Drinks in a Dungeon

Neil and Chris came to visit Japan for a couple of weeks recently. It was good catching up on news from NZ and having an excuse to avoid my Japanese course and go sightseeing. It was pretty much the standard Japanese holiday, temples, raw fish, sky scrappers, small explosions, electronics, crowded trains and a few gardens. Well the only exception was Neil trying to avoid eating fish, which is decidedly unjapanese, and not the easiest thing to do in this country. (Neil if you eat fish you will have something in common with your cat...)

I don't know what there impressions of Japan were, but considering Neils first full day in Japan ended in a simulated dungeon, with two Japanese girls, fighting off monsters with a mace, drinking shots from test tubes, and trying to avoid eating fried balls of tobasco sauce and octopus, his impression should atleast be interesting. I've come to accept themed restaurants as part of the Japanese experience, but still I am occasionally surprised. I came accross a new one last week, unhappy with just a prison or hospital theme, it decided to combine the two, giving Alcatraz Prison Hospital Restaurant.

On the day they were leaving we had lunch together in Shibuya, with Neil complaining that he "wished he could stay longer". Well in an inspired stroke of unconscious planning, he confused the departure/checkin times for their flight back, missed the plane, and got an extra two days in Japan. He also got a sizeable bill for Chris and himself to share, but I'm sure he was able to look on the bright side about it.

もう一回

I'm back in Japan, and after an abortive attempt at keeping a blog on a wiki, I have decided to resurrect my old Japan blog. I will try and post frequently, but as past experience shows this is not something I am particular good at, so my apologies in advance.

If you didn't know me back then, please feel free to have a look at some of my older posts, Japan was equally as strange two years ago. I would appreciate comments, so long as they don't concern my spelling or grammar.

Luke

Too Many Foreigners

The Japanese attitude towards foreigners is something I could say a lot about, but its not something I could even pretend to understand yet, so Ill avoid that topic for a year or two. But occasionally I am going to hear/see something so ridiculous that I have to say something about it, such as today when I found out the number of foreigners living in Japan.

Now its obvious that there aren't a lot of foreigners here, I can remember by the end of my stay in Nara that if I went to a place and saw more than 2 foreigners I would start to wonder what was going on. But its always good to have a number, and today while reading an international newspaper I found one, 1.6% of the Japanese population is officially a foreigner.

Ok now lets compare that to NZ, 17.5% of people living in NZ were born overseas as of the last census. Now before I said 1.6% of people in japan was OFFICIALLY a foreigner, well what makes you a foreigner in Japan and NZ is slightly different. Of that 1.6% over half were actually born in Japan! They just had the misfortune of foreign parents, so cant possible join the exclusive Japanese club.

BANG

One of my favourite things about Japan has always been the fireworks, and generally the ones that fly or go bang, not just the cute little ones. You can buy fireworks at any time of year here and they aren't tied in to any particular holiday, so its something you can do a couple of times a year which is what makes it even better.

Of course its still too early in the year for the massive 2 hour long fireworks displays, which make summer evenings fun, but that didn't stop me and some friends letting off our own in a park one night last week. Ok you might think that doing them in a park is a bad idea, but this is Japan, where else are people going to do them? Well the first pair of policemen who we met in the park also thought it was a bad idea and suggested we do it in our gardens.

Now about 90% of the population of this city we don't have our own gardens, so we didn't really know what to do with our bag full of fireworks. Though when we were leaving an hour or so later we thought that letting off a few little ones would probably be ok. The second set of police men didn't think so... and I am so glad that it was a different pair. The chances of be recognised there are now much to high and I wont be able to do fireworks in that park for at least a month, which is a pain as its the only large park nearby.

That night left me with a large surplus of explosives sitting on the shelf in my room. That particular surplus got a lot larger today when I discovered a fireworks wholesale shop. It was paradise, a shop where everything was cheap and explosive! Some very interesting types including rocket propelled toy cars! And the best thing was right next door was another shop exactly the same. I now have a truly scary amount of fireworks in my room though...

Natural Onsen

As I said in the last post I went to Nikko over the weekend, and one of the things I wanted to do while I was there was goto an Onsen. Now my past experiences with Onsen have be somewhat mixed, ranging from natural hot springs in the middle of forests, to essentially large bath tubs and given Nikkos reputation for natural beauty I was hoping to find something of the former.

Having been somewhat lazy about organising the trip I just decided to ask at the Tourist information centre which of the onsen are of the more natural kind, and was told about 3. Me and my friends chose the cheapest of these which turned out to be owned by a hotel. That's quite normal here, so I wasn't overly worried. We went there paid our money and were lead to the onsen.

Turns out what the tourist information centre consider natural is in the basement of a building, with no natural light, tiled wall-to-wall, with several rocks to one side of the room and the hot water coming out of a tap. I hate to think what the others were like.

