-raaaa!!!". It was like something out of a stereotype filled sitcom. Somehow Jenn and I managed to keep semi-straight faces through the song and then steered the conversation away from my name. Later as we were watching a music video by George Michael, James Brown turned to me and said "You love the gay?", then after Jenn had explained the term "man eater" another member of the group proclaimed "I'm woman eater!" we told him he probably shouldn't say that any more. Somehow up until that point Jenn and I had managed to contain our inner laughter, but then James Brown (and maybe a few too many drinks) pushed us over the edge when he asked, "Do you like poo?" and then repeatedly started screaming "POOOO! POOOO!". I almost died... from laughter. Looking back I know it's not really THAT funny, but at the time I just didn't care because laughing that much felt good and I hadn't done it in a long long time. Jenn joined in and then we just couldn't stop, we laughed until there were tears streaming down our eyes, while James Brown said "Pooh, yellow bear, pooh". He also explained that he was screaming POOO because he thought that's what Michael Jackson was saying when he made that high pitched "Owww!" sound. Basically, James Brown and his posse made my entire weekend complete before it had even started. We also are going to go see them perform in April, so I'm very excited about that.

On Saturday I had my second rehearsal. I met two more members of the cast and they both seem very nice. One of them was the guy who is playing the lead role, which is actually two roles because the play revolves around a set of identical twins and he plays both of them. He works at some sort of private drama school and teaches mainly Japanese kids how to act, so I thought that was really cool. After rehearsal I met up with Jenn again and we went to Ebisu for lunch because when I was there the other day I found a tex-mex restaurant called Zest that we both wanted to try out. I'm all for trying new Japanese foods, and I do the majority of the time, but sometimes it's nice to eat something familiar and homey (or as homey as Mexican food gets). On Monday I pretty much lazed around, but I felt that I had been productive enough on Sunday that it was okay.

Today I had been thinking of going to Asakusa to visit the famous temple, Senso-ji, and see the massive lantern that hangs in the front gate. I decided, however, that it would be better to wait until the weekend so that I can take my time and explore the area. Instead I decided to do some local exploring and I'm so incredibly glad that I did! One of my students had told me that I live extremely close (about 5 minutes by bike) from one of the largest Buddha's in Japan so I thought that since it was so nice out I would try and find it. I looked up the name and address online and then set off in the general direction without knowing exactly where I was going but knowing I had plenty of time to figure it out. I asked about 5 different people for directions and eventually made my way to the Tokyo Daibutsu (Big Buddha). I was truly stunned by how beautiful the place was, there was a big gorgeous temple, a Japanese garden with a pond full of giant koi, tons of statues, and of course the giant black Buddha. I seriously feel so lucky to have found this place because it's relatively unknown, even by Japanese people who live in other areas of Tokyo, and it's practically in my back yard, or it would be if I had one. On my quest to find Daibutsu I also found two lovely parks/gardens, one with a quiet bamboo grove that you can walk through and another that I will visit later in the spring or summer because there were signs marking hundreds of different flowers that are planted there, they just haven't bloomed yet. I also explored a park right down the street from me that has a little forest on the side of it. Lately I've really been missing the woods and lakes of Connecticut, so all this exposure to beauty and nature definitely helped to lift my spirits. Hopefully the weather will continue to stay warm and I'll continue to find new and interesting things to keep me happy.

One more thing...

2008-03-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

I entered my bunny, Dommie, and kitten, Doobie, into a cute pet contest that can win me about $200. So if you could click the link and vote for me I'd really appreciate it. You have to sign up to vote, but it literally takes about 1 minute or less to sign up. Plus, if you join any contests I'll totally vote for you! Thanks!

http://www.competico.com/photo/kitten-and-bunny-bff-s

Perfect Timing - A mid blog SURPRISE!!!

2008-03-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

My working week begins on Tuesday and while I do have classes that day, they do not actually begin until 6:15 pm. As long as I log in to work by 1 pm I don't actually have to be at the school until just a few minutes before my lesson begins, so I decided that I should start taking advantage of all that free time during the day. Until recently during my Tuesday time off I had just logged into work a little before 1, maybe run a couple of errands, and then just hung out for a while back at my apartment. This week I decided that since I actually have quite a bit of time, all day really, it would be good to go somewhere new. I took the train to a section of Tokyo called Ebisu. I had never been there before, but I'd passed through it a countless number of times because it is just one stop after Shibuya and is on the way to Oimachi (where Jenn lives) and Yokohama (where the play rehearsals are held). I decided to visit Ebisu because my dad sent me some information about a second hand English bookstore that is in that district. I ran out of reading material a few weeks ago so I had been meaning to pick up some new books. It's not so easy, however, to find books printed in English around Takashimadaira so this was a good excuse to go somewhere new. I looked up where the store was located and tried to print out the map, but the printer wasn't working. I meant to just write down the directions but then I got distracted and forgot to write them down so when I arrived at Ebisu I wasn't exactly sure where the store was, even though I kind of remembered the map and knew it wasn't far from the station. I wandered around for a few minutes looking for it and then asked a taxi driver if he knew where it was. I figured if anyone was going to know where things were it would be a taxi driver. The name of the store is Good Day Books so I said "Good Day Books wa doko desuka?" - "Where is Good Day Books?" At first he seemed confused, probably because of my terrible pronunciation, but then he double checked my question and attempted to speak to me in English (I've found that a lot of the time if you try and speak in Japanese to someone they will try and speak in English back), anyway he was very nice and helpful and he even told me to wait while he went into a convenience store and asked for directions... unfortunately he pointed me completely in the wrong direction. I wandered around and around in circles asking every police officer I saw for directions to no avail, no Japanese person knew about it because it was an ENGLISH bookstore, why on earth would they go there? I was getting ready to give up when I passed an International preschool, in Japan if the word "international" is used it means they speak English. I stopped and stood in front of it, but I thought that because it was a preschool, and probably a snooty upper class preschool for children of ambassadors and the like, they probably wouldn't be thrilled about having a stranger walk in to ask for directions, but as I started walking away I saw a guy come to the entryway and look out the window. I think they may have seen me standing there looking bewildered. I waved at him and he came outside to see what I wanted. When I told him I was looking for the bookstore he went inside and checked to see if any of the other staff knew where it was, then he invited me inside and drew me a detailed map and gave me verbal instructions on how to get there. As I suspected I had actually walked right past the stupid store while I was looking for it, it was on the 3rd floor so the sign was kind of small. I was so relieved to get there and was quite impressed with the selection, but when they went to look for one of the books I requested they couldn't find it so I bought a different one. When I got back to my apartment that night I received an email from the store letting me know that they found the book after all and were putting it on hold for me. On Wednesday normally I have a student who comes at 3 pm, but he cancelled this week and I didn't have any more lessons until 8:30, so I decided to make the journey to Ebisu once again. I bought my book, wandered around a bit, and went to a really good Indian food restaurant for lunch.

After I had my fill of Ebisu I got back on the train and got off a few stops down at Harajuku to do some shoe shopping... I'M INTERRUPTING THIS BLOG TO SAY THAT I THINK I JUST EXPERIENCED MY FIRST JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE!!! I can't be sure because sometimes the trucks on the highway overpass make my apartment shake, but I'm pretty sure that it was an actual quake because the whole room shook and I could hear the stuff of on my shelves and walls kind of rumbling. It wasn't really that scary, but my heart did a little dance for a second, more due to surprise than fear I think. So there you go, just a little spontaneous excitement to shake things up!!.... anyway, SHOES! I know, I know, not nearly as exciting as an earthquake, but let me tell you, finding shoes in Japan is an adventure of its own! My feet are just about a half size too big for the largest size in most places. I only take between an 8 to a 9 so my feet aren't really that large by American standards, but apparently in Japan I'm Miss Bigfoot. Luckily in addition to looking for a new pair of heels which I eventually found, I also wanted a new pair of converse and they are normally sold in men's sizes so that didn't cause too much of a problem.

Last night I went out with the guy that I called over the weekend. We didn't have too much time because we met after I finished work and then my train was delayed so I didn't get to the station where we were meeting until around 10 pm. We went and got a drink though, of all places we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. We just went there because it was convenient (it was located inside the train station), but I still remain convinced that if you are traveling somewhere outside Canada or the U.S. it's pretty much a sin to eat at Hard Rock Cafe because there are about a thousand more culturally significant places to eat at. We weren't eating though, so that also made it a little less blasphemous in the eyes of the travel gods. Despite our lack of time and sickeningly touristy restaurant choice I did have a good time and I hope to see more of the guy. I'll keep you posted if things progress with the two of us.

It's funny, I always start my blogs thinking I don't have much to say and then the words just pour out of me. This was a pretty good week, hopefully things will stay good and the words will just continue to flow.

Living it up

2008-03-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

This is one of the first times since coming to Japan that I've managed to have a fun weekend without depriving myself of sleep in the process. On Sunday I had my first play rehearsal in Yokohama. I met with my director and the woman playing the role of Madam Desmortes, because she is the character who I share the most scenes with. We read through our lines a few times and discussed our characters. I'm not going to lie, getting to Yokohama was a bit of a schlep and climbing up the gigantic hill to get to the country club where we met for rehearsal was no picnic, but it felt so good to be part of something that I love that the distance really didn't matter in the end. I really like my director, she's funny and creative and she cares about the actors. She said that she thinks it's important for the actors to be happy since we are the most important element of the show. Believe me, not all directors think that way, many believe that THEY are the most important element of the show. I am truly looking forward to working with her and really getting to work on the play.

After rehearsal I met up with Jenn at Yokohama Station and we strolled around a bit and found somewhere to get lunch. We ended up going to a Chinese restaurant. This was the first Chinese food that I've eaten in Japan and it was quite good. It's funny, before coming to Japan I never really noticed how extremely different Japanese food is from Chinese food. I was aware that there were differences and I knew that sushi was Japanese, but yesterday I walked into the restaurant and I could immediately smell the difference, let alone see and taste it! I'm sad to say though that while Chinese food restaurants are different from Japanese ones, they are also different from American ones... no fortune cookies at the end! I suppose it doesn't really matter anyway since the fortune would be written in Japanese.

After lunch we went to this enormous store named Tokyu Hands. The place seriously has everything you could ever need in life plus about 5 million random things that you would never need like natto (fermented soybeans) scented soap and 1 inch replicas of Redi Whip Cans. Jenn and I could seriously spend hours in that place, it took a lot of will power to force ourselves to leave. Every time we said we were ready to go something else would catch our attention and we'd spend another 10 minutes testing our favorite high lighter markers or searching for Hello Kitty vibrators (they had them at a different location we visited previously, Jenn wanted to send one as a gag gift for her friend). Eventually we managed to escape the clutches of that crazy store and I headed back to Takashimadaira for the night. I went out for gyu-kaku (the amazing cook your own meat place) with some friends. That's seriously my all time favorite place to eat in Japan. Sushi and ramen, yeah they're nice, but gyu-kaku rules over all! Plus my friend Ivan always talks about how gyu-kaku literally makes us high because of all the carbon monoxide from the smoke in the air. I know that sounds kind of unlikely, but honestly I think he's right, by the time we leave I always feel very happy and sleepy... more so than when I eat at any other restaurants.

Today was also a pleasant day. I slept in and then took the train into Jimbocho, the bookstore district. I actually wasn't looking for books, I was looking for air mattresses, and I found them! In addition to being the book district, apparently Jimbocho is also the sports/outdoor activity store district, there were tons of them! The annoying part was that all any of the sports stores sold was snowboarding stuff... not so helpful. Luckily I had done my research so I knew which store had camping supplies. On my way back to the station I passed tons and tons of book stores, they clearly weren't kidding about this being the book district, but I also passed something that I did not expect to see, I passed a bagel shop! This was probably the highlight of my day, I was seriously so excited. When I went in to buy some it was a little odd because each bagel was individually wrapped in plastic and I had to pick each one out and put it in a basket then ring them all up. Still, they were fresh and had I not just finished dinner I would have eaten one right then and there, I managed to resist the urge until I got home.

The grand finale of my weekend happened at home in my apartment. For the past week I have been working up the guts to call this guy who I went out with once, a while ago. I enjoyed our date but we just sort of lost touch after that, that is until he randomly called me at 10:45 pm a week or two ago. That ended strangely and I hadn't heard from him since then so I decided to take a chance and give him a call. I'm not exactly sure why I felt so nervous but it seriously was like something out of a corny TV show where they keep playing suspenseful music as the girl paces back and forth in front of the telephone. Well, there was no actual pacing involved here, but it did take me a good minute or two before I managed to press the send button on my cell phone. I was quite relieved to get his voice mail, on which I left an awkward, babbly (yeah, I know that's not a real word) message that vaguely conveyed the thoughts that had sounded so much better in my head. Apparently they were good enough for him though because he called me back a few minutes later and we're going to try and meet up sometime this week. I'm really glad, if anything I need a friend, it doesn't even have to go beyond that (though I wouldn't complain if it did). Living by myself is not terrible, but it is rather lonely and I find myself craving social interaction outside of the classroom, some days that barely happens. It's hard, there are times when I don't feel like dealing with the bikes and the trains and the constant language barriers, but I don't want to my waste my time here so I am trying my hardest to get out and see things and meet people and live the life that I know some people would die for.

