<< Saturday 6/8 - Present
Sunday 6/2/02 7:32 PM JST
Met up yesterday with Emi in Osaka around lunchtime; we visited the new NHK building, and went up to the top of the castle and walked around the grounds at Osaka-jo. Afterwards we headed to Shinsekai to check out the drunk people, transvestites and overall seediness, and then walked through the zoo grounds to Tennoji to grab dinner and go window-shopping. Finally, we met up with one of Emi's friends, went dancing in Namba until about 6am, got some ramen for breakfast and I headed back home to Kyoto. I got the usual teasing from otoo-san and okaa-san this afternoon about my nocturnal habits (for dinner we had huge quantities of tofu and fried pork, and some raw beef sashimi which was pretty weird), and now I'm relaxing as I watch the England-Sweden soccer match. World Cup fever is definitely in full effect here, especially judging by the hordes of hot Brazilian and Scandinavian girls (and skanky, bitchy Russians) who've descended on Osaka.
Speaking foreign languages and getting to know different cultures is great and all, but there are definitely times when my head is ready to explode from trying to understand Japanese, and speaking English feels SO DAMNED GOOD. It makes me wonder how it's possible to have problems communicating with girls back in California where both parties have full command of the English language; from my perspective here, it just seems like it should be so ridiculously easy. I can't understand the smiley faces girls use in their emails half the time (how about (^o^)/ (^^;) (^-^)g" (,_') or the ever popular (-""-;) emoticon), let alone twentysomething Kansai slang (good luck finding honma or angacho in the dictionary). It's definitely nice being able to work the gaijin angle, though, as my fumbling Japanese tends to be perceived as cute, and when I can't remember the passive-causative conjugation for a verb (or, more often, when I don't know a word at all) I just sort of wave my hands around and smile, and I get the benefit of the doubt.
So far I've taken 891 photos here (according to my probably flawed math, that's 0.84375 photos per hour). At this rate, I will have taken around 3000 by the time I get back to the States. Ridiculous! Sorry, no beer stats are available at this time.
Saturday 6/1/02 2:26 AM JST
Just got in from hanging out with everyone in the Kawaramachi area. I saw a lot of Japanese college students who I hadn't met up with since the beginning of the quarter here, which was cool. But the main reason I'm writing this journal entry at such a random time? SENEGAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh baby. Possibly one of the sweetest soccer games I've ever seen. A total underdog African nation squeaks out a ridiculous win against the the imperialistic bastards who screwed them over way back when. Too much drama to handle...
Friday 5/31/02 4:43 PM JST
This week has been pretty busy, as I had a presentation for Japanese class and a EE midterm on Wednesday, and then a Japanese midterm on Thursday. I see no reason with tinker with a a formula that's brought me so much success over the past twenty years, so as usual I did everything at the last possible minute and things turned out fine. Last night Emi came up to Kyoto for dinner, and we got Indian food at a little place called Kerala downtown near Sanjo Kawaramachi. We ran into Roger, Lonnie and Lee later at Bar Montebello, resulting in them attempting to disgrace/embarrass me in every way possible in front of my lady friend, which was pretty amusing.
Today I took the train with Okaasan down to Fushimi Inari Taisha in southern Kyoto, a really famous mountain area full of little shrines and so many torii gates lined up sequentially that at points it's like you're walking through a tunnel. We hiked several kilometers, seeing lots of cool stuff along the way. We then continued to Tofuku-ji, one of Kyoto's big Zen temple complexes. It's got lots of impressive ancient buildings and some gorgeous gardens, which apparently get even better around November when the maple leaves change colors. I'm going to eat dinner in a little bit (Okaasan and I went shopping on the walk back and bought lots of fish, also got some deeeeelicious matcha green tea ice cream) and then meet up with the usual crew to watch the opening World Cup game (France vs Senegal) at a sports bar tonight.
Monday 5/27/2002 11:40 PM JST
My journal has been neglected for the last week, so I'm going to be packing a lot of info into this update. Things have been busy... on Monday, I was finally able to meet up with Shin (for those who don't know him, Shin Yamaguchi is my ex-roommate/sempai/air traffic controller from Stanford who's spending a year chilling in Japan before starting Yale Law School in the fall). We had okonomiyaki for lunch and discussed Japan's society, economics, etc in typical Shin fashion. He lamented how out of touch he's become with the youth of Japan, now spending all his time hanging out with obaa-chan at home and visiting famous craftsmen in obscure countryside locations. He's off to the US now for a month, but hopefully we'll be able to hang out more this summer.
