Category Archives: Life and Stuff

Noodles and Beer in the Afternoon

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A friend and former colleague is back in Japan and because I was at work on a Saturday (long story) he came back to the school and I showed him all the new toys that had arrived since he’d left. We then went for a beer and a bowl of ramen soup.

One of my relatives once scoffed at the idea of an eight dollar bowl of soup. I told her she was missing out. She remained skeptical even when I pointed out it was only eight dollars because of the exchange rate.

Part of the problem is that ramen soup, in the USA at least, is sustenance for graduate students. In 1995, while I was at Ole MIss, I vaguely remember the price being a dollar for a pack of five. A quick check of some websites tells me that’s what the price is now. This means, oddly, that ramen is one of the few foods to go down in price relative to inflation. (The inflation adjusted price should have been $1.54 for a pack of five.)

This notion of cheap graduate student food is also true in Japan, the difference is it’s also food for workers with short lunch breaks.

The other difference is that if you spend a little more, you get well made ramen, even at a national chain. My friend and I went to a chain that is quite typical of ramen chains. You buy tickets for what you want from a vending machine near the door and then one of the staff fetch the tickets and start preparing your order. This way employees never touch the money and the store has a good sense of what sells and what doesn’t.

A lot of this is designed to get you in feed you and then usher you out as quickly as possible. My friend and I, however, did not do that as the other good thing about most ramen restaurant chains is they sell beer from the moment they open until they close.

We bought ramen, gyoza and a beer and then got confused when we actually had the choice of bottle for draft (we chose draft). We both spiced up the ramen with garlic greens mixed with red pepper sauce and destroyed the ramen, as people are supposed to, as quickly as possible. We then sat around catching up for a couple hours hogging the only real table in the restaurant.

Oddly, we only had one beer each, at least until we visited a grocery store and my friend bought a canned whiskey drink and walked back to the station with me.

 

Addicts of a Feather Enable Together

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I spent the day getting bad news from my supervisor and then almost forgave him when I discovered he was both a pen addict and a Kickstarter addict.

It happened at the end of a meeting when my supervisor was scribbling notes with an unusual stylus ballpoint pen combo. It had a strange shape and I think was a digital pen from Anoto. Unfortunately, as soon as I expressed an interest in it, his pen addict paranoia took over and he spirited it away to a safe place so I never got a good look at it.

This brief glimpse, however, led to a discussion of various Kickstarter products he’d supported, and this led to a game of “you show me what you wasted money on I’ll show you mine”. I currently everyday carry five things I got via Kickstarter. This includes pen cases from Nock Co. and my new wallet.

I then tried to introduce him to Massdrop (registration required to look around) because he probably still has some money roaming around in his wallet that needs to be spent.

All this got me thinking about the ways we pen addicts spread our addiction. For example, my loaner pens are now a Tactile Turn Mover and a Tactile Turn Shaker. When I lent the Mover to a colleague a few days ago, he liked it so much he suddenly asked to see “my coolest pen” and I let him try my TWSBI 580 and my Karas Kustoms INK fountain pen. (The latter came from a Kickstarter campaign).

He didn’t seem as interested in those but he definitely liked the others.

This seems to be the most common way to spread the addiction: share the wealth, so to speak. I find that once people try the Tactile Turn pens, especially if they have the chance to use them extensively, and the see the different in quality between them and a basic ballpoint, they are suddenly interested in spending the money it takes to get the higher quality pens. Suddenly the expensive pens don’t seem that expensive. (For the record, My TT Mover came from Massdrop and I won the all titanium TT Shaker in a raffle.)

Then, once the addiction begins to take hold, they begin to think about fountain pens. Once that takes happens, I have a few names I’ll pass on to my friend.

 

 

 

 

Getting Cold One Last Time, Probably

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I once had a Kansas farmer snicker at me in a “you poor naive lad” kind of way when I cited the TV weatherman as a source for what the weather would be in a few days.

One of the things Kansas farmers, actually all who live in Kansas for that matter, realize is that weather people are, more or less, making stuff up as they go along. In fact I’ve always argued that in Kansas “The weatherman says” is the phrase you use to start a joke instead of “Guy goes into a bar” This is because in Kansas the latter phrase used to be used in this manner: “Guy goes into a bar, finds out he has to buy a membership or he can’t buy a drink.”

