Sanpatsu

I finally broke down and got a haircut in Japan today. I went to this small, family owned barber shop on my street just because I walk by it almost every day. "Toyoda" and his family live above the barber shop, and I managed to see everyone in the family today while I was there. First, grandma preps me in the chair and powders my neck and gives me some coffee, all without even asking me anything. After that, Dad (labeled on his business card as "artistic designer") cut my hair after I showed him some photos of how it used to look. I tried describing to him that I wanted it shorter in certain areas and longer in others, but I think he kind of had his own idea of how I was going to look because he didn't really pay much attention to it. He was really funny, though, and tried to make small talk with me about the Nadeshiko soccer team's game against the USA, or how different areas of Japan pronounce things differently.

The introduction continued when the junior high daughter and her friends came in to ask Dad for money, which he obliged. He introduced me to them, and they giggled and laughed as they second-guessed their English pronunciation skills. After the haircut, Mom came over to give me my shampooing and straight-razor touch-ups. First, she massaged my entire face, neck, and head for about five minutes, then surrounded my head in a hot towel to open up my pores. I was amazed at how artistically everything was done during both the haircut and the grooming; after the shampooing and rinsing, she used 4 separate clean-white towels to gently blot all the water from my hair and face. Then, Toyoda came over to give me a 10 minute hair-brushing  and blow-drying so much that every follicle of hair managed to lay in the right place for his design.

I felt bad only spending $25 on such a stellar, 80-minute haircut, so I decided to show them the American practice of tipping and gave them an extra 500 yen. In the end, I feel I look a little like Yu Yu Hakusho, an Anime character with extremely symmetrical hair, but it was a cool experience nonetheless.

I promise you, each hair is equidistant from every adjacent hair.  Thank you, Japanese Perfectionism. 

Japanese Beeru

It's really late, but I can't sleep and Ross asked for info about all the different beers. It turned into a review, so I thought I'd post it here.

Like in the US, there are a few major brewing companies. 4 to be exact. They are Kirin, Sapporo, Asahi, and Suntory. Most of their flagship beers are really good and pretty strong, ranging from about 5-6.5% on average. My favorite and most commonly on draft at restaurants is probably Kirin, and it's one I had back home as well. Typically because eating out in Japan is about serving each other before yourself, If you order a bottle of beer in a restaurant, you will get a giant bottle big enough to pour for three or four people.




What's really common in cans, however, is the Happoshu beers. These have lower malt percentages so they are technically not qualified to be considered beer according to the tax laws, and instead qualify as liquers or something like that. Because of this they are much, much cheaper at the conbini than all the other beers. Instead of 2.50 per can, you're paying only about half that. Because they are still stronger than American beers, I really have no problem drinking them. Lots of people who I've met are British, and apparently living anywhere in the UK makes you a beer snob, so a lot of these guys won't drink the happoshu. Asahi Clear and Kirin Nodaguchi are the best, though the one uses soy protein and the other uses liquer to up the alcohol content.

This next one, Yebisu, is one of my favorite beers because they serve it at the Gaijin bar here on draft. Remember, all the restaurants and bars really only have one draft beer-- but if they are really, really westernized, they may also have Guiness on tap too, but that's about it. I also like Yebisu because he's the god of fat people and fishing, and is the namesake for the character Ebisumaru (which as far as I can tell means circle-ebisu, or round-fisherman).

And of course, last but not least, there are microbrews. There are tons here, and most of them are sold by the bottle and have really flashy decals so that you pick them up and think, "wow this looks cool." If you ever get the chance to drink a Hitachino's Nest Beer, do it! It's made only about 15 minutes away from my place and is extremely popular with this area. I have had their Weizen, but at about 5-6 dollars a bottle it's not something I like to drink everyday. I've heard rumors of some places like ITap carrying their beers back home, and I'd be excited to see if it's true.

Stressin' it out!

