Adventures in Japan

Why we like menus with pictures

Tyler & I have been doing the whole New Year's cleaning thing, so rather than cook in an apartment full of the fumes and vapours of questionable Japanese cleaning products, we ate in some little hole in the wall bar near where we live. The food wasn't terrible, but we did see a lot of bugs. Enough to make us want to leave. Except before we did, we had to satisfy our curiosity about the 焼きウィンナー. "Yaki-winner," we thought, "What on earth could that be?" It was only as the words left my lips that I realized what we had just ordered. Yaki-wieners. Yup. Grilled cocktail wienies. Five of 'em. For ¥400. Wow.

I guess that's funnier if you can read Japanese.

More Christmas Pictures

I was just going to add these into the body of my text, but they didn't really fit. Not that that has ever stopped me before, but they also might need a bit of explanation.


This is a Christmas boat. It was cruising around the Christmas island where all the Christmas lights were. If you can't tell, that's Santa at the helm and a reindeer on the bow.


I just like this picture. I like blur in my photos, I also prefer black and white, so if I'm going to take a colour picture then there better be colour dangit! I especially like the phantom feet at the bottom.


Sometimes my camera just takes pictures like this. I like when my camera takes pictures like this. I deem them happpy accidents. The extra p is for ppicture. That extra p is a typo.


CAT ON BIKE!!! I'm not normally a cat person, but this was just too cute to pass up. So I didn't.

Last Christmas I told You To Stop Singing That Horrible Song

This is the post where I talk about Christmas.

Christmas, despite all of the lights and displays and constant carolling on the sound systems, is not all that big a deal here. Christmas was, as you may remember, on a Saturday this year and yet both Carla and I still ended up working. It's just another day of the week, not a holiday or anything. To be fair, the 23rd was a holiday, the Emperor's birthday. And New Year's is the big event in these parts. It's the time of year when families all get together and celebrate and maybe go to a temple or shrine. Christmas is more of an excuse to get drunk. Sort of the opposite of back home.

So I worked. Not teaching or anything, I just sat in the office for many hours, wondering what I was supposed to be doing and when I would be allowed to go home. I got home, or the station near home where I was meeting Carla, a little before 7. The big Christmas meal in these parts is fried chicken. We thought about getting some KFC, or Kentakkii as it is known here, but instead got some marked down fried chicken from a supermarket. It was... greasy.

I know this is all sounding a bit... I sound kind of bitter. But I'm not. Not really. But I AM a bit homesick. I mean, all you back home get delicious dinners and warm houses and family and all that. We ate greasy chicken and then did laundry. Also, the bathroom ceiling is trying to kill us.


At around 1 in the morning we called home and that was nice. It was nice talking to family and hearing that everyone is doing well. Ry has a part in a movie and is working for WestJet. Dad is a loudmouthed MP and I don't think I've ever been more proud of him. So yeah, it was real nice to talk to everyone, but kind of sad too, because... well because we aren't there. But we're in Japan and Japan is lovely and a New Year is coming up and it will be full of stuff.


On Boxing Day (not that they know what Boxing Day is over here), we went out and looked at all the pretty lights they had on display. They were kind of pretty. Shame about the Celine Dion.

Now all I have to do is clean up the apartment with Carla (it's very important to ring in the new year with everything clean, my last day of work was spent scrubbing the office), figure out what to do with the boys when they get here in the middle of January, figure out how to tell my bosses that I'm quitting (I'm leaning toward blaming it on Carla), and figure out how to tell my adoring public that I will probably be staying in Japan until spring 2006. Haven't figured out what to do about that last one.

Best Ashtray Ever

For relaxing times...

The crying neighbour baby and its family moved out today. Merry Christmas to us!

I feel like maybe I should be watching festive holiday movies, but somehow I decided that today was the day for a repeat viewing of Lost in Translation. I quite liked it the first time. This time, too. But now I recognize more. Like signs in the background and games in the arcade and stuff. And when what's-her-name goes to Kyoto. We've totally been to some of those places. Those crazy, exotic places. We're in another country. Holy crap.

Oh yeah, and I think we're becoming wusses when it comes to the weather. We went out to look at Christmas lights tonight. The temperature wasn't even all that close to freezing, but we were still cold. I mean sure, we could have worn hats or gloves or scarves, but that would have been like cheating.

Merry Christmas All

Thursday night I went to a Christmas party at work. It wasn't like Tyler's "Christmas party" where he had to sing songs and dance around for the entertainment of children and their parents. Mine was a grown-up party. All I had to do was hang around and eat and drink. My kind of shindig. But because it was a party and not, strictly speaking, an English lesson, much of the conversation was in Japanese. I understood some of it, but I discovered that Japanese people not only have the capacity to speak incomprehensibly fast, they can also converse at volumes well below my range of hearing. It was like talking through a glass wall (or maybe a window, if the window was closed). People would look right at me and ask what seemed to be simple questions, but I'll be damned if I could make out more than a few words of anything they said. Everyone was really nice about it, but they probably all think I'm stupid.

