Adventures in Japan

How Much is That Thing In the Window?

The big event today is that there is a new addition to the Lukiwski/Schwartz household. Her name is Kimber, and she is a very energetic German Shepard puppy. She already responds to her name when called. What a smart doggie.

Dangit!

Didn't get paid a full time wage again this month. That well and truly sucks. That's a difference of about a thousand of your Canadian dollars. That could buy a couple appliances and some alcohol. But it was not to be. But I have been assured that starting next month, I will be paid what I am due. And what a glorious month that will be.

More of Tyler Writing Too Much

Our apartment is still very, very bare. No fridge, no stove, no microwave, no real food preparation devices save for a toaster oven. Mmmmm... toast. But now we no longer have to worry about other people seeing our squalor (it's amazing how dirty a whole lot of nothing can get). We bought ourselves some curtains today. And we didn't buy the super cheap ones, neither. They look nice and seem to suit our place just fine. The place where we purchased said curtains is about a half hour hike from our house. I seems longer when carrying curtains. Even longer when carrying a double futon. Not that Carla would know about that. Not that she didn't not.

We didn't just buy curtains today, we returned curtains. No, we didn't buy and return in the same day. Carla had bought some by her lonesome, but that didn't work out so well. I accompanied her this time and my exquisite sense of interior design saved the day. Again. Before we braved the half hour hike home, we decided to fuel up. So we hit the Bikkuri Donkey. Bikkuri is Japanese for surprised. Bikkuri Donkey is very much a big chain, family-style restaurant. Not that there's anything wrong with that. On the contrary, the oversized novelty menus were comforting. Especially since they were multi-lingual. German, French, two kinds of Chinese, and English of course.

Bikkuri Donkey's speciality is Hambagu, which is basically a cross between a hamburger and a meatloaf (basically hamburg). Carla ordered the hambagu stuffed with cheese and mushrooms, I ordered the hambagu topped with gnochi and covered in a white cheese sauce. We both ordered beers as well. Not just any beer, authentic German Donkey Bier! That's the sign of a AAA eating establishment right there. The bier was good. As was the food. The only other thing of note was that the manager was very eager to test his English on us. He was always stopping by our table, eager to help us through the food ordering, utensil using, food eating and bill paying processes. Oh, and Saturdays are non smoking days at the Bikkuri Donkey.

On the walk home we were shanghaied. Dragged into a bar we have always wanted to go in to. A bunch of Brazilians were having a party. And apparently, a party just isn't a party without the tangy zip of a befuddled Canadian couple. There was eating and drinking and music and dancing. We were seated and then they just kept giving us stuff. Beer. Barbecued food. We talked mainly in Japanese. There were birthdays, maybe. People had to stand up. They got gifts. There was a dude in a dress and face paint. We had to stand up. And shoot a flute of tequila. Each. There was a lot of tequila shooting going on.

Neither of us remembers how we got home. Oh yeah, we drank some champagne at the party too.

I woke up with head on toilet. At least it was my toilet.

Walkabout and Other Odd Bits.

You know what is a great way to start the day? Not having to pay to use a dirty shower in a communal bathroom that often smells of other's salty leavings. It's been half a year since we have indulged in such a luxury. Man, time, she flies and stuff. Plus, it's amazing what people learn to put up with.

Here's a fact about myself that maybe you don't know. I really enjoy walking. A lot. There's something so soothing about it. You get to soak in your surroundings and reflect and all that good stuff. Plus it's not nearly as show-offy as jogging or running. And by show-offy I mean strenuous. Here's a fact about myself that most of you know all to well. I am often times quite stupid. Put those two facts together and you get what happened this evening. Maybe I'll set the stage even more...

Back when we lived in Abeno, we would often walk about forty five minutes to get cheap rice. That forty five minute walk took us the equivalent of five or six subway stops on the Midosuji line. Easy as. Now that we live in Tachibana, I'm only five stops away from work. I reckoned I'd walk home from work to see how long it took. Plus, as I've mentioned, I do so enjoy a good walk. And I did enjoy this walk too. But it just kept going and going and going. There's a big difference between the spacing of subway stops and of train stops. Train stops are much more spaced out. Take a moment now, dear reader, and hazard a guess as to how long my little amble took me.

The first leg of my journey was easily the most enjoyable. The sun was still up, for one, so I could enjoy my surroundings a bit more. Lots of small parks. Lots of dog parks too. With lots of cute dogs in them. And birds. Lots of birds. One such park also had a pond in it. The were fish below the water in the pond. And insects above it. Small, fat bats dove at the insects, feasting in the dusk. Well, they were either bats or leathery birds. I watched the birds, bats, fish, dogs and insects for a while, just digging the whole scene, man. Enjoying it so much that it popped an idea into my head.