We did find another one while tramping that was about as natural as you can get, some hot puddles in the middle of a swamp. Unfortunately they were only big enough to bathe your feet in, still was nice.

Crime in Japan

Well despite 6 months worth of warnings last time I was in Japan about all the things I shouldn't do because of the crime rate here, I never actually saw any crime. That changed yesterday when I saw a theft from a souvenir shop in Nikko (Oh yeah, I went to Nikko, nice place). Of course the theft was by a monkey, so it doesn't really contribute to the crime rate.

Cute little bastard walk over to the shop, took one of the bags of snacks, and then just bolted. I call it a bastard because like every other animal in this country it tried to attack me, all I wanted to do was take its photo...

Oh yeah and as to crime I recently heard on the news that there had been a rash of gun related crime, apparently last year there were 53 shootings! 3 of which were fatal. Considering that the population of Tokyo alone is over 3 times that of NZ, how do you we compare.

No I dont hear Voices

This week is "health check week" at Tokyo University. Apparently the University wants to check all students, except for first years, to see if they are dying or not, and apparently its something I'll have to look forward to every year while I'm here.

I guess its good that the University cares about its students (well, except for the first years), but I really wonder why they want to know? If they find that I have some horrible incurable disease does that mean I don't graduate?

Thinking about it, I expect they are more practical than that, and I would probably be passed on to the medical department for study. I want to be involved in writing a few papers here, but that's not the way I have in mind. I find out in two weeks.

They were thorough, blood tests, X-rays, ECG, etc. and then just for foreigners a mental health survey. I have at times thought the Japanese consider most foreigners to be crazy, but I was somewhat surprised that the mental health survey was reserved solely for us.

No I don't hear Voices that no one else hears, and in the last year I haven't believed anyone was out to get me. I answered no to so many questions that by the end I was starting to get slightly nervous, it was like sitting a multi-choice exam and answering A to every question.

Oh and apparently I am 168cms tall...

Fucking Bird

Why is it that every animal I feed in Japan attacks me? Last time I was here it was the deer in Nara park, this time a bird. I was sitting under a tree eating lunch and a raven landed nearby and was just hopping round looking for crumbs. Everyone here thinks they are horrible birds, but until today I quite liked them, so I threw it a chunk of bread. It took it and flew off, seemed happy enough, a couple of minutes later it came back. Landed on the seat behind me, snuck up behind me and tapped my back. I went to look round and the bloody thing bit me. If all the wildlife here is like what Ive met so far I understand why the Japanese don't pay much attention to looking after the environment.

Chemical Brothers

I went clubbing with some friends last night to a club called Womb in Shibuya It was my first time going to an actually dance club in Japan, so I was expecting to be surprised. I was, both positively and negatively.

Although it wasn't a surprise the door charge wasn't pleasant, 3500yen, it was worth it. The dance floor was brilliant, with lazy light show and an almost 2m diameter disco ball. The music wasn't bad either, but will be better this week, they have the chemical brothers coming.

Me and pretty much every other international student from the hostel will be going (most of the Japanese people we've mentioned it to have no idea who they are). Only costs about $40 to get in tonight, so isn't even to expensive. Oh and I got membership last week which means I get a $10 discount.

Membership is one of those strange Japanese things, nearly every bar, restaurant, shop or Internet cafe has a membership program. They normally cost nothing to join, and get some pretty good discounts and special offers, just takes a few minutes.

Unlike all the other membership programs I've seen though, the one at the club didn't give a membership card. Instead they take a digital thumbprint scan! Not only does it mean I don't need a membership card, but also I don't need to carry ID to get into the club, just a scan at the door.

As to the negatives, there were a few, the worst being the gender ratio. It seem liked there were at least twice as many guys as girls! Tonight may be better

L and R

There are so many examples of bad English being used in Japan, so its not normally something worth mentioning. Occasionally though you come across a case that is particularly funny or ironic, and those can be worth sharing.

To be fair I probably make similar mistakes when speaking Japanese, so I don't normally find mistakes when people speak funny (Except for the Japanese guy who was talking about "the big election", but always confused L and R). However lots of Japanese companies use English in advertising campaigns and you would kind of expect them to have someone check it first.

Last time I was here I worked for a company which on their website offered "professional transration services" which fits the ironic category. One I saw last week might beat it though, an advertisement for a talking electronic dictionary that helps people learn English. The picture in the ad of course had a speech bubble, and what was it saying? "Lets Listening!"

The best Ive come across so far this time was when I went to karaoke last night. Lots of the songs are western and of course have the words in English, though not always the words you would expect. For example missing a space turned "I want you to hold me at night" into "I want you to hold meat ..." and a slight confusion between "you" and "your" gave "I want you baby" a whole new meaning.