There was lots to eat and LOTS to drink. In Japan it seems there's always someone waiting for an opportunity to top up your glass. They won't offer to fill it, they'll just go right ahead and do it. Sometimes the only way to keep people from pouring more liquor into your cup is to leave it full and not drink what you've been given. Now me not being one to let anything go to waste, I ended up drinking a lot.

Once the party started to wind down, I caught one of the last trains of the night and met up with Tyler and David at the Green Leaf where I drank some more. Then we went to The Brittania and continued to drink. Then we bought some liquor in a convenience store and drank it while watching Super Size Me in the lounge upstairs. I think Tyler and I finally got to bed sometime around 8:00 Friday morning.

Friday afternoon I got a call from a Russian lady in need of a warm body for some event work starting at 3:00. Because it was extremely short notice, she offered to pay me ¥10,000 for just over two hours of work. How could I say no? Well, having had a long night of drinking not too many hours previous, I was extremely dehydrated, short on sleep, and I hadn't had anything to eat since some chocolatey snacks in the wee hours of the morning. I went anyway.

Partly due to my depreciated physical and mental state, the whole experience was surreal. But a lot of it had to do with the pachinko. Pachinko is kind of like a cross between pinball and a slot machine. In a pachinko parlour (Japan has thousands upon thousands of them) players sit in front of their chosen machines and watch hundreds of little steel balls fall through the machine and bounce off pegs and into holes (kind of like Plinko on The Price is Right). When a ball falls through the right hole, the machine will spit out more balls, or trigger some crazy slot machine action, and then maybe spit out more balls. Now that may not sound like too much fun, but the machines all have themes, you see. Anything from comedians to cartoons to masked hero shows from the '70s. Underwater themes seem to be especially popular.

So anyway, the job consisted of wandering around a loud, smoky, pachinko parlour in a Santa dress, giving away prizes that consisted almost entirely of seafood (why not?). My companions in this endeavour were two Russian girls that spoke very, very little English. Now I myself don't understand more than two words of Russian, so I had to communicate with the other girls in Japanese. Somehow that seemed really weird, but then again, I was really, really tired.

I worked again on Christmas Day, but this time at a pachinko place all the way out in Kobe. I was a little more hydrated, slightly better fed, but somehow a little less rested. And I worked five hours this time instead of two. We handed out hot towels for the first little while, but after that we just walked around. Around and around and around. Making our Christmasy selves seen and tyring not to get in the way. One of the other girls seemed to have worked at that particular pachinko parlour fairly often. She was always waving at players and chatting with them like they were old friends. That must have made the time go by quicker. But I'm not complaining. There are a lot of worse jobs out there that pay a lot less money. Hooray for being an exotic foreigner!

So after all of that, what did Tyler and I do for our special Japan Christmas together? Laundry. Surprisingly enough, hanging wet clothes outside, on a windy late December night is not exactly pleasant. More like digit-numbing. So after that we turned on the heat for the first time since we've been here. I feel like such a sissy.

We also ate some really disappointing supermarket chicken.

~ o ~ O ~ o ~
And now Tyler says I should write some more interesting things about pachinko. Like how some players put little steel balls or coins in their ears. I'm not sure if it's for luck or to block some of the noise, or both, but I've definitely seen people do it. And aside from betting on certain types of racing, gambling in illegal in Japan. Yet some people manage to make a living playing pachinko. How do they do it? They exchange their buckets of balls for prizes at the pachinko parlour, then go around the corner and exchange their prizes for cash through a little hole in a wall. Then the mystery people on the other side of the hole sell the prizes back to the pachinko guys for a bit of a profit, and the cycle continues. Now, I'd heard about these prize-exchange shenanigans beforehand, but I expected the little windows to be hidden away down back alleys or something. Nope. They're right out front for all the world to see. The police don't hassle them at all. I guess they have better things to do. Or maybe it has something to do with shady underworld dealings. I dunno, but it's an interesting system.

Kyoto engrish

I wonder if the guy who appoved this sign in the Kyoto subway still has his job.


The Japanese translates to "Porta" (the name of the mall) and "periodic sightseeing bus"

And only one shifty foreigner selling hemp goods and jewelery

Once a month, To-ji temple in Kyoto holds a great big flea market. Today we went, and it was indeed very, very large. And very, very crowded. There were dense masses of shoving humanity pretty much everywhere we went. Except when it was raining. But then out came the umbrellas, pointy bits right at my eye level. Luckily it didn't rain long.