Another, commonly known me fact: I went to film school. One of my classmates was a fine fellow named Ian Toews. I don't just call him a fine fellow because he has won awards for his films. One of these award winning films was a Japanese landscape shot from a moving train. That's an oversimplification, but it'll do. I have not seen this film, much to my shame, but I thought that I could make a nice companion piece to said film. I would film my walk home. The scenery was quite nice, mayhap a bit residential, but interesting. Plus I planned on walking beside the train tracks all the way home. Many, many trains passed by me on the way home. All filled to the gills with weary looking people. Whereas I was quite enjoying a brisk stroll. I even had a name for my film. Aruite. That's Japanese for 'on foot' or 'walk'. Yeah, I thought to myself, I'll do this walk a few times, taking different routes to pick the best bits to walk along. There were a lot of good bits. I had to cross a couple rivers on rocks and stuff. There was variety. Yeah, the more I thought about it, the better this idea seemed. Then the walk just kept going.

After an hour and a half, the idea of the film seemed to start mocking me. Every dead end, every double back laughed at me. Then I made it to the great big river. I had to hike about twenty minutes out of my way to find a way across it. Some of that time was spent walking on the side of a busy yet not well lit road with no sidewalks or even shoulders to speak of. Stupid idea for a stupid movie.

So, in the city you can walk six stops in roughly an hour, give or take. Five stops by train takes about 3 hours, the first two stops are about fifteen minutes apart on foot, so it's more like 4 stops in 3 hours. Probably less, if you factor in that I wasn't so daisy fresh near the end there.

My legs still hurt, just so you know.

On the plus side, I was so tired that I slept very soundly. Didn't even notice when the trains started running at around 5:30 in the morning or when the construction started at 8. Our flat is a bit noisy.

Sayonara

I think this is the page Tyler referenced in his last post. Worded in such a way as to give us all a warm, fuzzy feeling, no?

Never ones to listen to the government, we did manage to get our own apartment. We'll be sleeping there tonight. Yay! No more Orange House with its nasty smells, pay showers, crazy neighbours, and resident rodents.

Also, no more internet. We've applied to have it hooked up at the new place, but it could take up to two weeks to get connected. So if you don't hear from us for a while, that could be why. Or, we're lazy.

Supplications

I'm posting this from the crap computer in the upstairs lounge. The internet is not working in our room, but is working just fine up here. Which sucks. The internet went out in our room last night at around ten to one in the morning. The only reason we were awake so late was so that I could call home and wish Diane a Happy Mother's Day. Ten minutes before I was to make my call, the internet breaks. I kept setting alarms so I could wake up every two hours to try and try and try again, all to no avail. I may not have gotten through Diane, but please be assured that I tried. And that I was a might ornery the next day. Stupid broken internet. And broken only in our room it would seem.

It's not going to be our room for much longer, thank God. It appears that we have finally found a new place to live. There's a spare room, in case anyone wants to visit. I suggest waiting until at least the end of this month to drop by though. Getting an apartment in this country is insanely, stupidly expensive. If the internet was working in our room, I could post a link to a page detailing just how stupid.

But I'm going insane using this keyboard. I have to hit enter after every word. And the enter key sticks. And all the punctuation keys are not in their right places. Hmmm... I guess if I really hate this keyboard SO much, I could have just skipped this whole paragraph.

Also, the spell check doesn't work. Sorry.

EDIT: the stupid computer upstairs won't let me POST either.

Psy-ko

We don't usually sleep with our door locked, because hey, it's Japan, what could happen? Well apparently a drunken neighbour could barge in at 1:00 in the morning and try to practice her English on you. She sat right down on our futon and proceeded to ask us a bunch of somewhat personal questions before proceeding to tell us her life story. Despite her constant apologies, she didn't seem sorry at all. Tyler was beginning to think her "So sorry, so sorry"s were a prelude to a grisly double homicide.

Did I mention that we were fast asleep? Well we were. She came in anyway.

It took us 15 minutes to get rid of her. It felt a lot longer.

Titled

We've been busy these last few days. Not so much with work. This here is called Golden Week. A week of non-working for most of Japan. Kinda nice. The weather, for the most part has been pretty fab to boot. Hot, but not nuts hot. That comes later.

So, if we ain't working so much, what have we been up to. Well, we've been trying to find a decent place to live. Haven't found one yet. That's not true. We found one place that we absolutely loved. It had a skylight, two bedrooms, a full sized bathtub, a fancy toilet, a television in the bathroom, big kitchen, two balconies, plenty of light. It was perfect. We didn't get it. Weren't quite quick enough. Dang. All the other places have been found wanting. But still, we soldier on.

On the 30th (Happy Birthday James!!!) we went and saw Shonen Knife again. Once again, they rocked. Once again, they were the opening act. Once again, the drummer was beyond cute. Once again, they all rocked out in the most smile-filled way possible. My face hurt 2 songs into their set. Shonen Knife is just happy-making music. And their cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated" was superb.

