Juicer Bar

I surprisingly didn't run into Jose Canseco at the Juicer Bar. I really would have thought he would be there. . .

Me and Downstair picture

We're grilling up some blowfish.

BLOWFISH

I have a movie of this plate of food. Why do I have a movie? Because the meat was MOVING.

Salarymen Adventures: Blowfish

I’m worried this may be my last blog entry (not really) because I’m never going to top this story.

I meet my two salarymen friends, "K" and "Downstairs" at our station and take the train one stop to Ikebukuro. Once we arrived, we walked to the fugu (blowfish) restaurant. Outside the restaurant, there was a huge tank, filled with about 30 yellow blowfish. We were quickly led to a private room, where "K"ordered a set meal for each of us.

The first dish came, and it was blowfish with onions, in a tiny bowl. For those who don’t know, blowfish has a poisonous sac that will kill you if it’s spilled. I heard that every chef has to taste a little of the meat before he serves it to make sure the customers don’t die. There was even a Simpsons episode devoted entirely to Homer thinking he’s going to die because he ate bad blowfish.

Anyway, I try it and it was pretty good—very similar to other types of fish. "K"also ordered lots of Shochu, Japanese liquor that you drink with soda. The next dish was a raw sashimi dish—there were lots of pieces and it had a nice dipping sauce. The color was almost clear, and it was pretty chewy.

At this point both of them gave me gifts—I had forgotten that it was technically my farewell party (soubetsukai). "K"gave me some tea, and Downstairs got me a very nice post card. I was really surprised and a little embarrassed. They were both very kind and it was very unexpected.

Next came the main event: the waitress slid open our door, kneeled by our table and placed the large platter of sliced blowfish—it took me half a second to notice, but it was still moving! I took a video of it, and will be happy to show everyone when I get home (I also might put it up on youtube). It was really quite amazing—there were two parts still contracting for about a minute before it finally “died”. Keep in mind it didn’t look like a fish at this point, it was completely cut up into several pieces, and it was the PIECES that were still moving.

The next part is a little GROSS so feel free to skip it.

@@@@@@@@

We ordered some tempura, and since this was a blowfish restaurant, I figured it was blowfish. It was a large ball, and it kind of reminded me of a cream puff. It was deep friend and when I ate it, white goo feel out. It was very good. I asked what it was, and "K"said “I’ll explain after you finish,” which is probably the worst thing you can hear after taking a large bit of something.

They decided to make it a guessing game. I first asked if it was “nou” (brains) but they said it wasn’t. Then I guessed it was the heart that was all blended up—again wrong. Finally they started giving me hints. It was pretty difficult and I didn’t know a lot of the words, so I was looking them up as they were saying them.

They kept using the phrase “Life Essence” which didn’t make a whole lot of sense in English or Japanese. I finally told them I had no idea, and they told me to ask the waitress. As I turned to ask her, they both kind of looked away and were chuckling because obviously it was something you don’t talk about. I know what you’re thinking it is—you’re wrong, it’s not. I was thinking “rocky mountain oysters” but that was wrong too. The guy told me the word, Shirako, and I nervously looked it up—only one definition “fish semen”. They then explained how they got it—they cut open the male reproductive organs, boil the contents until it solidified and then battered and deep-fried it. I was more perplexed than anything—why would someone want to eat it? Who’s idea was that? Japanese people are SO weird, but I love them.

@@@@@ Grossness over, but I’m sure everyone just read it anyway.

The last part of the meal was the fishtail sake—sake with a fishtail in it. Very good, and very strong stuff. We had a great time, I even showed them my Japanese presentations that I had done over the years. They were very interested and liked everything I talked about.

So after this delicious and expensive meal, were all kind of stumbling around pretty drunk, and "Downstairs" says that he sometimes gets ramen when he’s drunk so we went into a ramen shop and each got a bowl. This is EXACTLY equivalent of going to McDonald’s after have an expensive steak dinner.