There were some very expensive old things for sale at that market, and a lot of dishes and things that looked like they had been picked out of the trash. There were a bunch of bonsai and other garden-related things all grouped together at one end, and food stalls just about everywhere I looked. But the one thing there was more of than just about anything else was recycled kimonos. Some booths sold them whole, some sold the fabric in pieces, some sold clothes made out of bits of old kimonos, some sold purses, some sold crafts like dolls and goldfish and other decorative doodads. All made out of old silk. Maybe not all of it was old, but yeah, there sure was a lot of it.


I'm not sure why, but there were also a lot of people taking pictures. One old couple in particular seemed to concentrate on taking pictures of foreigners. I noticed their big cameras pointed in my direction on more than one occasion. I think they were camped out on a bridge for a while, and I'm sure I saw them taking pictures of two women looking at sweaters. It could have been coincidence, but it was still weird. Also kind of creepy: the man taking pictures of the shirtless mannequin.

After I was done with the market and Tyler was done with work, we went out to eat with one of the women he teaches with. She knows all the cheap places to eat and even cheaper places to drink. She's my favourite.

They Hit Me With A Truck

Today was a pretty good day. I thought the cute girls in the office how to swear creatively and with gusto. And I got paid to do it. One of the girls made me some niku jaga, which is like the Japanese version of stew. It was very good, but not near as good as Jerry's stew. It made me homesick. Then I went and played around with kids all day. I am beloved by Japanese children. I had to go back and revisit some of the kids because they called up the teacher I was teaching with and told her to tell me that they had gifts for me. That is pretty freakin' awesome. Some kid I taught for 45 minutes felt compelled to make me a card and some origami. The teacher I was with was also a real sweetheart. She laughed at nearly everything I said. I played peekaboo, in Japanese, with an adorable 3 year old boy. I had a delightful dinner with Carla and then we retired to our apartment to watch some The Brak Show, Futurama, and Venture Brothers. Days don't get much better.

The only real downside to the day was this: I asked my co-teacher what she thought about teaching for the Bing Bang Boom Club. She said she loved it but was going to quit it in the new year. I asked her why she would do that if she loved it so much. She said it was because she was getting married, as if that was an answer. And I guess to her it was. That's a little messed up.

I Just Like The Use Of the Word Quaff

Needs Less Cayene

Maybe this happens in every big city and I am just unawares, but I love how stuff is always happening on Osaka streets. Like the Abeny East American Festival today. We were just out walking today, no real plan, when we passed by a group of people handing out bunches of balloons. There was a bit of a bottleneck and we were stopped momentarily. Cups of hot onion soup were thrust into our hands by girls wearing hats bearing the stars and stripes. We moved off to one side to imbibe and to figure out what the hell was going on. The Abeny East shopping arcade was having an American Festival, that's what was going on. What onion soup has to do with America, I have no idea. But I'm glad there was onion soup to be had, for if we hadn't had to stop to slurp our soup we mightn't have ever noticed that the "American Presentation" was about to begin.

I cannot hope to describe the American Presentation, I can only relate some of what happened. It all started with some guy wrapped in black gauze talking for a very long time about the fact that this was the American Presentation, and that onion soup was available for all who wanted some. Then a girl with a green face and an orange soft serve ice cream cone started yelling "YES!" I guess she was supposed to be the statue of liberty, for when she took to the stage the Star Spangled Banner began to play. Then girls dressed up as cats started kung fu fighting. Then a male Batman and a female Spiderman fought and then hugged. Then a woman dressed all in red drew a picture of George W. Bush whilst "We Are The World" played in the background. Interesting note: Japanese people always colour the sun red. Then E.T. stole Eliot's bike. Then everyone got on stage and started singing a Ray Charles song. It was mildly surreal to say the least.

We walked on and saw a band tearing down their equipment. The Man had just shut them down. That happens all the time. Bands set up just to be shut down. I wonder if it's worth all the effort. I enjoy it, for what that's worth. The buskers don't seem to get picked on. I guess amps are what separate legal from illegal. There are tonnes of buskers by Tennoji station. I walk by them every night. They are always changing, and they all have cute fans.

I like all the buskers, and all their cute fans and all the crazy kids all dressed up all weird, but I think my favourite street performance I've seen was the drummers last weekend. The sound of that drum hits you somewhere between your navel and your spine and makes your ears ring pleasantly.