Seriously, that drummer is so cute. Both Carla and I have crushes on her. Watching her have so much fun playing the drums is infectious. Her lips start off with a determined set to them. Soon, however, they begin to curl upwards. Then they part into one of the happiest smiles ever. Then she starts singing along with the song even though she's not mic'ed. And you realize that you're singing along too. Even though you don't know the words. Not that the words to "Rubber Band" are that hard to figure out. The other, older Shonen ladies were compulsively chipper as well.

But they weren't the only reason why we were there. No. Our friend Ben has seen a lot of live music in his day. And he's been bugging us to go see this one Japanese punk band he saw when they opened for the Killer Dwarves. He's seen them... I think about three times now and he just loves them to pieces. So we had to see them, had to experience Akainu for ourselves.

Shonen Knife, as I obsessively detailed, made the crowd pretty happy. There was a lot of jumping up and down during their set. All that jumping, we soon found out, was merely prequel.

Please keep in mind that the weather has been glorious these past few days and I was dressed accordingly.

Akainu means red dog in nihongo (nihon means Japan and go means language. Nihongo means Japanese). Akainu is a band that I will not be able to properly describe. During the intermission between musical acts, odd looking fellows began to fill the stage. There was a man in a sequin covered hot pink cowboy hat with matching tight pants and mesh shirt, he was the guitarist. There was a guy wearing oversized sunglasses, a bowler derby and long johns. He was the percussionist. The drummer looked normal. Ish. As did the trombonist, saxophonist and trumpeter. The dude with the fiddle was wearing a frilly shirt that even a gay pirate vampire would have second thoughts about. I forget what the bassist was wearing. Maybe he was dressed up like an old time convict, all big thick white and black stripes. That makes nine people, and their assorted noise makers, crowded onto a stage that seemed too small for 3 tiny Japanese females. Then the singers hit the stage.

Oh. My. God.

Seriously.

One was dressed up like Marilyn Monroe. One like the cop from YMCA crossed with a martial artist. One had grey in his beard. The other was obscured by his long, long hair. That makes for 13 band members on stage. Then they all just started talking. Kinda shooting the breeze. Or maybe it was pointed philosophical theorizing. I don't know, I don't speak the language all that well. But the audience was laughing uproariously. And there was a lot of girlish shrieking and squealing. Oh yeah, there were a LOT of cute girls at this gig. So they talked and talked and talked.

Then the music started.

BANG!! Like a shot. And the place just exploded. Everyone was jumping. Everyone was singing along. There were specific dance moves and arm movements that everyone knew and they all knew when to do them. I just tried to keep up. It was insane. The best kind of insane possible.

If I had to describe their sound, and please keep in mind that this is just an approximation because you can't possibly know what they are like until you see them live, I would maybe say they were like NOFX mixed with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones mixed with The Village People. On acid. The one dolled up like Monroe sure could scream. He looked a bit like a professional wrestler.

So the show continued on like this for a while. Loud, cacophonous yet melodic music and shouting interspersed with apparently stand-up caliber comedy. During one of the songs, all of the singers began changing their clothes onstage. They went through a fair few costume changes. For one of the changes in costumes, the singers left the stage while the musicians kept on jamming. I can't recount all of their various and sundry guises.

I will say this. They spent a lot of time in just their undies.

During one such gitch (or gotch, or gonch depending on where yer frum) clad time, the old grey bearded guy climbed onto a table right next to us and did a headstand. Still singing. The professional wrestler-ish guy ran through the crowd, spitting on random people (Including me! WOOT!!) before grabbing some guy in the audience in a bear hug and running around some more.

It was a singular experience.

I really want to see them again.

After the show, we just kinda hung around. Ben talked to all sorts of people because he knows all sorts of people. It turns out the cute drummer from Shonen Knife had been behind us for who knows how long. I wanted to get a picture of her, but her cuteness was much too intimidating. Plus, I was bleeding from the foot.

There was a lot of jumping up and down over the course of the evening. And I was wearing sandals. Not my best wardrobe decision. Coming from me, that's saying something.

But it didn't hurt.

After the gig, we went and ate some delicious burgers. Prepared right in front of us, nice juicy patties, bacon, eggs, tonnes o' toppings and a heaping helping of melted Cheddar cheese. Fantastic way to end a fantastic night.

The next day wasn't near so great. It rained for most of the day. We went and checked out a few apartments in a neighbourhood that was a little too out of the way. The apartments were a 15 minute walk from a station 12 minutes off the main train line. If that makes any sense. After we looked at the places, we decided to snoop around the neighbourhood. Nice place. University right near by. But kinda dead. Boring. And just too far out of the way. And right near some kind of stadium. Which made the train ride back into Osaka a lot more crowded. Also, we were soaked. And the seam of my sock kept finding its way to the most sensitive, recently bleeding, parts of my toes.

Once back in Osaka, we met Ben at the Hub. Just to make the day even less great, we found out that the Hub has bumped up their prices. The prices aren't bad, but they aren't what they once were. Dang.

I assure you that photos were taken. They didn't turn out all that well, but they WILL be posted at some point. When the internet is working better.