We caught a train home at midnight, and I was ready for bed—But somehow we ended up at another bar, and we stay there drinking even longer—until about 2:30 am. We walked back home and I fell asleep without even showering. I woke up in the morning, a few hours later, and took a shower and brushed my teeth. I had a pounding headache and it was only Wednesday. I arrived at work completely out of it, and promptly fell asleep. Jonathan, my friend at work, woke me up and said “Brian, you have toothpaste all over your face and you’re sleeping with your glasses on.” Yeah, I was out of it. But once again, my greatest adventures in Japan are with the crazy salarymen friends.

Me pic

I am truly having a great time in Japan.

Blog update in late july

I feel I’m doing a pretty good job updating my posts, but so much is going on here in Japan, that I always feel I need to say more. Here’s a quick run down of this past week.

Englishpod

While I’m working for Japanesepod, the company is branching out to reach more markets of language learning. We’re launching Koreanclass101.com in just a few days (like Aug 1^st, I believe) and the fall project is Englishpod. While Japanesepod is nearly all in English and it teaches Japanese, Englishpod is the opposite. It’s being run pretty much by Sachiko, a completely bilingual woman in our office.

In the middle of last week, Peter was out of the office and Marky hadn’t shown up yet, Sachiko asked ME if I wanted to help her record a few lessons of Englishpod. I jumped at the opportunity, and we went down to the studio to record. She was doing a series on “Japringlish”—Japanese words that Japanese people think are English words, but they really aren’t (think “Salaryman”). She handed me a script with about 5 household appliances that she wanted me to talk about in English. She told me not to worry, I didn’t have to speak any Japanese (she was going to do most of the talking, all in Japanese, and she’d turn to me for EXPERT American insight).

The first word on the list was “heater”. In Japan, what we call a heater, they call a “su-to-bu” or “stove”. Sachiko told me when she asks me how to say it, just “lean into the mic and say ‘stove’”. Simple enough. So I’m sitting there and Sachiko goes full blast in Japanese, introducing the topic, talking a little about me, and then finally my big moment. I hear her say “su-to-bu” and she looks at me. I reply “Heater”.

Judging by her face (she started chuckling out of surprise) I realized I didn’t understand what she said in Japanese. She had asked me, “In America, if you hear the word stove, does that make any sense?” to which I replied “heater”. The beauty of doing a podcast as opposed to a radio show, is she was just able to explain her question to me in English, I gave the appropriate answer, and in a few months when the lesson comes out, it’ll sound like I perfectly understood her! Yay, for post-production editing!

Festival

I visited my old dorm for a summer festival party. It was nice to see all of my old friend who still live there, and my old housing attendant Mr. Ikeda. When I arrived, they gave me 5 “party tickets” that I could use at any of the stations around the complex. For example, food, candy, drinks, ect. While all the food looked really good, I ended up using all my tickets on beer. About an hour into the party, several very old men and women dressed in traditional clothes took the stage and did a dance. It was pretty cool.

We then played a game that I remember playing back at Language school in Middlebury. Basically each team blindfolds a member and gives them a huge stick. The people take this stick and, following the instructions from their team, they try to smack a watermelon that’s on the floor, maybe 10 yards in front of them. HUGE mess, but it was lots of fun. My team refused to give me instructions in Japanese, but their English was incomprehensible, so when I made my huge ax chopping motion where I thought the watermelon was, I ended up just smashing and breaking the bamboo stick. Oops.

The best part of the festival was the traditional dancing that happened after the watermelon game. The same grandmas came back and led a dance in a huge circle. They were looking for people to join in the middle, so of course I jumped at this opportunity. I was there, giving it my all, surrounded by 12 grandmas doing a Japanese dance. By now my beer dinner had kicked in, and I was just going all out. It took about 7 repeat cycles for me to get the 4 step dance down, but I eventually did, and I think I did a pretty darn good job. I’ll try to get some pictures from friends.

Election Time

Finally, I was in Shibuya yesterday, and as soon as I got off the train, I heard this blaring cheesy rock and roll music. Apparently, one of the candidates running for mayor of Tokyo had set up a concert. With a huge stage, tons of supporters and the aforementioned crappy music, all of us waiting by Hachiko statue were forced to listen. Definition of a captive audience.

