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.

Food

Mom keeps asking me about what I am eating, so I decided to post pictures of my lunch over the last two days. Yup, just got a cell phone and this is what I am using it for. Lucky lucky you.

I go to the store everyday and look at the case of pre-made food. Like in America when they have pre-made subs or chicken near the deli at the store. Well, in Japan they have pre-made Japanese food. Or "bento boxes" as a pre-made lunch is called.

This is what I had for lunch today.






So this is what I see at the store. Some brown noodles with cabbage and red stuff (ginger) on top. What does it taste like? Who the hell knows? Even if I had the name of it I wouldn't know what it tasted like. So, I buy it and try it.

This stuff. Tasted like soy sauce and cabbage. Not bad. Everything here is pretty much "not bad." Nothing is really spicy. Nothing is really offensive tasting (besides chewy octopus tentacles). I haven't really had anything that I have either completely loved or completely hated yet. I guess that is a good thing.

This is what I had for lunch yesterday.




What could this be? Chicken? Pork? Fish? Tofu? Octopus? All of the above? Who knows! Turns out it was chicken. Whew! That is what I was hoping. Another problem with eating from the store, everything is cold and the containers they come in are not microwavable. So maybe Japanese food is better warm. I wouldn't know. I can count on one hand the number of hot Japanese meals I have eaten.



Best for last! This is potato salad and is the best potato salad I have ever had. It is so good! The orange in there is carrot. And the green is pickles. Those pickles add so much to the salad it is ridiculous. So good! I can't buy it often because it is $2.00 for that little bit you see in the photo, but I treat myself once a week or so.


Here's the Takoyaki (octopus balls)



The container they came in. There are four or five balls in there. Can't remember how many. But they are sold in a package of eight. This is "fast food" in Japan. Eaten by "hand" or rather, poke into the ball with those long toothpicks, rather than eaten with chopsticks. Though, I guess if you had chopsticks you could poke into the ball with the chopstick. The white crap is mayonaise. Eww. I tried to wipe as much of that off as I could. They drench stuff in mayo over here. Gross. The green stuff is dried seaweed, in case the octopus doesn't taste fishy enough for ya I guess.


A single lonely octopus ball. Aww, isn't it so cute and yummy looking? I would say it is about the size of a golf ball. Apparently in Osaka Takoyaki is the size of your fist. Wow.

And then I got bold and decided to cut into it and see what I was actually eating under all that fried goodness, mayonaise, seaweed, and soy sauce.




Ahh, not too bad. No wonder these weren't as chewy as the tentacle. The octopus is already cut up into tiny little bits and there is hardly any octopus compared to the amount of fried dough.

So good.

Hair katto

Got a haircut today. Got up at 8:45 so I could get completely ready for work early so I could go get a haircut. Sucks that i work such a long day that I basically can't do anything except on the weekend. Oh well. C'est la vie. Or in Japanese, "Sho gan i" (can't be helped)

Anyway, went to one of the multitude of barber shops between my apt. and work armed with my trusty notepad that had the Japanese translations for "I would like a haircut please," "Short on the sides," and "Leave it a little longer on top."

Get to my shop of choice and couldn't be happier. It is an old school barber shop with one old man cutting hair and an old lady who will shave your face if you want. The chairs are beat up and taped over and over until they are more tape than leather. There are sports, electronics, and nudey mags sitting on the table beside the waiting bench. Oh, and comics, but comics are huge in Japan for some reason. I haven't figured that one out yet. There is a tv playing god knows what. And there is that welcoming barber shops smell of disinfectant and shaving cream.

I open up the handy notepad and announce in my most cocksure manner "I would like a haircut please." and stand there smiling knowing that the lady behind the counter understood me. And I know she did because she asked me a follow up question. Shit! This is where the notebook fails me and I revert into "I don't speak Japanese" bowing and pointing at my head to indicate that I want a haircut. The lady knods, looking at me like I am an idiot and points to the bench. Ahh, I have to wait there. Excelllent. There is one guy who seems to be almost finished getting his haircut. Actually, this old guys seems to be almost finished getting any haircuts, ever. But, I digress.