The American Festival was the best part of our wanderings. It was all downhill from there. We wandered past the nearby zoo. We didn't wander through the actual zoo, we didn't see any actual animals, but we saw how unbusy it all was. Maybe it was the overcast day that gave it all such a negative impression. From there we checked out Festival Gate, the mall with the roller coaster running through it. Also depressing. I'd say more than two thirds of the shops were closed or empty. The roller coaster was running, we'd have given it a spin if the weather weren't so crap. Festival Gate is is right next to Spa World, which is like the Moose Jaw mineral spa mixed with Disney Land.

In the evening, we went up to the lounge and met some new people. I'm tired of typing now so I won't say anything else about them.

Panda Panda Panda Panda Pan Panda

We haven't had the chance to mention this yet, so I'll mention this now: there are a lot of bikes here. Okay, we've mentioned that before, but have we mentioned the fact that everyone rides them on the sidewalk? Not slowly? They do. Got to be on your toes all the time, or else you might lose them. The only way you'll hear a cyclist coming is if they do have to brake. And then you'll REALLY hear them. Japan must have some kind of ban on grease or something, cuz man those things squeal. More than me when Sev slammed my fingers in the door at the cabin and the door latched. Ear splitting, eye watering shrieks. Not good.


But you have to admire the Japanese's mastery of the bike. They weave in and out of pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic with ease. I've never seen a bike accident. Given the amount of bikes I see, that is pretty remarkable. A lot of times, it isn't just one person riding on that bike either. More often than not, there are two people on that bike. Three if a small child is involved. And most of the time the second person is standing on pegs sticking out from the centre of the rear wheel. Most often they hold on to the person in front of them, but I saw one guy standing on the back of a bike with his hands in his pockets as his friend weaved the bike through the varied traffic. That takes talent.

Bike riding is a talent I haven't really ever had. Even back when I used to sometimes ride a bike. It's been a while since I've ridden a bike. I mention all this bike stuff because my job sometimes requires me to ride a bike to and from different student's houses. I am now even more in awe of the Japanese people's ability to not crash their bikes into things. I usually have nice, big, wide, fairly empty streets to ride on and I still have trouble not hitting things. To be fair, some of the cars that I almost hit surprised me by sneaking up on me on a bike path.

I had forgotten that I like riding bikes. It's just one of the myriad things that I am not any good at but like anyways. I like seeing the surroundings pass by at a faster rate than when I walk. But then again, it's much harder to take a decent picture on a bike. I can't stop, man, I've got students to teach. They don't give us much time to get between houses.

The other thing that riding bikes has made me notice is that it's getting colder. I had noticed the chill in the air before, but having to cycle through the cold, wet air makes you appreciate it on a different level.

Also, while we are talking about my job: Japanese children are SO CUTE!!!!

And thanks to Mom, Jerry and Sev for sending us a Christmas care package. You guys rock!

The wafting smell of diapers

I was so preoccupied with my stomach woes that I forgot to mention something that I'm sure will have a shattering effect on my mental well-being. We now have neighbours with a crying baby. Yay! We just paid our non-refundable rent, so that means with our luck we've got a whole month of crying (interspersed with snoring) to look forward to. Woo!

I think maybe apartment living is not for me.

Otherwise I'll never learn

I believe we've mentioned McDonald's "cheese croquette burgers" before. Well now I've actually tried one. I should have known better. I really should have known better. I mean, come on, it's still McDonalds. I don't know what makes me think the food will be any better just because it's in another country.

Right, so, I was expecting cheesy potato goodness inside the croquette. Instead I got about the blandest macaroni & cream sauce I think I've ever consumed. And there was probably more mayonaise on that sandwich than there was filling in the croquette. To make matters worse, I ordered the combo. I don't know what came over me. Horrible fries.

Now I don't feel so good. I guess that goes without saying.

I totally cut that log. Like in half. Or: And Spinning, Always Spinning

A couple of days ago at work I was shown a video. It was all about DanSingLish. Dance. Sing. English. Yeah. It was a bunch of very basic English dialogues set to very crap songs with very amateurish choreography. It was glorious. I could not stop giggling. Which made the girl who I was watching the video with giggle. Which made me giggle even more. Which made our boss look a little cross. Which made us giggle even more.

Let's see if I can paint you a little bit of a picture. Open on an anonymous white space, sparsely decorated with letters and such. Cue the really bad music. Once the crap establishes its beat, the dancers twirl onto the screen. Whoever directed this thing really, really liked spinning. Almost every song and dance number began with the dancers spinning into frame and all ended with them spinning away. Each song had between one and three real dancers (most of whom were cute girls who could not show off more of their toned tummies if they tried) and about five children who were, in theory, the backup dancers. I say in theory because I don't think any of the kids had ever danced before. In fact it looked as if they had only ever heard vague whispers about this thing the elders call "dance". So all the assembled dancers started their odd gyrations, most of which bore only passing resemblance to the lyrics. Oh the lyrics. Actually, the lyrics were not that bad. But the person who sang them... he had a thick accent and sounded like that green Karaoke demon from Angel. I never did like that green Karaoke demon from Angel, always found his singing annoying.