It got a little interesting, however, about 10 minutes later, when a van with 6 megaphones came rolling up across the street from the stage. A new crowd quickly gathered around the van, and it turns out, it was a rival candidate. The guy in the van was Doctor Nakamatsu, a famous Japanese inventor, who apparently has over 3000 patents and is world famous. As he stepped out onto the roof of the van with a microphone, I noticed two things. First, he was very old. Second, he was dressed exactly like Colonel Sanders—white suit, white bow tie, white top hat. I nearly died laughing.

So he began to give a in a speech when the guys across the street playing the music start singing louder and refused to take breaks. So the Doctor started turning up his mic and yelling his political views. It totally reminded me of the South Park episode where the anti-war protesters and the support-our-troops protester were on stage at the same time. Here in Japan, it was pretty funny to see two campaigns basically get into a shouting match. There real losers were me and my friends—one of our friends was half an hour later, thereby forcing us to put up with all the music and shouting for a full 30 minutes.

Karaoke

I am a rock star.

I like how the sweaty karaoke box totally messed up my hair. I mean, comeon, look at that Poof!

Finally, Rafting

We woke up a little past 7 am the next morning, groggy from a night of drinking, but excited for the day ahead of us. We had another traditional Japanese meal (ie, I couldn’t sit comfortably) and we were out the door by 8:30 heading down to the river. At the “home base” we signed the forms and waivers in Japanese, got our wetsuits and lifejackets, and even had a safety lesson. Apparently more people get hurt from hitting each other with the paddles than any other cause. “Always remember to hold the T-grip so you don’t hurt someone” one of the guides said. This would be important later on.

We rode in a large bus for about 5 minutes to the water entry point. Once there,

We divided ourselves into two groups. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room on the “guys” boat, so I was voted off, and was in the boat with Kishimoto-san, her son, Marky, his girlfriend, Peter, and his wife. What really drove the decision was my boat was going to be the “Japanese” boat and the other one was gonna be the “English” boat.

So instead of having the young, blonde Australian girl as the leader in the English boat, I got the crazy straight-from-a-samurai-movie Japanese guy as our guide. This guy had the letters T.L. written in permanent marker on his forehead; he had beads in his beard (a Jack Sparrow look) and he looked like he was either on steroids or was eating his Wheaties. This guy was probably the buffest guy I’ve ever seen in person, huge arms and abs—he was really quite interesting to look at. Compounding his scary appearance, he shouted the entire time in Japanese, yelling and giving crazy instructions.

It turned out Mr. Scary was actually quite funny and nice. Every few seconds he would yell “Paddle High Five” which came out in perfect Japanese as “Pah-do-ru Ha-i-Fiiiii-bu!!!”. He yelled that every time we passed a rapid or splashed another boat.

While on the water I noticed several differences between white water rafting in Japan compared to doing it in America or Canada. The Japanese had a command that would require everyone to bounce up and down in the raft to make it really “bumpy”. It was kind of like jumping on a trampoline—I think they did this whenever we were stuck on a rock or going through shallow water. The main difference though, was the Japanese guide loved to have us paddle full blast INTO huge rocks. He would yell for us to go forward, then we hit a huge rock and go spinning off it. This was actually really really fun, and it was a great thing to do during the time between actual rapids.

Probably the most memorable part of the trip (for better or for worse) was maybe the second or third time we went into a rock. Now I’ve been rafting several times, and there hasn’t been one time where I was even CLOSE to falling in. Well, ramming into the rock at an angle, then the boat bouncing back knocked me off balance and I went over the edge backwards. Now I was completely fine; the water wasn’t too cold, I had my life jacket on, we weren’t in a rapid—I was fine. In fact I was even starting to swim to the raft. Peter, being the caring boss that he is, however, jumped into action and made a zealous effort to pull me back in. He practically dove to the point where only his legs were in the boat and his entire torso was coming at me. Well, I had already started to take a huge stoke with my right arm (the arm I was holding my paddle in—not by the T-grip but by the middle) and I managed to basically punch my boss with the paddle, right in the face.

