Japan pic

Japan! Behold, my walkway to school.

Brian's Briefs (not his underpants)

Cell:

I got a cell phone earlier this week. I had the choice between the standard phone that had English on it, or I could go for the cool phone, but no English. I was with Masa so he suggested the cooler phone and hopefully I’d get better at Japanese.

This phone is amazing, it can do a million things and everyday I learn something new. I can’t read the manual, and I was having trouble navigating through the menus, but it’s starting to come together. I can email from it, and receive email too, even from a regular email account (ie, Middlebury.edu or gmail). I friend showed me today that if you point the camera at a sign, it can READ THE KANJI and give an English definition. That’s probably the coolest thing ever. I feel invincible now. Also, all phones have an infra-red beam that you shoot to give someone all your contact info (name, number, and email) and it takes about 5 seconds. This is so unfathomably convenient that I can’t believe America doesn’t have this technology. And even if they start making phones with this feature in the US, only a few people would have it, unlike Japan where everyone can trade info like BAM!

Bank:

I opened a bank account, which was exciting. I did it all by myself, which led to a very interesting interaction with the bank teller. Not only could I not understand anything she was saying (more honorific language) but I had some complicated questions that I could ask (regarding ATM cards, wire transfers, and transaction fees) but I couldn’t understand her replies. So after a few minutes, she got this other woman, who I thought could speak English, but no—This second woman treated me like a 4 year old, speaking Japanese like, “when you CALL the bank” (and she’s hold up her hands like a phone) “you can PUT money into the account” and she’d pantomime putting money in a bag. It was kinda like charades—I was always guessing what she was acting out. It all worked out though, so now I can pay my bills automatically, I think. Also at the very end, they bowed to me so I bowed back, so they bowed again, so I bowed back, not wanting to be rude. Well they bowed again, so I just backed away slowly.

There are no fat people in Japan. I’ve been here about three weeks, and I’ve see 6 overweight people. Everyone is thin. . .except Sumos.

Street:

When I walk on the street I have to remind myself to keep to the left ‘cause this is a backward-ass island country like Australia and England. They drive on the left, so we walk on the left. It’s so weird to pass someone and I naturally go to the right but we usually end up blocking each other, then we do the awkward sidestep at the same time to the same side, then we both stop, then finally I just walk past them. Screw it, I’ve spent 20 years learning to walk on the right side of the road, I’m not changing now. “Out of the way, big American coming through!”

Classes:

Saturday classes. I’m so sad. Morning classes to, which means I have my normal commute at 7:30 for my 9am class. The first thing they told us about class is that we have to arrive 15 minutes early. Oh well. Also, there is one other American in my section of class (about 20 people) everyone else is from Europe or Asia. I think there are 4 Germans, who speak Japanese with a German accent.

Room pic 2

My room. Notice there are no drawers for clothes. My bathroom is that door on the left, across from the 'fridge. 

Room pic 1

My room. It's like a hallway, very narrow. This is the biggest room I could choose from. Glad I didn't go with something smaller.

Bathroom pic

My plastic bathroom. Don't spill any water, because it'll never dry--it just puddles on the plastic floor. I'll come back 8 hours later, and there'll still be a puddle.

Hall Pic

My hall. 55 rooms and 4 people, including the R.A. Welcome to Cell Block A212. Notice the cement walls

Roppongi with Rem: Finale

Rem and I make our way to the downtown section of Roppongi looking for a bar and a club. Rem asks if I know the area, I say “No” so he turns to ask the first cute girl he sees where to party. The Rem’s victim giggles and suggests we continue straight ahead until we reach the main strip. As we cross the street, a large African man makes a beeline for us and starts into his spiel about how his club is the best place in the world and if we would only take a moment of our time to check it out, we will be pleasantly surprised. Guaranteed. Well, we decline and start making our way down the rest of the street, and Mr. Aggressive keeps following us, telling us how we “have to” visit his club. We tell him that because we have just arrived we’re going to look around the whole block before we jump into any random club. Finally after about a block and a half the guy turns away, and out of nowhere a different African guy comes from a different club and starts doing the same thing.

This happens for about half an hour, about 8 guys in all. And while we were trying to be polite at first, by the end of it, we were just stating things pretty bluntly. For example, this guy comes out and points to his sign that says “All drinks 600Y” and the guy goes “You can’t find a better price in town” to which I reply, “What about over there” and point to a 20 foot neon sign that glows “All drinks 500Y”. He was unphased and continued talking. Another guy we actually liked because his sales pitch made the most sense “How ‘bout you two fine looking gentlemen step into my club. Gentlemen shouldn’t be standing in the rain” because it was raining pretty hard at the time, I actually almost thought it was a good idea, if nothing else, then to just get out of the rain.