     Today I had a parent observation lesson with four students and their parents. The kids had a ton of fun, because they got to run around and play with props while speaking English. Afterwards, they were begging their moms to stay, so I knew they had a good time. All of the students by the end of class could recite the entire question and answer series without help, so it was clearly a successful lesson. In the parent comments, two of the parents wrote that while the lesson was fun, it should be more about studying and less about playing games. I would have agreed, too,  if the kids weren't 4 years old. There isn't even a table in the classroom at this age.

My job is so hard, and this country is so unforgiving! But with that said, I feel even worse for my students. I can't imagine what the deep psychological effects of living in this country for a long time are. Most of my students leave home at 6:30 a.m. and after clubs and cram schools they don't get home until about 9 or 10 at night. If they are lucky, they are able to finish their homework on the train or in between classes. They tell me that if they study hard they will be able to get a good job and be happy, but I don't remember ever seeing any happy businessmen. On Friday nights, you might be convinced that the hordes of businessmen are having a great time, but in reality it's a cultural requirement to go out with your boss after a long work-week. Lower ranking members of the office have to serve and treat the higher-ranking ones, which if it's anything like my office work parties, it's awkward and forced, with thinly veiled cliques. It's like nobody is allowed to control their life and pleasure here; well, except for the Yanki's I guess.

Here's to hoping that I can try and change that, at least for a few kids.

'tis the season.

     I walked outside yesterday morning into a nasty, gray-sky day. It looked like it was going to rain, but the wind was blowing so violently that an umbrella would have been useless anyway, so I continued without one. Then, I heard the sirens. "Are those voices?," I thought, and I wondered what they were saying in Japanese. Naturally I assumed was a warning of some kind; what if the weather was getting so bad that the announcement was urging people to evacuate? Do they even have tornadoes in Japan? I looked for other people so I could see how the natives were reacting, but nobody was on the entire street. "Strange," I thought, as I found myself drawn to the rambling of the horns in the direction of the station. The speaker was very monotone; whatever he was saying, this was not a festival. The walk was about a mile, yet the horns sounded clear as day. In the distance I saw a large crowd of people, and I imagined the imperial Big Brother of Japan, loading buses full of willing passengers unsure where their government was taking them. To my surprise, upon reaching the crowd I noticed group of four old men in suits, standing atop a self-painted van, speaking to the crowd. They wore sashes adorned with their credentials and had a few news-teams recording their speech. I should have known; it's political season.

I definitely agree with Mr. So-and-So about that one point.

     Apparently in Japan it's legal to drive around town with a giant megaphone on the roof of your van and spout political nonsense. It makes me weary to think that there is a country with a more invasive campaign strategy than the United States, but Japan seems to be doing a pretty good job of intruding every half hour when they drive by in the cars again. The only other images I have of these mobile-audio propaganda machines is among the plighted countries going through revolutions, like in the movies about Nazi Germany. Sure, today, the Japanese people are probably saying, "please vote for better education funding!," but I imagine tomorrow it could be something along the lines of, "Find those Gaijin! They must be turned in to the police!"

3 Months in

Gamba-ppe, Ibaraki's slang for Ganbatte (Good luck)

When I look at my time in Japan it feels like I've just arrived, and yet at 3 months, I'm 1/4th through my contract already! I don't update this blog enough, and I never find the time to stop and appreciate my situation; the last thing I want is to finish my tenure here without a lot of great stories and details about Japan. So much about my life has transformed so rapidly, that I feel that I've done some things I never would have tolerated back home. Also, I enjoy lists. The following are things, after only a few months in Japan, that you'd be surprised to find yourself doing;

1)  Speaking in basic, plain, Japanese-coddled English to fully competent English speakers. Everybody I've met here does it, and the longer I'm in this country the less I find myself using big words or complex sentence patterns. After 8 hours a day of speaking in the most basic tongue to students and coworkers, it's difficult to switch back to the old vocabulary for some other Americans. Sometimes it's simple changes that make me sound dumb, like using "[subject], do you know?" instead of "have you heard about [subject]?" Another example is that every question must be asked with the keyword as the last word, inflected with enough stress to indicate a query, such as, "At university.... what did you study?" instead of "what did you study at university?". Typically you have to make this inversion for the Japanese students because they often can understand the beginning and the end of a sentence, yet fill in the middle; the second question would often register with them as "what... university." Needless to say, you just sound silly when you do it to someone who was a born and raised English speaker.