During the ensuing commotion, he pulled me back onto the raft and we both fell on the floor. I looked over at him, and he had a nice sized raspberry under his eye. It was not good. It started to turn colors within a few minutes. He was rubbing it, and his wife kept telling him not to touch it. I felt really really bad because not only did I smack my boss in the face—I did it with my paddle like the guides said to watch out for. Peter though, quickly explained he played hockey all his life, has had tons of black eyes and has even broken his nose 4 times. He didn’t let me worry about it, but there was a time for about 10 minutes I thought I was gonna get fired. By the end of the trip, everyone was making fun of me for whacking him, but as it turned out, by work the next day, he ended up not even getting a black eye (there was just a little scratch were it was bleeding).

The other really memorable part of the trip was the cliff jumping. It was so much fun. We pulled our rafts to a bank and climbed up this rock (maybe 15 feet—hey, it was still kinda scary) and we took turns jumping off it. There were about 20 Japanese people in other boats there, so we had to take turns. My buddies from the other raft were the first ones to jump. Jonathan from work yelled “japanese101” as he jumped—the German guys yelled “Germany!!” and when it was my turn I jumped and yelled “Bansai!!!” which I was told got huge laughs from the Japanese people, and huge forehead smacks from Peter, Kishimoto-san, and a few other in our group.

The rafting trip was really fun, and we even intentionally capsized our raft at the end. The trip was a great break from the stress of Tokyo, and it was nice to be in a new part of Japan. We later found out that just after we had gotten on the water, the earthquake hit Tokyo and did huge amounts of damage. Everyone I know was fine, and I didn’t even feel the aftershock a few hours later. The company trip gets a thumbs up; I mean where else can you smack your boss in the face and not get fired?

Company Trip Continued

Once we arrived at the Japanese Inn, we moved into our rooms and headed straight for the hot springs. These baths were separated guys and girls, and everyone underwent an elaborate washing process before stepping into the actual hot spring baths. It was really really nice. The water was pretty darn hot, and the huge bath was indoors. It reminded me of those Roman style baths you sometimes see in the movies, it even had water coming out of a statue of a naked woman. It was pretty hard to stay in the water for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time because it was so hot.

About 10 feet away, still indoors, was a cold water tub. All of us were trying to one up each other by staying in the cold water tub for as long as we could. I lasted about 20 seconds. It was really fun just relaxing and kind of cleansing ourselves from the stress of the big city.

The Inn had another male bath on top of the roof. All of us headed up to the top and we noticed that there was a fake bamboo fence that surrounded the bath to “protect” other people from looking at us while we were naked in the bath. Well, it worked pretty well for everyone who may be at the same level as us on the roof, but across the street was a 20 story hotel staring straight down at us. Sure enough, there was a woman standing by her window watching the 7 of us get into the tub. We naturally started waving and strutting around the deck. The Germans started waving their butts at her, trying to provoke some sort of response. Finally, after about a minute she bowed towards us and left—only to return with a female friend! The two of them watched us for another few minutes, but we honestly didn’t care. I would find out later that every day the baths switch from being girls’ to guys’ so that by tomorrow, that particular bath would be the girls’ one.

Anyway, it was soon time for dinner and we dressed in our traditional robes and made our way to our private room. There was a tray on the floor for each person and we sat in a lard horseshoe shape. We had to sit on the ground, which was a pain in the butt for all us non-Japanese, but it was really nice to have a traditional meal. There was a river fish, sashimi pieces, shabu shabu (raw meat that you boil in water) for every person.

The room we were in for dinner had a private stage, so near the end of the meal a few of us got up on it and started singing karaoke (there was a machine there, but we didn’t get it to work. We just sang into the mic). One for the funnier moments was when Kishimoto’s son (Kishimoto is our resident Japanese teacher on staff), who was about 8 years old, got up on the stage and started playing around with all the machinery. His mother yelled “yamenasai” which basically means “stop it!” and he made a face and mimicked “yamenasai” right back at his mom. It was just like an American kid imitating his mom saying “stop that”. That got everyone laughing, although Kishimoto-san was clearly embarrassed.