I think I'll wake up soon

2008-02-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I know I've kind of been slacking lately with my blogging duties, sorry about that. I have just been feeling a little tired these last few days. It's not because I've been working particularly hard either, if anything it's the opposite... I think the boredom caused some slight exhaustion. On Tuesday EVERY SINGLE STUDENT canceled their lesson. That's sort of like being a normal school teacher, getting to class, and discovering every child is absent. It was crazy and it actually would have happened again the next day if I hadn't happened to have a student coming in for a private lesson. I can't help but feel a little freaked out about the fact that this happened. Even though I keep telling myself it's just a weird coincidence, in the back of my head I keep wondering if maybe it's because of me. I figure though that if my students did have a problem with my teaching they would have complained to someone by now since they're paying big bucks for me to teach them. Today was better, I taught five lessons and tomorrow is my busiest day of the week with six lessons if everyone shows up.

Really I'm really just excited to get to the weekend. This Sunday is my first play rehearsal and then I'm meeting up with Jenn in Yokohama for lunch. I'm so happy to be getting started with the play so soon. I really need to meet some new people and get involved in some activities. The other day I called up the JCC of Japan (Jewish Community Center) to see what their schedule was like. Unfortunately they are in the process of moving to a new location in Tokyo so their activity schedule is fairly light, but now I think I'll have somewhere to go for Passover, so that's good at least. I'm also considering getting in touch with someone to do a language exchange(there are lots of websites with people looking for exchange partners). My mom suggested it and I think it might be a good idea, but I'm also kind of freaked out about it since my Japanese level is so incredibly low. I just feel that before I begin exchanging language I should at least know the basics of the language that I want to learn and build up my vocabulary a bit. Maybe I can handle it though. The other day I went to a restaurant I hadn't visited before that's down the street from my school and I successfully managed to communicate with the owner when he asked me (in Japanese) where I was from and how long I'd been here for. It just takes me a while to figure out what I'm being asked and then a little more time to form an answer. He didn't seem to mind though and he gave me some free food so I was quite content. I also have a couple of boys in one of my children's lessons and despite my efforts to get them to stop, they always speak in Japanese to one another. The cool part is that I'm starting to be able to make out a few bits and pieces of what they say or ask me in Japanese. I still have an incredibly long way to go before I'm even semi-competent enough to converse normally in Japanese, but little events like those give me hope and an extra push to keep me motivated.

Some of our differences

2008-02-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months I have noticed that the Japanese and Americans each have a very different approach to the concept of small talk. Because small talk is an integral part of English conversation I always start off all of my adult lessons by asking how my students are doing and if anything new or interesting happened over the past week. In American society if an acquaintance says "Hello, how are you?" the normal response is "fine, thanks" and then there is the quick swap of each person's current good news and that's about it. In Japan when you ask "how are you?" it is taken far more literally, so often times you will receive a much more honest and in depth response than what you may have expected. I have one student in particular who informs me every week of the fact that her shoulders are aching. Sometimes her neck is sore too and once she actually drew a picture of a spinal chord in order to express that her back was aching as well that day. Needless to say, I was not particularly surprised when she came into class a few weeks ago and informed us that she is going to need surgery.

Another one of my students always tells me the most delightfully random stories (those of you who know me are probably thinking right about now, hmmm... sounds familiar). One time when she was in class I asked if anything interesting had happened, so she sat and thought for a minute, because it always takes her a minute or two to organize her thoughts, and then she cheerily explained to me how her chopstick had broken in half while she was eating lunch that day. Another time she told me how she lost her "pretty bag" on the train and then miraculously had it returned to her because they actually stopped the train to look for it (at least that's what I understood based on what she told me).

Today, however, I had a different student and her interesting news was not quite so delightful. Because her English is obviously not perfect the story started off a little strangely and I thought she was just going to tell me about something she did with her friend. It turned out that she was actually telling me about how they had buried her friend's bones earlier this week. I was a little shocked because she told me about it so casually, almost as if it were an everyday thing. She explained how after the funeral the family waits 46 days for the spirits to decide where the person should go and then they bury the person's bones so that the person can be released into "the Buddha World". This was obviously a somewhat odd description of the Japanese burial process since my student didn't have all of the necessary vocabulary to explain it, but I still felt like she got the main idea across. Later on I told my co-worker about how nonchalantly my student had described the burial of her friend and he told me this was a fairly common thing. Apparently in addition to small talk, the concept of death is also viewed somewhat differently in Japan. I think that learning about these social and cultural differences and having the chance to actually experience them is one of the reasons that traveling abroad is so important. It forces you to become open minded and see from a perspective that you may have never even known existed.

What's White Day???

2008-02-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

This past Thursday, as I'm sure all of you are aware, was Valentines Day. I'm not really the type who has any strong opinions about this holiday. Some people freak out and get all love sick, some people get all depressed because they have no one to get love sick about, I just don't care... it's a day. It was a slightly more amusing day, however, in Japan. I'm continuously amazed by Japan's ability to transform something relatively plain and simple into something utterly different and complex. Valentines day of course was no exception and on this occasion the Japanese have actually managed to mangle two holidays out of one! The first day is February 14, what we Americans call Valentines Day, and on this day ONLY women give chocolate to the men. Women will give chocolate to the guys they are married to, dating, or crushing on, but there is also the "obligatory chocolate" that Japanese women must give to all their male co-workers. Since the Japanese version of Valentines Day kind of sucks for the women, a while back a couple of chocolate companies literally invented a new holiday called White Day. This holiday is celebrated some time in March, possibly March 14, and on this day all the men have to give chocolate back to the women who gave them some on Valentines Day. Yeah, I wasn't joking when I said it was complex, and the craziest part of all is that no one goes out on dates on Valentines Day OR White Day, they do that on Christmas! I did luck out a little bit because a few of my students still brought me some chocolate, my male co-worker even said to me, "Why did they bring YOU chocolate? You're a GIRL!". Never the less, I was a dutiful Japanese worker and I bought him some obligatory chocolate, so now he has to buy me some next month (and I've heard they double the chocolate prices on White Day!).

I GOT A PART!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-02-13T06:20:00.000-08:00

I found out yesterday that I was cast in the play that I auditioned for! YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!! I'm totally psyched even though rehearsals don't actually start until April. I got the part that I auditioned with, it's not a lead role, but it has a pretty good number of lines, 50 or so I think. The name of the play is Ring Round the Moon and I play a character named Capulat. From what I can tell after an extensive google search of both the play and my character's name, I play a middle aged spinster who attends to Madam Desmormotes, an old woman in a wheel chair. Based on what I've read in the reviews, Madam D and I tend to have some rather comedic dialogue, so that's sort of fun. Here are a couple of excerpts from reviews that mention my character:

"McCarthy, as the play's resident Lady Bracknell archetype, and Varma, as her foil - the simpering, starry-eyed Capulat - make a great pairing as well. McCarthy has a delivery that is spot-on in every regard and, even when confined to a wheelchair she has an imposing presence on stage that serves to eclipse the bemused Capulat (right up to the point near the end where Varma let's Capulat's sense of whimsy light up the whole stage)."
- M/C Reviews

"There are also some priceless interchanges between Madame Desmermortes and Capulat at the top of the second act (as when the romantic spinster's reminiscence of being twenty and claim to a still beating heart is greeted with a dismissive "You're a nice girl, Capulat, but -- you know-- this as well as I do -- you're plain and no one who is plain can ever have been twenty.")"
- A Curtain Up, Berkshires Review

The play is being put on by the Yokohama Theater Group. Yokohama, by the way, is not in Tokyo, it's actually a city next to Tokyo so I'll have to make a bit of a commute for rehearsals. Right now it doesn't matter though, I'm just so excited to have something interesting to get involved with, and to have the chance to meet new people while doing something I love. Teaching is okay, but I definitely don't love doing it because to be honest it's kind of monotonous. Acting I love and I haven't done it in a long time so that just adds to the excitement. Well, time for bed since I have to teach 7 lessons tomorrow (OY!) but only 2 days left after that! Yay for optimism! Oh, and one more fun fact, there's a Jew in the play! A Jewish character that is, his name is Messerschmann and he's a millionare. Yay Jews!!!!!

Beautiful onsen website

2008-02-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

Here is the website for the onsen I wrote about in my last post http://www.sayanoyudokoro.co.jp/index.html . I was so excited about getting through the scary stuff, that I forgot to mention just how beautiful it really was. There were amazing rock gardens and stone tubs and a very traditional restaurant, so you should definitely take a look at the site. It's all in Japanese but if you click the 3rd word in on the horizontal menu then it will take you to an interactive map that shows you pictures of the different parts of the onsen. There's also a flash intro when you first enter the website and you should watch it because it shows some really nice (and big) photos of the onsen. Enjoy!

My onsen experience

2008-02-10T07:44:00.000-08:00

Today I went to my first onsen. For those of you who missed my last post or just have really bad memories, an onsen is a Japanese hot spring. When I invisioned the onsen prior to actually visiting it, I imagined that there would not be that many people there, like maybe 8 or 9 women quietly relaxing in the water or discreetly washing themselves off in a corner somewhere.... I was mistaken. There were at least 40 or 50 other women and unless they were just arriving or about to leave, they were all naked. Jenn and I were a little freaked out at first since neither of us had ever in our lives been exposed to quite so much nudity. After nervously stripping down and wrapping towels around ourselves, we entered the bathing area and realized that holding the towels around ourselves seemed about as awkward as being naked since pretty much all the other women were completely out in the open. Most of these women did not seem to care at all about covering anything up, the majority just walked around without any towels, a few would hold little towels in front of their nether regions when walking outside of the tubs, but that was about it. We gradually let our towels fall a little lower and made our way over to some empty bathing stools. It is absolutely essential that before entering the actual springs you wash yourself off because the Japanese are kind of anal about cleanliness. They don't just sit down, quickly rinse off and then hop in, these women scrub. I swear some of them must have sat there scrubbing with soap and shampoo for a good 2o minutes. Jenn and I didn't put quite so much effort in since we had both just showered earlier in the day, but we did the required rinsing and then decided to head to the outdoor springs. Once we were in the water things felt a bit less awkward. There were still some curious stares from women and children alike, but that was to be expected, especially since Jenn and I were the only female gaijin (foreigners) at the onsen. I should probably mention that children of both genders are allowed on both the male and female sides of the onsen, so there were little boys sitting in the tubs with their mothers and, according to my friend Ivan, little girls sitting in the tubs with their fathers. All of us were particularly shocked by the latter section of the previous statement and agreed that while it might be considered acceptable in America for mothers to bring their sons into a public bath, it would never in a million years be considered okay to have little girls sitting in the water with their fathers and a bunch of other naked men. In Japan it's just not an issue and is viewed as a completely normal practice, so that was kind of interesting. After a few minutes the initial shock of our complete exposure started to wear off and Jenn and I started to feel more comfortable relaxing in the extremely warm water. I'm really glad that I did not go to the onsen with just the guys because I think I would have had a much harder time adjusting to my surroundings. Apparently going to onsen is a somewhat social activity and while some women seemed to be on their own, the majority had friends or relatives with them to keep them company. Jenn and I not only provided each other with company and conversation, but we also provided one another with words of encouragement to get through the embarrassing parts. Overall my experience at the onsen was a really good one and I'm very glad I did it. Jenn and I both agreed that if anything, visiting an onsen could actually improve a person's body image because there are literally women of all ages, shapes, and sizes who use the springs and none of them seem to take any shame in showing off their bodies. It's sort of nice to know that the majority of women don't have perfect bodies like we see in the magazines and in turn that makes me feel better about my own body because I feel more normal. I think that I'd like to go back to an onsen at somepoint and the fact that I can honestly say that makes me kind of happy.

Shopping cart catharsis

2008-02-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

So not too much excitement this week. I'm still getting used to my bike and I'm trying really hard not to run anyone over, because I've heard that's considered a bad thing. I've decided to try and save a little money by cooking more of my own food and now with the basket on my bike, transporting groceries from the super market to my apartment has been made a helluva lot easier! I still feel a little lost when food shopping sometimes. It always reminds me of when I was little and I had this book about a man who couldn't read... I think it might have been called "The Man Who Couldn't Read". It was about an illiterate man whose wife always did the grocery shopping, but then she went on a trip (or she might have died) and left him alone to shop for himself. When he went to the store he made all these mistakes like buying soap flakes instead of oatmeal and shoe polish instead of whipped cream... okay I made the shoe polish example up, but I bet about 2 seconds ago you were all thinking 'How the hell could you possibly confuse shoe polish and whipped cream?' so haha, I fooled you all and I made myself laugh in the process, so yay. ANYWAY, what I was really getting at was that I feel like the poor little illiterate man, because I can't read the labels on about 75% of the products. Now, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out when I'm in the fish section, but it sure would be nice to know what kind of fish I'm looking at. Right now the only one I can recognize based on just physical appearance is salmon and while salmon is delightful, it might get old after a couple of weeks. There are also a number of bottled spices and other substances that I might consider purchasing if I had a clue what they were. At this point I have taught myself the katakana character set, which is one of 3 character sets that the Japanese use to read and write. Katakana consists of 46 letters, almost twice the number of letters in the English alphabet, but they are all phonetic so that's a good thing. The other reason that I decided to learn katakana as opposed to hirigana, the other character set that consists of letters, is that katakana is used mainly to spell out foreign (mostly English) words, so if I can sound it out, usually I can figure it out. When I'm not trying to figure out what stuff is I actually do enjoy grocery shopping, it's actually kind of a cathartic experience for me. I haven't really been under a lot of stress lately , but I still like just being able to relax and wander around the store at my own pace.