Even though that changed a long time ago, “guy goes into a bar” jokes aren’t that popular.

I bring this up because despite it being almost shorts and t-shirt weather just a few days ago, today it snowed here in the Tokyo/Saitama. I was the only one who wasn’t surprised as one of my odd mantras about life in this area is “It always gets cold one more time. Even if you think it won’t get cold again it will get cold.” Today that was true with a vengeance.

Getting snow isn’t that unusual (it snowed in April five years ago) what was unusual was that it actually stuck in a few places rather than quickly melting. What was also unusual was that it kept snowing well into the afternoon.

It had a happy ending though because She Who Must Be Obeyed used it as a last chance to make chili. Since we used up all our kerosene for our small kerosene heaters we needed something to warm us up.

Tomorrow the weatherman says it’s going to be partly cloudy and 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 Celsius). That’s a funny one. I’ll believe it when I see it.

 

Note: Heavily edited for clarity on August 7, 2015.

Blissfully Embarrassing Myself Without Knowing When to Leave

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Be careful what you wish for, because I just might say yes.

Although I’ve gotten a lot better at it, I’ve never been very good at reading signals people are sending and I’m not always fully aware of the conventions involved in certain situations. For example, in Kyoto, if you’ve been invited to a house for lunch toward the end of the lunch you will be offered tea. As you approach the end of your cup, you will be offered another. The savvy person refuses the second cup, engages in a brief faux argument and leaves. In Kyoto the tea is the signal the lunch is over and the host’s polite way of saying “Thanks, now get the f@#k out.”

I, on the other hand, at least when I was younger, would have taken the second cup after it was offered and then gone on blissfully unaware, once I finally left, that my host was spreading the story that I was rude and wouldn’t get the f@#k out. (So maybe THAT’S why I don’t get invited to parties. Too much tea.)

I say this because something similar to this happened when I was in Albania. A couple of our language teachers repeatedly said that the next time I was in Tirana I should contact them and they’d have me over to their place for coffee.

I was not aware, at the time, that this was the equivalent of “let’s do lunch” and “my people will call your people” and that I was not actually being invited over for coffee.

Of course, during one trip to Tirana, I called the people in question and said if the offer was still good I was in town. There was a brief moment of “Offer? What offer?” and I reminded them of the offer and was invited over for coffee and dinner. Well, sort of.

They had a small place they shared with extended family and I got the chance to say hello to several people and then got my coffee. I was offered a second cup and then time just kind of froze. I remembered that I’d imagined there’d been an offer to stay for dinner so we all ended up on the couch watching TV to wait for dinner.

After a while, even I could sense something was wrong, but nobody seemed to be dropping hints that it was time to leave. Of course, as it turned out, the hints had already been dropped.

I then entered a panic loop that amounted to something like “I feel tense and that makes them feel tense and I think I’m overstaying but if I’m not I don’t want to be rude but I feel tense and that makes them feel tense and I think I’m overstaying but if I’m not I don’t want to be rude but I feel tense and that makes them feel tense and I think I’m overstaying but if I’m not I don’t want to be rude but I feel tense“. Etcetera.

Solution: sit and do nothing until the situation changed.

After about an hour of the panic loop, it finally dawned on me that nobody seemed to be making dinner and I was the reason they weren’t. At long last, I thanked them for the coffee and letting me watch the TV show and apologized that I’d have to be leaving.

Instantly everyone got nervous smiles and escorted me to the door faster than I’d ever seen happen in Albania.

This last part was the hint I’d done something wrong. The Albanians usually made a big show of encouraging a person to stay even when it was clear they desperately wanted them to leave. The fact they were sending me on my merry way made it clear how desperately they wanted me to leave.

I apologized the next time I saw them and even apologized to some of their friends in the Peace Corps, because I was 99% certain the entire Peace Corps knew about what happened the very next day.

Since then I’ve gotten much better about reading those false invitations. That said, I probably always knew about those false invitations, but free coffee’s worth a social faux pas or two.

Show Me the Losers and Show Me the Tears

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In honor of Ariana Miyamoto becoming the first half-Japanese Miss Universe Japan last month, I’m suddenly thinking about the worst beauty pageant I’ve ever seen.

