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Published: June 24th 2005
Point and Order
Pointing and nodding is often the best way to order food.With computer problems abound, I finally got this thing up. This update was written on Wednesday. Il try and get a more up to date one up soon but enjoy the endless wonders of japan.
Well, it took a few days but I am finally beginning to settle into life here in Okazaki. The main street through town is lined with shops with signs that I can’t begin to decipher. Using my modest Japanese skills, William and I have managed to forage enough food in this wilderness to get by. It’s interesting; I always wondered what it was like when I was a small child and could not read the everyday things around me… End Nostalgia because it ‘s not fun… in fact, its frustrating to no end. But that’s good I guess, extra reason to study.
The trip started off allright. Nothing too insanely crazy on the plane ride over. A few things are worth note however. The in flight movie choices were a great solace. I got to see many movies I had been meaning to see: Million dollar baby, coach carter, and three episodes of 2 and a half men… guess which one of those I
My Cozy Hotel
My Snazzy hotel. hadn’t really been meaning to see for a while and you get a special prize. Note to all future travelers abroad: If Million Dollar Baby is an in-flight option, DO NOT watch it first thing on the flight. You will spend the next 10 hours being a sad, miserable human being with no escape except to make unnecessary flights off to the bathroom to be alone from the cruel, unrelenting world outside. Those stalls really are quite cozy.
Aside from William almost losing his luggage, The arrival into Japan went alright. Wooried as we were about how we would find our Yamasa contact, the second we walked out of the international arrivals terminal, there was a guy holding a bright red yamasa folder and thus we met Decklin. Decklin was an interesting bloke. I say bloke not because I’m trying ot be all international, but because that is probably what he would call himself. Decklin hails from the great down under, Australia. His language is peppered with phrases we can’t understand (“ last night the bars were totally on blocks”). Apparently, Decklin fell into being a director of Yamasa because they needed someone to build a website and BOOM!
Dog Ridin'
You have not truly lived until you have ridden a mechanized, walking dog. Congratulations you are director of our international office. Decklin studied engineering and economics in college so most of the ride to the school was peppered with descriptions of the goings on in the factories we were passing and the latest “in jokes” in the automotive business (“for a financing company, GM’s cars aren’t that bad!”) I actually kind of liked that last financing company joke, but I think it needs a bit more context than I am willing to give it.
The only real problem encountered on the first day was ordering food. This is a problem that would plague us for the next three days but one which we would eventually begin to conquer as we grew more assured in our Japanese abilities. The first night however, consisted of grunting, pointing, and emphatic hand gestures. I always thought that the Japanese menus having pictures of their food were laughable, but now I put them in the same category as I put mana:, a gift form God on high to those who should otherwise be unworthy of his love.
Tuesday’s adventures were centered around walking and television. Unbeknownst to us, the hotel that I have been put up
Dragon Well
Don't touch his water... he's a DRAGON! in is roughly a 15 minute walk form the student village where William lives so on the first day, William and I did a lot of walking. We walked to get food at yoshinoya. They gave us grey bacon on rice. We walked to yamsa to get a map. We got a good map. We walked back and forth between our dorms so many times I thought my legs were going to flal off. The only real break form walking was our tip to the park. The park had rideable fuzzy animatronic animals you could ride. Yeah, Japan is waay cool. William got first go on what looked like a big dog. Put in a hundred yen coin ( about 95 cents) and you get to steer this fuzzy beast around the park, not to mention being the complete envy of all the other little kids who whose parents won’t pay for a ride… ok, so the animals ARE aimed at little kids but they are way fun nonetheless. I was gonna go for a spin on the animatronic lion, but some punk kid took it so I rode on the dog too. Sitting on these things is very unsettling.
Astro Boy Sushi
Named after the popular cartoon character, this chain of restaurants features a long conveyor belt full of sushi. They look like big fuzzy animals when you look at them from any position but on top of them. When you are there, you notice the big green and red “stop” and “go” buttons… and the bicycle handlebars. Dogs should not have handlebars coming out of their heads.