Alas, we didn’t realize it, but we came into close enough proximity of the first guy, Mr. Aggressive, and he swooped in to claim us—he yelled at another guy who approached us, “NO! THESE ARE MINE!” which Rem and I thought was pretty funny. I looked over his card once again, and realized how insanely over priced the club was. It was 7000 for all you can drink, and keep in mine I paid 3600 with Masa for all you can drink, and that included catered food.

The guy was giving us a really long talk about how much better our lives would be if we just went into his club, when Rem interrupted him and proclaimed, “We’re going to THAT club. I just saw, like, 5 girls walk in there.” Mr. Aggressive look so dejected that I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

We ducked into the club Rem wanted to go to, then realized it sucked, and decided to go to Shibuya, and get away from all the foreigners. Roppongi was packed with foreigners, and I didn’t really like that. There was no authentic Japanese anything there. So we headed off to Shibuya.

At Shibuya we walked all around with out committing to go to any one place until we found a 200Y per beer place. There we traded buying rounds, until we left to find a club. We found this club called “Gas-Panic” which made me laugh out loud, and insisted that we at least check it out. Once inside, there was no cover charge, a real plus, but you had to buy a drink. But the drinks weren’t over priced, we were each able to buy a beer for about 500Y, which is fine for a bar. Once inside, we met these two white guys—they insisted that they were from Europe, but I think they were Australian. Seriously, who else calls each other “Mate” every 5 seconds? I was just about to give them my condolences about the Crocodile Hunter, when they told me they we’re from Scotland. Now I know the difference between those accents, Willie from the Simpsons is has a Scottish accent, but I wasn’t about to split hairs.

Anyway, these guys were decent, and after a little while they said they heard of a bar with a live band, but they didn’t know how to get there, ie, will Rem please help them ask someone how to get there. We decided to just go with them, and once we found the place, Rem negotiated with the Japanese bouncer to cut our cover charge of 2000Y each down to 1500Y each because there were 4 of us. The rest of the night the guys were so happy about Rem saving them the equivalent of about 5 bucks that they kept buying us drinks at the second bar, which was a little more expensive than “gas-panic” at about 8 bucks each.

The music was absolute crap. Good lord, it was loud, terrible, and it didn’t stop. These were like Japanese Punk-rockers, or something, but they totally sucked. At least at this point we had a few drinks in us so it was endurable. Rem started talking to various people, and I had a little conversation with this one girl, but I couldn’t hear anything she was saying, not that I would have understood it, but it was a moderately enjoyable time. I think I’m enjoying writing about it a little more.

We leave the bar at some ungodly hour, like 3 am, so we take a taxi back to Rem’s aunt’s house. But instead of having the guy drop us off in front of her house, Rem tells him to stop at a Seven Eleven. We load up on pork-buns, ice cream and lots and lots of water, and stumble the remaining few blocks home.

We pass out around 4 in the morning and wake up at 10 the next day. We’re both still drunk, and I felt like there was a layer of bologna stuck between my brain and my skull. Rem walked me to the train station with his suitcase (he was leaving to go back to America that day) and I took what seems like the longest train ride ever to my dorm.

I got back and crash on my bed, but woke up an hour later with a strange feeling that I had forgotten something. I checked to see when college registration was in my folder, knowing that it was sometime that week, and scan until I find that it was. . . 9am that morning!

Is Japan awesome or what?

Rem's Aunt; Mr. Benihana, Rem, and Me 

Roppongi with Rem: Part 2

We all sit down at this counter, and there’s a chef wearing one of those cool tall white hats cooking on a “benihana” style grill. We sit down and order beers make by the restaurant, right there in Roppongi. The chef begins cooking us food on this stainless-steel grill and I realize that the last thing I ate was a cup-noodle about 7 hours before, and I was getting pretty hungry.

We received a few “warm up” courses including soup, and a salmon and avocado “tower” that was very good. Then they brought out the Japanese stuff. He brings out a platter with two delicious looking pieces of fish, which he dips in batter and begins to fry right before us. Then he takes the two shrimp that are there, each about 4 inches long, and throws them on the grill. Immediately their legs start kicking, scaring the crap out of me. I obviously didn’t realize they were still alive, but as I looked over, Mr. Benihana was flipping them onto their backs and their legs were still kicking. At this point I must have made a face because Rem goes, “You have to watch this is sooooo cool”. I look over and catch with the corner of my eye, the chef ripping their shells off with his knife. At this point I’m praying the little guys are dead, but those damn legs keep kicking.

