It's fun for all ages! *Except if you're a baby

Again, a huge delay between posts, I’m starting to think this may be a trend. Or the norm. I’m not to blame, really, as I was sick this past week. Maybe I should stop eating all that free candy they hand out in public toilets.

I’m recently 25 and I celebrated my birthday by going to Yokohama, a major city south of Tokyo Metropolis, yet still considered to be in the Greater Tokyo Area. Yokohama has an awesome factor similar to Tokyo’s, in that it’s essentially the urban equivalent of 150 Red Bulls snorted through your nose, only it’s on the water and that makes it more susceptible to giant squid attacks. Two generally agreed upon places worth seeing: Minato Mirai and Chinatown.

This is the much ballyhooed giant Ferris wheel in Minato Mirai, touted as the tallest in the world by most Tokyoites. (A quick Wikipedia check reveals that there are 12 wheels even taller, two of them in Japan.) Anyway, it’s still pretty big, and even though we couldn’t ride it because of the rain, it makes for a neat picture.

Yokohama’s Chinatown is hailed as the place to visit if you’ve ever wanted to go to China, but don’t want to go to China, and it’s one of the world’s largest Chinatowns. (Supersleuth Chelsey says this one checks out.) The place had a credible enough authenticity and the night-time atmosphere is lively. Adam and I embarked on a gastronomic inquiry of the place, ducking in and out of restaurants, ordering a couple dishes at a time, and pairing them with warm sake. There were also tons of streetmeats to be had.

Tourist attractions aside, it’s a pretty cool city to walk around in at night:





On the way back we stopped into Tokyo to check out the Nakizumo (lit. ‘crying sumo’) festival which had been the whole reason for the trip in the first place. Every year Senso-ji temple in Tokyo holds an event where sumo wrestlers pit babies against one another in hardened competition with the desired result of making them bawl. The whole thing goes like this: 100 or so proud mothers parade their babies around and then hand them off to a sumo wrestler. Said sumo wrestler takes offpsring into a ring, faces off against another baby brandishing wrestler, and then the babies get jostled around like little Jell-o bobbleheads. The baby that cries loudest is declared the winner. Occasionally, the babies fail to recognize the unpleasantness of the situation and start enjoying themselves. In such cases, three officials wearing oni (devil) or Groucho glasses come to heckle the babies by repeating nake, nake (cry, cry).

Typically, watching grown men shake babies around until they cry is not on everyone’s birthday wish list. But as you can see, this event was too high-brow to pass on. As we all stood around swirling our brandies and twirling our moustaches, I reflected on whether or not this kind of thing is good for babies. But hey, I'm sure I've been shaken around a lot as a child, but I sorted myself out relatively quickly and by the age of 19 was a halfway normal person, a state which I have maintained with varying success since...

...Though it explains why I can't do simple math in my head.

And for those people who are quick to point the SBS finger, this festival has an ostensibly long, culturally significant history that totally makes everything okay and stuff.

I forgot my camera, and my iPhone pictures just don’t do it justice, so here are some pictures that I’m borrowing from elsewhere on the internet.

Photo credit: Koji Sasahara



Photo credit: vyxle on Flickr

Photo credit: vyxle on Flickr

In other news, Adam just got back from getting a haircut at a random place in our neighbourhood. This is what happened:

Shampoo Lady: Are you an English teacher?

Adam: Assistant Language Teacher.

Shampoo Lady: CHELSEY?

Adam: My name’s Adam, but, yeah, she’s my girlfriend.

Shampoo Lady: Eeeeeeeeh?!

Adam: …….

*Shampoo Lady leaves and her daughter appears out of nowhere*

Daughter: Autograph?

Adam: Sure.

*Daughter gets shooed away by her father*

Barber: After the haircut! By the way, teacher’s boyfriends get free shampoos.

So the moral of the story is that I’m famous and people who know me get moderate favours. Like the Oprah of the Takasaki High School Community.

