Brother Annie

So it occured to me recently just how little I actually talk about my school, which was sort of the point of this blog originally. Shows how much I care about the place. Just kidding. Maybe.

As many of you know, I’m no longer living with a host family, and instead I’ve moved into the Seminar Houses. These are basically just dormitories, but only for the foreign students. There are four of them total, and about 15ish minutes by bike away from school. I live in Sem. House 4 (dah best–but please don’t start an internet flame war about it). I particularly like it because its the most communal of them all. It’s got a big lounge, a dining room, and kitchen, which everyone shares. I really like cooking around lots of people, and its something I’m definitely going to miss. Residents are also given their own plates, silverware and cups, in their own lockers.

The above are all on the first floor, along with the computer lab. Additionally, when you first walk into the Sem House, there are shelves for you to put your shoes (its Japan–you don’t wear your shoes inside the place you live).

At SH4, there are 3 floors: the 2nd and 3rd are where all the dorm rooms are, girls on the 2nd, boys on the 3rd. All rooms have a tiny entryway where you take off your slippers (if you’re wearing any). The rooms themselves have tatami floors, and for bedding you get a futon. Strangely enough, the giant comforter like blanket which is covered by the weird sheet with gaping hole in the top, is also called a futon. The rooms are also furnished with a low table (you might want to call it a coffee table, but its really just a normal table for a Japanese living room really), a closet and dresser, and just a general desk-work area.

Over all, a very simple but very nice room. You’re not allowed to hang posters on the walls, which might be a bummer for some people, but I’m not really the poster hanging type, so it didn’t phase me.

Living in the seminar house is really fun, and its a really fantastic way to make friends. I’ve blabbed on and on about what it was like living with a host family (go back and read those posts if you’re interested and haven’t read them yet), so I thought I’d give you guys an idea of the other option for Kansai Gaidai housing.

Happy rice making.

PS: I will be in China until May 6th, so sorry for the lack of posting. The same goes for my YouTube channel–but that’s more because YouTube doesn’t exist in China.

Last week was not a good week for me, and I could feel the laziness bleeding over to this week. On Monday I was very reluctant to go to my Issues in Contemporary Japanese Society class, but I went, begrudgingly. And it’s a good thing I did.

We watched a Japanese documentary called the The Great Happiness Space. It’s about host bars, in particular a host bar in Osaka called Stylish Cafe Rakkyo. For some of you, the term “host bar” maybe familar, but I’d like to go into more detail to clear things up. For one thing, they are absolutely nothing like this:

Dear Host Club Ouran fans: real host bars do not remotely resemble this fantasy anime club. Real host clubs are more like:

The Great Happiness Space has got to be one of the most depressing documentaries I’ve ever seen. I’m not even sure if FRONTLINE’s Darfur special made me this depressed.

Host bars, along with hostess bars, for those of you that don’t know, according to Wikipedia “are a common feature in the night-time entertainment industry of Japan as well as other east Asian countries and areas outside Asia with a high east Asian population. They are establishments that employ primarily female staff and cater to males seeking drink and attentive conversation. The more recent host clubs are similar establishments where primarily male staff cater to females.”

The movie we watched was about a host club, and really didn’t talk about hostess clubs. Japanese hostesses are sort of your modern day sleazy geishas: you pay to drink and flirt  and be entertained by pretty, well dressed girls. It’s the same situation in a host bar, except the other way around. There is some difference though. The clients of hostess bars are generally rich men with jobs and lives. The clients of host bars on the other hand, are generally other hostesses and prostitutes.

The point is to make the girls fall in love with them. The men know its fake, and sometimes the girls do to. But many girls claim to actually be in love with their hosts. The hosts heal them, make them feel wanted, make them feel good about themselves. One prostitute said she would sell her body, and feel bad, so to feel better, she would go to host bars.

The hosts themselves are constantly tired. They sleep during the day and stay up all night drinking. It’s their job to do so. Though they didn’t mention it, I doubt you can become a host and not become an alcoholic. You kind of have to be, since the girls want to drink with you. And not only are the hosts physically tired from work all the time, they are emotionally drained.

The owner of Rakkyo, the host bar in Osaka, named Issei, said that, he might be emotionally broken, but if he told these girls the truth, if he stopped lying, there would be no business. Regulars, who are so emotionally attached to these hosts, whom with which they are lead to believe they have a real relationship, become the most tiring. One such girl professed that she would take whatever measures possible to become Isse’s girlfriend, even wife. This fake relationship is kept up by the constant lies of said host. It’s tiring, he says, and he always feels guilty. But no matter how annoying he finds her, he keeps up the act. It’s business.

