Tokyo weekend

Ah Tokyo. Japan’s capital and most expensive city in the world.

We had a 3 day holiday weekend so I decided to surprise Ed and take him there for his birthday. The weekend was meticulously planned with sealed envelopes and hints of what adventure awaited us!

Friday

After work, we caught a late bullet train into Shinjuku, wandered to our hotel, then to the convenience store for some nibbles and call it a night!

Saturday

Saturday morning started out very magical as we headed into a “forest” park to go to the Ghibli Museum. (Studio Ghibli has made movies such as: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, etc). This was by far the coolest museum I have ever been to. Constructed like a giant house, with tiny caged spiral stair cases and little hobbit half-doors weaving you in and out of half levels and real floors. There was no set route, and your reserved tickets guarantee it won’t be that over-crowded as well as getting you a free strip of film of a Ghibli movie. I think I had a big dumb open mouth grin the entire time there, it was just so fun.

Tall guys!

After that was free time. I attempted to find the possibly only letterbox in Japan. It was placed in a poor area, so it was gone (so now my soon-to-be letterbox will be the only one in Japan!). We wandered around Shibuya, home of the busiest train station and crosswalk in the world.

And this is a light flow!

Afterwards we ate at a pub back in Shinjuku.

Sunday

It was an early start on Sunday, I had planned many things!

First we stood inline for about 40 minutes to make sure we got tickets for Kabuki at THE Kabuki-za theatre. For a cheap ticket, you can watch one-act of that day’s performance from the nosebleed seats on a first-come first-served basis. Because it was the first of the day, the scene closed with someone about to be stabbed!! The tension made us want to be another ticket, but alas! There were more things to do!

Next it was to a (less than impressive) flea market. But it wasn’t in vain as a bagel shop was right by it and we indulged! Getting a bagel in Japan is a big deal in the first place, but getting them fresh and watching them being made?! Well geez! It’s wonderful!

Across the street was the Imperial Palace. Even though you couldn’t get anywhere near it and the gardens appeared to be closed. It was still a nice, albeit windy, day to enjoy a stroll.

Having a Sunday free in Tokyo basically means you have to go to Harajuku. Every Sunday, the youth hang out by the Meiji Shrine dressed in all sorts of costumes and get ups and nonsense. Pikachu out fits, looking like a doll, poor cross-dressing, or merely a couple of guys holding signs that say “FREE HUGs” you will find them here. They all just dress up, hang out with their friends and wait for people to take pictures of them.

You can go from one end of pop culture to traditional culture at the MEIJI shrine just by crossing the street. And this is not an uncommon scene anywhere in Japan. The Shrine itself is set in a big wooded area. A lot of people are walking with you on wide gravel path, but you don’t really notice them as the big old trees around you dwarf them and you.

Once at the shrine there were a few weddings going on.

The white head covering represents covering the horns or jealousy that the bride will have when their men would have mistresses (back in the day).

Taking in the tranquility in a bustling place seems impossible, but it really wasn’t! We left to shop the vibrant streets of Harajuku. I resisted a $200 Hello Kitty and Gremlins.


We ended up at a place called AMIGOS DEL TACOS. It was Japanese Mexican food, but they had hard tacos, so I’m not complaining. It’s hard to find any Mexican food, and this was semi-passable. Yum!

On our way back to the hotel we decided to do some late late night karaoke! And this place had blacklights too!

Monday

Hotel Tateshina, the small hotel we stayed at was priced pretty cheap, the rooms were decent (not too small) and the staff was really nice. You could buy a Western or Japanese breakfast in the mornings. Ed got a Japanese breakfast and I brought my blueberry bagel I purchased the day before to have with some coffee and steal some of Ed’s giant bucket-o-rice. The nice food lady brought me some green tea and miso soup and another plate for the rice... for free! How nice!

We started out our lovely warm clear Monday morning with a visit to another famous temple, Asakusa. It was here in 2002 I had gotten a “bad” fortune. For 100 yen, you shake a bunch of sticks, a stick will pop out with a number on it, you find that number’s drawer and get a fortune (in numerous languages). After my bad fortune, I tried to cheat fate by getting another one and redeeming myself. Wrong. I found myself with a “worse fortune” (and that’s what it actually said-along with the sayings, “The person you wait for will not come. The sick person will not get well. The lost item will not be found.” Etc…). And when you get a fortune you do not want, you tie it on a post in the temple, and “leave” the bad luck behind.

So there I stood, years of revenge in my soul. I paid. I shook. I got another “bad fortune”. Angered (as my life outlook had taken an extreme turn from bad to good since previously living in Japan), I tied the fortune to the post and went to have a chat with Buddha. Feeling refreshed, I decided to get a bag of these wonderful little fried filled-donut things. Ed gave me 100 yen and told me to get another fortune. I got a “better” fortune. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t horrible either. I’ll take it! Success!

Wanting to reminisce about Hong Kong, I took us to Yokohama’s Chinatown. Unfortunately, we were short on time. This warranted us enough time to eat at a restaurant even if it, and everywhere else, was pretty expensive (but it did taste like Hong Kong). I also bought a lil cute sleeping panda.

