Writing

One of the more interesting and unusual things I have noticed while teaching is the way my students write their letters.

Japanese is written a much different way than English. In Japanese almost every "letter" (since they don't have letters per se as much as symbols that represent sounds) is written from left to right and top to bottom. Even when the top is the "add on" part.

Okay, this is kind of tough to explain without demonstrating. So here is "u" in katakana:

Step 1:



Step 2:



Step 3:



Notice how the "add ons" the little parts are written first, because they are at the top and the left part of the letter, and then what I consider the "body" of the letter is added last. This is very different than the way I would write this letter, I would write the "body" part first and then add the little line at the top last. Similar to if I were writing a Q I would write the O body part and add the tail at the end.

Because my students learned to write their Japanese letters in this manner they tend to write their English letters in the same way.

Here is how most of my students write "E"


Step 1:



Step 2:




Step 3:




Step 4:



Weird.


And here is "a" and "b"

a1:



a2:



b1:




b2:




In both cases, students tend to write the line and then add the circle part, and not even a circle, more like a half circle connected to the line.

And maybe it isn't a big deal and this is a completely boring post, but try writing those letters like that and see how odd it feels. Just like as I am learning katakana and trying to follow the "proper" steps to write their letters and it feels completely unnatural. OH MY GOD IS THIS WHAT CULTURE SHOCK FEELS LIKE?!?

Speaking of which, I ate a fish last night. And when I say I ate a fish, I mean I ate the entire fish, from head to tail. Well, actually from middle of body, to tail, to head last. It was about six inches long and pan fried so it was nice and crispy.

Kind of looked like this, but cooked



There were three on the plate, and I asked, "how do you get the meat off of this little fish?" And the response was, "You don't, you just eat the whole thing."

"Uhm, you mean head and tail and bones and all?"

"Yes."

Ooookay. So, I cut the tail off and the head off and attacked the meaty part of the body, thinking I could at least handle that. Yeah, lots of bones in a fish. And I am not used to eating bones. That was strange. And I kept getting bones stuck on the end of my tongue or between my gums and my cheek, so i had to keep wiping them out of my mouth (which is not polite by the way). But, eventually I was able to chew it up. And then (after another beer mind you) I attacked the tail. Actually that wasn't bad at all, it was just crispy and less bones, or littleler(is that a word) bones than the body of the fish. Yay! Now all I had left was the fish head. Looking at me with its ugly fish mouth open and frowning. Its eyes, while cooked you could still see its eyes, it eyes looking at me. Like it was daring me to eat it. Knowing that I couldn't. But I did! It is tough to eat something that is looking at you. That is my new rule in life. I think I would be willing to try anything, as long as I don't know what it is I will eat it. I think that is where I get freaked out. "Hey try this chicken asshole! How bout some sheep eyeballs? Want to eat monkey heart?" NO! But if someone just put that stuff down in front of me and I didn't know what it was and couldn't identify it I think I would just eat it, let my tastebuds be the judge. Of course, if someone serves me monkey heart and I eat it I will be really upset. That is my other rule, no eating monkeys. Anyway, tangent over, eating something with a face that is looking at me, that is tough. But I did. And you know what? Not worth it. It was just chewy and bony and not anything special. Now I have done it, and can say I have done it, but can't say that I will be seeking out any more of that dish anytime soon. Maybe just to prove how manly I am when I hesitate before eating it, aka, give the Japanese a laugh.


The bar we went to last night has been my favorite so far. It was traditional, meaning you had to take your shoes off. However, whereas most traditional restaurants and bars have low tables and you sit indian style (can I still say that? cross-legged style for all you politically correct types out there (or as I like to call them, douchebags!)) and if you are lucky you have a wall nearby to lean your back against. Otherwise it is sitting with no back support for an hour or two. Yeah, not so fun. Not for my back. Well, this place had the mats on a raised floor with the regular height table set into pits in the floor. So you could sit with your legs under the table. It was like eating at booth. And I had a wall behind me, so back support too, so it was exactly like eating at a booth. Yay! The only difference was that you didn't scoot into the booth you walked on the bench until you got to where you were going to sit and then slid under the table. Fun.