Host bars are young, attractive, exciting, euphoric places where life problems are forgotten, but not gotten rid of; sometimes reinforced. These places are definitely some of the darkest sides of Japan.

Sakura season is coming to an end here in the Kansai region, which makes me a little sad, but I captured the blossoms on film, so I’ll tell you guys more about this in the video I’ll be making soon about spring flowers in Japan.

What I’d like to discuss today is a very common form of transportation. Back where I’m from in Texas, people usually ride bikes to get around. People ride bikes because they like to get/be in shape, and sport the Lance look, lame sunglasses and everything. They have the best bikes available, with like 83 gears and special gripping material on the handlebars and stuff. In Japan though, they like to keep it simple.

I have yet to see a bike in Japan with gears. I have also yet to see a bike without a basket attached to the front. These are extremely simple and very practical devices, solely for transportation. Everyone rides them too, not just poor students. In fact mostly you see women riding them, often mothers with groceries in the front basket and a kid strapped to the back. I get so nervous seeing these women weave around town with their kids bouncing allowing with them. I’m just waiting to hear on the news one day of a baby that got knocked out of its bicycle basket and died. Yes, these are the things I think about in my free time.

Also now that its warming up, the Obaachan’s are beginning to show their true colors. In the summer you see these old ladies who do everything possible to keep from being tainted by the sun’s rays. Despite the blazing heat, they’ll wear these long (often black) gloves (think ball gowns/mall goths from high school), visors larger than life (you can’t see their faces under these things, I’m not exaggerating; I worry that they’ll run into something), and then these oven-mitten looking things which are sometimes attached to the bike handles. I still don’t understand the purpose of this.

As strange as these old ladies may seem, the bike is extremely common. There are whole parking lots full of bikes, which is intimidating when you’re trying to find yours. Another thing different is that you don’t have to buy bike locks in Japan–all bikes have locks on them, and in order to ride, you need a key, just like driving a car. Pretty smart I think.

Anyways, the other day I was trying to get my bike out of the parking lot, but someone had parked their bike too close to mine. I had a lot of trouble getting it out, and finally had to yank it out, but in doing so, I nudged the bike to my left. That bike then nudged the bike to its left. Which nudged the bike to its left. I found myself running after a Domino chain reaction of bicycles until the entire row was knocked over. It was hilarious, but see how embarrassed I was:

Happy rice making guys. Don’t make fun of me お願いします。

I finally got the text widget to work, so UW is finally up and running. You can check it out by looking several pixels to your right.

Also, below said widget, is another widget which I stole from Google, made by my favorite Japanese-English dictionary: Jisho.org

For those of you studying Japanese, you should really check it out. You can look up kanji (by radical!!), words, sentences and phrases. It tells you whether words are common or not, what kind of word they are (noun, i-adjective, na-adjective, suru verb, intransitive, transitive, etc), the kanji for the word AND the hiragana reading PLUS whether its usually written in kana or kanji.

And now the best dictionary in the universe is on my blog. *squeal*

Despite my lack of posting, I’ve been thinking of creating another blog for when I leave Kansai Gaidai. I’d really like to start up a linguistics blog about Asian languages (pretty much Japanese and Chinese only), but I’m not exactly sure what it would look like. I’d like to do comparisons of the languages for sure, as well as looking at them individually, examining grammar structures, roots of words, kanji (or hanzi), etc. It will be mostly for people who are learning either or both languages, but will not consist of any lessons, courses, etc. My target audience is simply other language enthusiasts.

If this sounds like something you guys would be interested in, please please please let me know! And let me know if you have any suggestions!

Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend! Happy rice making as always.

PS: I’d also like to make a food/cooking blog for lazy university students. More on that later.

PSPS: A Brother Annie Wikipedia page is an ingenious idea, don’t you think?

I may have accidentally posted that last one instead of hitting “Save Draft”. Let’s try this again.

I’d like to tell you guys briefly about a feature on my blog which I’ve just added called

It’s exactly what it sounds like. My loathing of Kansai Gaidai’s homemade textbooks has finally driven me mad, for a variety of reasons, one of which being the number of useless words in our vocabulary lists. The other reasons are the multitude of grammatical mistakes and horrible translations, which not only impair students’ ability to understand the material properly, but impair my ability to a happy person on a day to day basis, because I am forced to witness the butchering of my own beloved language on every other page.