Oddly, you can blame the Italians.

I think it was 1993, but I’m not sure. All I know is I was up north in Shkoder visiting my friend Eddie and, as was common, the TV was set on an Italian channel. The Albanians enjoyed their new freedom to watch foreign TV without the threat of going to jail and a lot of them had picked up Italian as a second spoken language.

I couldn’t understand Italian at all and Eddie was keeping his Italian skills secret, but it was beautiful Italian women dressing beautifully or barely dressing which meant it was worth watching.

At least that was the premise; then it got bizarre.

First all the women performed a dance that was apparently choreographed by some famous choreographer as the person’s name kept being flashed on the screen. The problem was the dancing amounted to the women standing in geometric patterns and waving their arms to the rhythm of the music. Even the fact the women were in bathing suits couldn’t override the bizarre.

Then there was some kind of vote held that may or may not have involved telephone polling. As soon as the poll was complete, the survivors were announced and then sent off stage and the emcee interviewed the losers. I couldn’t understand what was being said but I think it amounted to:

emcee–How bad does it suck to be a loser?
loser–It sucks pretty bad.
emcee–Are you sad to be loser?
loser–I’m very sad.
emcee–Now get off the stage, loser.
loser–Thanks for inviting me! Viva l’Italia!!

Then the survivors were brought out to do more posing and another dance involving geometric shapes and hand waving. Another poll was taken and the survivors were sent off so the losers could be interviewed.

Along the way Eddie and I held our own poll (which is not dirty) and decided our personal favorite was a woman with a pageboy haircut and a sophisticated university look.

At some point the emcee brought Gina Lollobrigida on stage to do the “serious interview” portion of the contest. Our sophisticated university girl went first and was so moved by standing near the famous Italian actress/sex symbol, she burst into tears and was unable to speak. Gina Lollobrigida comforted her but you could tell she wouldn’t survive. She didn’t.

Eventually a winner may have been crowned but I don’t remember her name. I may have stopped watching by that point. All I remember is the dance and the losers.

The Last Train and the First Train

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One of the decisions you have to make when you live near Tokyo is how late you want to stay out when you’re spending a night out on the town. Your choices are simple:

1) Go home early.
2) Stay out all night.

You can not stay out “later than usual”. If you try to do this, you will stay out all night.

This is because Tokyo’s train system begins shutting down between 11 and midnight. If you have to catch two or more trains, you have to be aware of the last train on each line. The last train from the closest station may depart at 12:45 a.m. but the last train you can take to get home may leave at 12:30 a.m.

If you miss one key train you will miss all of them and may find yourself taking a taxi home or back to the bar.This makes for odd schedules. The Yahoo Transit site tells me that 12:45 a.m. is the last train from my Ikebukuro heading my direction. It stops about half way and then the instructions tell me the next connection leaves at 4:59 a.m.

This also makes for odd evenings.

I remember meeting a friend from high school and university who’d been living in Japan since the 80’s. I hadn’t seen him in decades, but after only a few drinks and some reminiscing, I had to leave for home at 10 because the bar was in a strange location and I had four trains to catch. It was either “Sorry but I turn into a pumpkin at 10:00”  or I had to say “I know I haven’t seen you since the Reagan administration but can I crash at your place?” (It might have worked with him; it doesn’t work with ex-girlfriends, though.)

The other choice is to stay out all night. The first trains start around 5:00 a.m.

What typically happens around last train time is the working people, the Cinderellas, rush to the train to get home or their wives will throw pumpkins at them (something like that). To reach the train they have to human slalom around the college students and party animals (Vampires) who have the energy to stay out all night and are just heading to the clubs.

The last train is typically one of the worst rides you can take. It’s crowded and full of drunk people. It’s one of the few times I feel nervous riding the train.

If you’re not interested in playing Vampire but don’t have any one who will throw pumpkins at you the next day, there are other options, but they are expensive. There are capsule hotels and, if you can find one that takes singles, Love Hotels. They are safer than the last train and the prices are usually comparable to taking a taxi home.

In fact, I suspect it’s the hotel and taxi industry that lobby to keep Japan Rail and the private train lines from operating all night.

 

 

Slowly at First Then Faster and Faster

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I’m a good enough dad that I’ll go to a concert even when I’m tired. I’m a good enough photographer that I’ll keep the camera straight when I’m asleep. Mostly.