Look at that weirdo wearing the man-purse!

2) Buy or wear something you used to think was extremely gay. In my case, it was a small leather bag I could keep my personal items in. A man-purse. Japanese people are obsessed with bags and trinkets that they can individualize, and the same applies for the guys here. My theory is that because everyone walks everywhere here, you can't just keep your stuff in your car, and going sans-bag would be more of a hassle. It's super effeminate, but it's nice to have something to help carry my wallet and stuff. This rule, though, also applies to wearing bright neon clothing, hanging little stuffed animals off your cell phone, and getting really strange hats.

A traditional Japanese lunch. 

3) Start using a coin purse. Coins here are big! They take up a lot of space, and because the smallest paper bill is around 10-12 dollars in value, you'll be carrying a large amount of change at any time and unlike in the US you can't just throw them on the ground. Without a coin purse, these things will muck up your wallet and cut up the bills inside. Also, paying with change is really useful; there is rarely sales tax on things here, so very often you'll be able to pay in exact change.

A 20-minute special of a Panda fighting a Koala, MMA style.  In poor form, the koala paid off the ref and wouldn't make the count. 

4) Lose all respect for television. The other day at prime-time there was a super-live, commercial free showing of the Women's Doubles Ping-Pong championship. There were maybe 15 people in the crowd as 4 women played best-of-seven, 11-point games for three hours. Also, When you watch sports on the news, they will often show highlights of the Japanese players in the MLB. One time, I watched a replay of Ichiro dropping a ball in the outfield in a Mariners game five or six times, and yet the news didn't even say the final score of the game.

Golden week coming up...

A week from today (Friday through Friday) is Golden week. It's a week where almost everyone in Japan has a week off and it'll be my first chance to really get out and explore some of Japan. I'm thinking a Tokyo adventure is in order?

I really do want to go see Akihabara. It's supposed to be the capital of Japanese nerd-dom, complete with 12-story electronics stores, multi-level arcades, anime and manga cosplayers on a daily basis, and an AKB48 concert in the DonkiHote (wall-mart on lsd) every single day. The town even has a Robot store; I have to go there.

Back in Mito and "O" Hanami

After a three week vacation, I'm finally back in Mito. This is the first time I've been back to my apartment since the Earthquake, Lucky for me, the Cherry Blossoms were still in season.

Cherry blossoms line all the water in Mito

I didn't get to relax long before I went back to work, but Thursday I was lucky to spend a beautiful day in Kairaku-en with the cherry blossom trees and my gaijin friends. The Japanese literally call it O Hanami, or literally, "flower watching". Before well respected or revered words, the Japanese put an O to show respect for the historical significance of the item, such as O Gohan (rice), O Sake (delicious sake), or O Hashi (chopsticks). Hanami follows the same rules, where the Japanese sit together in nature and contemplate the beauty of Spring. Foreigners, however, traditionally use Hanami to take advantage of the great weather and lack of public drunkenness laws to get wasted.

Joel at Senba Lake

Our camping spot

The Shiba dog Tora, meaning Tiger

The Cherry Blossoms are beautiful, but the weather in Japan during this time of year is some of the best I've ever encountered. It's warm with a cool breeze, and not a cloud in the sky no matter what day of the week it is. As I rode my bicycle along the lakeside, lined with Sakura trees, a gust of wind would blow hundreds of tiny flower petals into the air and I was able to ride through them like they were snow. The sights and smells were amazing; It's hard to believe that this city was wrecked only a month before.

We finished the evening at a Korean Barbecue place. These places, called Yakiniku, have hot grills in the middle of the table where you can grill all sorts of raw meat and vegetables, and offer an all-you-can-eat Tabehodai for about 20 dollars. We would have combined it with all-you-can-drink, but the restaurant informed us that nobody in town was offering it, in reverence to the earthquake victims.

My Japanese friend, Yasu, laughed when I made the mount Fuji out of an onion like hibachi chefs at Shoguns do back home. He said that he's never seen that done before; who would have thought?