Speaking of relaxation, this weekend I'm going with some friends to an onsen, a Japanese hot spring. I'm pretty excited, because everyone seems to love onsen, but I'm also slightly freaked out because most onsen require full nudity. Now, we are separated by gender so it's not really THAT big a deal, but still, I have never been naked in public and stripping down in front of some lovely thin Japanese girls is not exactly my idea of a great time. I'm actually hoping that there will just be some gross old ladies or perhaps the one obese woman in Japan so that I can feel slightly less self conscious about my body. Either way, I am determined to try new things, even when they scare me or push me out of my comfort zone, and this is just one of those things, so I'm going to do it. I'll fill you in on how it goes after I get back on Sunday.

Food, drinks, bikes, and snow!

2008-02-03T00:42:00.000-08:00

These last four days have been quite wonderful. Earlier this week my co-worker invited me to go out with him and one of my students to an izakaya (Japanese style bar/restaurant) on Friday night. I said I definitely wanted to go, but in order to get to the place I needed a bike because it was kind of a long walk. For the past two months I had been saying that I was going to get a bike but I just hadn't gotten around to it and since I don't really mind walking most places it just never really happened. Well, the izakaya invite gave me the incentive I needed to stop waiting around and just buy one, so on Thursday I did! I love my bike soooooo much! It's what the Japanese call a mamachari, which is basically "a mama's bike" so it's kind of dorky and traditional looking as bikes go, but still freakin' sweeeet! It's a lovely shade of orange so I can find it easily among the hundreds of other bikes, it has a built in lock on the back, a light on the front, and a bell, but really the best part is the basket! That's right, I have a black metal basket on the front of my bike, it doesn't get more Japanese than that!

In Japan just about EVERYONE has a bike, so when you buy one you have to get it registered with the police. I think the registration is a pretty good idea because that way if your bike is stolen or towed (yes they tow bikes here) then you at least have a chance of finding it again. The registration is done at the bike shop so I just had to fill out some paperwork, well actually I can't read Japanese, so I handed over my information to the guy working there and he filled out some paperwork, then he put a sticker with a unique serial number on the front of my bike, adjusted my seat, and I was good to go. I should probably mention that this is the first time I've been on a bike since I was about 13 years old, so it has taken me a little bit of time to A) Get used to riding it, B) Get used to the people who are constantly walking in front of my bike as I am moving , and C) Stop worrying that the bike is going to deteriorate under me because I'm a lot heavier than I was nine years ago. I'm still a little freaked out that I'm going to run into someone or fall off and be laughed at, but I'm starting to become a little more relaxed.

Sooo... On Friday night my co-worker, student, and I rode our bikes to the izakaya and had some food and drinks and it was a lot of fun. I was going to try whale and horse meat while I was there, but they weren't serving either at this particular spot. I did try the dorsal fin of some random fish though, so that was slightly unique. The food was good and we had fun just talking about random stuff. I'm really glad the company I work for allows us to socialize with students outside of the school because it allows us to get to know them in a much more natural setting. Some other companies strictly prohibit teachers from having any outside contact with their students which has always struck me as an utterly bizarre policy. We stayed at the izakaya for a couple of hours and then headed home since my co-worker and I had to work Saturday morning.

In addition to the izakaya, a few weeks earlier my co-worker had also invited me to come with him to his friend's birthday party. I am always happy to meet new people and so I eagerly accepted his invitation. The party was last night and I had a really good time. It wasn't really a "party" in the literal sense, but really more just a big group of people going out for the night. We met in Shibuya and spent the first couple of hours at a big izakaya down the street from that really massive crosswalk that you always see in the movies. After that we went to a karaoke bar and drank and sang and it was fun. My co-worker's friends were incredibly nice and I hope I get to see some of them again at some point (I already friended a couple of them on facebook). We stayed out all night and in the morning as we headed to McDonald's for some breakfast it started to snow! It's really quite uncommon for it to snow in Tokyo and the birthday girl was so excited because she's from New Zealand and has only seen snow about 3 times in her life. As we rode the train back home it continued snowing and it was rather picturesque with the trees and bushes on the sides of the track all white and snowy. It wasn't quite so picturesque when I reached my station and had to ride my bike home through all of it. It only takes about 4 minutes to get to my apartment from the station, but by the time I arrived my feet were completely numb. I don't care though, I am most definitely enjoying my time here in Japan, but it's still nice when things feel like home and few things could make it feel more like home than snow.

The wrong kind of walk in

2008-01-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was very easy, I only ended up teaching one lesson all day because my other student canceled due to a headache. I also had my Japanese lesson at 4 and a Video Chat at 5, but that still means I only worked about 2 hours all day(3 if you count some paperwork and stuff, but being taught Japanese doesn't qualify as work). Even with such a slow day, something interesting still managed to happen. As I was walking back from my lunch break someone behind me said something to me in English. On the streets I am normally surrounded by people who can't understand what I am saying and who would never dream of trying to communicate with me, so when I heard the English naturally I turned around to see who was speaking to me. Turns out it was a very drunk Japanese work man who knew a very small amount of English, but that did not stop him from talking to me/following me as I walked back to work. He quickly figured out that I was a teacher because A) There are only so many things a white girl in Takashimadaira can do, B) I forgot to take my company name tag off (this is a mistake I will never make again), and C) About 5 seconds after he started following me I was standing outside my school. It was the last part that made things tricky because it was around this time that I realized he didn't intend on leaving. The only way into my school is by elevator and there was no way in hell I was going to get on an elevator alone with the drunkard. I saw an older, professional looking man approach the elevator and tried to get him to go up too, but he wouldn't get on so when the drunk guy turned his head I just ran away for a second and hid in a bank next door. A minute later I came out and peeked around the corner. Both men where gone so I took the elevator up to work, but upon entering the school I discovered Drunky McDrunkerson had made his way up and was talking to my co-worker. I felt bad about leaving my co-worker to deal with him alone, but we both knew he'd never leave if I stayed out there so I went and shut myself in my classroom. Even with me gone it took my co-worker about 10 minutes to get the guy out of the school. A few minutes later the older man who I tried to force onto the elevator showed up, he told my co-worker that he saw me down by the street... apparently I'm good for business, 2 walk ins in 20 minutes... I'm just glad one of them walked out.

Pizza can be inspiring

2008-01-28T05:43:00.000-08:00

It was a good weekend, not too hectic for a change and I am totally okay with that! I got to sleep in both days without feeling like a complete slug... okay, maybe I was kind of slug-like today, but I cleaned my apartment (I even vacuumed) so I would tend to consider that a major accomplishment. Yesterday I went to my manager's party and my audition, both events went fairly well. The party was first and oh my goodness, there was SO MUCH FOOD. Every time I thought there could not possibly be anymore to eat they would bring out another dish. I honestly have no idea how the majority of Japanese people have managed to stay so thin because they certainly do know how to eat! I guess they must have some sort of whacked out metabolism that they decided not to pass on to me... oy, it's so unfair. In addition to eating ridiculous amounts of food we also enjoyed playing with the animals that the family owned. They had a parakeet named Poppy and a rabbit named Cinnamon (after a manga character). I didn't really care for the bird so much because it kept landing on people's heads and I was afraid it might make a mess in my hair. The bunny, however, was very cute and small, well at least small in comparison to my mammoth of a rabbit, she wasn't nearly as cool as my bunny because she wouldn't sit still to let you pet her... Dommi will sit for hours. The party started around noon and I didn't leave until 4:30 to go to my audition, but I was still the first person to leave, apparently Japanese parties are all day affairs. I think the audition went pretty well, it was a very laid back atmosphere and the director said that she thought she could work with my schedule so I'm crossing my fingers. She also said "well done" at the end so I'm going to take that as a good sign since she could have just said "thank you". I will find out in about two weeks if I have been cast so I will be sure to let all of you know as soon as I hear. It is a spring play so even if I am cast the rehearsals don't actually start until April. (The audition was held very very close to Tokyo Tower, so I took the photo at the top while I was there.)

Today was quite relaxed. Jenn and I decided to have a movie night here at my apartment so that was fun and cheap. It worked out well because she had the microwave popcorn and I have the microwave. In addition to the popcorn and the snacks that I bought, we decided to order delivery pizza from a chain called Pizza-La. Easy right? Yeah... not when you don't speak the language. We decided that since Jenn knows even less Japanese than me (which basically equates to no Japanese) that I should be the one to make the call. I have never in my life had to prepare more for a delivery order. I wrote down the pronunciation of each food we where ordering, thank goodness we were only ordering two things, then I wrote out the words for all the numbers of my address. When I made the call I prayed that maybe someone there would speak a little bit of English, but no such luck. I made it through ordering, giving my address, and choosing tomato sauce versus some other unknown sauce, but then she asked me something else and I got stuck. Luckily, Jenn suggested the word keitai, which means cell phone, when I repeated this to the girl she excitedly proclaimed "HAI!!" which means "YES!!". It took me about a full minute and a half to get through my 11 digit phone number since I am still not so great with my numbers. Once everything was complete the girl confirmed my order, address, and phone number, but it took another minute or two to hang up because she kept saying ok and thank you and other nice things that didn't make sense to me, so I wasn't sure if we were actually done. I can't tell you what a relief it was when the delivery person arrived and spoke English! Still, I must say that I felt kind of proud of myself when I hung up the phone, it was the most Japanese I've spoken since arriving here and it definitely inspired me to keep on learning.

Waiting for Sunday

2008-01-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Yikes, it's ridiculously cold in my apartment! I think I'm going to make this a fairly short blog just because there's a good possibility that my fingers may freeze to the keyboard within the next 5 minutes. This week has been fairly mellow, which is fine by me. I started my work week off with 2 days of advanced training. I enjoyed the change of pace and it was nice meeting some new people from around the region. I had actually met one of the teachers before at the Higashi Kanto End of Year party that I wrote about in December, so it was also nice to see a familiar face. We all went out for drinks after the second day so that was fun. Our trainer, aka my boss, also came out with us which was cool, but it still feels strange for me to go out with my superior. I know it's not really that uncommon, even in the states, but drinking with the same person who could technically fire me still weirds me out a little. During the training I met another teacher who is interested in acting and who majored in drama. She just finished performing in a play at a theater that puts on shows in English and she informed me that they are holding auditions for the spring show, Ring Round the Moon, this Sunday. I asked her how she was able to attend rehearsals with her work schedule (the same as mine, 1 - 10 pm Tues-Sat) and she said that all of the rehearsals for the previous show had been on Sundays and that she just took a few days off for the performances. I would absolutely love to get involved in a play while I'm here, so I emailed the theater manager for more information. He didn't know what the rehearsal schedule was going to be like yet, but he told me that the spring show is actually being directed by an English Teacher. Most Eikaiwa (English schools) run on similar schedules, so that means there's actually a chance that I could attend the rehearsals. I've decided to at least give it a try and signed up to audition this Sunday evening, so wish me luck! I scheduled the audition time for Sunday evening because during the day I am going to a farewell party for my manager being held at the house of one of my co-worker's students. I am very excited to see the inside of a Japanese style house and to try some traditional Japanese food. I am also a little excited because the daughter of the woman hosting the party is actually my student and she is going to show me her bunny! I know some of you are probably sitting there rolling your eyes thinking, oh my gosh Leila is such a dork, but I really miss my pets and this is as close as I'm going to get until I get home! Okay, going to crawl under my covers now because I can't take the cold any longer! Goodnight all! (Really good day to most of you, but whatever!)

SUMO!!!!!

2008-01-21T06:57:00.000-08:00

I am tired. I woke up at 5:15 this morning so that I could buy tickets for Sumo Wrestling by 7:30 am, which is when I was informed I had to get there. Turns out the ticket booth didn't even open until 8:30 am, so I could have slept a whole extra hour! It's okay though, because my friend Ivan and I were the very first people in line. After we got our tickets we went and got some breakfast and then spent the entire day at the Sumo Tournament. It was AWESOME!!!!! They started with the low level guys in the morning and then progressively brought in higher and higher ranks. The tournament ended with competitions between the highest ranking wrestlers, the really famous ones you see on TV. Ivan and I seriously got way more than our money's worth. We paid about $20 for the crappy nosebleed seats, but since it was a Monday (fewer people) and no one really seemed to care that much, we moved down to the lower balcony seats that are actually worth between $60-$100. People did come to claim their seats a couple of times, so then we just moved to different seats in the same section. The view from where we were sitting was great and we could even hear the wrestlers breathing at one point! It's hard to explain the details of sumo wrestling, because we didn't even quite understand, but it was still ridiculously fun to watch. Every time a new set of competitors was about to enter the dohyo (the ring) this little singing man in a crazy costume would stand in the middle and chant a song in the direction of each wrestler, then the wrestlers would climb up and do this crazy side kick balance thing that sumo wrestlers are sort of famous for doing. I recorded one of the earlier matches so you can see what I'm talking about. The beginning matches weren't too exciting, but the later matches with the higher ranking professionals were extremely intense. The wrestlers were wild and since the dohyo was raised off the floor by about a foot and a half sometimes they would fall off and go toppling into the audience. I seriously thought someone was going to get crushed by one of these massive guys. Every time it happened the entire audience would gasp and then check to make sure that the old woman who the 400 lb. wrestler had just landed on wasn't dead. In addition to the video I have also included a couple of pictures. I am sort of in love with this picture of myself (which is somewhat uncommon), I just love how the sumo guys look in the background, it almost looks like a backdrop! The other one is a circle of all the highest ranking wrestlers before they began competing. Okay, seriously tired now, work in the morning, going to bed.