Today was a special concert for our oldest’s brass band club. It was the final performance for all the 3rd year (9th grade members) and took place in a large auditorium with professional lighting.

As always, it was a good performance but there were two problems:

1) last night was the final (probably) farewell party for a departing colleague and I didn’t get home until the next to last train. (I actually wrote yesterday’s post early because I knew I wouldn’t be home until late). (More on “last trains” and “first trains” in another post.)

2) The band front-loaded all the serious slow songs. The songs were so serious the students actually wore their uniforms and sat seriously.

I was using a monopod and had situated it with one hand more or less strapped to it as an anchor and the other holding it straight. Several times during the performance I caught myself waking up but subsequent check of the video showed little drift. Luckily I didn’t experience a Hypnic Jerk (which would make a great band name) or the film might have been more exciting.

Only once did I catch myself falling to the side, but on video it looks more like a clumsy adjustment.

After the five slow songs and, as it turned out, the accompanying nap, there was a ten minute intermission.

During that break the band changed to jeans and t-shirts and came out for the real performance: theme songs from movies and a couple of the girls acting like Ariel from Little Mermaid (who suddenly went blonde) and another girl dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow. We then listened to “Under the Sea” and the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean and medleys of various Studio Ghibli tunes.

During the third phase (Japan Pop Tunes) the graduating 9th graders put on funny hats and sunglasses and tried to induce the audience to join in a popular dance to the song “Gera Gera Po (Yokai Watch)”. The effect was something like this. (You don’t need to understand Japanese; it might be worth watching a minute or two.)

At some point there was the obligatory random standing, but at times there was also actual dancing, which is one step away from marching, but not as annoying.

It ended with one parent encouraging the audience to shout “Thank you” to the graduates, which led to lots of tears.

Next year, I’ll have to go again for our oldest’s graduation performance. I’ll try to be more awake then, but I make no promises.

 

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Beer

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One of the things I think a lot of people don’t get about government goodies is that although something doesn’t have a price, it always has a cost. You only think you’re getting it for free. This is also true of free beer.

One of the advantages of being a foreigner in Japan is that, even in this area, people will invite you to their blue tarps during Hanami and offer you a beer. If you’re lucky the only cost is 20 questions and a chance to practice your Japanese while they practice their English. Then, if you’re smart, you run to a beer machine or a convenience store and replace the beer you just drank after a short “oh, you didn’t have to do that” ritual.

If you’re not lucky, or an introvert not good at making long term conversation in another language and/or not good at making graceful exits, you may pay a higher cost when you end up trapped. On two occasions, I’ve been trapped. Both actually happened in the same day.

First, when I was still in Nou-machi, the town festival (more on that in another post) fell on a Saturday which meant a lot of people were suddenly able to attend. As soon as I arrived, I ran into my former boss who had secured a prime location. He immediately ordered me to sit down and drink. I stayed a while and every time I was about to try to leave I was handed another beer. Eventually, other friends arrived from other towns and I was able to exit.

(For the record: I probably out-stayed my welcome by quite a long time but I’ve never been good at reading “your time is up, get the hell out” signals in any language.)

After that I pointed my friends in the right direction for beer and refreshments and then got ordered to sit by a group of people I knew. They also started handing me beer. I ended up stuck there for a while until I managed to escape.

Keep in mind, part of the reason I liked attending the festival was it gave me a chance to play with camera gear and take lots of pictures. Being trapped, even with free beer means I’m stuck in one location and can’t just break out a tripod and camera when I’m supposed to be being sociable. It also means I can’t enjoy the food you have to pay for. Most of the free beer entrapments provide free snacks, but I’d rather head to the food stands.

The stuff there has a price but little cost.

I rather be here. The food stands at Takada Park in Joetsu. It's famous for its night Hanami.

I rather be here. The food stands at Takada Park in Joetsu. It’s famous for its night Hanami.

Viewing Flowers Through Beer-Colored Glasses

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A lot of people are about to celebrate spring by getting really drunk.

The arrival of spring in Japan means the cherry blossom trees are about to bloom and the Japanese will get drunk and stupid for at least one night during Hanami, or the flower viewing festival.