Cherry Blossoms

Ah, spring. There’s a saying here. They say that when spring comes, the cherry blossoms bloom, and the weirdos come out to play. According to many Japanese, weirdos are seasonal occurrences (debatable) that come out to pester you while you’re trying to enjoy an afternoon in the park. Apparently they’re keen to come over and touch your hair and then go back to creeping everyone out with deranged whispering. With that, please enjoy some pictures that I took while trying to enjoy an afternoon of cherry blossom viewing in the park:

In case you were wondering, I packed another bento for our excursion:

You might say I’m addicted to bento making now. And you’d be correct. You might also say that I need to spend more time having friendly relationships with people instead of spending Friday nights in the kitchen by myself. I’d say things like this shed light on why my high school experience was the way it was. Anyway, I put off starting this one until 12:30 the night before and I didn’t get to bed until 3:30. Needless to say, it was a late start on flower viewing the next day.

In other news, I bought tickets to Fujirock. Between the 1-day and 3-day ticket choices, I opted to do the full 3 days, which cost me ¥39, 800 (that’s nearly 400 dollars in Monopoly money) but it’s totally worth it for a chance to get shickered, avouch my discipline issues, and throw something saucy at the lead singer of Vampire Weekend* …And possibly something heavy and blunt at the frontman for Air.

In a subject change to a topic that has nothing to do with anything, have a look at this:

Cute, right? This is Rilakkuma, a popular character in Japan somewhat akin to Hello Kitty. Cute as he may be, I find his backstory to be a little disturbing:

Rilakkuma mysteriously appears in the female office worker
Kaoru's apartment one day. He is a soft toy bear who has apparently decided to
take up residence there. On his back is a zipper which when opened reveals a
light blue polka dot patterned material. The contents or nature of this zipper
is unknown.

It is implied that…his entire lower body is a costume,
which he will often replace when it gets old or dirty (Rilakkuma is frequently
seen sitting around waiting for suits that look exactly like him to dry on the
clothes line). However, it is not clear whether his head is also part of his
costume. -Wikipedia

Is anyone else a little creeped out by this? If I had something like this going on in my apartment I would run screaming out of my place like a maniac, grabbing passers-by by the shoulders and shaking them and insisting that THERE’S AN ALIEN FURRY WASHING HIS BEAR SKIN-SUITS BACK THERE HALP MEH etc etc.

*Not as emo as it sounds. Why do so many good bands insist on terrible names?

Temples and Castles and Post-towns

Spring is finally here, much to the dismay of many Japanese people who suffer from an aggravated type of hay fever (kafunsho), and who consider spring to be the most miserable season. I’m quite healthy and am enjoying the plum blossoms.

This weekend we took a trip out to Nagano to do some sightseeing. First stop was Zenko-ji, a rather hugeish temple right in the heart of Nagano city. This temple is not unlike most temples, except that it has a passageway leading underground where you must navigate your way through to the other end in complete darkness. You’re supposed to run your hands along the walls and try to find a protruding key that, once found, will unlock your path to enlightenment. As innocuous as it sounds, the total darkness thing may lead those with disturbed overactive minds to foresee unfriendly encounters with any number of things. Like a Rapeceratops. Or his more terrifying big brother, Rapeasaurus Rex.

Having emerged alive, our next stop was in Matsumoto to visit a national treasure. Matsumoto castle is nicknamed The Crow because of its black exterior and wing-shaped roof. Castles are much more accessible to tourists than temples are because you can poke around inside and check out the keep and storage areas.

Samurai armour rocked several different moustache types. Behold the upside-down Walrus Moustache:

Last stop was Kiso Valley, where we visited some post-towns. Here’s the abbreviated history behind this: The Tokugawa government imposed a kind of back-and-forth system whereby every year all the shogun would have to travel between Edo (Tokyo) and their domain. Along the main travel route to/from Edo, a series of little towns popped up to provide shogun and their samurai with rest and food. Two of these towns are preserved in Kiso Valley, and one is still inhabited. They are very much unchanged from how they looked when they were built (sans slightly unhinged honour-obsessed samurai stabbing each other in the goolies).

Note my new haircut, which is cheekily referred to as He-Man hair by my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

On the second night of our trip we had unknowingly stumbled upon Japan’s stinky armpit, a town called Nakatsugawa. I won’t bore you with details, other than that everything we touched was sticky, but the clinching factor was that Adam and I both hated it and were unable to leave because our scheduled train kept on NOT COMING. It was like it was some voodoo ghost town that doesn’t exist except in your most vivid nightmares. We were lucky enough to catch a train out of there after waiting 3 hours, and we didn’t look back.