On Tuesday I went to the Metro in northern Kyoto with some people where I was able to hear some Pharcyde, Herbie Hancock and James Brown. Thursday I had dinner in Osaka with a really fun girl named Emi who I met there the week before. Due to a combination of factors, I found myself frantically (not that I'm ever frantic... but relatively speaking) trying to make my way to Kyoto Station at 8:41am on Friday morning to meet the rest of the SCTI group to head to Hiroshima for the weekend. Thanks to a car ride from otoo-san, I made it to the station just as everyone was leaving and caught the next shinkansen fifteen minutes later. A quick phone-call to Eiko-san (the Stanford Center's internship coordinator/goddess) and everything was cool, so I settled into my seat and watched the countryside fly by.
The weekend's trip was paid for by Stanford's wonderful Bing family, and included visits to the major sites in Hiroshima (unfortunately, we were not able to catch a Hiroshima Carp baseball game), followed by a ferryboat ride to the amazing island of Miyajima (famous for its giant torii gate on the water, a sweet five-story pagoda and a mountain full of monkeys). There we stayed in an awesome ryookan (Japanese-style inn), had a huge meal and explored the shoreline at night wearing yukata (light evening kimono) and geta (ridiculously painful wooden clogs). Thanks to a conveniently located beer vending machine, some horseplay in the ryookan's ofuro (public sex-segregated bath) followed, though no one did any cannonballs into the water.
The next morning we were free to make our own way back to Kyoto (again with a generous subsidy from the lovely Helen Bing). So first I headed to the top of Mt. Misen on the island with a group of about twelve, where we played with fairly disinterested monkeys and deer, visited a really cool shrine, and ate udon noodles & Hawaiian shaved ice at the top at a small rest station. My camera was out of batteries by this point, so once I get Ian's photos I'll post them.
We then took the shinkansen from Hiroshima to Kobe (probably the most gorgeous city I've visited yet, like a combination of San Francisco and San Diego) where we had tabehodai/nomihodai (all you can eat and drink) for 3500 yen at a Brazilian restaurant. The chicken hearts were a little tough to stomach, but the garlic steak (cooked quite rare) was nice, and staff (several actual Brazilians mixed in with equally boisterous Japanese) were highly entertaining. At this point half of the group stayed in Kobe to crash at a capsule hotel, while the rest of us took the last train back to Kyoto. We stayed out until about 3am setting off fireworks next to the river. Until the next update, this is hen-na-gaijin (bizarre foreigner) signing off...
Sunday 5/19 3:40 PM JST
So last night we started out at Tengu for a bit of scientific inquiry. My presentation group for class includes Ian and Lonnie, but Roger, Lee and Dave showed up too to further our research efforts. Lonnie also brought a couple of his hard-partying friends from Tokyo, so from about 7:30 to 9:30 we drank sake and ate large quantities of octopus. Afterwards we decided to head to Osaka for an all-nighter (I'm only young once, I guess), so we piled on the Keihan and were in the Namba/Shinsaibashi area before 11. It was a pretty awesome night; met lots of interesting people, including two more of Lonnie's Tokyo buddies who bought us all drinks and facilitated interaction with the locals. Thanks to the miracle of public transportation, I was sleeping happily back in Kyoto only a few hours after sunrise.
Saturday 5/18 4:42 PM JST
Right now I'm watching sumo on TV before dinner. Sumo seems to have quite a bit in common with baseball, in that it involves a ridiculous amount of ritualistic time-wasting and posturing before a really brief period of action. Lots of fun to watch. In July there's a basho (tournament) in Nagoya, so I'm going to try and check it out for a day or two with Shin.
On Wednesday I had my second English-teaching session at Ikeda. There are two sixth-grade classes; last week I taught both of them together, but from now on it looks like I'll be alternating between the two classes each week. The kids were a lot less rambunctious this time, though I would still say that it probably isn't the ideal teaching environment. It's all good though; the kids and I have fun, and I'm making some bank. At the end of the class, the Japanese sensei wanted me to sing a song with the kids; I couldn't think of any good ones of the top of my head that they would know, so we ended up singing "Happy Birthday" three times.