I think this festival is so important because it marks the first day the Japanese can have a party outside without freezing. That said, it is still kind of an odd festival.

The truth is the plum blossoms have been blooming for a while and they are much more impressive than the cherry blossoms, most of which are old and are more of a pale pink that a vibrant pink. However, most years the weather is too cold for people to properly enjoy partying outside, especially when it’s only plum blossoms.

This is what it looks like from under the tree.

Cherry blossoms from a couple years ago. Cool, but kind of pale.

Also, a lot of events happen at once at the end of March: graduations, teacher transfers, company employee transfers and the end of the fiscal year. Everyone’s tired, has cabin fever and is ready to party.

This also leads to a form of competition. Young employees are sent to the most popular party spots (Ueno Park, Shinjuku park and Naka-Meguro) and told to claim a plot of land for their company. The weapon of choice for this claim is a blue tarp. The young employees then work shifts, including spending the night in the park, to keep the prime spot of land claimed.

Some people camp out for a week at time and neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor rival companies will keep them from their appointed plot. (Something like that.)

At the same time the Japanese news is filled with official forecasts of when the leaves will be in full bloom. The forecasts include color charts depicting the current level of bloom and the full bloom day in various cities. Forecasters can get in trouble if they are wrong.

Reporters are sent out the parks to interview earlier partiers and commiserate with the campers as the young reporters probably were the campers the year before.

Once the party starts, it’s basically a 24 hour drunken picnic. Thousands of people assemble on the tarps and thousands more walk around with drinks in hand. Places like Naka-Meguro (a river walk) are so crowded all you can do is walk (don’t stop, it’s too dangerous to stop) and photographers will nearly come to blows trying to get the best angles.

At that point the tabloid magazines send out their reporters and photographers to capture the revelry and as much debauchery as possible. Back after I moved to Tokyo, a group of us managed to find a spot in Ueno Park along with tens of thousands of other people. We were then invited to join another group.

At some point a tabloid photographer started stalking us, mostly to get pictures of drunken foreigners and, especially drunken foreign women. That tabloid shut down soon after that party, but there might accidentally be a picture of me out there.

Luckily, it will be pretty boring.

More cherry blossoms. Still kind of pale, though.

More cherry blossoms. Still kind of pale, though.

The Endless Tournament of the Not Funny

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One thing I don’t get about Japan is it’s unceasing love for comedians. Perhaps it stems from a lifestyle that’s so work-oriented it’s driving people to suicide. In that environment, some humor must be a nice thing.

That part I get. What I don’t get is their love of unfunny comedians. For the most part Japanese humor is old vaudeville slapstick with two comedians, one the straightman and one the stooge. The stooge does something dumb and the straightman responds by slapping him on the head. In fact, it’s common for the host of a comedy show, if he’s a comedian to hit his comedian guests. They even do this to women which can be rather disturbing to someone from the west. (More on that in another post.)

There’s also a reliance on goofy gestures and pratfalls. Most comedy duos also have a signature gesture they use to announce the end of a joke as most of the audience isn’t laughing and need a cue to commence polite golf claps and polite, er, golf laughs.

Soon after I got to Japan, I saw a TV show where several comedians played a form of baseball. Nine members of a family were arranged in a tic-tac-toe grid. The members’ ages ranged from elementary school kids to retirees and included at least one teenager. Each comedian was given a set number of “pitches” (i.e. jokes) to make all nine members of the family laugh.

I wanted to practice my Japanese so I thought I’d watch and see if they could make me laugh.

Spoiler: they couldn’t.

Almost every comedian went up and started making stupid gestures or simply acting stupid. The elementary school kids laughed right away but everyone else kind of seemed sad for the comedians. Finally, Takashi Okumara of the Japanese comedy duo Ninety-nine got the chance to “pitch”. After a few failed gestures and stupid puns, he announced something called “Bruce Lee DJ”. He made a big show of balancing imaginary headphones and putting on a record. Then as he started to scratch the record he started making Bruce Lee kung fu chicken noises and kung fu gestures.

I’m not sure anyone else laughed, but I did. It was an actual joke requiring set up, timing and delivery. It also required a bit of knowledge about Bruce Lee.

It may not have been that funny, but by that point I was hoping for anything resembling a joke.