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATEH AHET HTATE

Overall, it was an intriguing couple of days. Interested parties can click here for more photo goodness.

Bento

No real blog post, just pictures of another bento I made:


I made this for Adam because he had to take a long train ride out for a business trip on a Saturday. Cute, ne? A mawkish lunch such as this should do well to boost my reputation as a caring and generous individual despite the fact that I am small-minded and mean and sometimes involuntarily creepy.

About Valentine's... mostly.

Happy February! As of the 27th, I will have been living in Japan for 7 months. I suppose I completely glossed over the half-a-year milestone, so I’m celebrating by eating some turducken. Well, not really, but I will stuff some food into some other delicious food stuffed into some other delicious food. I’ll probably make ramadamatamagoyakiso…ba.

Valentine’s Day was mostly spent nerding around at some museums this year. We went to the Tokyo National Museum, the oldest and largest museum in Japan, which houses an excellent Asian exhibit and a ton of National Treasures. I’m happy to report that I learned the Japanese word for Archduke (taikou) from an old-timey English-Japanese dictionary. I do hope it comes in handy. We also went to a futuristic science museum on Odaiba, a man-made island near Tokyo Bay. Odaiba is well-known for its newfangled architecture. Check out the Fuji TV building:

Among the exhibits at the science museum were a giant pinball machinesque simulation of the internet, real-time displays of data from a huge array of seismometers across Japan which show the whole country vibrating, Asimo/other cool robotic business, and space stuff. I was looking forward to seeing the Maglev Train model, but couldn’t find it. There was also an exhibit devoted to creating awareness about man’s negative environmental impact, and Adam and I exchanged ironic glances as we stood on the artificially made ground. At any rate, I feel safe knowing that the mountain warrior-priest responsible for Japan’s ninja-grip on technology is using it for good, not evil.

I packed this bento for our lunch, my best attempt to date. By the way, bentos have been way easier to make now that I have access to every kind of Japanese ingredient. The pink heart sushi was made with denbu, which is a kind of fish egg product, only it’s sweet and very pink. And my octodogs aren’t gross anymore, because now I can use sausages specially made for octodogging purposes.

When we sat down and cracked out the bento, in less than two seconds a bird came over and pooed on it, with fevered intent. I swear to god it was just waiting for us. Luckily, only one of the tamago pieces was soiled, which was easily isolated and disposed of. Adam graciously ate from the poo-bento first, while I cursed all birds to hell with angry fist-shaky action. I was disinclined to partake, as I am neurotic about poo-related skin diseases, but Adam said it was fine and I eventually gave in.

While we’re on the subject, and this being the classy blog it is, here’s a textbook example of the tendency for Japanese to anthropomorphize everything, sometimes with terrifying results:

Anyway, as the day wrapped up, Godzilla came over and stomped on the Fuji TV building and we ran for our lives.

Voilà, c’est la fin.

Lots of nakie man bum

I meant to get this up a few weeks ago, but it’s been busy back at work. Recently a second wave of the pigflu has quarantined many of my students in their houses, so I’m finally free to sit down and write this.

Recently there was a huge sumo tournament in Tokyo to which Adam and I bought tickets. The tournament lasts all day, with the lower level matches beginning in the morning and running until the serious wrestlers go at it in the late afternoon. We got there in the morning and played spot-the-sumo in the area around the stadium. This is super fun because all the wrestlers are out doing normal people things like eating lunch and riding bikes and shopping. And they’re easy to spot since they all have a traditional waxed hairstyle. (And easy to spot for other, more obvious reasons.)

Mid-day we left to visit a Parasite Museum. It was cool, but very misleading. I won’t go into details, but Adam and I walked out of the place under the false impression that tiny fish could live inside your liver, and crabs could live inside your heart. We later googled ‘liver fluke’ and ‘heart crab’ to no avail and promptly realized how stupid we really were. I blamed the museum for lying to us and maintained a dignified silence on the train back to the sumo tournament.

Anyway, we went back to see the oozeki and yokozunas, the top ranked players in Japan. There are a surprising number of foreign sumo wrestlers, and in fact, the two highest ranked wrestlers are Mongolian. We sat a few levels up from the action, but people can buy Japanese style seating right next to the ring (really just cushions on the floor) for outrageous prices. These usually go to impetuous old farts who are known to have mantrums and throw their cushions at the wrestlers during lacklustre matches (because old people can get away with whatever they want in Japan.) What’s funny is that Sumo isn’t just a fat man’s sport. We saw lots of Marvin the Martian vs. Mongo matches, and it wasn’t always a win for the bigger guy. It would seem that being a good sumo wrestler has qualifiers other than ‘be gigantic and push people around.’

