Adventures in Japan

Slightly Channeling The Cos

Happy belated Easter everybody! Hope you all enjoyed your hams! Man, I miss me some ham.

Which is to say we didn't do much of anything for Easter. I'm still getting over whatever bug it is that is in my system. There are those who suggest that what I am suffering from may, in fact, be allergies. I don't think that is the case. I know from allergies, and this ain't that. Then again, I never was tested for cherry blossom allergies.

Being all cultured and stuff, we decided to take in even more art. Yesterday Carla and I went to see The Work of Charles & Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention. Ray was Charles' wife, not brother. Just thought I'd clear that up. Maybe you've heard of him. I hadn't, but the effects of his work are still being felt today. He was trained to be an architect but he dabbled in just about everything. To great effect. His films are still impressive, his house is considered a classic of modern design, he invented new ways of manufacturing chairs. Chances are you've sat in Eames' work without even knowing it. His career, it seems to me, was the nigh-perfect blend of art and science. I really enjoyed the exhibit.

The exhibit was on the 17th floor of a department store downtown. We were downtown because Carla had an interview. She had the best kind of interview, the kind where you walk in and they ask you when you want to start. Huzzah for Carla. In celebration, we spent too much money. First thing we treated ourselves to was some pizzas from First Kitchen. They have new pizzas, y'see. One of which was the bacon and potato pizza. Made me homesick. I miss perogy pizzas.

The next big expenditure was a two hour drinking session at the Hub. Here's how it works, y'see: you pay 2300yen and then you can order all the cocktails you want. Well, all the really cheap cocktails. Gin and Tonic, Moscow Mule, that kind of cocktail. No Strong Bulls for us. All in all, kind of disappointing. The food was good and the drinks were fine, but I really wanted a Strong Bull or two. They make for a very happy and energetic drunk.

So, we've spent a bit more than we wanted to since I got paid less than we wanted. On the plus side, we picked up a free television today. And a toaster oven, iron and ironing board. David's moving and he didn't need any of this stuff. So yay!!! Thanks David!!! We also picked up the DVDs we had lent him. It's like Christmas, we've got all kinds of movies to watch, multiple TVs to watch them on and games to play (David also lent us his GameCube). We don't know where to start.

Hey

Haven't been here in a while. I've been busy. And sick. Sick and busy. Busy and sick. Yeah.

Been sick for over two weeks now. Not fun. Been on the verge of losing my voice for most of it. Makes teaching English a little more difficult. But I seem to be doing okay. My boss seems happy and that is what really counts. Can't wait till I get done training. I want money. The kids are pretty good for the most part. They all want to stick their fingers up my bottom. Is that normal?

We saw some more free art today. I like art. Today we saw a lot of work by Toulouse-Lautrec. I liked it. Kind of a refined sketchy kind of vibe. With splattery, splotchy colours. And very distinctive noses. I'd go into more detail, but I'm a little... we stopped by the Hub after and had a few cheap drinks with Ben. He got beat up at Rock Rock last night. No one knows why. Last weekend he got tonnes of free drinks from the band A Simple Plan. Plus he saw REM and Green Day in concert. Man, I can't wait to have money. But getting money means having to work and working cuts into band seeing time. Like this summer. Fuji Rock is the biggest music festival in Japan. This year Foo Fighters, The Go! Team, Beck, Cake, Fatboy Slim, and others are playing. I'm working. Man, I wish I was independently wealthy.

What else? They were handing out free alcohol on the street today. We didn't bother. The line was pretty long. Longer than the line for free cosmetics. This here country is pretty cool.

There was an earthquake on Sunday, but we didn't notice

The weather was lovely today, so we thought we'd risk going out even though we're not 100% better yet. Right now we're exhausted and my throat & eyes hurt, but we'll see how we're feeling tomorrow.

So what did we get up to while we were out and about, you ask. Art. First we went to see some treasures from some temples in Kyoto (currently in Osaka for our viewing convenience). It's probably not the kind of thing we would have bothered with normally, but we had free tickets, and today was the last day, so we figured we'd better go. Most of the time we didn't know what we were looking at because all the labels, descriptions, and explanations were in Japanese, but we saw some things we liked, some things we didn't, and the scariest elephant EVER.


The exhibit wasn't all that big, but it really wiped us out, so we ate a crêpe (according to the sign out front, today was crêpe day, so we couldn't not get one) and caught the subway home. On the subway we saw a sign advertising yet another art show ending today. It looked to be more interesting than the show we had just come from, so I thought I'd better check it out even though I was tired. Tyler went home for a nap, which was probably for the best. The show was called Modernism Shinsaibashi and featured mostly paintings, prints and photos either of, from, or having some association with the Shinsaibashi area of Osaka. I quite liked most of it (aside from some horrible bowl-of-fruit type pieces) but once again I didn't understand much because it was all in Japanese. Art may be universal, but I still feel like I'm missing out.