Oh, and another thing about some of these bars in Tsuruga, and I assume much of Japan. They are tiny. They are about the size of my apartment. This bar last night couldn't have possibly held more than 20 people. There were two tables in the place and then a bar which might have had 6 seats. I kind of like those places. Somehow they seem more "real" than those huge bars I would do events at for the radio stations (more so for the Bay, RNR has events at some pretty small places too). Of course, none of these bars have a pool table or darts, and the drinks are probably twice as expensive, so not 100% better than big American bars.

Walk walk walkin around

Day off today. Three day weekend! Yay!

Beautiful day, so I decided to walk around this afternoon. I had seen a second hand store while at a restaurant earlier and was told they would have rice cookers. Well I really want one of those. I think if I could get a cooker that I could program to have rice ready when I get home I would be more apt to eat at home instead of always getting stuff out. The biggest hinderence from me cooking at home, besides the complete lack of work area which I will rant about at another time, is that I don't feel like starting to cook at 10 pm. If rice was ready there, I could cook up some chicken quick and have a healthy and inexpensive dinner, instead of going to lawson's and getting junkfood. Also, I hate hate hate the bike that the previous teacher left. I am grateful he left a bike, that is very cool of him. But that bike is terrible. Every time I feel like riding it, I have to fill both tires with air, they are always half flat. And by the time I am riding home I feel like I am riding on the rims again. Also, the tires are so thin that every time I hit a pebble I feel like I am about to kick it over. But, I would like to ride a bike around, it would make getting around much easier and quicker, so I thought it might be worthwhile to check out a secondhand goods store for a more sturdy bike. I have seen mountain bikes around, and that is the kind of thing I am looking for.

Anyway, I had seen the second hand store before, it was across from the "Tomato Onion" restaraunt. What a great name that is. It is like a Japanese Denny's, a little bit of everything. Or maybe Japanese Double T diner, because they also serve alcohol at the Tomato Onion. I knew the store was kind of far away, but it was a beautiful day and I had nothing better to do than walk around.

So, off I went.



A tower near my apt. I wonder if I will get super powers living this close to such a large and multi-dished tower? I hope so! I want super-awesomeness! Oh wait, I already have that. Then I want the super power to speak Japanese!

Mom asked about cars in Japan. They are shorter and skinnier than American cars, but they seem taller, maybe that is because their other two dimensions are smaller. Anyway, here you go mom, some Japanese cars.



Shakey cuz there was a car veering dangerously close to me as I was taking this photograph.



Work trucks!



My favorite one. Look at how yellow it is! If that isn't a girls car, I will eat my hat.





Maybe I should have someone stand in the shot to show some perspective? Next time. Oh, and girl cars have all sorts of shit on the dashboards too. Like faux fur covering the dash and stuffed animals and all sorts of weird stuff. I must take a pic of a strange dashboard too.

Have I talked about the yellow lines in the sidewalk yet?



Everywhere there is a sidewalk there is a line of four raised dashes traveling the whole sidewalk. They are for blind people to feel so they don't walk into the road. At crossings they also have a series of bumps for the blind to feel that are different from the sidewalk bumps. I assume they are yellow for everyone else to see. They suck to ride a bike on by the way. When I say I feel like I am going to spill, yeah, mostly it is when I hit these bumps.



But everyone rides bikes in Japan. So I feel like I should be riding a bike.



Outside of a department store. Look at all those bikes. And this is 3:30 in the afternoon.

As I kept walking I passed by a KFC.



I was talking to some of my students about how great KFC biscuits were, so, of course, I had to stop in and get some chicken and a biscuit.




Two chicken strips meal, and a biscuit ordered extra (it is in the wrapper in the tray), total cost $8.50. Ouch. something I like about fast food in Japan, they bring you the food. You order and go sit down and they bring you out the tray. Makes me feel special.

The meal on the other hand made me feel as unspecial as any meal could possibly make me feel. The chicken was completely bland, no 27 secret herbs and spices on this chicken. Reminded me more of Long John Silver's chicken than KFC. Granted, it wasn't bad, just not what I expected. And the biscuit. No. No. No. Just no. Tasted nothing like an American KFC biscuit. And it had a hole in the center of it, it was like a biscuit donought! They give you maple syrup with the biscuit though, and that made it edible. All in all, if you ever come to Japan, I suggest you do not eat at KFC. Conversely, if you are in America, I suggest you do go to KFC and get a biscuit and enjoy its buttery goodness. And think of me and chortle at your good fortune.

Speaking of donoughts!