Sit for a few minutes enjoy the cool breeze from the fan. The humidity has dropped in Tsuruga as of late, but the temperature is still hovering right around the mid 80s every day. And when you have to wear long sleeves all the time...

The guy motions me over and i sit and recite my other two phrases. He nods and goes to work. At this point I am nervous as all get out. I know it is only hair and it will grow back, but I don't have enough time to go home and do a recut so I know that if it turns out terribly that I will at least have to walk around looking like a doofus for the rest of the day. Also, it is nerve wracking to have someone waving sharp insturments around your head when you cannot communicate your desires with them.

So there I am sweating with my eyes closed (I keep my eyes closed for almost the entire haircut every time I get my hair cut. Anytime they are not cutting the back part of the head, the eyes get shut. I dunno why.) and trying to "feel" how much hair he is cutting off. And this guy is taking forever. I am used to people using electric trimmers and being done in 10 minutes. This guy used all scissors and took close to half an hour to cut my hair. That is a long time! At least in my experience. I do feel like I got my money's worth though.

After I get my haircut, and it turned out fine, he did exactly what I asked and it looks okay. Well, I mean, it is still my head, but looks pretty decent.


Yesterday's hair




Today's cut. And psychotic smirk.



Or more serious, I am going to teach the crap outta youz kids look.


So, after the barber is finished cutting my hair, he breaks out the straight razor and trims up the edges. And I guess he thought my sideburns were too long cuz he just cut them bad boys right off. Hmm, barber with an opinion. Definitely old school.



Sideburns sometime last week.




New short sideburns today. If you look closely you can see the very bottom of the sideburn still there. He just cut a swatch through it.

Good lord I have huge nostrils!


And then I went to work. And then I came home and posted on the blog. I am living the high life!

Fun weekend?

Well half fun.

Had my welcome party on Sunday afternoon. So nice of people to get up and come out on their day off. Honestly, I don't think I have ever had that before, a party for me. I mean, some birthday parties when I was a kid and whatnot, but never as an adult has there been an event organized around me. (head swelling)

So, had about a dozen of my students come out to eat and hang out. We ate at this great chinese food place that the other Geos teacher knew about. It was really good food, and you could tell everything was fresh. Started off with some cold chicken in peanut sauce (that sounds like Thai food to me, and it was fantastic) then a salad with pumpkin chips on it. The Japanese are really big on pumpkin. I saw pumpking salad in the store the other day, like a potato salad in the states with mayonaise and whatnot. And no, I did not get it. Anyway, this salad had thin slices of pumpkin on it, about the thickness of a ripple potato chip and they were crunchy and really good. Someone in America should put that on their salads, I bet people would eat it up (ugh, that pun really wasn't intentional).

Oh, and I had a triangular piece of cucumber that was covered with salad dressing and I absolutely COULD NOT pick it up with my chopsticks. I was trying and trying for a couple of minutes to pick it up and one of my students (it sounds so weird saying that because we weren't in class and she is either around my same age or older than me) was watching and laughing at me. Eventually I was told to just pick up the plate and push it into my mouth. That is okay with noodles too, pick up the bowl and shovel em in. See, Japan isn't that polite.

The next course was soup. I can't remember what it was other than noodles. Then came shrimp with tomato sauce. And then fried pork and rice with eggs. And we finished up with some yogurt and cassis. What is a cassis? So, I asked what the fruit flavor in the yogurt was, and everybody said, well it tastes like a cassis. What do you call a cassis in America? And I had never even heard of a cassis. So someone broke out their handy electronic dictionary and it translated it as a "black currant" which I have never even heard of. So I asked what it looked like, and no one had ever seen the fruit. Just eaten it in stuff, or apparently it is mixed in drinks a lot in Japan. So, never really figured out what a cassis is. Got home and looked it up on Wiki and it looks sort of like a blueberry. Tasted somewhat similar to one as well.