I love the Japanese... I just don't like hospitals.

2008-01-18T06:19:00.001-08:00

I have now had the chance to visit two different Japanese hospitals within less than a month's time... lucky me. This time, however, I was the patient. Don't worry I'm ok, it was nothing too serious. Normally, I would just go to a doctor's office, but in Japan they don't really have doctor's offices, or at least not many of them. Basically, if there's anything wrong with you at all then you just head straight to the hospital. I'm not really a huge fan of this auto-hospital system, but I didn't really have a choice in the matter. There's also a hospital about a five minute walk from where I live, so it would have been ridiculous to try and track down a doctor farther away and then have to make an appointment and pay for the train ride to get there. Still, there was the tricky issue of communication, and that was pretty tough, since I know absolutely no Japanese beyond greetings and "what's this/what's that?". So before I left for the hospital I stopped by work and did some "googling", which was extremely helpful. I found a website with all sorts of medical information and charts in English and the exact same charts and information in Japanese (you could choose the language that you wanted). The site had 2 pages of information on my specific problem, so I printed them out and circled my symptoms. When I arrived at the hospital I took out the papers and pointed at the key words. I knew exactly what was wrong with me from the start and I just needed to go to the doctor in order to get the appropriate antibiotics, so that also made things slightly easier. What really kept me from becoming completely overwhelmed, however, was how incredibly friendly and helpful the Japanese people are. I had noticed it to some extent before, but my belief that they are seriously some of the nicest people in the world was confirmed today. The staff went completely out of their way to make sure I got treated properly, in fact I think they may have fast tracked me so that I got through before some other people did. Rather than pointing to where I needed to go and just hoping I'd end up there, someone walked with me to each section of the hospital and they tried so hard to use the extremely broken English that they knew in order to talk to me. After I got through and paid, they gave me my prescription and one of the hospital attendants walked outside with me. I thought she was just going to point me in the direction of a pharmacy, but she actually walked me all the way there. It wasn't really that far, but it was down the street and around the corner and she was just wearing a flimsy sweater so I'm sure she was freezing. I was dumbstruck because no hospital staff, no matter how nice they are, would ever do that in America. Not because Americans are rude, just because it would never even occur to us to do such a thing in the first place. When I arrived at the pharmacy the attendant left and a minute later I was handed a form to fill out. The form was completely in Japanese. I sat for a moment and tried to figure out some of the basics, like my name. I managed to get that down in katakana (one of the 3 Japanese character sets) and circle the kanji for "female" which I recognized from other forms that I'd filled out with my manager's assistance, but then I got stuck from there. The woman sitting next to me noticed that I was staring intensely at the blank form in front of me and immediately offered to assist me. She helped me calculate my Japanese birth year (it goes by what emperor was reigning at the time of my birth) and wrote my address for me, because I had it with me but there was no way I could write out all the kanji. She tried to help me answer some of the questions, but her English wasn't good enough to translate, so then she went and found a pharmacist who actually spoke a little English. It was seriously mind blowing how helpful everyone was today and I am still so incredibly grateful.

Buggin' out!

2008-01-15T06:44:00.000-08:00

I had another fun weekend with a couple of my friends. We had planned to go to a sumo tournament on Monday, but since we had to be in line for tickets at 7 am and didn't actually go to sleep until 5:30 am the same day, we decided that sumo could wait until next weekend. It should be a really cool experience and I'm really excited for when we do go. I have actually met a sumo wrestler since coming here, but you will never guess where he's from... Ireland! Crazy right? He is a co-worker of Jenn's and is a teacher for the same company as us, but he does sumo during his time off and competes in amateur tournaments. He is so committed to sumo that he purposely gained weight for the sport, I think that's sort of impressive.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that guy's not the only one who's gained weight... I haven't bought a scale since coming here, so I don't know for sure, but I just have a feeling. I thought I'd be eating much healthier in Japan, but I didn't consider the fact that while a large percentage of the Japanese diet is fish, an even larger percentage is carbs! There's rice or noodles in just about every dish you eat and then there are also the ever tempting bakeries... I try to resist the urge, but I really have very little self control. Granted, I do walk about a mile to work and then another mile back everyday, so that might balance it off a bit, but still I am conscious of the fact that I need to exercise more. One good thing is that based on my current budget and a slightly higher cell phone bill than expected, I have started paying attention to how much money I spend on food, or in other words, I have started spending less money on food. I try to buy the cheapest foods available at the store, and salad is pretty darn cheap. Today during lunch, however, I was slightly traumatized by my salad eating experience because there was a lady bug crawling around in my lettuce. EWWW! I didn't feel like going to the trouble to figure out how to say in Japanese that I wanted a refund for my insect infested salad, so instead I've decided to start my own personal boycott of that particular grocery store. Luckily, there is a higher quality store literally next door to the nasty one, so it's not really a problem for me.

That's about the most excitement I've had so far this week (my week starts on Tuesday), but I'm sure something else random and crazy will happen very soon. I will be sure to keep you posted.

Yay yay yay for omiyage (if read correctly that should rhyme)

2008-01-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

The Japanese have many traditions and customs, obviously I haven't learned about all of them, but I am starting to become familiar with some and so far my favorite one is the giving and receiving of omiyage. "These are customary gifts typically given by someone upon returning from a trip to be given to family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, business associates, teachers, classmates and any other person socially related to the returning vacationer" (Wikipedia). Perhaps I should rephrase... I enjoy receiving omiyage. So far in the past week I have received from my manager a lovely pencil case from South Korea, from my co-worker a huge colorful scarf from India that matches the picture frames in my apartment perfectly, and from two of my students an assortment of tea and face scrubs also from South Korea. There is also a large assortment of food in our school lobby that students and co-workers have brought from all over the world (people travel a lot during the New Year's season here). I do not currently have enough money to travel, but when I do I will also be expected to bring omiyage home for everyone at my school. That's the part that I am not so thrilled about. The Wikipedia definition is not an exageration, people seriously bring stuff back for EVERYONE here, and if you don't you're considered to be extremely rude and unthoughtful. It's not that I don't enjoy giving gifts to my friends, I actually really enjoy doing so, but having to spend money on every single person I've ever met in Japan seems like it might get a little pricey. Well, I plan on doing most of my traveling after my contract has expired anyway, so I probably won't be returning to Japan once I've gone on any major trips. It's also normal to bring back food or candy for the majority of the students, so if I go on any smaller trips while I am still here, I don't have to put too much thought into what I get. The only people I need to put a little more effort in with my gift giving decisions are my co-workers and since there are only three of them I think I can handle it.

Speaking of co-workers, today was my manager's last day. I forget whether I mentioned in any of my previous posts the fact that she is quitting. I'm kind of sad about it because she is very sweet and really knows what she's doing since she's been with the company for two years. I'm also nervous about having to adjust to a new manager who might not speak English and might not really know what he or she is doing (most likely she). I don't think it will be too bad though because I have my other two co-workers to go to for help, some people aren't so lucky. A friend of mine works at a school where it's just him and one other person who functions as both the manager and JET (Japanese English Teacher). I don't think I'd like that very much at all, it just seems so lonely.

Well, I'm suddenly quite sleepy and since tomorrow is Saturday I have to be at work earlier than normal (it starts and ends 2 hours early so it's still the same amount of time). I have been staying up way too late for no particular reason as of late, it's a habit I carried over from home and I don't think I'm going to kick it any time soon. So it goes... enjoy your weekends and leave me comments, because I still get really excited whenever I get any.

Quirks and perks

2008-01-09T07:50:00.000-08:00

Every night when I walk home from work, I pass the local police station. Ordinarily one would probably not find passing a police station to be very interesting, but of course, this is Japan and the Japanese have found a way to make everything interesting. They have succeeded in jazzing up the police station by installing an armed guard outside of the station entrance at night. What is he armed with? A stick. Okay, to be fair I think it would actually qualify as a pole. Still, each time I walk by I just can't help but think how ridiculous it is. I mean it's true that you could severely injure someone with a giant wooden pole, but if a person was really that intent on invading a police station, I think there's a good possibility that they'd be carrying a gun. Then what is the cop going to do? Whack the gun out of his hand with the giant stick? I also get the feeling that if I ever decided to approach Mr. Stick Man, there's a good chance that I would be whacked just because he'd know that it would be the most excitement he'd have for the entire evening (the police men never look very happy while standing out in the cold with their poles). Tonight I tried to make eye contact with the guard standing there, but he freaked me out so I looked away. They always look so serious! Because everybody knows that guarding a police station with a stick is very serious business... Grrrr.

In other news, I paid my first Japanese bill yesterday. It was an electricity bill and I paid it off at the local 7-11. That's right, in Japan you can pay your bills at convenience stores... it is freakin' awesome. Actually, they're not usually called "convenience stores" here, they are called "conveenies" which I think is rather cute. You just bring your bill up to the cashier at the conveeny, she/he scans the bar code, and you pay it off in cash. I think this payment process should be listed in the dictionary under the definition of convenience, because it doesn't get much easier than that. I suppose writing out a check isn't that difficult either, but if you are anything like me, then there is always the stamp issue. I never, I repeat NEVER, have stamps when I need them. This results in the obnoxious task of driving to the post office in order to buy one measly little stamp to put on the freakin' envelope. None of this would ever happen in Japan, however, for a couple of reasons: 1) I do not have a car in Japan, so it is impossible for me to drive to the post office, unless I hail a taxi 2) There is no such thing as personal checks in Japan, so I would have nothing to mail in the first place. Ahhh Japan, there is no way in hell I would live here forever, but temporarily I am enjoying its quirks and its perks.

My lazy day

2008-01-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

Not too much to report, because I literally did nothing today. I did not take one step outside of my apartment and it was quite nice. A friend who stayed with me this past week introduced me to the wonderful world of downloading and it is just lovely. Tomorrow I am planning to meet up with Jenn during the day and Hiro in the evening, so I don't feel too bad about being a useless mass today. In my mind, one day of lazing around is nice, but two days is pathetic. That's why I was so excited to come to Japan in the first place; by the time it was finally time for me to leave I had spent close to three months doing a whole bunch of nothing. For anyone else who has ever done nothing for that long, you probably know it gets old fast. I am not completely in love with my job now, but I have no serious complaints and it gives me something to do. It's crazy how the days just seem to fly by. I cannot believe that in just a couple of weeks I will already have been living in Tokyo for two months! I just hope that life continues to go by at the same pace because if so, then getting through the rest of the year shouldn't be too difficult. I have, however, been missing some of my friends from home over the past few days. As I've mentioned previously, I have made a few friends here, but they're different, and obviously I don't feel as close to them because I'm not. Sometimes I miss having friends that I don't feel stupid around when I decide it would be a fun time to make faces in the mirror or to tell one of my random camp stories (I haven't actually stopped telling them, I just feel more dumb while doing so). I realized that I've known all of my closest friends from home for at least five years, so the concept of forming new ones here within this one year seems slightly overwhelming and at times even impossible. Even so, I'm doing my best to meet new people and form new relationships, because you never know what might happen or who you might become friends with. I'm still sometimes blown away by some of the people who I love so much now and who I know love me back, because no one would have expected it from the start.

2008-01-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, here's the link to my webshots (click webshots) it has a bunch of photos from this and other weeks since I've come to Japan. I still need to go and put all the titles and comments on the photo's because I spent forever doing it and then my computer screwed up and deleted it all and I didn't feel like starting over. I'm also posting a cool video from inside the gates of the Imperial Palace so you can see how excited everyone was. Enjoy!

Five crazy days

2008-01-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

These last five days could possibly qualify as the craziest five days of my life. So much happened that it's difficult to remember it all, but I'll do my best to describe the highlights and major events of the past week. The insanity began on Saturday morning when I went to meet James at Ueno Station. I got to the station about 45 minutes early, but we did not leave until close to an hour after he arrived because I couldn't find him. The station wasn't that big and it was just a loop, so I told him to meet me by a specific exit and thought that would be simple enough, but when he called to tell me where he was I couldn't find the exit he was near. I checked the map and realized there was a whole other section to the station that looked just like the area I was in. I assumed it was just another level, but when I took the escalator down it just brought me back to the tracks. I was so confused, it was like there was an alternate train universe that I could not find the entrance to. Turns out, the other section of the station was about a quarter of a mile down the road and I never would have realized this if it hadn't been for the fact that I'd been to Ueno once before and kind of remembered seeing trains in that area. After we eventually found each other we headed back to Takashimadaira, where we wandered around for a while and realized there really isn't that much to see in Takashimadaira. I took him to my sushi place for lunch and one of my chefs asked if he was my boyfriend, we explained "just friends", but I think it's an understandable assumption since he's the only person I've taken with me to the restaurant so far.