Though this guy never got the memo:

Oh and we got to see the Emperor of Japan. He and the Empress came to watch some Sumo too, only they had much better seating than us and were accompanied by some shifty eyed suited types.

In other news, you’ll be interested to know that the Tokyo Metro Railway Company puts out a series of ‘do it at home’ posters featuring various impolitenesses, reminding Tokyoites to mind their manners when riding the subway. These are apparently necessary because Japan sans public service posters detailing embarrassing social faux-pas is a Japan with no discernable moral compass…? Some of them are quite funny, and here are a couple of my favourites.

Here's a spoof I thought was pretty funny:

Tewnty-ten!

Happy New Year! Winter holidays are over and it’s back to work. After Christmas I spent most of my time showing a friend around Tokyo and its surrounding areas. We got to see a kabuki performance, which was lucky, considering the famous (and very old) Kabuki-Za theatre is being torn down in a couple months and being completely renovated.

We also played some pachinko. Pachinko is way less fun than it sounds. And it sounds horrible. When walking into a pachinko parlour you’re met with the sound of a million million steel balls ricocheting off the pegs inside the game. It sounds like the engine room of some great ship. Couple that with second-hand smoke and flashing neon lights, the whole experience is a sensory overload. Oh, and the chairs are designed to pull you right into the machine, should you push away or lean back. It was like being inside the heart of some giant out-of-control manic robot clown.

New Years was spent drinking nihonshu (a mix of sake and shochu) in an izakaya in Tokyo this year. We did the countdown with everybody else in the restaurant, except for the table adjacent to ours, who did theirs two minutes later… which struck us as odd. What did they think was going on beforehand?

My New Year’s resolution is to stop carrying around so much shit in my bag. I never wanted to become one of those girls with irritatingly full shoulder bags, but I find myself reaching in for my wallet when it’s time to pay for something and embarrassingly grope away like a 13 year-old boy trying to get to second base. Here, then, is what’s in my bag:

-emergency battery for iPhone
-assorted tea bags (this month is Lady Grey and popcorn tea)
-pamphlets/tickets to things/receipts
-extra pair of underwear (black, if you must know)
-iPod
-broken South Africa keychain
-book (currently reading Kafka on the Shore) (So guhd)
- 2 spoons
-no, wait, 3 spoons
-magnets
-lip shimmer
-insurance application form with scribbles all over it (this is telling, don’t you think?)
-mittens
-packet of soy sauce
-maple candy I brought from Canada (I don’t like maple. I brought these to give to other people, but now they’ve gotten all scummy and manky at the bottom of my bag and would likely give someone a bad case of thrush)
-glue stick
- earrings I thought I lost
-broken pens

…I may have issues.

Tokyo is a walking city, but after a while we were able to duck into a basement cigar bar near Harajuku, where we sat down like rakish highbrow types and ordered port and sat in high-backed leather chairs and exchanged sly witticisms while smoking cigars etc etc. Struck with the realization that I had an opportunity to indulge in some bad-assery, I opted to try the whiskey, mainly to satiate my preoccupation with Captain Haddock. Nope. Still can’t drink the whiskey. But going to places like this may ruin my life in the most magnificent ways.

I was recently made aware of a place in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district (lit. “pond bag”) called Nekobukuro (lit. “cat bag”) where you can go and play with cats all day. If everything is born of necessity, places like this is what makes Japan so bloody peculiar. Adam’s allergic and I’m in kitty-withdrawal, so I made a special trip with Juan to see this place, which is just a big room with cats comfortably tucked into every nook and cranny, as only cats can do. They’re used to being pet all day so they’re completely indifferent if you go up and poke at them while they’re trying to sleep. I happened to have some string with me, but I was popular only as long as their attention spans held out. Either way, they were soft and cute so I was happy.

Overall, it was a busy and tiring holiday. However, Adam and I weren’t so worn out that we couldn’t appreciate the novelty of this enormous carrot, which provided suitable entertainment for an entire evening.

What small lives we lead.