So the dance steps, which were supposed to demonstrate what the lyrics were talking about, ended up being more confusing than anything. So between all the songs they have little vignettes where two people just talk the lyrics and do the actions normally. You'd think that would render the whole singing and dancing section of the video pointless, but you'd be right. The same two people appear in every "spoken word" vignette; a heavy, haggard looking blond woman and some smarmy jerk who looked like Brian Austin Green doused in extra annoying. I know, the mind boggles.

So that's about it. With a couple other little bits of chuckle fodder. Every 'song' was in a different genre, the best of which was the rap song about speaking good English. You have not lived until you have seen a five year old Japanese boy try to act thug whilst a Japanese accented singer in the background talks smack about how well he speaks English. Also funny: a part of one of the dances had one of the 'real' girl dancers crouch down so all the kids could leapfrog over her. It all went fine until the heavy kid tried. Hilarity ensued. I can't believe they didn't do another take.

Well, that took longer to detail than expected. While I'm here and you're bored, I'll just keep talking. I had my first real day of teaching today. I went to actual Japanese houses. They are small and cramped. Who knew? One of the students forgot that I was going to be showing up for his class this week. He got all nervous and didn't say very much. At least until I pulled out my DS, then he got a lot more animated.


I bought a DS.

Walking in Kyoto after dark is scary. There are no sidewalks and lots of traffic. Me no likey. I also didn't like being in a bus as it careened through the same small side streets.

After the last class, me and the other teacher went out to get some dinner. On the way to dinner she noticed that her bracelet was missing. We retraced a lot of steps. Didn't find it. She started to leak a bit from the eyes. Awkward. I paid for her dinner.

There is a print ad on the trains here that is deeply disturbing. I think it is supposed to be of people crying with joy. It instead looks like they are bleeding gallons of milk from their eyes as they scream in terror. It's like they've just seen the contents of the Lost Ark.

Another disturbing sight on the train: on my way home a very drunk business man got on and stood in front of me. I was seated. He grabbed onto the handhold and hung on with a death grip. He swayed and lurched all over the place. Then the train started to move. He was like a perpetual motion machine. I was positive that I was going to get covered in his sick.

Another expensive weekend

Of the three, count 'em three, free English language publications available around these parts, at least two of them advertise a bar called Café Absinthe. Now with a name like that, how could we not go? Answer: we couldn't. Not go, I mean. So we did. Go.

Surprise surprise, the bar advertised in foreigners' magazines was full of white guys. At least these seemed younger and slightly hipper than the ones we usually see in such places. The bar itself was brighter and not quite as funky as I was expecting. But it didn't totally suck. And it reminded me that I like the idea of absinthe much more than I like the taste. I drank my absinthe in a cocktail, because it seemed like the thing to do. Unfortunately, it still tasted unpleasantly like licorice. Apparently the wormwood content of absinthe sold in this country is as negligible as it is in Canada, so I think I've officially given up on my dreams of an interesting absinthe experience. Although lighting drinks on fire is always a pretty good time...

After the absinthe, we wandered until we found food, an ATM, and a taxi for our lovely companion, then we walked home. I had a couple of pretty good Irish coffees, so I was all right. I'm not sure what Tyler had been drinking, but he was dozing as he trudged the hour or so back to our apartment. It was cute.

Somehow not feeling the post-absinthe lightness of our wallets, we ventured out again the next night. This time without any plan in particular. We probably could have wandered the whole night listening to street performers (like the Chinese lion dance drum guys, or the choreographed funk guys) if "the man" hadn't come along to shut them all down. I'm not sure if they were police, or the Japanese equivalent of mall security guards, but they went up the street shooing everyone along. Pity.

So with no more free street entertainment, we sought to amuse ourselves at an izakaya. Failing to find the one we were looking for, we ate okonomiyaki. You know, the Japanese omelette-y, pancake-y, pizza-y things. It was overpriced and really, really nothing special. But it kept us downtown long enough and put enough beer in us to think that all-night karaoke would be a good idea.