Later that night we took the train down and met up with Jenn and our other friends from training who were visiting. We decided to go into Roppongi and find a club or bar to hang out in. Since it was already about 10 pm by the time we decided what we were doing, we basically had to commit right then and there to staying out all night since the trains in Tokyo stop at midnight and don't start up again until 5 am. When we arrived at Roppongi it was like another alternate universe, except that this one looked just like America. Everywhere you looked there were foreigners, the Japanese literally became the minority in their own city! As we walked down the main strip, we realized that not only were there a lot of foreigners around, but there were also a bunch of people trying to solicit the foreigners. I'm not sure why, but for some reason a large quantity of black men seem to have settled in Roppongi and taken over all of the strip clubs and gentleman's clubs. Every five steps or so and one of them would come up to Jenn or myself to try talking one or all of us into entering their club, then they would follow us down the street as we tried to ignore them. Jenn taught me the "pretend to talk on your cell phone" trick, so that managed to get rid of some of them. We girls weren't the only ones getting attention though, the guys we were with were repeatedly grabbed by girls who would say things like "I'm sad" or "Want a massage??" I didn't think the guys would mind the attention so much, but they even seemed a little freaked out at times. Eventually we found a place to eat and then we paid for an extremely overpriced karaoke room and sang our hearts out for a couple of hours. After that we went to a bar where I talked to some guy in the military who was from Texas, but then one of my genius friends thought it would be cool to try and steal a beer from the bar and got us kicked out. The beer stealing friend disappeared and after trying to call about 5 million times, we gave up, got some McDonalds, and then headed back to Jenn's apartment where we slept until the afternoon. This was just the beginning of a very screwed up sleep pattern, which would explain why I am currently writing this blog at 3:55 in the morning.

When we finally left Jenn's apartment we headed for Yoyogi Park in Harajuku to see all the people who dress up in crazy costumes and go there on Sundays to show off what they're wearing. Unfortunately, we got there too late so most of them had left, but I did see a few girls dressed as Lolita's, a whole group of people (men and women) dressed up as Rockabillies, and one guy wearing a sort of mouse costume. After getting crepes in Harajuku (the crepes here are fantastic) and shopping in a massive 100 yen shop called Daiso, we all headed back to my part of the city to get Gyu-kaku, the amazing barbeque meat that you cook at the table. We went to the karaoke place under my school, which is far more reasonably priced than the place in Roppongi, then we somehow crammed all 5 of us into my tiny apartment for the night. All my friends raved over my apartment because it's so new and said they were very jealous, well, all but one since he has basically the exact same apartment as me. There was the issue of size however, and one of my friends actually decided to sleep in the storage space beneath my loft, he basically had his own little cave. We slept late again and then headed back to Jenn's to prepare for the evening, New Year's Eve.

Since we first came to Japan, Jenn had been complaining of a tooth ache, but during the week that we all spent together it got progressively worse. While she was at my apartment she called an English translation line to get information on dentist clinics in the area and tried numbing it with whiskey that we bought from the local 7-11. The woman on the line also told her to get a certain pill that she said would help ease the pain. Jenn picked up the pills on the way back to her apartment and we discovered it was the most foul smelling medicine on the face of the planet. Even after trying it and confirming how gross they really were, she still managed to convince two of the guys we were with to taste the nasty black pills, so everyones breath absolutely wreaked! After getting ready, we headed to a club in Shibuya where one of Jenn's coworkers had gotten us discount tickets. We had a couple of drinks and danced for a bit, but Jenn's tooth pain got extremely severe and we decided that she needed to go to the hospital, so I hailed a taxi and James and I took her to the Emergency Room. We couldn't fit everyone in the cab, so the other two guys stayed in Shibuya. I was sure that we were going to be at the hospital for hours, but we actually got in and out within about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, the timing still wasn't that great, because we were standing at an ER reception desk when the clock struck midnight.

The medical staff at the hospital didn't really speak English, but thank goodness James can speak some Japanese and they had a book with Japanese-English medical phrases and questions. They couldn't do too much since they didn't have an oral surgeon on staff, but they did give Jenn some real painkillers that actually helped a little and didn't smell so bad. After leaving the hospital we headed back to Shibuya, but Jenn decided to go home, so James and I got out at Shibuya and she took the taxi all the way back, which with the outrageous Tokyo cab prices cost her about $70 for a 20 minute ride. You would think that the night would be about over for us at this point, but in my memory, this is actually when it really began. We met back up with the other guys and discovered that Tokyo is a truly amazing place to be on New Years. You just walk down the street and shout "HAPPY NEW YEAR" and strangers will shout it back and give you hugs and high fives, it is absolutely fantastic. As we headed back to the club where we had first been, the guys called out "Happy New Year" to a group of Japanese girls walking by and as we all gave each other high fives we realized that they were actually the same group of girls we'd been dancing with at the first club. They invited us to join them, so we went with them for some truly outstanding Ramen noodles and then they took us to an absolutely wonderful dance club. The club was filled with almost all Japanese people, which was quite a change from the primarily gaijin clubs I'd visited so far. The people on the dance floor were so incredibly friendly, and unlike clubs that I've been to in America where the sole aim of most guys out there is sex, here the guys actually seemed happy to just dance. Guys danced with guys, guys danced with girls, girls danced with girls, everyone was just happy to dance and be with one another and it was so much fun and truly unforgettable (Photo 1, me in Shibuya by the famous crosswalk).
The guys and I spent the next day recovering at my apartment and then met back up with Jenn that night. We took it easy on the first night of the new year since most places weren't open anyway, but still we somehow managed to stay up way later than we should have just because none of us ever stop talking. We got up abnormally early on Jan. 2 so that we could go to the Imperial Palace (photo 2, side building at palace) and see the Emperor of Japan make an appearance. The gates of the palace are only opened to the public twice a year, so even though it meant losing some sleep we decided it was worth the effort and we were very right in thinking so. There were thousands of people who came to see the Emperor and the security checks were pretty intense. Most citizens of Japan love the emperor (photo 3), as Jenn's friend put it, "He is a living god," but the communists despise him, so security is definitely necessary. We had a pretty good view when he stepped out of the palace, and when he did the crowd just went crazy, everyone started cheering and waving their Japanese flags and it was very moving, definitely one of my favorite parts of the week.

The last night with my friends was similar to the other party nights: clubs, karaoke, food. We did get invited into another Karaoke room by a group of Japanese people after our time was up, so that was sort of cool. One of the guys decided to try sleeping at a capsule hotel for the night (I have no idea why he would want to) and the rest of us made our way back to my place after the trains started up again. Even though I really enjoyed spending time with my friends, I was kind of glad it was the last time we all had to cram into my apartment. As a person who has grown up with just a sister and mainly female friends, I have a new found respect for those of you who live with husbands, boyfriends, or brothers. After five days of living with my 3 male friends I really just couldn't take it anymore . Don't get me wrong, they are all very nice, but put them all together in a small space and you get very repetitive fart jokes, ridiculously hot living quarters because someone decided to turn the heat up to 31 degrees celcius (87.8* F), and a big mess. I know that in a few days when I get back to my normal schedule I'm going to miss my friends and the excitement of the past week, but for right now it's nice to just relax and have a little time to myself.

Happy new year everyone, I hope it's a great one.

Gleeful Gaijin

2007-12-27T22:35:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine from training in Vancouver, James, is flying in tomorrow to stay with me for our New Year's vacation and I have a lot of preparing to do for his arrival... aka cleaning. So of course I am writing in my blog instead! I can bet that anyone who has ever lived with me in the past was not surprised by the previous statement, because I will do just about anything to avoid cleaning. Once I start I really don't even mind that much, as long as there's some good music playing, but just building enough motivation to begin, well, it takes me a while. Don't worry, I'll get it clean before he arrives, it's not even that dirty, because with so little space I can't tolerate too big a mess or I'll go insane.

I'm so excited to have some company for a few days. I still don't really mind living on my own, but having a friend around will be nice. The whole group of us from training, minus one, is planning on meeting up over the next few days and partying together on New Year's so it should be really awesome. I only had room for one person to stay in my apartment because there's so little space, but the other two guys are staying with my friend Jenn who was in training with me and was also placed in Tokyo (I've mentioned her in previous posts). I'm not sure exactly where we are going to go for New Year's but I suspect that we may end up in Roppongi which is well known for its club and bar scene.

On Christmas Eve I went with Jen and some of her co-workers to a pub for dinner in Roppongi. Roppongi is just dripping with foreigners and walking into the pub was sort of like going home for a little while. It looked just like bars you'd see in America, everyone spoke English (the owner was Australian), and the food was a fusion between British and American cooking, so it was quite familiar. Except for one JET (Japanese English Teacher) everyone in my party was either British or American, so it was nice not being the minority for a few hours. The area I live in, Shin-Takashimadaira, is on the outskirts of Tokyo so it's somewhat quiet and secluded and besides my one co-worker I feel like I'm the only foreigner for miles. I've heard that there's another girl who teaches at an Eikawa (English school) down the street from mine, but I have never seen her and I would think she'd be awfully easy to notice! Every time I travel into popular areas, like Roppongi or Shibuya, I get really excited to see anyone who is NOT Japanese and I always want to run up to them and say "HI! I'm American where are you from? Be my friend!" but since they never seem to show any interest in seeing me, I resist the urge. I do believe, however; that some of them really are excited to see me and they're just doing the same thing I am, resisting the urge.

Being a gaijin (foreigner) has its perks though, I'm not going to lie. For one thing, everyone notices you, there's no way around it... and sometimes it's nice to be noticed. My sushi chefs at the revolving sushi place I wrote about a few weeks ago have definitely noticed me. I know it's odd that I refer to them as "my" sushi chefs, but I'm pretty sure they refer to me as "their" white girl, so it's ok. I go there ALL the time, because it's one of the few places that's open after I finish work and because I really love sushi. Last night when I was there they prepared one of my favorite dishes for me before I even ordered it and when the chef sent it over to me he gave me the peace sign, which made me laugh. Plus they gave me a discount so that was nice too. I suspect had I just been a regular Japanese girl the dish and the discount never would have happened.

Alright, I'm going to clean now, or at least that's what I'm going to say. I'll try and write one more December post, but if not, best wishes for everyone in the New Year!

Rudolph's staying home, but I'm not!

2007-12-23T20:10:00.000-08:00

I was reading about how this evening, Christmas Eve, Mars is going to be shining bright red and I came upon a very cute rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in which they have changed the lyrics to included Mars in Santa's journey:

Mars is a red-tinged planet
With a very shiny glow
And if you look to see it
You will find the moon in tow.
All of the other Yuletides
Santa would have at his side
The shiny nose of Rudolph
Acting as his big sleigh's guide
But this very Christmas Eve
Santa came to say:
"Rudolph, now with Mars so bright,
You can stay at home tonight."
Then all the reindeer teased him.
And they shouted out with glee:
"Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
Outsourced to astronomy."

Unfortunately, with all the city lights of Tokyo, I most definitely will not be able to see Mars tonight. I am a little disappointed because while I'm no astronomer, I am always up for a cool natural phenomenon. Actually, I can't see the stars anymore at all and it does bother me a little, because this is the first time in my life that I've gone for more than just a few days without seeing them. Stars... I guess they're one of those things you realize are important to you only after you realize they're gone.

In terms of natural phenomenons though, well, I'm still waiting for my first real earthquake. It's okay though, I'm perfectly fine with waiting longer. I've actually been in one earthquake before, when I was going to school in VA, but it was so tiny that it barely counts. Hopefully when I experience one here it will be equally wimpy, because just the concept of an earthquake scares me. People here are immune to earthquakes though, they're just a part of their lives, like stars are a part of mine.

My life, goodness gracious, it's become slightly more complicated since I've arrived in this crazy country, but I think "more complicated" can be equated with "more interesting", so that makes me happy. I went on another date yesterday with a different guy and it was a lot of fun. We ate and walked around and went to the movies. He took me to the Imperial Palace which was really really cool and I'm really really annoyed that I didn't have my camera with me! I'll be going back though, because since today is the Emperor's birthday we were not allowed to actually go as close to the palace as normal since they were making all sorts of preparations. The movies was also an interesting experience for a couple of reasons. First, the theater was absolutely massive, almost like an IMAX theater except the screen wasn't quite so large. The second reason movie going was made more interesting, was the fact that the audience was practically silent throughout the whole film. We went to see National Treasure 2, which includes a character whose sole role in the movie is to act as comic relief. Now because the movie was in English with Japanese subtitles, it's obvious that some of the lines would not translate as being funny in Japanese because of idioms or culturally significant plays on words, but this audience NEVER laughed, not even at the physical humor which does not require any translation whatsoever. It was bizarre, but at the same time sort of cool, because it kind of felt like it was my own personal movie that only I could understand... my date laughed too though, so I didn't feel like a complete dork.

Well, I am meeting up with friends tonight for a Christmas Eve dinner, so I must get ready and I must take out more money from the bank. I get paid on Wednesday though, so it's all good!!!! To all my Christian friends and all my agnostic/athiest friends who celebrate anyways, have a ridiculously Merry Christmas! To all my Jewish friends and family, enjoy your Chinese food!

Short and sweet

2007-12-19T06:36:00.000-08:00

I know I mentioned it once before, but I would now like to pledge my undying love for the 100 yen shop. The place seriously rocks my world and is possibly one of my favorite things about Japan. Any time I need anything, it's there. The name of the store near me is quite appropriately named Can-do, and yes they can! What can they do? They can provide me with a spatula, salt, chopsticks, a cute scarf, and a soap dish for the equivalent of $5. They can also provide me with endless amusement, primarily through the genius pictures and sayings displayed on their postcards. I did not discover them until today, but oh my goodness, the postcards alone make the entire store worthwhile. To get an idea of how incredible they are you will need to use your imagination. First, imagine a picture of a hamster or a piglet or maybe a smiling cake, next think of a cute phrase like "You're a great friend. I love you a lot," and finally take out two or three words from the previous phrase, e.g. " You're a friend. I love you lot." That is basically what every single one of the 20 to 30 postcards is like... I can't wait to send them to people!

