At first I thought this, cereal in a bag, was strange, but then I realized cereal is always in a bag, we just have a box as extra, superfluous packaging.
Clocking in at three months, my parents are coming to visit. I came up with a plan for them so I look like I know a lot about Japan. However, most of the things on the list will be my first experience. The unfortunate thing was the empty room at my apartment suddenly filled with a new roomate so I will become aquainted with our sofa.
Thursday, April 6
1. Meet at airport 2. Eat at sushi conveyor belt 3. Unpack and sleep
Friday, April 7
1. Tokyo Tower + Zoijoji Temple 2. Akihabara (Electronic Town)
Saturday, April 8 - Wednesday, April 12
HONG KONG
Thursday, April 13
1. Yoyogi Park 2. Meiji Shrine
Friday, April 14
1. Order Hato Bus Tour (for Saturday) 2. Kawagoe shopping and site seeing
Saturday, April 15
1. Hato Bus Tour (Panoramic Tokyo) $100 dollars per person:
Meiji Shinto Shrine National Diet Building Imperial East Garden Asakusa Kannon Temple and Nakimise Shopping Street Table D'Hote Lunch Tokyu Bay Cruise Panoramic View of Tokyo from Pier Arrive at Ginza
There is a method to my choice in club. The highest priority is that it plays breaks. And so it happens that all three clubs I've gone to has had breaks planned but have had special nights and switched the music to give the people what they want. The first night at Air it was for a four man live set. At Womb there wasn't a reason given. At Ruby Room, it was someone's going away party so they brought their laptop to the club and they played out of their iTunes folder. They didn't even give a crap transitioning between songs and sometimes just abruptly switched over (as you can tell I didn't like the Ruby Room, although they hired Alex as a DJ).
The club worth mentioning, nevertheless, was Womb. It was supposed to be a huge club but we couldn't find it anywhere and no local in the area had ever heard of it. When we finally found it, we nearly walked pass, since it only had a tiny black and white plastic banner.
Inside I joined their membership and they took my fingerprint. Now I don't need to bring ID anymore and get a discount everytime and on my birthday month, cover is free, I get a bottle of wine and 5 friends get in cheaply. Score.
The frontdesk told us that only the 4th floor was opened. The fourth floor was a tiny bar with a DJ. It sucked because from the 4th floor we could look down and see the massive main floor with the largest, most sparkly disco ball I had ever seen in my life.
The place never packed because it was not a planned night. I think they just had the resident DJs playing. A large loud group of white people who work at the same company I do came barging in and started doing wild college white girl dance. Wild college white girl dancing is so uncool and it's always the same no matter the music. It's kind of the opposite of Japanese girl dancing, which has no life. If only they merged their dancing techniques. Then you'd have sane dancing.
One party girl was dragging Japanese people to and fro from the sidelines to all over the dance floor. I used this freakish behaviour as my opportunity to make conversation. I asked "What do you think of foreigners? Do you think they are... you know..." And I would let my fingers finish the talking. I'd do that thing where you use your index finger and make circles around your temple while rolling your eyes.
That's how I met this girl:
Towards the end of the night I asked for her phone number and she looked afraid. I thought I had totally misread her signs because I was thought she liked me. She had came over and approached me to reinitiate conversation two seperate times. She asked "Then I would have to talk English? My English is very bad." And she ran to her bag and got her pen and notepad, ran back and gave me her email. I wasn't sure if it was a pity email so I said "Hey, I'm gonna go dance, but when you leave, you have to come find me to say bye, okay?" So I thought if she takes the effort to find me (which isn't hard though since the place was tiny) and say goodbye then I would take the effort to email her.
She found me. I've emailed her, but she hasn't responded.
She is also another perfect example of Japanese female dancing. She does a lifeless shuffle. Alex kept on mimicking her and I had to bite my tongue to not laugh.
Alex, by the way, was really a dancing star that night.
One guy I met through my "Do you think foreigners are crazy?" phase came up and asked me to teach him how to dance. I introduced him to Alex. Before you knew it Alex was teaching scores of people how to dance. At one point even the photographer joined and they were all in a line doing hop steps. It was hilarious. Here is the guy and two girls he taught how to dance:
I met a nice photographer. He forbid other people to take pictures, but he encouraged us to. He even emailed me all the pictures he took of us. He had a HUGE camera and even walked around with a lighting umbrella. On his chest he wore a LCD display screen of pictures he'd taken and he would cycle through it for you. After he would upload his pictures to the projectionist and party pictures would mix with the graphics. He invited me to a party of his and said to say I know him, but I don't think I will go because I'm so weak and I think that I need a few months rest now.