Mister Donought! I hear it is the one donought place in Tsuruga. And I think half of Tsuruga was in line in that place. There must have been two dozen people in line. I was going to try a donought, but no donought is worth a fifteen minute wait in line. That is my motto in life, "No donought is worth a fifteen minute wait in line."

Shortly after this I saw a tiny Japanese girl driving a big black motorcycle. Perhaps a Harley, maybe not, either way, it was a big road bike, not those little sport bikes that most people around here have. I fell in love with her for a fleeting moment this afternoon, and then she was gone. So I continued my walk.

Here is an awesome store!



An owl eyeglasses store! Lots of glasses stores in Japan. I really want a new pair of glasses. I wonder if insurance covers glasses? Must find out, can't afford $200 for glasses.

Then I walked by a porno store. Apparently, I was in the good part of town.




The poster in the upper right hand corner reads "Oh its a pretty hips!" Even when stuff is in English it is tough to decipher what is going on.

Hey a church!




I must be in the good part of town. How cool is the juxtaposition of Japanese architecture and a church? Also, that church was teeny tiny. And had a glass store window in the front. That was unusual.

So after about an hour of walking I still hadn't found the second hand store or Tomato Onion for that matter.

I walked by an abandoned and overgrown playground and broke out the artistic photos.




How cliched of me. Odd to see something this unkempt in Japan. This was about a block down the street from a Pachinko parlor, so maybe degenerate gamblers don't take care of playgrounds.




The tightly packed houses of "country town" Tsuruga. I can only imagine what Tokyo looks like.



Aww! Look how embarrassed that little doggie is that he pooped on the sidewalk! Dogs aren't allowed to poop in Japan.

Eventually found the second hand store. No bikes. But they did have clothes, and some cool clothes too. Man clothes are expensive in Japan! Used sneakers were still $50. I saw some Timbaland boots that were $178 used. That is almost $50 more than new in America. Used shirts were $30-40. Ouch. I think I am just going to order online when I need new clothes. And I know that I am at least going to need some new jeans, mine are already getting really loose. That is a good thing.

And they had used musical insturments. Man do I miss my guitar. I was this close to buying a bass guitar. I think I would have if I didn't feel like lugging both the bass and an amp the three miles back to my apt. The many benefits of walking around, no impulse purchases.

They also had these awesome stuffed animals



A giant eyeball headed thing. Yeah, what kid wouldn't love to cuddle up next to a giant eyeball?




Teddy bears with blood dripping from their mouths and off of their claws. How cute! And age appropriate.




My favorite, a giant disembodied bear's head wearing a cow print hat. WTF? Seriously, who would buy that for a child? Maybe these are adult stuffed animals and I just have no idea about Japanese culture.


At this point I had been walking for about an hour and a half, and the sky was getting pretty dark and foreboding looking, so after not finding anything at the store I hightailed (well, as hightailed it as possible when walking on foot (made it back in an hour and ten minutes!) it back to the apartment.

Observations from the day walking around:

My apartment and school are in the "old" part of town where nothing is. There are a ton more stores and restaraunts "across the bridge" on the other side of Tsuruga.

KFC in Japan sucks.

Clothes are cool but expensive. Oh, and they had a label for "American" clothes, it was flannel shirts and camo pants. American equals redneck I guess.

Two and a half hours is a long time to walk. My shoes are fantastic. I should buy another pair so I have them when these wear out.

Tiny Japanese women on big motorcycles are always hot.

Three day weekends rock! I think I get another one next month. Yay!

Boring week

I have done absolutely nothing blog-worthy this week (then again, what is really blog worthy? Isn't this just an exercise in ego masturbation, thinking people want to read about my life?)

I finally received my learning to read/write/speak Japanese books. Hopefully I will be able to pick those up quickly as I think it will improve my "real world" Japanese experience greatly. I feel like a retard at stores when I just grunt, nod, and hand my money over. It takes me forever to find stuff, and I have no way of asking. I bet there is a lot more to these stores than I am finding, I just have no way of knowing what is or isn't there. I feel like a Mexican. I think I have said that before.

I also received and finished in one day the final Harry Potter book. I don't know why I bother buying those books. I thought it would be nice to re-read the final book since I finished it so quickly last year. I would be able to read a little each night and really take my time and enjoy the experience of reading (since, you know, all the books and magazines here are in Japanese, and I don't read Japanese yet, so I don't get to read much). Well, that didn't happen. I got the book at 11am last Monday and read it all day Monday finally finishing at about 2 am. And I even told myself, just one more chapter then put it down, but one chapter turned into two, turned into twenty, and before I knew it I was done. Oh well, still a great book.