On our way home, I finallllyyyyyy got to see Mt. Fuji out the window of the bullet train!

Gorgeous! I couldn’t believe it! What a perfect ending!

Happi Barentainsu Day

I'm skipping ahead a bit before giving my Tokyo rundown of the weekend. It's super windy out right now. I have a craving for grilled cheez, and luckily I bought some soy cheese in Hong Kong. Now the problem is bread. I was going to whip up a quick batch of beer bread, but it always comes out real small and dense. But thankfully, I have now learned that the kanji for "lecithin" is similar to the kanji for "milk", so all the things I have passed up have not had milk in them, just thickeners! So, I busted out my lecithin-filled yeast to make some real bread. It smelled so good when I was kneading it. I also have the very last of some vegetable soup, which I am saving to eat with the grilled cheez. I have been hungry for a good 2 hours waiting patiently with this bread. not long now!

note: I know how cheese is spelled. I use "cheez" to mark the difference of a non-dary cheese.

I told one of my teachers I was going ot kabuki over the weekend and she brought me a kabuki calendar AND Edo-period firmen in woodblock print style. Awesome!!!

Another teacher told me Tuesday that she and her husband had a heart-shaped chocolate cake for Valentine's Day. Today she told me that yesterday (Wednesday, V-day) they had some more cake and this morning her husband told her she got fat really quickly (!!!!). She gave me some advice:
"Be bery strict to you husband, in the future, ne? Very important."
(ne= alright?)
I gave Valentine's candies to the Jr High staff. The Principal and Vice-vice principal both said exactly "I am bery happy!" It was cute.

As you can see, its fun to listen to the Japanese.
bery= very
Barentainsu= Valentine's (as seen in the title)

and a lot of my students seem to want to go to Australia and pet a "coara" (Koala).

Ding! Bread's done!
More pics are up too!

The half way point

Six months down, six to go. I've made it over the hump!
Yesterday I turned in my "I will not recontract for another year" paper with a note for my supervisor. I was very sad as everyone is so great. For 2 days I really thought about staying, but I don't think my sanity could handle it. I texted my supervisor "Sorry" and he said "ok! Don't worry! but in fact, i am a little sad =( but I want value what you decided. because there is it for five months more, we will do our best!" My rough plan from here is to get my TEFL/TESOL certification (to teach English) and then travel around doing that!

I have been having waves of sickness, I'm on the better end now. In the morning office notes it stated something about influenza, so I figured thats what I have. A lot of the students and staff have a terrible cough. Thankfully their cough syrups do not have caffine in them like the ibuprofen does, so I can sleep at night.

One thing that has bugged my since getting here is when you leave the office, you say a specific phrase and then a specific phrase is given back (like a "I'm going"/"Thank you, Take care") type thing. So I use this phrase, and you can tell who likes you (they use the correct corresponding phrase) and who doesn't care about you with this- by saying "sayonara" which is "good bye (I wont be seeing you for awhile"). Maybe they say sayonara because they think I can understand it, I think theyre jerks for not treating me as a fellow teacher.

Over the weekend I went to The Chocolate Show in Nagoya with a bunch of friends. I bought a Chocolate gorilla.

(Currently, the Gorilla only has his torso remaining)
The police also hit us up asking for our ID (they were checking to make sure we were here legally). So once they saw we were ok they asked if we were shopping and I said we went to the Chocolate show. He asked if I bought anything and I pulled that out and went "CHOCO GORIRA!" He was amused. (Remember there are no "L"s in Japanese) and "Gorira" is actually really fun to say.

Last week, I bumped my arm on my piece-of-crap iron (it barely works, I don't understand how it could be so hot!). I ran cold water on it and forgot about it. At school I noticed it was quite raised so I went to the nurse to get something for it- maybe some aloe or something so it wouldn't scar.
The nurse is approaching middle age and wears purple and gold eyeshadow. She eats very daintily and is more of a germaphobe than me. I imagine she has many cats.
Anyways, she tells me you can't put ointment on a burn, but you can put gauze on it. so she gets the gauze and cleans my arm and puts a square gauze patch on it and tapes it up, ok fine. She then proceeds to open a little box of rolled gauze and starts to wrap it around my arm.. and wrap... and wrap.. until almost the ENTIRE roll was used. Keep in mind this burn was thin and barely an inch long...



That's right. She wraps half of my forearm up. Thankfully this was after all my classes (with the PTA watching!) so they wouldn't have thought I was suicidal or something.
Also in this picture is some shark jaws. This is on the counter right behind my desk so for two days I heard passing conversations of: "What's that?" "I don't know" "I think its a shark!" "I don't know" "Who's is it?" "I don't know". So appearently these shark jaws appeared and no one knows where they came from or why. Someone said they were worth 20,000,000 yen which is about $180,000, and you watch all the little kids holding it (cringe).

And to wrap it up, for your viewing pleasure: Guns N Roses karaoke with my friend Lincoln.