So, good lunch/welcome party. Oh, and and the restaurant was so hot! I always wear long sleeves over here to cover the tats, especially around co-workers and students, and I was dying in that place. It didn't help that they had a tv on the wall showing the kitchen and I kept seeing the super hot wok and the flames coming up the whole time. Oh well, just sweat all the time over here. Not a big deal, at least not for me. Maybe for those around me.

Afterwards, one of the students that I went out with after work on Saturday night asked if I was busy and wanted to go bowling. Of course I said no I wasn't and yes I did. Well about ten of us decided to go bowling at USA. USA! USA! USA pachinko parlor, arcade, and bowling alley that is. A super huge place full of all your time and money wasting vices. Well, turns out Sunday afternoon is league day at USA bowling alley. What the? Wouldn't you think that a weekend afternoon would be the worst time to fill up the bowling alley with league bowlers? Well, whatever. So, it was decided that we would go to another bowling alley in Sabae. A couple of people decided to call it a day, so we ended up with 7 of us piled into a station wagon headed to the bowling alley.

Turns out Sabae is about 40 minutes away. That is a long way to go for bowling and I felt bad that everybody took that much time because I mentioned I would enjoy going bowling. Sometimes I feel like I am taking advantage of everyone's niceness. Like they won't say no to me. So, now I feel like I shouldn't ask anything. Especially if people are going to go out of their way. Hmm, concious fight.

So, we went bowling and it was fun. The bowling alley was super busy so all seven of us had to bowl on one lane. Except they only allow a maximum of four bowlers per lane, so we paired up and bowled as teams. It was fun, nice bonding time with some of my students and my manager.

And of course I forgot to bring my camera. The trees around here are so green and dense. I don't think I can get to those hills around Tsuruga easily. The expressway runs along between the city and those hills. I am going to check around and see if there is a way to get to them though because I want to go up and see how big Tsuruga actually is. Of course i was told that there are poisonous snakes around here, so maybe not.

Today (Monday) I got up at 8 am and went to city hall to get my foreigner's card.



Cool huh? (Ooooh, and how meta, the picture of the blog in the blog. You are now in an MC Ecsher drawing)

And once I got that I was able to go and open up a post office bank account so my paychecks can be deposited right to there and I don't have to walk around with all of this money. Nice. Of course, I don't get paid again until the end of September, so not really of any use to me yet. More important for my manager because without the bank account she has to pay me in cash, and I know she doesn't like doing that.

After that I went and got a cell phone. This is where the weekend gets less fun. Cell phones are butt expensive over here, especially because the cell phone company doesn't just give you a cheap phone like they do in the states. You have to buy your cellphone. And the cheapest cellphones at the place were over $300. Ouch! And the one I bought was $400. Yes, I didn't get the cheapest one, figured if I am going to use it for a year I might as well get one I actually like.



Just sitting there.



With the clock lit up. Yes, that is really pretty and very slick looking. That is the one reason I chose this particular phone.



Opened up.

Now, everyone says that cellphones are much better over here, and they might be, but I don't really see it yet. Especially because I am not a big cell phone user. I use the cellphone to make calls and send text messages, not download songs and games and other junk. The one thing I wanted they didn't have. Some of the students said that the last teacher had a phone that allowed him to take pictures of kanji and it would translate it to English for him. That is what I really need. However, that wasn't available for the phone I got or at the place I got it, or I don't know, I just don't have it. Oh yeah, and everything is in Japanese of course. So I had to stumble my way through the online user's guide and try to figure out how to change stuff to English and to use the phone.






Look at how big the phone is! It is huge compared to US cellphones.

Now, the most confusing part of the whole experience for me is how cellphones work in Japan. I am used to day minutes, free nights and weekends, a limited number of texts per month and then a charge, and paying for internet usage. It is different in Japan. First, days are free and it costs money per minute to call at night, like 20 cents a minute. That is odd. Also, if you call a person on the same network as you it is free, but it costs per minute to call people on another network. And they don't have text messaging per se, they have emails and you get charged per data packet sent and recieved. Well you sign up for x number of data packets and if you go over that you get charged more. I have no idea how that works. I hope they allow you to change your plan easily so once I figure out how everything works I can get what I need and get rid of what I don't.