So, that is what I did this week. I worked. I played cards with one of my students and he destroyed me at games I made up to entertain him before class. Can you believe that? I made the rules and he still beats me, AT MY OWN GAME! He's a quick one, that kid. I am going to have to really beat him good one day to re-assert my dominance.

Tonight I went to the corner store after work and as I was walking down the hallway outside of the apartments I felt a blast of air on my head as I walked by one of the apartments. As far as I can tell every apartment in the building is the same layout. Front door, to the left of the front entrance, toilet room, across from that bathroom, then kitchen then bedroom. So that blast of air was the exhaust fan from the bathroom. Yep, I got a face full of poopin air!


Poopin air!?!?

And yes, when there is nothing else to talk about, you can always count on a poop story.

Sunday is Funday

Hey, I actually went out and did something today! Yay for me!

Earlier this week my manager told me I would be going to Kanazawa on Sunday with one of my students. I was like, "uhm, okay. What is Kanazawa? And why am I going there?" I mean, thanks for giving me the option and all. Turns out, Kanazawa is a pretty large city close to Tsuruga and has a modern art museum called the "21st Century Museum" that is suppposed to be pretty cool. Modern art museum, I am completely down for that. Saturday night my student told me that he and several of the other higher level students (from now on the 7-up crew, since they are all above "level 7" english proficiency according to Geos standards, and therefore I can talk to them easily) were going to this museum and asked if I wanted to come along.

Of course! The one problem, 9am go time. Ouch. 9am rolls around and the 7-up crew is rarin to go. I am struggling to keep my eyes open in the bright sunlight and I can already tell today is going to be brutally hot. No matter, it is trip time!

Kanazawa is about a two hour drive from Tsuruga. Tomorrow is a holiday in Japan (Respect for the Aged Day, aka old people day) so everyone has off and wanted to go do something they wouldn't otherwise be able to on a normal two day weekend.

Kanazawa has a castle!



We walked by it on the way to the museum. It was huge! I guess it would be, it is a castle after all. The street the museum is on is named Moat street since it is where the castle's moat used to be. Or, the river around the castle as one of the students put it. I was just surprised that a street actually had a name. Very unusual.

The museum was really cool. Here is their website. It is sucky. You can't take pictures of most of the exhibits, but there is a neat optical illusion pool that is a favorite picture place.




Look down into the pool. There are people down there!





From inside the pool looking up.



Basically it was an underground room with a glass ceiling painted to look like a pool. And above ground there was about half a foot of water on top of the glass that really made it look like a pool. Very neat to look down and see people walking around.

After that was a dress made out of beetle shells which was neat looking. Then an optical illusion of a hole on a wall that I can't explain. You go into a dim room and look to the left and there is an angled wall with a hole in it. Or is it a hole? There is a black circle that might be a hole that is ten feet deep, or maybe two inches, or maybe is just painted on the wall. It is hard to explain, but it was really really cool to sit in the room and look at this black dot and try to get your eyes to tell you what you are seeing.

There were some video installations, which don't really excite me, especially because they were from a few years ago and the technology has gone past them at this point. The only video installation that I ever actually enjoyed was at the Andy Warhol museum and it was a video of someone sleeping. It was completely fascinating to stand there and wonder if something was going to happen. Maybe it was just me.

My favorite part of the museum was the Yoshitomo Nara: Moonlight Serenade (warning, that link is a pdf file) exhibit that was a life sized version of this:



A play house/fairy thing. The best part was inside there was a ton more stuff. There were lots of childlike drawings and toys, but they were all "teen angsty." Which is what I think Yoshitomo Nara is known for. For instance there was a crayon drawing of a little girl with an angry face and written below the drawing was "I want to burn this city to the ground" and another crayon drawing had "Fuck you! I am old and can say what I want" written in a childlike scribble around it. Very neat juxtaposition, standing in a child's playhouse and looking at all the anger. I wonder if the Japanese got the same thing out of that experience since most of them probably didn't bother to read the English writing. Oh, and of course, my favorite part was there was a cd playing inside the playhouse and there was a 20 song playlist written on notebook paper laying on the floor of the playhouse. The music nerd in me loved that!