WTF?!? level four?

Well last week I had a japanese language placement test and interview. The test went ok and the interview went well and they told me I would probably in course 3. There are five courses, from beginner 1 to advanced 5, and to be honest I was quite pleased with myself for getting into level 3, its what I was aiming for.

Yesterday though I found out what class they actually put me in, level 4, I am so buggered. I just finished my first class and in 2 hours there was a grand total of 3 words of English. I can survive the explanations in Japanese, my speaking/listening isn't to bad, but the problem is the writing.

I've only ever studied Japanese on my own, so I always skipped over the boring bits, ie how to read, and just concentrated on speaking. So of the thousands of Chinese characters hat are used in Japanese I know about 100, most of which refer to different types of food.

In class however Im supposed to know 600+, so it looks like im going to have a fun few weeks trying to catch up. Hmm maybe I should stop complaining, its just after months of complete laziness I have to actually do some work.

11mm Cell Phone

Living in Japan without a cell phone is difficult, well actually not difficult, just bloody boring. When you have a city of 12million people you don't often run into friends by accident.

Of course like everything else here it take a fair amount of paperwork to get one, but annoyingly you also need to have an alien registration card before they will let you get one. I waited until I had mine then went shopping, which involved about 4 hours talking in Japanese with sales people that had to constantly keep checking what rules applied for foreigners to buy one.

Following that I decided to get a phone from softbank (they used to be vodafone and so my phone will work in NZ when I come back). I got a 2 year contract, at $15 a month, for which I get a free phone, free txt/pic/video messaging to all other softbank users, and free calling before 9pm to softbank users. Other messages cost 4 cents, and calls are 40 cents a minute.

The free calling is great, I convinced all the other foreigners I know to sign up for the same contract and so apart from my Japanese friends all my calls are free. The actually phone is pretty cool, much like a RAZR (but thinner I think, 11mm), has a 2 mega pixel camera, blue tooth, Internet, micro SD etc. Ok its not the wonderful compared to what you get here, but you've all seen what sort of phone I use in NZ, and this one was free!

$115 Bike

My rent here is cheap, but thats only because I'm a student staying at the on campus hostel, but some things in Japan are cheap regardless of who you are. Tokyo is flat, and even though it is quite large most of the interesting bits are close together, its perfect for biking.

I've been thinking about buying a second hand bike since I got here, but hadn't seen any second hand store. Well it turns out that its not much of a problem, because brand new bikes are ridiculously cheap anyway. I'm not sure what I'm going to buy yet, but this one is only 10 400 yen, which is about $115. Japan isn't really that expensive.

First Months Rent

I thought I should probably say something about what my accommodation is like in Japan, it is small, cramped and somewhat tiny, that is to say it is Japanese. I didn't really have any problems with that, but the kitchen is completely unusable.

I have a mini-fridge that could probably store 12 cans of coke, no freezer, no microwave, a single cupboard, no drawers and a one element stove. I was thinking about buying a microwave, but then I realised there are also no power points. Umm I haven't been doing all that much cooking since I got here.

The bathroom is similarly minimal, it has a toilet and a shower, though not both at the same time. You slide the sink to one side an there is a toilet, to the other side and there is a shower head.

On the plus side the location aint bad, its walking distance from Shibuya which means there is lots to do nearby. Have been going there most nights for dinner, but have been having a hard time convincing any of the other international students to do karaoke with me.

I was planning to move out and find somewhere closer to the university to live, but then I got the bill for the rent. Only $130, including expenses, and being japan thats per month, not per week! Unfortunately Ill only be able to stay there for my first year, but at that price, i should be able to save a bit, or more likely do some traveling.

USB Missile Launcher

I was walking through Akihabara last week looking for a new cell phone when I found the coolest USB device I have ever seen, a USB Missile Launcher!!

It cost 1000yen, so about $14, and fires three foam darts. Using the arrow keys you can rotate it through 360 degrees, up and down and then fire using the space bar. Bloody powerful too, can easily fire from one side of my lab to the other which is about the same width as Memphis.

Here's a photo of it, and I'll try and get a video up later.

Yes I'll go back and see if they have any more, Memphis needs one of these. Also if anyone else would be interested add your name to the discussion page and I'll see if I can send some back (Postage might be expensive).

We want 10yen back

I'm in Japan on a scholarship, and quite a nice one. I get 170000yen a month, my airfares paid for, tuition and subsidised accommodation. The only thing I have to do for this is some research, and a lot of paperwork.

Last week I was looking at the list of things I needed to take to the international office at the university, lots of official documents about enrolling, a copy of my passport, some photos, and 10 yen. 10 yen is nothing, sort of like 10 cents in NZ, but it was one of the things on the list.