He mercifully cuts off their heads, and begins to butterfly them. He takes the shells and the part with all their legs and presses the crispy pile into the grill with his spatula. He goes back to the shrimp, which now look more like the shrimp you eat and not like the animal and flips them around for a little bit. When he’s all done, he puts the pieces of shrimp next to the fried fish, and serves them to us. The legs and shells he had been mashing were pounded into the outline of two little crabs—this is so hard to explain, but the mashed exoskeleton looked like a paper crab now, and he put the shrimp heads, eyeballs intact on top. We were supposed to eat these “crabs” like crackers. I tried it, and because it had soaked up all the oil and butter from the grill, it tasted fine. The fish and shrimp meat were delicious.

Finally, after a few more courses, they served us the fillet of beef. Mr. Benihana took these beautiful fillets and grilled them perfectly right in front of us. This was really a completely awesome experience, and I have Rem and his aunt to thank. The food was amazing, and during the meal we had wine, in addition to the microbrew.

But for Rem and I, our night was just beginning.

Rem and me

Roppongi with Rem: PART 1

So randomly my friend from high school, Remington was visiting family in Japan the same week I arrived. After we got in touch, we planned to hang out on a Wednesday night. Rem’s Aunt offered to take us out to this place in Roppongi called the Roppongi Hills Club Restaurant, located on the 51^st floor of this huge building, which provides an excellent view of Tokyo.

Before I left to meet them there, I’m told by Rem to dress semi formally because this was a “members only” restaurant considered pricey even for Tokyo. My homework for the 5 hours before I had to leave was iron my pants and shirt. I began my search for an iron with my next door neighbor, an RA of the dorm. He didn’t have and iron but offered to check with the Super. A little while later he informed me that there was no iron in the entire dorm. Perfect. I love Japan.

My next option is to go to a dry-cleaners and ask them to iron it, but because it was pouring rain at the time, I didn’t want to take my clothes, which were clean and just wrinkled because I packed them in a duffle bag for the flight, and get them all wet in the rain. I decided to put on a nice suit jacket to conceal the wrinkled shirt, and just hope that no one would look at my pants.

I managed to arrive at Roppongi without getting lost, no small feat for me, and made my way around the shopping center at the base of the huge building. After walking around for about half an hour I went up to the 51^st floor, hoping Rem and his aunt were already there. As I rode the elevator alone, my ears popped around the 30^th floor. I was let off on the 51^st a few moments later, where I noticed an umbrella rack for all the customers.

Every single umbrella was made of some stained elegant looking wood, and was full sized. I had been carrying around this plastic blue umbrella that I bought at a convenience store the day before. I made my way to the entrance of the restaurant when three greeters eagerly rushed to help me out. One guy took my umbrella with both hands out, like it was Excalibur and I was King Arthur, and gave me a ticket to reclaim it. I can only hope he put it in a back room somewhere, because it would have been an eyesore next to all the rich people’s umbrellas.

While I didn’t understand all that they were saying to me as they were helping me out, I immediately recognized the style of speech as “Keigo” the honorific style. I got a kick out of that because it basically would be like saying, “Your Excellence, how my I humbly serve you” and stuff like that. Anyway, I said the name of Rem’s aunt and told them I was meeting them. The immediately sprang into action, two of them checked charts and the other ran off somewhere else.

They concluded that she hadn’t arrived yet, I did understand that when the said that (you might be wondering why I don’t understand anything, but Japanese is freaking hard, and when they speak Keigo, all the verbs are modified to be polite, but to people like me it just makes me strain to listen for the stem of the original verb/noun/whatever).

I then asked where a phone was so I could call Rem’s aunt’s cell. Instead of pointing me in the direction of a phonebooth, they yell something and this guy—no joke—comes out with a cordless phone on a platter. They told me to hit 0 first, but because the number started with a 0 I asked if I should hit it twice. The guy asked to see the number, and they dialed it, listened to make sure it was ringing, and then handed me the phone. I got a hold of Rem, and he said they were about 5 minutes away.

After that, I was led to the bar, and as I entered, my “guide” said the equivalent of “this in the honorable customer” and let me to the corner of the room, by the windows that over looked the city. The bar was very dim, but because the ceiling had lights that were like stars, it was a pretty cool atmosphere.

Rem and his Aunt arrived, and everyone spoke in Japanese. I could say a lot, along with making a lot of mistakes, but it seemed like she understood what I was saying. When she talked I got most of it, and Rem filled me in on the rest. I was initially a little uptight because of the ultra-formal setting and the Japanese, but everything became a little easier after we all ordered our drinks. Beers where like 9 bucks there, and that Rem ordered for each of us was almost 15 bucks.