We tried one of the places with one of the giant mechanical dragons out front. For one not so low price (but pretty reasonable, compared to the hourly rate) we got a karaoke booth from 11:00PM until about 5:30AM plus unlimited free drinks. Unfortunately, the booth we were given had unpleasantly warped mirror-type panels on the walls. I guess it was meant to make the room seem bigger, but really it was just distracting and more than a little off-putting. The room didn't seem to have any climate controls, either. If it hadn't been for the free drinks, we might as well have been singing in an elevator. Speaking of, the background music for our songs had a decidedly Muzak quality. And it seems all the foreign songs play over top of the same two videos. One was just a lot of shots of San Francisco, London, and Rome, with a little Paris or New York thrown in for good measure. I believe we also saw a lot of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The other video featured jazz musicians and a guy tap dancing on the street. Try watching that all night. Maybe we wouldn't have noticed if we'd been drinking steadily, but the service was very, very slow. And rarely did we get exactly what we asked for.

We lost one of the screws from Tyler's camera, so we haven't had it out with us the past few days. That's a real shame, because many of Tyler's performances were worth recording. He sang his little heart out. I'm surprised he's still got his voice today. What a guy!

Begging

Yeah, so Carla and I are teaching now. That involves a bit of talking about ourselves, our families and where we are from. So, it would be helpful to have pictures to go along with our words. We would be quite happy if any of you could send us any such pictures. Not by mail, no, but via email if you could. That would be awesome. Pictures of Christmas and Halloween would also be keen.

But No Complimentary Shave

Got a haircut today. Very exciting, I know. None of the hairdressers could speak any English, so that made things a bit more interesting. First, I had to pick out a hairstyle from one of their many hairstyle books. The problem with this is that my hair is not Japanese hair. It's fairly different. Plus, the trend amongst young Japanese males these days is to bleach their hair an ugly brownish orange and tease it into ridiculous shapes. I've seen anime with more realistic hair. But I managed to find one that would maybe suit me.

The actual haircutting process involved getting my hair shampooed, then cut a bit, then washed again, then I got a delightful scalp and neck massage. It was unexpected, but much appreciated. I think I ended up looking okay. At the very least my boss won't keep asking me to get it cut. And best of all it didn't cost a ridiculous amount. I'm not sure if I was supposed to tip or not.

After supper we went out for dinner. We had us some yakiniku. Literally translated, it means grilled meat. And that is what we ate. And it was good. Better than good, really. It took us a while to figure out what we wanted to order, actually had to ask the owner what he recommended, but we eventually got it all figured out. We ordered some beef. The owner/manager/waiter/only other guy in the place not that that was a bad sign because it had just opened for the night and it was still pretty early and people in Osaka seem to eat late placed a bucket of burning embers into the middle of our table. It made me miss camping and fireplaces. The heat of a fire is just so pleasing, so relaxing somehow. We sat and enjoyed the warmth and watched the flames dance.

Which is not to say that it is cold here in Osaka. Far from it. The nights may get a little nippy but when the sun is out the temperature is always in the mid teens. How you guys doin' over there?

After a while the owner brought a fair sized plate of meat to our table. It looked good, it smelled good, it made my stomach rub its hands in anticipation. Good lord, the smell of cooking meat is one of the best scents in all the world. The meat was cut thin so it didn't take very long at all to cook. Which was good, as we were very hungry. In addition to the meat plate he brought us out saucers containing a light sesame sauce of some kind. When the meat was cooked, you dipped it in the sauce to cool it down before chowing down on it. The sauce was also excellent. Everything about that meal was excellent. The warmth of the flame on my face, the smell of good meat cooking, a cold beer in my hand and a gorgeous girl sitting across from me. It doesn't get much better than that. After the meal we exchanged pleasantries with the owner, raved about the food and then came back home for a nap. We will be going back there. Man I wish I was getting paid soon.

All The Small Things

The thing about not posting every day, and about me being to lazy to take accurate notes, is that a lot of the small details get lost. "The happy little trees" of our trip, to couch it in Bob Ross terminology. To put it another way, I'm forgetting about the flavouring. I likes the flavouring. I know that I already use too many words, but you'll be glad to know that I know that a little flavouring goes a long way. Too much flavouring, too many flavours, and whatever it is your cooking turns to crap.

It's just that there are certain things that stand out sharply to me when they happen at the time, and I say to myself, "Remember to mention that the waitress at the Thai buffet looked remarkably like Zhang Ziyi." And what happens when I go to write about the Thai buffet (buffets, or smorgs, are called Vikings here, pronounced BaiKinGu)? I don't mention the cute waitress, nor the fact that she can speak French. That's some nice little detail. Detail that would make my friends jealous at the very least. Which is why I didn't mention her horribly unfortunate teeth. So I'll try to get better at that. Yay, more reading!!

I work in Kyoto. That's about an hours travel from here. A twenty minute subway ride followed by forty on a train. Wanting to fit in as best I can, I oftentimes fall asleep on these conveyances. I have no idea how I wake up in time to not miss my stops. I don't try to fall asleep, I try to study or read but no matter how hard I try it always ends up with me groggily apologizing to the nice Japanese person next to me for drooling on him or her in my sleep. But on my ride home today I managed to stay awake. It's an entirely different experience.

Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe are all so close together that they could almost be called one city. There's not a lot of open space. But there are mountains. Maybe not mountains, but big jutty hills at the very least. The cities are slowly climbing up these steep hills. Or the hills are slowly creeping on the cities. They are covered in vegetation, these hills. Carla says they look like they're covered in broccoli, that should give you a good idea of what they look like. Lots of round, poofy protrusions obscuring the rock below. And at this time of year, there is a wonderful variety of colours. I myself think that the hills look like massive mounds of mold that have run rampant. It's crazy man, they are high and steep and just poised on the edge of civilization. It's like they are waiting for the perfect moment to explode forward, smothering and crushing all that lies in their way. It's really quite pretty.

I stopped in Namba on the way home to pick up some groceries. Then I picked up some groceries. To be fair, I was also very tempted to buy a DS. I saw them on sale man! I saw slightly used units and games for even cheaper, man! They ain't all sold out! To be completely honest, I was so tempted that I tried to purchase one but the stupid Japanese credit card reader was racist. I guess it was not meant to be. Back to groceries: I was lugging my groceries home and wanted to figure out when I'd be getting home. So I asked a nice looking Japanese man what time it was. He told me. He was walking in the same direction as me so he struck up a conversation. In Japanese. I managed to keep up. In Japanese. He asked simple questions and I provided even simpler answers. Perhaps emboldened by my performance so far, he asked a few questions that flew right over my head. I apologized. He said I should study more. I told him that I study every day but it all goes in one ear and out the other. He laughed. That's a good phrase to know. He seemed very impressed that I was walking all the way from Namba to Abeno. It's only about a 45 minute walk. But I was weighted down with about 10 pounds of stuff. Through hobo town.

It's not really called hobo town. There's just a bunch of homeless people who hang out there. Have we mentioned the homeless people here? Other than the one who touched Carla moistly? It's strange. They don't beg. They don't wash windows at intersections. They just rummage through rubbish in search of sustenance. And they build their own little lean-tos out of cardboard, newspaper and tarp. Some are quite elaborate. I walked by about a dozen such constructions on the way home. I'm debating whether or not to mention that there's been at least one murder in this area recently. No, I'd better not. It might upset the moms.

Fury

We have a neighbour who snores. I'm not sure which one, but I can hear him right now. Through the walls (or possibly floor or ceiling). Through my earplugs. Over the sound of the TV. His snores are driving me mad. If I'm not asleep in the next 30 minutes, I'm likely to go over there with something heavy with which to bludgeon him. I wonder if he's also the guy that smokes enough to stink up our apartment.

Now if y'all will excuse me, I'm going to try to drink myself into a stupor and hopefully get some sleep.

It would have cost us more if we wanted to see it in Japanese

The Incredibles, or "Mr. Incredible", just opened here in Japan. We thought maybe we wouldn't get to see it for a while, but we splurged on an opening weekend viewing. Totally worth it. That was probably my favourite Pixar movie so far. I was mesmerized by the animated hair, and for some reason, the lips. Even the end credits I enjoyed. Partly because they were visually interesting, and partly because there was no blooper reel. Everyone else seems to enjoy them, but I can't help but find animated "bloopers" overly contrived and more than just a little stupid. Also stupid, the trailer for Pixar's next movie, the one with the talking cars. Maybe, by some miracle, they'll pull it off and the movie will be fabulous, but from what I saw, that doesn't look too likely. Pity. And you know, I gotta say, I wasn't too impressed with the animated short that came before The Incredibles, either. The one with the jackalope and the dancing sheep. It wasn't bad necessarily, I just really didn't care for it. It certainly doesn't compare to the shorts Pixar has included in front of their other films. Those all made me laugh. This one not so much. Pity.

While we were downtown for the movie watching, we took another look at the English book sale. I bought a cookbook that I will probably never use. At least, not in this country. It's bulky and heavy, and I don't know how I'm going to get it back to Canada. But in my defence, it was a really good deal.

And on the subject of books, buying a whole bag of them the other day was probably a bad idea. I can't be trusted not to read them when I have other, more important things to do. Not only am I an inveterate procrastinator, I have almost no willpower. If there's a book sitting in front of me, I can't help but pick it up and read it. And once I'm reading, I can't seem to stop. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go read right now. Or maybe study some Japanese vocabulary. But probably read.

Working Leaves Less Time For Not Working

Not that that is an excuse for not posting here for such a long stretch. To be fair, I did type up a post a few days ago but the computer ate it. Swallowed it whole, never to be seen again. 'Sallright tho' cuz it wasn't any good no how. Heck, I even forget the particulars.