I would also just like to mention that tonight is truly a monumental occasion, because for the first time since I've been in this country I cooked! EGGS! I know how exciting this must be for all of you, but really, it's kind of a big deal to me. Cooking in my own apartment makes it feel... real and more like home and even though I don't think I could ever really consider this place "home" it does make it feel a few steps closer to the real thing.

Hunkering, turnips, and kisses

2007-12-16T04:15:00.000-08:00

Last night was our school's Christmas party/my welcome party/the old teacher's farewell party. It was a lot of fun and nice being with my students and co-workers in a more social atmosphere. I also had the chance to meet a few new people, including a teacher who taught at my school a year or two ago and a friend of the teacher who I'm replacing (he had just flown in from Australia that day!). Overall it was a rather pleasant evening, but there was one particular moment that caught me off guard. Towards the end of the party I was randomly kissed by my co-worker. Now, I want to make it clear that normally I would not share details about this sort of thing, but this was so bizarre that I felt it was an acceptable topic to write about. We were in the restaurant with a bunch of our students, I walked over to join the group of people talking in the back, and basically it went something like this...

Co-worker: Oh, I'll kiss Leila!
Me: Ummmm...
Leila grins nervously, co-worker kisses Leila, people take pictures... ok then.

It was definitely not something I had envisioned happening at all, let alone at a school function, but I didn't really mind too much. I discovered afterwards that he basically kisses everyone once he's had enough to drink, in fact he'd kissed at least 5 or 6 of the people that were standing there when it happened (including some of the business men). He's also pretty damn cute, so who am I to complain? The other thing is that I know had this same thing happened to me a few years ago I would have been mortified. Knowing that I've gained enough confidence to handle a reasonably awkward situation with grace makes me feel good about myself. Later my co-worker actually did apologize for putting me on the spot like that and I said it wasn't a big deal, because it wasn't. Still, I do want a copy of that picture!

A bunch of us went out to sing karaoke after the party and that was also a good time. I forgot to mention in my earlier posts that there is a karaoke place under the school I work for. By under I mean, we're on the 5th floor, karaoke is on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, so when I take the elevator up to work everyday, I always hear people singing very badly as I'm rising to the top. We ended up renting a room at that place. For those of you who are unaware, karaoke is done a little differently in Japan from the way it's usually done in the U.S. Instead of having just one karaoke machine at the front of the bar, you rent a little private room with your friends and order food and drinks over a phone in the room. To make things even more interesting at this specific location, every time a song finished our karaoke machine forced us to play a game before we could move on to the next song. And what was the game? Find the turnip. Yeah, I'm serious. There was a little hand that you could move over three stems in a garden and once you chose one, the stem would spring up and it would either be the prized turnip or a variety of other bizarre images ranging from egg plants to golden muscle men. Whoever created the game (and decided to install it on the karaoke machine) had some serious issues and had taken some serious drugs. After a few hours of karaoke I got really tired. It was 2:30 am and thanks to some hellish nightmares over the past few days, I hadn't gotten much sleep, so I was the first to leave. Everyone else stayed until 5 in the morning, so I'm glad I didn't try to stick it out, since I had to be at the kids Christmas party by 10 am this morning... ughhh.

Today after the kids party I met up with my friend Jen in an area called Roppongi. We walked around a very modern and beautiful building complex called Roppongi Hills, that has a bunch of very posh stores and restaurants. We couldn't really afford to go in any of them, but it was nice to dream. Speaking of dreams, I'm ridiculously tired, so I think I'm going to hunker down and watch a movie and then go to sleep (I really just wanted to use the word "hunker" because I've never actually written it in a sentence before.) Hunkering will commence now.

Hanko crazy love... I crack myself up

2007-12-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

So I realize it's been a few days since my last post and that may have been distressing to those of you who have made checking this blog part of your daily internet routine, so I apologize. I don't want to write just for the sake of writing though, that's boring... I need material! I got some today though, so no worries! Wow... that last sentence sounded very Australian... Anyway! While walking to work today I made a new discovery. I hadn't noticed it before because of the route I usually take to work. Normally, I go through the park for the first half of the walk and then veer off onto the sidewalk, but today because it had rained the night before and I didn't want to walk through the wet leaves, I decided to go around the park instead. That's when I noticed them... the nappers. All along the side of the road were parked cars and in just about every one of them was a sleeping man. Most of the cars were still running, probably because it was a little nippy out and they didn't want to freeze their asses off. I can't explain how bizarre it was to walk past car after car and see business men sleeping out there on the side of a park in the middle of the day. It was 12:30 in the afternoon! While it was kind of funny to see all these guys napping it up on the side of the road, it was also a little sad. How hard must they be working for all of them to find it necessary to take naps during their lunch break? I get exhausted just thinking about it. The Japanese people as a whole are very hard workers. My manager only gets one day off a week and she never complains, well, at least not in English.

Speaking of my manager, she took my out today to pick up my hanko and gaijin card! I know most of you are probably wondering what on earth those are. Well, my lovely friends, they are what make me an official resident of Japan for the next year! Yay! A hanko (mine is shown in the picture below) is what Japanese people use in place of a signature. It's a little stamp with Kanji (Chinese symbols also used in Japanese) representing a persons name and it is usually, if not always, stamped in red ink. I love my hanko and I got a little red case for it that comes with a tiny little stamp pad inside of it. It's soooo cool, definitely going down as one of the coolest souvenirs ever! It's extremely cultural and very personal at the same time, since it's my name spelled out with the Kanji. I asked my manager if the Kanji meant anything, she said not really, but the -la part of my name means "Good". I like that... good is good! The gaijin card is required to do a number of things here in Japan. Gaijin are foreigners, so it translates to foreigner card, and basically it's our official form of identification while we're living here. I need it to do all sorts of things, for example, open a bank/post office account (post offices also function as banks here) or join a gym. I'm going tomorrow to open my account, so that when I get my first paycheck, I actually have somewhere to put the money. I guess that will be my hanko's first official use... I'm very excited!

An amazing weekend

2007-12-10T03:43:00.000-08:00

This weekend basically ruled. I had so much fun... enough fun to make up for the fact that I lost a lot of sleep while having all that fun! It started off calm, I slept in on Sunday and went and got some food from Jolly Pasta which is a restaurant directly across from my apartment and is a Japanese attempt at Italian food. I, however, have dubbed it "Japitalianese" because it is really nothing like what most people would consider Italian food to be. Most of their dishes revolved around sea food, but I did find spaghetti and meat sauce, so that made me happy. Then I got ready and headed off to an area called Ueno (sounds like wayne-oh) to meet up for the Higashi Kanto area Teacher's End of the Year Party... yeah, I know that's a ridiculously long title for a party but it also sums up the purpose of it pretty well. I saw my friends Jenn and James from training and some of the sub teachers who helped me out during the first couple of weeks. I also met some new people which was cool. The place we went was very very nice and we were seated in a big private room around 2 giant tables. For the price of 4300 yen (about $43) We got a five or six course meal and unlimited drinks, but the best part was that there was a big karaoke screen at the front of the room so we got to sing karaoke while we were eating and drinking! I sang a couple of songs on my own and joined in on a bunch of them. The room was only rented for about two hours so after that the whole group had to leave and find something else to do. Most of the other teachers decided to sing at a karaoke place across the street, but six of us decided to head off to the area where Jenn lives and find something to do there instead. It was Me, Jenn, James, my sub teacher (aka my boss), another sub teacher (I think he would also be considered my boss), and this really sweet girl named Eimilly who I met through Jenn because they interviewed together in San Francisco.

We ended up at a very cute bar with a rustic Caribbean atmosphere. It was fun and at one point we joined a table with some Japanese customers who lived in the area. They were very nice and it was cool talking to them, but we needed to leave a little earlier than planned because there was some sort of an issue between one of my friends and another guy at the bar and it got a little tense. We stopped at a convenience store where Eimilly bought more snacks than any of us could ever have possibly eaten, even on empty stomachs, and then we went to this little place that Jenn really likes. It was kind of like a cross between a Japanese bar and an American diner and since it was rather late by that time (maybe 3 am or so) we were the only customers there and the guy was super nice and gave us free food. Finally, we all headed back to Jenn's place to crash for a while. In Tokyo the trains stop at midnight and don't start back up again until 5 am, so we all had decided long ago that we were going to be spending the night at Jenn's. We hung out for a while, played a couple of stupid drinking games, and then I tried to sleep because I was obviously quite tired by that point. James was a jerk and tried to freak Eimilly and I out with scary stories, but he didn't really get to me (he got to Eimilly though).

In the morning when we all woke up (it took some of them a while) the six of us headed to Shibuya, a very trendy area of Tokyo with lots of really good shopping. The first thing we did when we got there was eat because we were all hungry! We went to this really wonderful burger place where they practically put an entire avacado on my avacado burger... soooo good! The actual reason we came to Shibuya was so that I could buy a cell phone, so after lunch we headed to Softbank, a big cell phone company in Japan. I was a little nervous that they wouldn't be able to sell me a phone because I had a different document from the one that they wanted, but it worked out and I am now the proud owner of a freakin' awesome Japanese phone (pictures below)!!! You guys might think that cell phones are popular in America, but you can't even begin to understand just how obsessed with phones the Japanese are! And they have a right to be because their phones are soooo cool! You can do everything on them. You get an actual email address for your phone, you can check train schedules and routes, get money conversion rates, there is an English/Japanese dictionary, a camera and video funtion, EVERYTHING! All of us, except for my sub teacher, then went to Harajuku and spent forever wandering through the beautiful Yoyogi Park before we realized we'd gone in the complete wrong direction. Jenn and I are going to return to Yoyogi Park on a Sunday because that's when the people dress up in their crazy street fashion, e.g. Lolita's, Gothic Lolita's, anime characters, etc. and all gather in the park to show off their outfits. I'm really excited to see that, I think it's going to be pretty wild! We finished the day off on a main street of Harajuku with Udon (a kind of think noodle), Crepes, and an enormous 100 yen shop where I bought decorations for my apartment.

I'm tired now, but I can't tell you how glad I am to have had the chance to hang out with all my new friends this past weekend. I have been slightly caught off guard by the friendship I am forming with my sub teacher. On one hand he's just a really chill guy who's funny and is just like everyone else; he drinks, he swears, he talks about crazy stuff that you would never discuss in a classroom, and on the other hand he determines whether or not I keep my job. It freaks me out a little, but he straight out told me that he hopes to be my friend, and as I mentioned in a previous post, friends are always a good thing to have.

Hoping this will work...

2007-12-10T02:34:00.000-08:00

Hey guys sorry for the delay on the apartment videos, but I've been having some major internet issues. Hopefully they will be fixed sometime soon. I ran out of time with the first video (starts with a brown background) so there are two. I'm going to write an actual post right after this, so make sure to read that too!!

The cat came back, the very next day

2007-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Last night as I was walking past the first house on the street I live on, I saw a cat. I know that's not really so exciting, but this was actually the first cat I'd seen in Japan so I was slightly surprised. I kissed to it but it ran off, so I just kept walking, not really thinking much of it. Then this morning as I walked past the same house I saw a little old woman holding a box. The box was filled with bright yellow blankets with ropes tied around them and sticking out of the blankets was the cat's head. Don't worry, the cat was alive, but it was very tightly bundled and I was very confused as to why the woman would be carrying a bundled cat down the road. We were both walking in the same direction and I kept glancing over at her to see what on earth she was doing. I was afraid she was going to leave the poor cat tied down on a street corner or something. We both headed into the park and she walked into a big field, still holding the cat. As I paralleled her on the path I was walking on, she stopped in the middle of the field, so I stopped too. She put the box on the ground and I held my breath, sure that she was going to turn around and walk away... but she didn't. Instead, she lay down newspaper, took off her shoes, and sat down next to the cat. The woman had brought her cat out for a sun bath in the park; it was possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen. Even though Tokyo is very different from my home, there always seems to be something here that makes me smile.

picture of the lovely park shown below:

A sushi story

2007-12-06T07:32:00.000-08:00

Tonight, after work, I stopped by the little revolving sushi place near my school to get a quick bite to eat and in turn had the coolest "sushi experience" of my life. It all happened as a result of the fact that I am the most clueless of all the clueless Americans in Japan. It seemed perfectly normal to me to reach out and take a plate of tempura off the revolving tray, what did not seem normal was how the man I was sitting next to kept glancing back and forth at me and my plate. Never the less, I finished the sushi I had ordered and was about to move on to the tempura when the man said something to me in Japanese. I obviously had no idea what he was saying, but he was gesturing toward my food and that didn't seem like a good thing. Thirty seconds later four people where all speaking to me in Japanese and vigorously shaking their heads at my tempura. What I soon came to realize was that the tempura had been going around in circles for a very long time and all these lovely people had just stopped me from eating some extremely cold food. The chef cooked me up a new batch and while I waited the man sitting next to me and his wife/girlfriend started talking to me. It was quickly established that I had no idea what they were saying, so they started talking to me in a mix of Japanese and very broken English. I could make out maybe 25% of what they said, but I made out enough to realize that they wanted to share their sake with me. For those of you who don't know, sake is a kind of warm Japanese wine. I'd never had it before, but oh my goodness, it's freakin' strong! Even on a full stomach and just 3 or 4 cups (the cups are tiny, smaller than shot glasses) I could definitely feel it. I was shocked to see that the man had already finished about 4 bottles before sharing with me... actually, I imagine the 4 bottles had something to do with his extremely social and friendly disposition. The couple weren't the only ones talking to me though, periodically a man on the other side of the sushi bar would shout something over. Apparently he was 44 years old and lived in Portland, Oregon for a year.