Then there was the main exhibit by Makoto Saito. He is apparently a renowned graphic designer and this exhibit was his paintings. He took frames from films and blew them up huge, like 5'x5' and then, best as I can tell, took a massive dose of psychoactive drugs and painted what he saw. Or rather, digitally re-imaged what he saw since this was all done with digital ink and paint.




These are from the brochure accompanying the exhibit, and the small size of these does no justice to how surreal the paintings were. I would equate him to a modern day Van Gogh, just the impressionist painting. It was cool to look at; I have no idea what any of the stuff "meant" but I would have bought a print to hang in my apartment had they been available. Unfortunately, they were not. I need some cool art for this apartment. I feel like I am living in a hotel.

Oh, and apparently if you make anything big enough it becomes art.




Giant fooseball.

There is also a tasting room at various times during the day when you can buy food to taste "emotions."



Hopefully if you blow up those pictures you can read the "flavors" offered. I really wanted to taste "impatience" but we weren't there at the right time and I didn't feel like waiting around.

Very cool museum. I would mos def. go back again when they change exhibits.

Then we went and ate at an Italian place called Budoonoki on the outskirts of Kanazawa. Budoo meaning grape, no meaning from, and ki meaning tree, the grape tree. It was a grape farm and the grape trees made a canopy over the dining room and also over the parking area. It was very pretty and apparently they do a bunch of weddings there throughout the year. We went there for Sunday brunch/lunch (since it was 2 pm when we got there I don't know what to call it). They had a soup and salad bar and you could order either a pizza or pasta for your meal, for about $17 bucks. I had cold pumpkin soup. It wasn't bad. I really want to try warm pumpkin soup, I bet that is fantastic. I had some salad with grape dressing (tasty), some fried vegetable that was just odd tasting, and a three cheese pizza. Now, one of these days I will learn that Japanese pizza is much different from American pizza. I thought I was getting a pizza with four types of cheese on it. And I did. I got pizza dough with four types of cheese on it. No sauce! Like eating cheesy bread. It wasn't bad, I would have just rather had pizza that had pizza sauce on it. Oh well, from now on I must remember to order a margarita pizza because that is the one with sauce, cheese, and basil. Red, white, green, the colors of the Italian flag. Simple and delicious.

One of the crew ordered pasta bolognese (spaghetti with meat sauce) and it came with a soft fried egg on top of it. Ahhhh! Why do they do that? Eggs on top of everything in Japan. The next Japanese phrase I am going to learn is "No egg on top." That will be infinitely more useful than "Hey baby, what's your number?" (Besides, I already know that.)

After lunch. Oh, and I had grape soft serve ice cream. It was so freaking good! Why don't they do flavor soft serve in America? Besides vanilla and chocolate? Hmm. Either way, that ice cream was fantastic!

And I saw my first white person while in Japan at Budoonoki! And she looked like a Russian prostitute. She was chainsmoking the whole time, was wearing a leopard print tank top and a short skirt with cowboy boots and had that stringy hair and awful skin that unhealthy chainsmokers get. Or that Russian hookers get (I am speculating here).

Anyway, after lunch we headed back toward Tsuruga. We passed by a town holding a festival and I took this picture of guys in pajamas preparing to run through the town holding a throne for their God. I think that is what that is. What is that thing called? A walking throne?





About halfway between Kanazawa (have I called it the same thing throughout this post?) and Tsuruga we stopped at a small town called Tojinbo. Apparently this town is known for suicides and is supposed to be haunted. It is located right by the ocean on cliffs and is somewhere people go to throw themselves into the sea or onto the rocks below the cliffs. The town has these tiny streets and is very hilly. We went during the day, but I could see how creepy it would be at night. But, when we went it was tourist city on those cliffs!



Yeah, I can see how people throw themselves off those cliffs.





Look at all those sicko tourists. Just waiting for somebody to jump.

I don't know if that is entirely true. It is a very pretty area and the cliffs are beautiful to see. I am sure people also jump off the tall rocks at Catoctin State Park, and the King and Queen's chairs in Bel Air. Pretty much any high place will probably attract jumpers. However, this place is especially renowned for suicides.



Flowers at the end of one of the rock outcroppings.




The suicide phonebooth. Located about 2o yards back from the cliffs. Phone that links to a suicide prevention hotline, you know, just in case.

The Japanese think of everything.

And that was my day. Pretty good way to spend a sunday. And now I am completely beat and am going to bed.