After dinner the guys (the 4 interns and 3 Germans) went back to the room and cracked open the 100 bucks worth of alcohol we brought on the trip. We played games (poker, among others) and around 12:30 headed back up to the roof hot spring bath. All of us pretty buzzed we turned out all the lights on the roof and just looked at the stars. It was a pretty amazing sight—we never can see the stars in Tokyo. It was a perfectly clear night.

I’ll write about the rafting next time. It’s time for bed.

Jpod team

The team enjoying the food. actually only half the people in the picture work for jpod, the 4 white guys in the back table are the friends. food was so good.

FOOD

Peter and his wife on the left, Kishimoto-san and her son on the right.

Company Trip I

The company trip started off easily enough—alarm went off 7am on Sunday morning. I checked my email and saw that Peter, my boss had emailed me the following “Call me ASAP”. Not having Peter’s number, I contacted the other interns who got in touch with him. We had to decide if going on our trip was worth it because at the time, Tokyo was getting blasted by a Typhoon that had actually killed people (3) in southern Japan. Now I like white water rafting as much as the next guy, but rafting in a typhoon might just be a little too “extreme” for me. Anyway because we weren’t going to do the actual rafting until Monday (Monday was a holiday in Japan, once again it was “Kanji-I-can’t-read Day”) if it cleared up by then, we could have flowing, full rivers.

We made the call at 8am to go ahead with the trip. Lots of train rides later (about 2.5 hours) we met as a group (I was with about 3 people from the trip but we all met up later, a few hours out of Tokyo). We left the train station and headed to the most amazing place on earth: an all you can eat Korean BBQ, sushi, curry, friend chicken buffet. To top it all off, the restaurant was shaped like a castle. There were 13 total people on the trip, 7 of them were guy who were my age. We destroyed this place. I actually knew how to pace myself because Middlebury has the meal plan, but the other 6 guys were absolutely disgustingly full. Our boss was laughing the whole time.

Lost in all the commotion and excitement of mounds and mounds of food, was that it was pretty low quality. I didn’t care, but some of the kids got pretty sick later that night, and they blamed it on the meat. I was fine, though, and was very proud of the quantity of food I stuff away.

We rolled ourselves back to the station and took another hour long train ride to get to our actual destination. I’m gonna continue this story later, I’m going to bed. Sorry to keep you hanging, but think of it as two posts instead of waiting for one long one.

Hakone Pirate Ship

Some Germans, some Americans, all on a pirate ship. . . in Japan.

Amazing Hakone Picture

Look at this awesome shot of hakone lake, and you can even see Mt. Fuji in the background. I took this picture.

Unfortunately, while I did actually take this picture, it's just a close up of a post card. I stood about 4 inches away from the post card, and i saw this Japanese guy laughing as I took it. Darn.
see below for my "real" picture.

Hakone Pic

This is what it actually looked like when I went. You see that huge gray thing out in the distance? Yeah, me neither, but that's Mt. Fuji.

Random thoughts

It’s been awhile since I’ve written an actual “entry” so I thought I would catch up on everything from last weekend.

I went to Hakone, a beautiful lake way up in the mountains. It was a two hour train ride to get there, but it was worth it. The lake boasts some of the best views of Mt. Fuji, and that was pretty much the selling point for me. Well, when we got there it was foggy, and we couldn’t see anything at all, pretty disappointing. But the lake did have several other things going for it, including a pirate ship (we rode on in across the lake) and a sky box (one of those dangling ski lift type things that gives you great views of everything). The day was really fun, and we capped it off with a bath in a hot spring. I’ll put up some pictures.

There was a huge earthquake today that knocked out power, killed a few people, and spilled the contents of a nuclear power reactor (according to cnn.com) so I guess I should watch out for water. Or maybe I should drink it and get superpowers.

I didn’t feel the earthquake because it actually happened while we were white water rafting. I didn’t feel the aftershock, even though it hit near Tokyo, too. There was also a typhoon that slammed into Japan this weekend, causing flooding and more power outages.

Huge in Japan

On the right I have my Teva Sandals, size 10, that fit me very well. On the left I have the biggest pair of slippers I could find at the dollar store (they actually cost TWO dollars, a dollar for each slipper). I still wear the Japanese ones indoors even though my heel hangs off the end by about an inch.