What I thought was going to be a quick snack turned into a very cool and culturally educational experience. I not only learned to beware of late night revolving food, but I was also taught the correct time and way to get more green tea, and not to drink municha, Japanese cold tea, because it's gross. I also discovered that Japanese people like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe, but figuring out that they actually said Marilyn Monroe can be a bit of a challenge. At some point the man next to me said "the chef says you're ... insert Japanese word here..." as his wife said "beautiful, beautiful"... I'm not sure why the sushi chef would be saying I'm beautiful, or if that's even what he actually said, but hey, I'll take a little self-esteem booster along with my healthy dose of culture! As I finally got up to go, my new sushi friends bid me farewell and called out "See you next week"... you can bet that I will totally be there.

I love my home and I love my meat!

2007-12-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

I have my own apartment!!! I'm seriously ecstatic over this little place, it's so awesome. Don't get me wrong, it's still freakishly small, but it's very new and modern and bright and mine! I thought I might be afraid to live out here on my own, but so far I'm really loving it(I'm counting the Weekly Mansion as part of that statement). Yes, living alone can be lonely, but I spend so much time around people at work that it's nice to just have some time to relax and be somewhere private. I went out today and bought some apartment essentials from the 100 yen shop... I'm really starting to worship that store. It's like a dollar store, but on crack, and I am totally addicted. It's truly got just about anything you could possibly want, all for 100 yen, which converts to roughly a dollar. I bought toilet paper, a trash can, tea lights (it's the closest I could come to Hannukah candles), an alarm clock... the list goes on. The only bad part was schlepping all the stuff I bought back to my apartment, but I figure I could use the exercise. Luckily, I'll be getting a little exercise every day since my apartment is about a 10-15 minute walk from my school. The walk, by the way, is wonderful. I live about 1/4 of a mile from a really lovely park with lots of trees and a big fountain in the center and I get to walk through it on my way to work everyday! It's an especially nice walk now because autumn is actually just hitting Tokyo at the moment, so all the trees' leaves are turning yellow and blowing around in the air. I love the fall, but I never thought I'd get to experience it twice in one year!

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering about the date I mentioned, so I will follow up on that a little bit. The guy I went out with, Hiro, was very nice and interesting. We went to a traditional Japanese style bar, but by American standards it was a restaurant. The bar was very nice and big, it had three different floors! We were seated at a sort of secluded booth on the third floor and every table had a little touch screen that you could place your orders on... it was very futuristic. We had some food and drinks and just talked for a while and it was fun. I don't know if I'm going to pursue anything beyond friendship with him, but either way, a friend is a good thing to have. Especially a Japanese friend! We're going to meet up again at some point and I'm going to do my best to show him around my neighborhood, Shintakashimadaira, (try saying that 5 times fast) since he's not familiar with the area.

I also went out last night with my co-workers to... god, I can't remember what it's called in Japanese... but it's a sort of Japanese BBQ where you get to cook your own meat. OH MY GOSH, it was sooooo delicious. We ate and ate and ate, and I totally could have eaten more! Man, I really do love meat.

Yakuza, ya crazy!

2007-12-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't done too much this weekend, primarily due to laziness, but yesterday I did force myself to go out for a little while and check out Ikebukuro, the electronics district (shown in picture). I'm not sure if it was because I got off at the wrong end of the train station or if I just wasn't looking hard enough, but it actually took me a little bit of time before I found a big electronics store. What I did find where lots and lots of arcades and pachinko parlors. For those of you unfamiliar with pachinko machines, they are like a cross between a pinball machine and a slot machine and they are ridiculously loud! You can you hear the pachinko parlors for practically a half a mile before you actually walk by them, which means you can almost always hear them because they are all over Tokyo. The really weird thing about pachinko is that because gambling in Japan is technically illegal you can't win money from the actual pachinko parlors. What you do win is a prize like a pen or a stuffed animal, but then you step outside the parlor, turn a corner, go to this little shop, and abracadabra your pen is suddenly worth $1,000 and they are happy to buy it off of you. Yeah, I told you it was weird. What's also pretty weird is that most of these pachinko parlors are run by the Yakuza, which is essentially the Japanese mafia, but no one seems to care.

Speaking of the Yakuza, you all may be interested to know that I am personally affected by them. And you want to know why? Because I have a one inch tattoo on my back. Oh my goodness, call the authorities. Traditionally in Japan only members of the Yakuza have tattoos, so having a tattoo is a sign of criminality and extremely frowned upon here. People with tattoos are often not allowed in public pools or Onsen, the Japanese hot springs, and it's particularly tricky to get around this in the Onsen because everyone is completely naked (it's separated by gender). Now, I understand being a little suspicious of a Japanese man with a full body tattoo or a sleeve, but come on, do I really look like I could be a member of the Japanese mafia? I think not, but you never know, maybe I'm a hardened criminal at heart.

A better day!

2007-12-01T04:47:00.000-08:00

It's my weekend! YAY!!!! Well, today was also long, but it went a lot better than yesterday. Despite the fact that I have not been overjoyed by my trainer's criticism, I have tried to use at least some of the advice he's given me to improve my classes and apparently it's worked to an extent because I received far less negative feedback today. There was just one lesson that I completely bombed because I misjudged the student's English level. The lesson I planned was just way too difficult for him and I ended up having to improvise a lot of it which was not easy. My last lesson of the day is amazing though, well really it's not a lesson, it's an hour of conversation with 3 really sweet women. In my classroom I have a map of the world that his push pins marking all the places that I have been and one of the women asked about the Israel pin (she thought I'd been to Saudi Arabia). Obviously my Israel trip led to the fact that I'm a Jew so they spent a good portion of the time asking me questions about my being Jewish. There are very very few Jews in Japan so very little is known about Judaism here and it's nice being able to educate people who want to know more about my culture. One of the women, Kiko, is having her birthday soon, so after the Jew talk we had cake that my trainer bought and it was just a nice end of the day.

Kiko got a cake, but I actually also received a present today! The other NET (Native English Teacher) at the school bought me alcohol! No, I'm not joking. We had been talking about this drink called Chuhai yesterday, so he bought me 3 cans of it, each one a different flavor (I intend to try them once this blog is finished). It's a kind of fruity drink and there are a gazillion flavors, the ones he got me include Watermelon Pineapple Cranberry; Orange Passion Fruit, and.... purple... yeah, that one seems a little iffy. Well, I'll give it a try. I took a picture of the cans, so now if you come to Japan you'll have no trouble spotting the booze section of the convenience store. I have also posted a picture of the beer vending machine conveniently located in the lobby of my hotel (don't worry, I have not actually used the beer machine). I'm not kidding when I say the Japanese seriously love drinking. I've had multiple students list it when I've asked them about their hobbies/things they like to do. I have not yet gone out with any of the staff or students, but I think it will definitely be interesting. In training they told us that if we go out with our students we better be the last to puke!

This weekend I'm not sure what I'm doing, well besides sleeping that is! I think I may try and brave the trains to go to a more central area of Tokyo like Rippongi Hills (high end shopping district) or Ikebukuro (electronics district). It should be an adventure either way so I'll write soon to let you know how it goes!

P.S. Thank you again for all the comments they really helped to improve my mood and to Jen yours was especially uplifting, but I'm not actually sure which Jen you are because I know about 5 or 6, so if you could let me know I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

2007-11-30T06:17:00.001-08:00

Today was... long. It was my first day of doing lessons all on my own and I'm tired! I'm also frustrated and feeling very tense (literally, I can feel it in my muscles and my neck). I just want to do a good job as a teacher. I want my students to like me and for them to actually learn and all I hear from the teacher who is training me is everything I'm doing wrong. I know he's trying to give me advice and constructive criticism, but a little positive feedback would be nice too. I don't know... I know I'm probably just being too sensitive, but I'll finish a lesson thinking that it went pretty well and then as soon as it's finished he'll tell me all of the mistakes I made and the things I should have done differently. I just can never seem to do anything right in his eyes, but the crazy part is there were a number of things he did during lessons that seemed wrong or unnecessary to me! To be honest, even though he has helped me tremendously in familiarizing me with the school and the neighborhood, I'll be sort of glad when he's gone and I can just figure all of this out on my own without worrying about being judged by him.

There's also the issue of my age. When I applied for this job I thought that most of the other teachers would be about the same age as me but I was wrong, they're all older than me and I just feel very young and stupid... and I think people have been seeing me that way, even though I'm trying my hardest to be mature and professional. I have classes teaching middle aged Japanese business men who have gone from having a very self assured 35 year old teacher who has already had a successful career as a commercial pilot and is about to open his own film making company, to me, the 22 year old female college graduate. I feel like I'm a joke to them.

I'm sorry to complain to all of you, and I promise not to make a habit of this, I just got off the train today and this was all just running through my head. I just keep trying to remind myself not to take this job too seriously, because what I really came here to do was experience a new place and a new culture. Tomorrow is Saturday (I work Saturdays) but then it's my weekend and I know all of you will be excited to know that I have what I think would be considered a date on Monday evening. Yeah, see reading to the end was worth it right?! I don't really tend to do this often, but I met this man through a website called gaijinpot.com (gaijin means foreigner in Japanese). We've emailed a bit and even though he is Japanese, he's been all over the world... even to Connecticut! For those of you who are freaking out at this point about the whole online thing, don't worry I will be very careful and use common sense. So that's about it, I'll keep you guys up to date on what happens... well to a point. Thanks to those of you who've been leaving comments, I really do enjoy reading them and I suspect that I may receive a few after this post!

What's really going on...

2007-11-28T15:45:00.000-08:00

Two days down! Over the last couple of days I have just observed the teacher I will be replacing, but today I get to teach my first real lesson. I'm pretty excited, but a little nervous of course. Since I've started working and observing the teachers at my school I've come to realize a couple of things. First of all, everything at our school is a lot more laid back and less structured than what they taught us in training. For instance, when I was at training we had daily dress code inspections to make sure we weren't wearing anything that would be considered inappropriate in Japan. Then I got to my school and the men never wear their jackets in the lobby (which was pounded into our heads during training), one of my male co-workers has an earing (another big no-no), and the first time I met the co-worker with the earing he took one look at me and said "Wow! You look so professional!". Well, yeah... I thought we were all supposed to look like that! But hey, I'm all for a more relaxed atmosphere and since he's been teaching for three years I figure he knows what he's doing.

Another major difference is the lesson plans. During training we were taught a very specific format for creating and teaching our lessons, I've come to find that this structure is also a lot more relaxed. The teacher who is training me never writes anything down on the board or on paper for the students to see. I find this frustrating at times because some people are visual learners and need to see the differences in what is being taught rather than just hearing the differences explained to them. I personally learn better by seeing information laid out in front of me, if you tell it to me I'll zone out and get confused. So basically, I need to figure out a way to mold what I've been taught in training to what the previous teacher does and what I want to do so that the students aren't completely weirded out (or bored) by the way I teach, but still learn in the best way possible. I think it's going to take a little time to figure out, but that's okay, I've got time.

I'm going to go out with my co-workers sometime in the next few days so I'm excited about that. When I went with my manager to get a thing called a gaijin card (foreinger card) she turned to me in the elevator and asked "Do you like meat???" for those of you who know me well, you all know the answer to that question, for those of you who don't, the answer is YES. I guess they're going to bring me to some sort of Japanese BBQ place to eat and, more importantly, drink (at least it's more important by Japanese standards).

Well, it's time for me to get ready for work. Today I'm going to bring my camera with me to the school because there are a few ridiculous things I need to take pictures of to post here. Until then, I hope you all have a fabulous night or day depending on your time zone!

Video of my Hotel Room

2007-11-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

The Story of Pleasant Animals

2007-11-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

For anyone who has ever lived with me or just witnessed my sleeping habits, you know that I am the kind of girl who will happily sleep until 2 in the afternoon if given the chance. Things now, however, are very different thanks once again to this stupid time change. For the past 3 days I have not been able to stay up past 9 pm and sleep past 6 am and it is driving me freakin' crazy! This would not be too big a deal if it weren't for the fact that my work hours are 1 - 10 pm, so basically by the end of today (my first work day) I'm going to be dead... good thing I'm writing this now!