When I got to the office I found out why. Everyone needs to open a savings account, so you need an initial deposit, thats what the 10 yen was for. I ended up waiting in line, for about 10 minutes while a lady asked everyone in front of me if they had their 10 yen or not. I shouldn't complain, after all they are giving me plenty of cash, just so strange the lengths they had to goto to get 10yen of it back...

30000yen Taxi

Before I came to Japan I had almost no idea as to what I was going to be doing once I got here. I was under the impression that I would be told once I got here, though apparently that wasn't what was planned.

I got off the plain with one very dead sunflower, cleared customs and was met by a guy from the Japan Student Association. He seemed to be quite disorganised, and initially didn't seem to want to believe that I had come from New Zealand.

Having convinced him I was not in fact Renald from Australia I was taken via 5 other people, each of whom wanted me to sign my name and fill in some part of a form. After this I was told to wait, still having not been told anything, but having received an envelope with 25000 yen. I waited.

An hour or so later I was told that my ride was there, and still not knowing anything I was thrown into a cab with the single other NZ student and a cab driver who spoke no English. I asked how long it was going to take, and found out that it would be a few hours. I spent the next 2 hours watching the fare go up, and up and up. I had no idea who was going to be paying for it, which made me slightly nervous when it hit 300 000 (about $400).

Oh it was about that point where the Taxi driver got lost. I knew he was lost not only because we had gone past the same intersection 3 times, but also because he turned round and asked me if I knew how to get there. We did make it eventually, after stopping and asking pedestrians, and I discovered that the bill wasn't for me.

To this day I still haven't been told anything much, but apparently I have a Japanese test on Thursday and might have classes at some point after that. I'll let you know.

...not just buddists...

When I first came to japan I believed there were no churches. After a few months I found a few, most of which were run out of rented rooms in apartment blocks or in convertered warehouses. So I came to believe there were no churches here worth taking photos of.

For a couple of months I filled my photo albums with pictures of temples and shrines, and the massive stone churches I had seen in germany became a distant memory.

I had given up hope to soon! I found one right in the middle of osaka a couple of minutes walk from the main train station. Looking at it i couldnt tell if it was actually built of stone or not, but as things go, it looked pretty authentic.

The only issue with it was the location....

...built 10 stories up the side of a hotel.

...bunny rabbits...

Japan is obsessed with cuteness, and wherever possible cuteness of the small, cute, fluffy and fuzzy kind. I think everyone probably knows who hello kitty is, but what about totoro? or doraemon? or spulin? or the other million odd characters that live here?

And unlike NZ they arent confined to a solitary life at the foot of the bed or in kids toy boxs, they are everywhere. I cant make it to the kitchen without coming across a few, let alone the end of my street. But more about these little parasites later, because there is another thing certain japanese people seem to like, anything "western" (by which they invariably mean "american").

These two things were bound to combine in some way, so ask yourself what is american, small, cute and could be completely misinterpreted in someway? The playboy bunny of course! You see it everywhere here, on notebooks, bags, keyrings, clothes etc.

The one place you dont see it though is on playboy magazines, i cant remember seeing one in japan! This could have something to do with japans bizzare censorship laws which would leave them very pixelated, but thats another story.

Ive asked a couple of my students who came to class wearing playboy sweatshirts if they knew where the rabit came from, and none of them did. All im going to say about this is can you imagine explaining what playboy is to a group of japanese housewives in their 50s with limited english ability?

One of the most surprising places the rabbit turns up is on school uniforms. School dress codes are much stricter than in NZ, uniforms of course, no jewellery, uniform jackets, uniform schoolbags, I even heard of students being taken out of class to the hairdressers because their hair wasnt the right shade of black!

The one small shred of individuality that can creep into the uniform is in what brand of socks a student buys, with each brand having its own 1cm square logo. Most choose eiffel tower socks, or something similar, alot however choose the bunny.

...im sorry its having a break...

I thought i should be slightly more scientific about vending machines, so I decided to count how many i passed on my way to Nara today; 67 of them. Now to put this in context its less than a 30 minute walk, so i was passing vending machines about once every 25 seconds...

Considering how well endowed japan is with vending machines, youd think it shouldnt be to hard to find an ATM either. The truth is its not really hard to find one, its hard to find one thats open. Because unlike the inhumanely treated dispencers of tea, sake and cigarettes, which must work 24hours a day, ATMs are allowed to take a break every evening, and on weekends.

After about 8pm on weekends, and maybe 4pmish on saturdays, banks shut down there ATMs, which means if your out of cash your in trouble(because there isnt any EFTPOS here either). I have no idea why they do this, i can only assume that the ATMs in japan have a very good union, because they spend less time working than many office workers here!

Im left to wonder what the ATMs do on sundays, play space invaders?