Alex did a battle with a tattoo store owner and a famous manga artist drew of a picture of them and gave it to Alex.
I have to say that Japanese people are very friendly. I don't think at a club in Toronto between Alex and me, would we have met and been friendly with all the DJs, the bar staff, the photographer and lots of random people.
One of two housemates moved out to a place five minutes away. The strange guy took his strange things including a bar set and a slot machine:
After he left, the place looked barren. Unfortunately, he was the housemate that owned the microwave so now I'm debating if I should buy a microwave even though I'm just staying in Japan for a year or two. My other housemate agreed to split the cost with me.
Last Thursday when I was walking in Shibuya with Alex I stumbled upon Love Hotels after Love Hotels. Apparently these Love hotels (Sex Hotels) do not even have employees, but you buy rent rooms through a vending machine or some other self serve method.
Well Alex thinks this was the entrance to one (I thought it was a restaurant). We walked by it when we noticed that it had a waterfall and we wondered how people could get in without getting wet. It had a motion sensor that stopped the waterfall when you got close enough. Here is the video (check out my Mickey Mouse ear muffs):
The first thing I say when I walk into a room is "Hi, how are you?" In Canada this nearly translates to "hello," since most people simply reply "good." But when I say it to students in Japan, they actually tell me the truth. I get as many "I'm very bad," as "I'm okay." Also, what they see as bad has great range.
How are you?
Bad. I'm very tired.
Did you sleep late last night?
Yes. Only two hours. (It happens to her every night)
How are you?
Bad. My older brother died. (This was from a student I met for the first time)
How are you?
Very bad. This morning, my wife was sick, so I had to make my own breakfast. (I told him, if he was me, he would be feeling bad every day)
I don't think Japanese people have any problems sharing if you ask. For example, I had a really sophisticated, good-looking 40ish woman in a one on one class. The lesson was talking about being sick. I asked her when was the last time she was sick, and she told me in Thailand on vacation. I asked her about her symptoms and she flatly told me (remember, she looks cute, posh and refined) she had a headache, a fever and diarrhea. I asked didn't I? Anyways, we had a good discussion because I then shared with her that when I went to Thailand, I had diarrhea too. Talking about runny feces really made a strong bond between us.
A lot of the time, the students are very tired. They push themselves so hard. I can't imagine how they could fit English lessons into their lives. One time we were doing a lesson and the word "rat-race" came up. I explained, it's someone who works a regular, long hours desk job, usually from 9 to 5, 5 days a week. They started laughing when they heard 9 to 5. They asked me, did I mean to say 9 to 9? It's not uncommon for Japanese people to work everyday of the week. One of my students works everyday of the week and does overtime each day. A fellow teacher told me one of his students worked 3 months straight without a day off.
I won a poker thing, but I wish it was a cash prize. Instead, I won a placement in a 500 man tourney where the winner gets a 15K USD prize package which includes the 10k entry fee into the WSOP (World Series of Poker). Okay, so all in all, I'm a gambling man, so the idea of winning nothing but the chance to win something huge isn't too depressing, but, due to my uncommon timezone, the tournament is 4 am! Waaaaah!
What is different about this picture than if I had taken it in North America?
A plus for you if you noticed that all the cars reversed into their spots. About 90% of parked cars I see are parked by backing into the slot. It's not uncommon to see an entire 100+ lot full of cars all parked this way. This made me wonder about the stereotype that Asian people can't drive, since it's more difficult to reverse into a spot than driving straight in.
For breakfast I eat instant noodle or cereal. I found my favourite cereal I have ever eaten. It has delicious dried fruit in it.
Some instant noodles are hardcore. They have real preserved beef and the brown flavoured eggs. Every separate piece is in an airtight seal. You rip everything apart and add boiling water:
On my early shifts I also drink coffee. Japan has single serve drip coffees that is so wasteful, yet so convenient:
For lunch I consistently try to spend about 7 dollars.
Salmon on rice and calamari:
Sushi:
Fish rolls:
Nice cuts of fried chicken, cake and a drink:
If you've been following my food progress, you'd see that I went from eating out (conveyor belt sushi restaurant) to instant noodle mania to cooking meat. I've finally started throwing in some veggies! I bought some sort of chinese oyster-like sauce to season it with. You can click on the thumbnails for a bigger picture.
More strange things my ex-roomate brought with him:
