Even with the warnings of Japan's outrageous prices, I was not prepared for what we have encountered here. A large pizza, delivered to your door, costs $35. Jeremy and I can live without pizza. Grocery shopping is a major task for us. Not only do we have to walk 10 blocks each way, everything is unfamiliar. There is no English writing on the packages and the selection of foods are, well, lacking. The foods we do recognize are generally the fruits and vegetables. I thought it was because of the winter season everything was so expensive. We are now mid-April and [View Full Entry]

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Occasionally, people will knock on our door or ring the horribly-toned doorbell. The slightest shock crosses their face at being confronted with a real life gaijin (foreigner)before they decide to do the polite Japanese thing and forge ahead. They blast a string of Japanese at us. We shake our heads and ask, "Ego dekamaska?", which of course is "Do you speak English?" Most do not, but they continue speaking to us in Japanese. Who knows what events have befallen us without our knowledge? Perhaps the neighborhood watch has warned us about a string of burglaries. Maybe we have even been this [View Full Entry]

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In the past few weeks I have repaid my debt to the bookstore who loaned me money for a bus, gotten lost innumerable times having once to rely on a 70 year old woman to escort me one full hour on foot to my destination, and been stung by a supposedly harmless "laundry" bee, so called because this bee likes to nest in our laundry as it hangs out to dry. The bee sting swelled and itched and hurt like heck. But on Saturday morning, March 19, all began to go well again. I was awakened to a birthday cake with [View Full Entry]

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A couple of days ago, I had a pretty rough day. It all started Wednesday night when I brought in the laundry. A couple of bees hitchhiked in on our clothes, and you know how I feel about bees. Jen and I devised a plan of attack. Swatting is not an option unless the bees land low, but they tend to stay up high beyond our reach. We decided to spray them with water to make their wings heavy so they would come down. After about 15 minutes our apartment was soaking wet and the bees were still flying high. Finally, [View Full Entry]

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Read that subject line literally, please. We have more news of the earth shaking. Last Wednesday morning at 4:45 AM we were awakened by a magnitude 5.5 earthquake. It was extremely disorienting to come out of sleep into a world where it sounded like 4,000 tables were being dragged across a hardwood floor. Not to mention all the movement. We lost a couple of plates to gravity. The earthquake during the day was much more fun. We sent a memo to the Pacific plates asking them to confine their headbutting to daylight hours. In completely unrelated news, we recently finished the [View Full Entry]

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Setsubun February in Japan starts out with the celebration of Setsubun. The word literally means “a division of the seasons”. The holiday is based on the lunar calendar and marks the beginning of the “eve of Spring”. Generally, there are two customs on this day. First, people of all ages throw dried soybeans while chanting “oni wa soto, fuki wa uchi!”. Translated roughly, this means “out with the demons, in with good luck!” People partake in this celebration at work and at home. Usually the boss will be the one to wear the read “demon [View Full Entry]

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I can hardly believe how fast time is passing in Japan. Jeremy and I are quickly approaching upon four months here. And our entry about “first impressions” is long overdue. I was shocked at just how incredibly different Japan and Korea are. Although the physical difference between the two is miniscule, the psychological differences are vast. Apparently most of the countries’ frictions are rooted in Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Over 50 years later, the differences really show. The most shocking difference was the way foreigners a [View Full Entry]

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Do you know how long I have waited to have an excuse to use that as a subject line? Too long. Too long. My visa woes have followed me to Japan. After having to do the crazy 24 hour visa run from Korea to Japan about 9 months ago, my company in Japan told me they could not process my work visa before my toursit visa expired, so I had to leave the country. For regular readers, you can probably guess there was no way I was going back to Korea. My company gave me very little notice, so Jen and [View Full Entry]

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The last week turned out to be very chaotic. Jeremy left this morning for yet another visa run. Originally, we had planned to visit Hong Kong together. but our week became unexpectedly hectic and in the end he went to Taiwan- alone. I am very jealous that he is getting to travel while I have to attend to my responsibilities. Mostly I am envious that he will be at a hotel with a bed and that Taiwan is warm right now. There is no animosity, but I will proceed to tell the following story which may publicly embarrass him. I get [View Full Entry]

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Japan is pretty expensive, so sometimes we have to get creative on date night. Jen had the great idea of making s'mores. We nostalgically remembered their marshmallowy goodness, plus there was a chance we might burn the apartment down roasting our marshmallows and have to move into a nicer place. We got the ingredients and three different kind of beers, as well as a copy of Dr. Strangelove. We played blind taste test until we settled on Sapporo as our favorite beer, then watched the movie as we toasted our marshmallows stuck onto a chopstick over a candle. The apartment did [View Full Entry]

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