With so much daytime on my hands I did get some good exploring in yesterday. On Sunday I took a right out of my hotel, so yesterday I decided to explore what was to the left. I walked down the main road, Kananna-dori, for a while (I live along side a highway); went down a few side streets and turned around so I wouldn't get lost; and then, being very careful to remember land marks, made a few turns and ended up accidentally doing a big loop back onto Kananna-dori. I went into a couple of convenience stores to try and buy a hairbrush (the airline baggage handlers broke mine in half) and discovered that finding normally sized hairbrushes in Japan is tricky. I also discovered that the Japanese eat corn dogs, in addition to a number of foods that I did not recognize. I'm not sure if you guys knew this, but 7-11 originated in Japan, so there are lots of them and then a bunch of strangely named stores that are just like 7-11 and they all smell really strange! Like a mix between fishy foods and chemicals... actually, a lot of the streets in Tokyo smell like this too. Sometimes you luck out and the street just smells like good food, but more often than not it's that strange fishy-chemical smell... or sewage. Putting smells aside though, walking the streets in Japan can be quite amusing. At one point I saw a sign that said: "Hair - Rose or Lose". Ummm, what does this mean? I don't think we'll ever know. I also bought from one of the 5 million convenience stores what may be the most amazing notebook ever, I have put a picture of it at the bottom. The cover of it makes about as much sense as the Hair sign, but that's why I love it (plus it was cheap and notebooks always come in handy).

Finally, I turned around and headed back toward my hotel. Despite lots of walking, most of the restaurants I saw looked sketchy or didn't have pictures in their menu's, so I decided to eat at the same place I ate the first day because it was very good and well priced. I forgot to mention this before, but eating out in Japan isn't really more expensive than buying food from a grocery store because the food is priced about the same and you never tip in Japan. When I say never I mean never, not for servers, taxi drivers, delivery people... no one. And if you try to tip anyway, basically they'll get confused and try to give your money back. It's nice, but at the same time, even though I know it's not expected, I feel kind of guilty not leaving anything.

That's about all I can think to write at the moment. Just so you all know, once work starts (that means today) I probably won't be writing in this every day, but I'll do my best. I'm pretty nervous about starting at the school so please keep your fingers crossed for me that everything goes smoothly... oh and feel free to leave comments, I love comments. I'll write soon, take care.

Small print says:

Please have a wonderful time with this notebook.
The story of pleasant animals.

Here at Last

2007-11-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

Well, after months of waiting I have finally arrived in Japan. It has been an exhausting, and at times overwhelming, process and I think it will continue to stay that way. I'm really relieved to know at least 1 person in Tokyo and to have made some friends who are scattered about Japan thanks to training. The night before we left 4 of us went out and it was just a really good time with some really awesome people (picture 1 and 2), so I hope we stay connected over the next year.

So now for what I'm sure you're all actually interested in... Japan! Well, to start things off, Japanese Airlines is totally amazing, each seat is equipped with a detachable remote control that lets you scroll through a menu with music, movies, and a bunch of video games to choose from on the screen in front of you. They also have storage departments by the window and hand out warm cloths at the beginning and end of the flight. I've never had a more enjoyable flying experience. We also flew over Alaska, so the view was absolutely spectacular (picture 3).
When we arrived at Narita (the airport) the 6 of us met Rita, the Sub Teacher who was picking us up. We split up from there and half of us went with Rita while the other half stayed at Narita to catch another flight. We took a train into Tokyo where I went with Rita and the other 2 were sent to meet other trainers/teachers. Rita and I took another train to the school that I will be teaching at. At the school I met my manager and the teacher whom I will be replacing. The school was kind of different from how I imagined it, which shouldn't have really surprised me because nothing ever turns out the way I imagine. It was very long and narrow which, according to the previous teacher, is pretty much how most places are in Tokyo... the long and narrow statement is supported by the dimensions of my hotel room/temporary apartment which is not only long and narrow, but also extremely small. It seemed like ages before we finally arrived at my hotel, partially because we stopped to eat, but mostly because it's ridiculously far way from my school. Luckily, the reason I'm staying at this crappy little place is because I will be moving into a brand new apartment on Dec. 4 and it's just not ready yet. When we arrived at my hotel (Weekly Mansion) it was discovered that the room hadn't actually been paid for yet by my company. Thank goodness I had a lot of cash on me so I was able to pay for it. I will be reimbursed on Tuesday when I return to the school for classes so it's not too big a deal and I actually end up not having to pay for 10 days worth of rent which is excellent.

In just the one day that I have been here I have already seen some pretty interesting things and had some unique, and at times frustrating, experiences. First of all, I have come to learn that it is not unusual to see people walking around wearing doctor's masks, even some children and teenagers wear them. They're meant to just keep the wearers healthy, and those around them too I suppose, but I'm not going to lie, I find something about these masked people rather disturbing. I was informed that some of my students will probably wear them during class, so that's definitely something I'm going to have to adjust to. I also completely freaked out this morning when I could not for the life of me shut the window to my room. I had just opened it so that I could take pictures of my view (picture 4) but when I went to close it the thing would not budge. Since the receptionist last night had not spoken English I assumed that I would not be able to explain what had happened to the front desk. As it turned out, the receptionist this morning did speak English and when she came up to "fix it" I discovered that you just had to push down on the metal bar that attached the window to the ledge. I have never in my life seen a window like this and even though I ended up looking like an idiot, I am relieved that I did not actually break the window and end up having to pay for it. The most frustrating part of the whole experience though was being unable to communicate what was wrong. Being unable to speak the language makes you feel completely and utterly helpless... it's scary. But you know what, scary is okay sometimes.
Today I went and walked around the neighborhood a bit and got a bite to eat at a local restaurant. A lot of restaurants here have fake food displays in their front windows and lots of pictures in their menus so I can just point at what I want. I also walked around a grocery store and bought some band aids and a mini christmas cake (a strawberry and cream cake). I know it's a little strange, but I really love going to grocery stores in different countries. I like seeing what we do and don't have in common in terms of eating and shopping. The bakery was actually very similar to one I went to in Mexico. All the breads and pastries are out in the open and you go around with a tray and tongs and choose the ones you want. Well it's pretty early, but I'm getting tired thanks to that lovely littl thing called jet lag, so I'll leave you with this delightful package of gum that I sat on when I got on a bus last night (picture 5). Goodnight, I love you all.

First Day of Training

2007-11-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

Well, 1 day down, 3 to go... so far so good. I'm rooming with 2 girls, Jen and Caitlin, who to my surprise are actually somewhat older than me. Plus, you're not going to believe this, but Caitlin went to Mary Washington... my college! But she graduated like 4 or 5 years before I even started... still I think that's pretty freakin' weird. I met my other roommate, Jen, within the first 5 minutes that I arrived at the hotel last night, she was sitting in the lobby using her laptop and she actually recognized my name when I checked in so she introduced herself. She's from Queens and she's very nice. Besides us girls, there are 3 guys who are doing the training with us. They are all very nice and one of them, Dele, was part of my group interview from when I went to Toronto in August. He's a good guy and I'm a little disappointed that he's been placed in Southern Japan, which is kind of far from Tokyo. Today wasn't too bad in terms of training, kind of basic stuff, all taught by a really nice girl named Wendy who just started working for the Vancouver office (she was a teacher/trainer in Japan for 4 years). Tomorrow the head honchos, my actual employers, will be taking over and I suspect it will be a little more challenging.
Well, time to go eat and do a bunch of reading and paperwork that half of us forgot to do. I'll write more in a few days... a bunch of us have planned to go out for Thanksgiving, even the Canadians, so I'll probably fill you in after that. (I ALTERED THIS BLOG for reasons of confidentiality).

No, this is not a joke.

2007-11-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

So basically, I work for the most indecisive company in the history of the world. That's right ladies and gentlemen, 2 days before my departure for training and I have been moved back to Tokyo once again. I'm at a different school than my original Tokyo placement and on a different side of the city (west instead of east). I'm not going to lie, I am not particularly thrilled about this change because Urayasu City seemed pretty wonderful, but so be it, that's life. I haven't looked up my new school yet, but it is called Takashima Baira and it is in downtown Tokyo in a section called Itabashi. So that's my big news for the week, hopefully it'll be the only news, but do not be surprised if I leave a post on Monday explaining how I have been re-assigned to Timbuktu, because at this point I wouldn't really be that shocked.

Change of plans... again!!!

2007-11-02T14:19:00.001-07:00

Oh my goodness, it's hard to believe, but just two weeks before my departure my plans have been changed again! I'm still leaving for my training and for Japan at the same time, but my placement has been changed... I'm no longer teaching in Tokyo! I've been reassigned to a school in Urayasu City called Shin-Urayasu (New Urayasu). Urayasu City is only 10-20 minutes outside of downtown Tokyo by train and it's where Tokyo Disneyland is located... even though it's not actually Tokyo. I'm really excited about this switch because I was pretty freaked out about living in such an extremely Metropolitan area, this city is far smaller (more similar in size to Hartford if you're familiar with CT). It was originally a fishing village so it's on the coast and has a sort of Japanese version of Mystic Seaport (sorry to those of you who don't understand the CT references). The old fishing section is split off from the newer section called Shin-Urayasu, which is what my school's named after, and it was only developed/established in 1981 so it's very new and popular with families. This website has some more information about it if you're interested: http://elidun.googlepages.com/urayasu-index

Now I'm just crossing my fingers that there will be no more changes because this placement seems pretty perfect for me and a lot closer to what I had wanted in the first place. I just hope they remember to send my Leila Poster over to the new school because I really really love that poster!

The confirmation has been unconfirmed

2007-10-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

So apparently my company was using the term "confirmed" loosely, since my confirmed schedule has been changed. I was supposed to leave for Vancouver Nov. 4 and Japan Nov. 9, but now I'm leaving for Vancouver Nov. 18 and Japan Nov. 23. The man who hired me explained that the Japanese Government has been taking its sweet old time to get all of my official documents (visa, immigration, etc.), despite their efforts to get them up to speed. It's not really that big a deal, it just caused a little bit of a hassle since I'd already booked my tickets to Vancouver, but my company is going to cover all the re-booking costs so I'm not too concerned. In the long term 2 weeks doesn't really make a big difference and my employer explained that everyone in Japan is waiting for me to arrive. It's kind of crazy, I feel sort of like a much awaited celebrity! I even have a "Leila" poster that they have put on the wall of the school I'll be teaching at so that the students, management, and other teachers (if there are any) can get to know me. The poster is made up of mainly photo's since obviously not everyone can understand English and it's got pictures of my friends, family, pets, and travels... it's pretty freakin' awesome.

I've started some of my preparations for traveling to Japan. I have a pile of stuff on my bureau that I plan to bring with me; I add a little to it each day. Some of the items include half a years worth of contacts, a flashlight, and a fold up hamper... essentials if you ask me. I also took some time today to pack all of my dvd's into a travel case in alphabetical order. No, I am not obsessive, alphabetizing just makes it easier to find individual dvd's since I won't have the cases to help me recognize them in Japan. I have yet to start my 2nd correspondence package, but since there was the scheduling conflict I have 2 extra weeks to procrastinate! Don't worry, I won't wait until the very last night, I'm not that bad.

Oh boy, this is all just so exciting! For now I'm just trying to live up my last few weeks in CT! This is my favorite time of year and I'm so glad I get to be here for it. On Tuesday I'm going pumpkin picking with Laura, which now that I think of it, is a truly North American experience (I think they pick pumpkins in Canada too). I have also joined a gym for my last month here so that maybe I won't look quite as cow like among all the tiny Japanese women. Shopping for clothing in Tokyo is going to be a real treat... but it's ok, because it's all part of the crazy, new, overwhelming experience.

Preparation and Strangeness

2007-10-09T21:44:00.001-07:00

Well, my schedule has been confirmed (it's the one I posted last time) and today I booked my flight to Vancouver and to Japan. I went shopping for professional clothing with my mom the other day. My company's dress code is ridiculously strict so most of the clothes I owned until 2 days ago really won't be much help in Japan. I got a few suits (if we wear pants they must match the jacket) and some skirts and blouses. Shoes are also an issue because they must be both closed toed and closed heeled and I do not own any nice shoes that actually fit that criteria. I've also read that it can be difficult to find shoes above a women's size 6, so the fact that I take between an 8 1/2 to a 9 could make things tricky once I arrive. Life's been pretty hectic lately dealing with all the preparations for my trip in addition to the ridiculously awful sales job that I took (BIG MISTAKE). I cannot wait to just get through with all the planning and actually go! I've included a couple of pictures demonstrating some of the oddities that await me... I'm excited!

Tentative Placement

2007-10-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

I recently received my tentative date and placement for Japan. I asked for a somewhat rural location or someplace that would at least not be considered "urban"... so of course they have placed me in Tokyo. Oh my god!! I have never lived in a city before, let alone a city where I don't speak the language, so this is very very scary for me... but I am still really excited. Since this is just a tentative placement there is still a 20% chance that I may be moved. If not I will be teaching in a school called Shinonome SC (Shopping Center), which is located in downtown Tokyo. My tentative schedule is as follows:

Nov 5-8, Training in Vancouver
Nov 9, Fly out from Vancouver
Nov 10, Arrive in Japan

So basically, if all goes as planned, I've got about a month left here in the US and TONS left to do! I still have a bunch of work to do on the correspondence packs that must be completed before my training, plus shopping, packing, bank stuff, and saying goodbye to all the people I love. This Saturday is my family's Sukkah Party / My going away party, so I guess that's when the farewells will begin. There are some people I'm going to miss so much, I still don't know how I'm going to handle living without all of them for a year.

Head Start

2007-09-15T22:56:00.001-07:00

I don't actually go to Japan for another couple of months, but I was just kind of eager to write something in my blog. It looked so empty with all that purple space so I thought I'd get a head start on filling it in. I find out within the next couple of days what city I will be living and teaching in, so I'll be sure to post that once the letter arrives. When I was at the interview I asked that I be placed somewhere considerably rural, or at least not too urban, so hopefully they'll acquiesce to my request.