And speaking of art, Tyler & I finally saw Porco Rosso last night. It's an animated movie by Hayao Miyazaki (the guy who did Spirited Away, among other things). It's about a flying pig (Actually it's a pig that's a bounty hunter/pilot. In Italy. In the 30's. And there are pirates.) which sounds pretty stupid, but like all Miyazaki movies, it's actually really good. The Japanese version, anyway. Disney just released their own translation on DVD a little while ago, who's to say if they did it justice, but I still think y'all should check it out. And any other Miyazaki movies you can get your hands on. Or anything by Studio Ghibli. Go! Go now!

I'm pretty sure I gave him some chocolate...

There were two quasi-holidays in Japan this week: White Day & St Patrick's Day. White Day is a purely commercial invention à la Valentine's Day. You see, because in Japan only women give chocolate to men on the Big V (not necessarily having anything to do with romance), they need a whole other holiday for men to buy gifts for women. Gifts worth 5 to 10 times more than the chocolate they received. Why? Because it's "White Day". What other reason should they need? As for St. Patrick's Day, it gets some recognition over here. Some cities even have parades. Not Osaka, though. Just green beer et al in the Irish-themed bars. I'm sure it's all very festive, but Tyler & I gave it a miss (he's sick and I'm well on my way to being as miserable as he is). Pity us, won't you?

The actual day-off-work holiday this month is the Vernal Equinox. I don't think anything particularly special goes on, just a day off work, but you won't hear me complaining! And as near as I can tell, the Japanese have no use for Easter, but it's only a matter of time until the stores have them scrambling to buy little chocolate eggs and bunny paraphernalia.

My throat hurts.

New Job

Remember how Carla said Spring was here? Well she lied. It's all snowy and blowy today.

Luckily we spent most of our day in of doors. We were given a tour of my new, one day a week job. I still have my other job, don't worry. But this new one is super cool. I teach at a technical college that trains animators and artists and actors and film... film-ers and TV-ers. It teaches all kinds of cool stuff, and I teach there too. My class is... I'm not really sure. A conversational English course maybe. I'm super excited!

I had my heart set on a Jacuzzi®

Ben brought his iPod over last night. There was an exchange of music. It feels like Christmas!

In other news, we've been scouting for a better apartment. Outlook: not so good. Everything we've found so far has been either too expensive, too old (can't get internet), too small (we need that kitchen), or in the wrong location. Often in combination. We've limited our options a bit by looking for something furnished (apparently not too common) and by not being Japanese. Apparently a lot of landlords aren't willing to rent to foreign devils. Sigh.

We're maybe kinda sorta thinking about finding a roommate, the kind we can practice our Japanese on, but I think that will be tough too. Japanese apartments are so small. Who's going to want to share with a couple? Plus, you know, I don't play well with others.

I was really excited about moving to a new place, but now I've pretty much accepted that it's not going to happen any time soon. It's a bit of a letdown, but Spring is here, so yay!

Lucky

I forgot to mention another stop we made during our Kyoto crawl night. We stopped by a Moonwalk bar before we went to Isn't It?. We drank interesting drinks. As we were thinking about getting ready to leave, a girl came up to Ayako and they started talking excitedly. It seems this lady, whose name we never learned, was also a teacher at the Bing Bang Boom Club. After the other teacher lady left, a large dark skinned man (who I assume was the girl's boyfriend) sat down at the table with us. He had a serious look on his severe face. He clapped Ben and I on our shoulders and then said to us: (I don't remember the exact words, but what follows is fairly close and with less swearing) "Sometimes you get lucky. You two are very, very lucky tonight." He clapped us one more time on the shoulders, with much more force than the previous ones, and then left. We all just sat there until he was gone and then cracked up. I still don't know what that was all about.

Last night was another all nighter. With David this time. With multiple stops at multiple drinking establishments. I feel like a college student: I have no money, yet that knowledge never stops me from going out all night. That's probably a bad thing. On the plus side, there were no confusing encounters with intimidating men who were obviously deeply unconfident in their manhood, instead there was a cute Japanese baby and a toddler toddling about the Green Leaf. And we got a scrabble board, a GameCube, and a really nice bottle of Scotch Whisky out of the deal.

Plus we finally got to eat and drink in a Murasaki, an izakaya that David quite likes. We've tried at least half a dozen times to get into various Murasakis but they have always been full up. The food was quite good. Except for the chicken that might have actually been liver. That I didn't like so much.