I’m going to write about the actual meal next time.

video game soldiers

shibuya: the first time

Masa took me to Shibuya where we walked around and explored the stores and hang-outs of the area. this is the "times square" of Japan, so there were a bunch of neon lights, and it was completely packed the entire time we were there.

as soon as we stepped off the train, we noticed about 30 people standing decked out in Medieval aromour, holding signs promoting the launch of a new video game. so gathering around them were about a hundred million tourists trying to take pictures. i took one, which i will figure out how to post here, in the near future.

we went from shop to shop looking at all the weird things japanese people buy and sell. i enjoyed the high-tech security camera/doorbell combos that let you confirm who was ringing your bell from the comfort of your living room. Masa showed me "comic book cafes" where you pay by the hour to read comics in reclining chairs. you can also take a shower there if you need to. it seemed odd to me, but Masa explained that once he missed the last train of the night, and spend 6 hours in one of these places until the trains were up in running. needless to say, all comic cafes are 24 hours--catering to not only those to missed the last train, but also anyone who really needs to read a comic book or take a shower at like 2:30 in the morning. Weird japanese people.

after about 2 hours of wandering around, Masa took me to the club/resturant where we were going to see the concert that night. The concert ticket was about 30 bucks, 3600Yen but i didn't find that too objectable. what i didn't know, was this club was going to be fully catered with all you can eat food-"tabe-houdai" and an open bar of all you can drink alcohol-"nomi-houdai". since Masa's friend was one of the people who organized the entire event (it was actually a gathering of college students who had been friends since high school, each playing in his or her own band) so we got into the club as one of the first people in line. we got to sit at one of the tables in the back, and each table had three HUGE Asahi beers, opened, and fresh glasses. Masa and i started right in before getting in line for the rows and rows of food.

The food was great--different kinds of chinese dumplings, japanese salads, fried everything (fish squid, ect) pizza, pasta, and a whole bunch of meat and fruit. i was really impressed by the quality and quantity. With our plates stacked high, i think we each had two, we returned to our table to find a couple about our age, sitting there. "Well, this is awkward" but Masa started talking to the guy, and i happily ignored them as it was much easier to eat good food and drink beer, than strain to understand what they were saying--japanese people talk too fast.

But suddenly, masa looks at me and goes "they speak english" and i started talking to the guy masa had been talking to. apparently, this guy, Soichiro, had lived for three years in NY as a child, then moved to London when he was a teen-ager for about 5 years. his english was very good, not perfect, but he understood everything i was saying. we kinda spoke "Japringrish" for about 10 mintues, until i told everyone that i was going to get my 3600 Yen worth at the bar, and got up to go get in line. His girlfriend followed me and jumped in line. I introduced myself in shaky japanese, to which she looked at me, and in PERFECT english, no accent at all, goes "yeah, i speak english. I lived in Canada from ages 12-18". That made things a lot easier, and although it wasn't ideal, i probably should have spoken a little more japanese, it was really nice to talk to someone.

we made our way back to the table and Masa introduced me to his other friends, most could speak english, but they humored me by letting me make my self-introduciton in japanese. only one of his friends didn't really speak english ( according to Masa,his english was about as good as my japanese--yeah, thanks). So i talked to him for a while in japanese, mostly guessing what he was saying, but it seemed to go well. by this time the bands had started playing, making it harding to hear what people were saying, in addition to it being japanese, and everyone was getting pretty drunk at this point.

I met Masa's friend who organized the whole thing. His name was June, and he attended Keio High school in New York, and is now a senior at Keio University. Talking with him was awesome. not only could he speak perfect english, he was the most american in terms of attitude and character. it was like talking to a friend from home. i just talked how i normally do, using slang and such, and he was fine with it. He organized the partying, saying he had to rent out the place, and buy all the food and alcohol--but he didn't a pretty awesome job as it was one of the best parties i've ever been to.

The rest of the evening i spoke to these new freinds is a mixture of japanese and english, and got contact info from almost everyone. Everyone was a keio student, at the same campus as me, so i should be hanging out with them again. Masa and i had a really great time, i was pretty happy that i got to meet some real japanese people, even if i got to know them mostly by speaking english. There was one girl who June introduced my to who wanted to talk to me because i was an american. Her english was terrible, but it made me feel so much better because she'd ask me questions in english (sort of english), and i'd answer in japanese, probably equally incomprehensible. it was a really fun experience, and i hope to have more like them.

Next task is figuring out how to get a cellphone. you think american plans are complicated, they don't made an ounce of sense here. Masa pays 40 bucks a month, and has 25 minutes. . .PER MONTH. he just emails with his phone to communicate. So confusing. he's helping me with it, cause the brochures are all in japanese. Oh well, japan is a crazy place.

japan: first thoughts

Japan is crazy. I ate some octopus on the first day and was sick for about 48 hours. oh well, you live and you learn. I'm staying in Yokohama with my friend Masa until i move into my dorm, also located in Yokohama. It's hot and humid here, with the only relief being standing in front of a senpuuki (electric fan).

today, i'm going to a japanese concert after spending time in downtown tokyo (shibuya). i might buy a cell phone, which will come in handy when trying to organize meetings with people, as it takes about an hour by train to get anywhere. enough for now.