Then on Thursday, I started kendo training along with a couple other Stanford people. There's one American at the dojo from Oklahoma who translates really well, but the rest of the teachers and students pretty much only speak Japanese. I'm hoping to keep it up all the way through September, since my job this summer in Nara is so close. Classes are each week on Thursday and Sunday, so tomorrow morning I'm going to head to the Budo Kaikan near the Stanford Center and pick up my bamboo shinai (sword) and some other gear. Fortunately the dojo is going to loan us all of the really expensive body armor, with would normally run a couple thousand dollars, and we only have to pay 1000 yen a month (less than ten bucks).
I'm heading out tonight to do some field work for Japanese class, as we have to do a presentation on a Kyoto restaurant/pub of our choosing. So Ian, Lonnie and I are heading to an izakaya to eat, drink, take pictures and attempt to interview the staff. Okaasan and otoosan think all of my extracurricular nighttime activites are hilarious, and jokingly give me a bad time when I roll off my futon in the afternoon on weekends.
Monday 5/13 10:18 PM JST
This entry is quite gargantuan, so if you're in a rush, here's a quick summary: Osaka clubbing 7am train 1001 statues softball supermarket fish Pocari Sweat soccer beer college chicks. Oh, and I just got done reading one of Brent's epic emails from Chile, so I may also be engaging in some dramatic storytelling and whatnot. Abunai!
So anyways, I headed to Osaka via the Keihan on Friday night with a large crowd for Karen's birthday. We ended up exploring the Shinsaibashi area, making stops at several venues before settling in at the very un-Japanese Sam & Dave's for the night. Yadda yadda yadda, took the train back to Kyoto around 7am. You know you're beginning to settle into Japan when you can fall asleep on the train and magically wake up right before your stop. Thusly, I was out of commission for most of the day Saturday, and spent the evening eating a typically massive & delicious dinner, watching the Hanshin/Kyojin game with otoosan (even though he was born in Kyoto, he's inexplicably a Yomiuri Giants fan, which coupled with my recent Hanshin Tigers obsession made for an interesting viewing experience). There was a small festival going on around the corner that night, so I took a walk to check it out with otoosan and okaasan. Lots of takoyaki (fried octopus), chocolate dipped bananas, and various distractions.
On Sunday morning I headed with okaasan via bicycle to watch otoosan's softball game (he's 62, but has skills on the diamond that I envy). I brought my glove to Japan, so we played some catch too, which was pretty rad. Then I headed with okaasan to the supermarket. Quite bizarre, like a miniaturized US supermarket on extreme antidepressants.. we picked up tons of supplies for roll-your-own sushi in the evening, along with some snacks for me to take to the Kyoto Purple Sanga soccer game later in the day. This included the ever tasty Pocari Sweat sports drink, and goldfish crackers (except in the shape of little squids). Okaasan also took me to a super rad temple called Sanjusangendo; its claim to fame is 1000 nearly identical (but all slightly different) statues of Kannon, a Buddhist deity, created about 800 years ago. In the middle of this all is a huge seated Kannon statue. Each of these guys is capable of metamorphosing into 33 different forms, with 21 pairs of arms apiece. Once all is said and done, 33,033 deities, each with the ability to save 1000 worlds in the event of a hugely cataclysmic event called Mappo.
After an awesome lunch of udon, I biked across the river to Kawaramachi-Shijo and took the Hankyu line subway over to the Nishikyoogoku Comprehensive Sports Park (great name) for the soccer game. I arrived a little early, so I spent about 20 minutes watching a high school baseball game slightly illegally through a fence. My viewing companions were a crowd of old men too cheap to buy tickets for the game, who drank copious amounts of Suntory beer throughout and peed in the bushes. The soccer game was lots of fun (great weather, cheap Asahi, even ratio of gaijin guys and Doshisha girls in our group) though Kyoto lost to Osaka 2-1. Afterwards about 10 of us headed back downtown to walk around Teramachi. I went home for sushi, then met back up with the group at Tengu, a really good izakaya (pub-type place) on Sanjo for more beverages and socializing.. It was rough getting up for class today.