So, all in all, a very busy weekend. Not much sleep. Lots of fun on Sunday, lots of money spent both Sunday and then a lot a lot of money spent on Monday. Although, I was good and didn't go out to eat tonight. I cooked up a chicken breast. I read about a rice cooker with a timer on it online over the weekend and am going to look into that. The biggest obstacle to my cooking at home more is that by the time I get home from work the last thing I want to do is cook. I figure if I can set the rice cooker to cook the rice at 9, by the time I get home it will be done or close to it, and I can cook up some chicken and have a healthy and inexpensive dinner instead of spending so much on food. Right now that is my biggest expense. And I am sure will continue to be over the course of the year.

So, next weekend I am going to go do something. I haven't decided what yet, but something. Maybe a day trip somewhere? And the weekend after that is a three dayer so I can def. go somewhere and not worry about not getting to chill out and catch up on sleep for the week ahead. OH and plus I got a second futon to put under the one that was provided for me from one of my students' parents. They were going to throw it out and she offered it to me as padding. And boy does it work great! My bed finally feels like a bed instead of sleeping on the floor. Now maybe my back will stop hurting so much. Fingers crossed!

Hanko update

Found out today from some of my completely bi-lingual students that the literal translation of my hanko is "Respect Fish"


How awesome is that?!?!


You can just call me "Mr. Respect Fish" from now on.

My hanko!

I got my hanko today! Yay! Now I can "sign" stuff the Japanese way!




That is my signature for the next year on all official documents and when people ask me for my autograph. Yeah, I get that all the time. They think I am Kevin Smith.

I guess if your name is super complicated it is way easier just to throw down a stamp rather than write out a long complex kanji. I mean, if I had to write/draw what is on that stamp I would be there for ten minutes.





It even comes with a little case that so I can carry it around with me.

And I have no idea what it means. My manager said it says "Trout" but she also told me that the symbol for "Trout" is stupid ugly fish. I hope that everytime I sign something it says signed by "Stupid ugly fish." How awesome would that be?

Also, check out the mail I get.



Still can't read Japanese. I wonder if I can plead illiteracy and not pay my bills?

Okonomiyaki

Or, what I ate today.

I have discovered that the grocery store across the street from Geos has a pretty large prepared foods section. Hence, I can get something fast for lunch that isn't McDonalds.

The only problem, I don't know what anything is. I mean, I can barely recognize anything. I recognize noodles. I recognize sushi, but not what type of sushi. I recognize shrimp (sometimes). But, I pretty much don't recognize anything or combinations of anything since I have almost no experience with Japanese food. So, I pretty much just look at stuff until I see something that looks tasty, or rather something that doesn't look awful and buy it. Costs me about $4 to try it out, and hey, if I hate it, I know for next time.

Today I got something that looked fried and with eggs and noodles in it. It was Okonomiyaki. What is Okonomiyaki? Best description, an octopus omlette. Or maybe an octopus and egg pancake since that is what it looked like. It is eggs, vegetables (mostly cabbage and onion) some other yam like vegetable (probably yam now that I think about it) all mixed together, fried up, and topped with octopus and cheese which is also pan fried. Also, there were noodles on the side with a slight meaty taste.

All in all, pretty good. It wasn't really hot (the downside of buying at the store and getting stuff in non-microwavable plastic containers) and I am sure it would have been better hotter, but I would buy it again. Pretty good.

Man, I sure am eating a lot of octopus lately. It is Tsuruga festival time this week, and there is a Takomiyaki stand right outside of the school. Takomiyaki is deep fried octopus balls, and they are supposed to be fantastic. I gaurentee I am going to have one this week. Even if they are super expensive at 500 yen a pop. Ouch.