But I might remember some of them as I type this. There is a fair bit to mention I guess and the act of mentioning some things might stir up memories of others. Or it might not. I've started work is the main big thing. Haven't really taught much of anything. Just been reading lots of manuals and talking to the other people in the office. That's about all I'll say about that. For now. Well, I guess I can mention that the JR Central Station in Kyoto is amazing. It's about 12 stories tall, a good chunk of it is open to the sky and you can take an escalator all the way to the top. My words, they ain't so good. But trust me, it's some darn fine architecture. I may have to dance about it some day.


Segue.


I had another interview, at a school near Kobe. They also loved me. Figures. No one wants me until I get hired somewhere else. We checked out a bit of the Kobe scene. We didn't get to see all that much, but we liked what we saw. So much so that we went back. During the day, like. I like Kobe. It's got the whole by the ocean thing going on, so that's nice. Plus it's totally in Japan, which is a big plus. But it ain't near as crowded as Osaka or Kyoto. There were some really neat and interesting looking buildings. Except for that one. The one that looked all blocky, yet gothic with pyramids on the roof. Kobe also had DSs. We were in Kobe the day the Nintendo DS launched over here in Japan. Carla and I spent all day talking ourselves out of buying one. Then we talked ourselves into buying one. Then we spent a fair bit of time oscillating between the two extremes. Finally we decided to get one. Everywhere was sold out. I was a little bummed.

But I cheered up fairly quick because we ran into Ozzie Ben at the Green Leaf and he gave us free beer. That is like one of my favourite kinds of beer. So we drank and talked to Ben and his friend Will for a while and then we decided to go someplace else.

There's this little place kinda near the Orange House and kinda near the Green Leaf. One could kinda say that it is kinda in the middle. And when I mean little, I mean little. A stand really. With stools outside it. Every time we pass it, there is at least one person standing against the bar, drinking and talking to the girl who runs it. And a dog. Or two. Cute dogs. A white one and a black one. Carla and I always remark to each other when we pass it that we should stop there some time. It seems Ben had the same feelings towards said booze food dog stand. So that is where we three set off to. It was good. The dogs were very friendly, the drinks were fairly inexpensive and the noodles were delicious.


I talked earlier about almost buying a DS. This is maybe kind of some kind of quasi-problem type thing. Maybe. See, I have a job. I'm WORKING, but I won't be paid for a while yet. But I want to spend like I have a job. Because I do. I have a job. I just don't have any income from that job yet. It is irksome. The lack of money didn't stop Carla and I from buying 9 new books this evening. That's around 2582 pages.

The underground shopping arcade in Osaka is massive. It may well be the biggest one in all the world. Carla and I spent around three hours walking around in it. Carrying 2582 pages of weight.

I have a new phone. It's orange. I was going to buy the phone that is also a T.V. and an FM radio but the reception wasn't as good as I would have liked. So I bought the orange one.

That's all for now.

Not nearly as adventurous as juggling fire

Wow. It's been a while since either of us wrote anything. If I didn't know better, I might suspect we'd met with some foul end, possibly involving the Japanese underworld, or maybe Godzilla. Sorry guys, nothing so interesting.

We've been to Kobe twice since the last time we posted, but we didn't see a single pampered cow. We just sort of wandered around and ate stuff. Kind of like what we do in Osaka, Except farther west. Kobe was pretty much levelled by an earthquake in 1995, so the rebuilt city has a bit of a "new" feeling to it. Nice, but kind of bland. It does have a Chinatown, though. Not quite like what we think of as a Chinatown at home. Instead of a mishmash of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and whatever other Asian stuff you might care to cram in there, everything seemed to be singularly Chinese. Mostly food and trinkets (you know, like Chinese dresses, cheap toys, and all things panda-related). Much of the food was sold from little stalls lining the streets. Crowds stood around eating, or waiting in line (some of those stalls were really popular). We ate in a little restaurant in behind one of the stalls. The food we ordered was nothing we'd ever seen in a Chinese restaurant before. Either it was very authentic, or modified to suit Japanese tastes. I'm leaning toward the latter, but either way, it tasted really good.


Inspired by the "Italian" sandwich and pasta from the other day, and the "Chinese" food that followed, on Sunday we indulged in a little Thai dining. We were hoping to make it to our restaurant of choice in time for the all-you-can-eat buffet, but we were much too late for that. We ate there anyway, enjoyed it, then went back for the buffet a couple days later. We so got our money's worth. Yum. We walked out of the Thai place to see this:


which was a shame, really. Post buffet, we were too full for giant crépes. Now we are waiting for coming to the shop. We have it on authority that when we do, it will be very well.