In this country, if you were to go to an 'authentic' British pub and order a Shepherd's Pie, you would receive a small portion of Bolognese sauce topped with an even smaller portion of mashed potatoes. Not as tasty as it sounds.

Crap, Isn't It?

Visited Ayako in Kyoto tonight. We had no real plan other than I had a souvenir for her from Okinawa. Oh, and we wanted to eat and drink. By we, I mean Carla, myself and Ben. Ben the Ozzie. Our first stop was at my bank. My bank has incredibly stupid hours. As do most banks in this country. Japan is a cash based society. Credit cards are not much of a help here. If you want to spend a Saturday night out on the town, you'll need a fistfull of bills. You wouldn't expect to pay an after hours charge at an ATM at 5:30 in the evening, but that's the way things work here. ATMs close. If you need more money at, say, 1 in the morning, you are out of luck. It blows my feeble white mind. You need lots of money to do anything in Japan, but Japan limits where and when you can access your own money and then charges you way too much. I am angered.

Our second stop was the Hub. I believe Carla has mentioned this fine establishment before. She tells me that the Hub in Osaka is nicer than the one we visited last night in Kyoto. That may well be, but the bar last night was still just fine. Strong Bulls are just a fantastic, fantastic drink. My brain vibrates just remembering them.

From there we　crossed the street and karaoked for nearly three hours. I should warn you now that this post might contain much gushing about Ayako. She rocks. Literally. I might have mentioned how she used to sing in a metal band, but I hadn't really heard her sing properly until tonight. Befitting her death metal leanings, she sang that crap Titanic song. And she sang the hell out of it. We were all amazed. She followed that song up with some screechy, yelly, throaty Japanese metal. We were dumbfounded. We all applauded after every song she sang.

This might seem horrible, but I'm going to go from singing Ayako's praises to mentioning a couple of Carla's flaws. She doesn't dance, and seems to be incapable of making the best of a bad situation. So when we entered Bar Isn't It?, a dance bar, Carla decided straight off that she hated it and sat off in a corner. She stayed there for the rest of the night, exchanging bitchy emails with David. Every once in a while, one of the bar staff would check on her, to make sure she wasn't asleep. I checked on her a couple times too, lest you think I was being negligent in my duties. Mainly though, I danced. That's not quite true. Ayako danced. She used to be a member of a dance troupe as well, have I mentioned that. So she danced, and danced quite well. Ben moved his body in time to the music, and I did so as well, though not quite as well. Ben and Ayako seemed to hit it off, so I kind of moved off and gyrated quietly in a corner. The music was enjoyably crap. It was like I had gone back in time about 5 years.

After that we retired back to Ayako's apartment. Our room at the Orange House might be a little smaller. Or not. But it's a close call. And our kitchen is better. But she has her own bathroom. So she wins. We stayed up until we could catch the first train in the morning. We caught it and slept all the way home.

Like a bad 80's flashback

I can't believe I'm one of those people that would cry over a haircut, but apparently I am. Even now, I'm typing this with tears in my eyes. It's awful.

I cannot stress enough the importance of speaking the same language as the guy cutting your hair. How else will you know when he says, "I'm going to ignore the picture you showed me and give you a mullet. A thin, scraggly mullet. Ha ha!"

I have no idea how I'm going to get this fixed, or how long it will take to grow it back to a length where I can tie it back out of my eyes. I'm miserable.


P.S. I hope you all remember what I looked like, because there won't be any new pictures until this grows out. Mortifying.

We Cooked Today

Actually cooked. Not just boiled a bag of curry and slopped it over rice. There was chopping of vegetables and slicing of meat. There may well have been some simmering. It was crazy! Crazy like a Japanese loaf of bread.


That's a full, unopened loaf of bread. Six slices.

Not all bread is like that of course, but it's the norm. Kobe, where I now work, is known for it's baking. During my six minute walk from the train station to where I work, I pass by at least half a dozen bakeries. Plus a few cafes. I think I've lost some weight since coming to Japan but I fear I'm going to put it all back on now that I work in Kobe. The bakeries just smell SO good.

There's a pop band here in Japan called Smap. They've been around for a good long time. They have their own TV show and it is odd. For the first half an hour, they split into two teams of two and cook meals for special guests (all the members are accomplished chefs, or so I've been told), after that they perform some sketch comedy and then they close out the show by singing their latest song. I want to be a member of Smap.

Enough of Smap and their cooking prowess, back to Carla's. She made Niku Jaga tonight. Which is kind of like a soupier Japanese version of stew. It turned out pretty damn nice. That Carla, she's a keeper. Pity about her terrible new haircut.