Inbetween the walking and animal riding, we watched tv. We couldn’t really understand what was going on, but here is what we think we watched
-Old white man returned by korea to japan for insubordination (not sure about this one)
-A gameshow named Spice in which contestants eat a potato chip, then try and make the spice in a blender . Then everyone drinks it, including some J-pop band that has the bad luck to be there that day. (100% true)
-A gameshow in which attractive Japanese men and women talk for hours with a really shad host who may or may not be blind, and then play a game in which they name the item that has shown up on their screen. And not hard items, One guy had golf club. The guy who eventually lost couldn’t say wall socket.
Our absolute favorite show was called “9x9 Champion” in which two kids who couldn’t have been more than 10, played a game of go. Then, the two Go masters replayd the game on the instruction board, showing which moves were good and which moves they would have made instead of some of the bad ones. I never wanted it to end. A nice guy named shin was watching it with us but then he left. Not everyone can be a ture 9x9 champion. I guess Shin just wasn’t made of the right stuff.
Meeting people has been difficult, but I don’t think it will be a problem in the long run. On all of our atmpets to go to the student lounge nad meet people, no one has spoken English as a first language. Having people we can only communicate with in Japanese is good when we want to practice, but for all practical purposes we can only get ot know eachother so well until one of our Japanese skills falls short…gerneally this is the japnese skills of me and William.
Today was the last class free day and we took full advantage of it. Our first stop was Denny’s for breakfast. Japanese Denny’s served exactly what you would expect from a Japanese breakfast place; They had the fish, and the rice, and the miso soup. They had green tea. They had chopsticks. And then, they threw in one or two hearty American style meals., like the Denny’s breakfast: Scrambled eggs, sausage, and enormous texas toast. We think that having Americans in the American style restaurant amused some people because we got a lot of looks here. Our waitress was also exceedingly nice, but that could have just been her temperament. She had a high squeaky voice which I think is indicative of nice people. They have to be nice so people will want ot hang out with them and their squeaky high voice.
Through the course of the day, we bartered for bikes and visted some temples. It appears that most of the temples and shrines that we visted were very child centric. Two fo the three was saw had playgrounds and one appeared to have been taken over by a ful itme childcare service. The kids had little cubbies and everything.
William and I found a new love of our lives, Sangokushi tasisen. A translation is in the works soon but heres the scoop. It is a collectible card game, like magic or pokemon, except you play it on an arcade machine. Each card has a sensor of some type in it and when you place the card on the mat, it reads the card and it becomes a unit on the battlefield. So you have this battle being waged in rela time with archers, cavalry, swordsmen, etc. and you are acting as general, physically moving your car ot move your troops through battle. Each unit has special powers and if you hit the power button at the right time, you unleash a flood, or an opposing army’s souls are sucked out. Try as we might, William and I have yet to actually play, per se, for tow reasons. One, We think the game consoles are on a reservation sytem. Eveytime we show up to the arcade, the people at the machines all have a sheet with a time written on them, like they reserved a time slot and there are at least 5 other people with shoebozes full of cards reasy to try out hteir new decks. The second problem is that we can’t really read what is actually oign on, either on the cards themselves or during the course of a battle. Seing as we don’t think terms like “counterattack” "Flank” and “tactical retreat” are going to come up in our vocab classes, Wililam and I have some studying to do before we can fully get into this game.
Finaly, tonight Wiliam and I had a good itme meeting some local folk at the bar. About a block away form my hotel, there is a small bar called Yellow Cab. All of the Japanese style cloubs are pretty far north, nad neither William and I had the energy to hike it up their, so we chose to hang out at the yellow cab for a bit. We go in and there’s only one patron: he pores over his drink while the bartender talks at him as he washes his dishes. William and I go in and sit down at the bar. We stumble through ordering and we assume that we’ll sit and talk for a bit before we head to our rooms. But much to our surprise, the bartender makes a very concerted effort to get us talking. We have trouble getting through things at first, but eventually we end up talking about anime, the great equalizer.. At the mention of anime, the other patron lights up and seems to be pretty impressed that two Americans have seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. While I’m certain I didn’t catch everything the bartender was saying, it was the first real test of our Japanese skills on actual Japanese people and we did allright. Hopefully, with classes starting tomorrow, I’ll be able to get into the Japanese speaking mindset and really start tearing it up, Nihongo style.
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ginni
non-member comment
hi guys, wish I was there with you. I ought to try and get us us a gig...Gad's could be one of those J-Pop groups on wierd game shows...