I’ve decided to install a little widget on the right side bar where I’ll occasionally post these useless words, so you too can learn a multitude of Japanese vocabulary which will in no way assist you, should you choose to visit Japan. A present from me to you.

Right now the text widget is being a little poop, but I’ll try and get UW up and running soon. I’ll do a real post with in the next few days.

Thanks for posting lots of comments on my fake post more than my real posts, guys. You make me feel loved.

Happy rice making–IF ITS NOT F*CKING STOLEN BY SOMEONE. (More on this later–also, I rock at censoring)

I’d like to tell you guys briefly about a feature on my blog which I’ve just added called

It’s exactly what it sounds like. My loathing of Kansai Gaidai’s homemade textbooks has finally driven me mad, for a variety of reasons, one of which being the number of useless words in our vocabulary lists. The other reasons are the multitude of grammatical mistakes and horrible translations, which not only impair students’ ability to understand the material properly, but impair my ability to a happy person on a day to day basis, because I am forced to witness the

If you haven’t tried the dessert I’m about to tell you about, you have to promise to do so. Meet mochi:

I don’t really know if the Japanese can claim to have any another traditional dessert. If you know of anything other than anko (red bean paste) and/or mochi, please let me know. This stuff was invented way back in mukashi-mukashi times, and has been adored up until the present. On the outside, you have the rice cake material. This is made by mashing up cooked rice until its a paste. I believe you also add sugar. With this rice batter you can make plain mochi, without anything inside–but that is just plain boring.

My favorite kind of mochi is the kind with anko inside. It is always translated as “red-bean paste”, which is completely correct, but doesn’t sound very appetizing. “Paste” is not the most enticing choices of words when describing food, but there’s really not much else you can call it. There’s really know way to describe the taste of anko. It’s nothing like anything I’ve ever tasted before, so it is best just to try some if you’d like to get the idea. It’s sweet. On its own, I am not a particular fan of the stuff. Nowadays the Japanese often enjoy a variety of baked goods and pastries with anko inside, of which I am not very fond. But in mochi, it is delicious.

Mochi have the perfect combination of a soft, velvety outside, with a semi-sweet, gooey (but not sticky), doughy consistency, and a unique sweet filling. I crave the stuff like a pregnant woman.

I bought some mochi the other day from a 100 yen store, as well as some really dodgy chocolate milk product. Whenever people think of Japanese food, I have a feeling they think of something healthy, organic. Don’t be fooled, people. Japan is just as fond of preservative filled cheap goods, like this chocolate milk product I got. The ingredients are: sugar, dairy products, cocoa powder, dextrin, salt, fine crystal cellulose, other flavors/spices, and a stabilizing chemical (I have no idea how to translate that last one). My point is, nowhere does it have the word “milk” in there. Dodgy. But apparently the people working at the store didn’t expect me to be any classier, because they gave me a long straw to drink my carton of chocolate dairy juice. I mean, I know I’m student and all, but I have standards too, you know.

I’ve really been enjoying life in the dorms. I mean every word when I say I’m grateful for having lived with a host family during the first semester, and there were so many things that I learned because of it. But a semester is about all I could do. Let’s face it. Curfews are not my favorite thing, being a twenty-something year old. I like cooking my own food, and not feeling guilty about showering in the morning, and being independent. Life is good in the dorms.

Mid-terms are already here, so I will be cramming my butt off this week. My apologies if the posts become scarce.

Peace.

Happy rice making.

Friday the 26th was one of the most interesting nights I’ve had in Japan. Me, Jace and two other friends of ours headed out to a place called Jin’s Place (or something). I’d seen the place before, since it was right by the gates to Kansai Gaidai, but I’d never gone in. The place looks rather shady, you have to admit. But one of our friends had been there before and invited us to check it out. So we did.

It was an izakaya (居酒屋)–a Japanese style pub. And in many (most?) izakaya, you take your shoes off at the front, just like in any Japanese home. Then, barefooted, we stepped out of the entrance and found an empty table. However, after not even a minute of sitting there, we decided to move to the bar counter, just for fun.

At the bar, we each started out with a beer. The owner chatted us up in fairly decent, but still broken, English, and asked each of us our names and where we were from. Then he gave us each a slip of paper, a pen and a pin, with which he asked us to write our names and pin on the world map hung on the wall. For me and the other American friend of our group, he pointed at a map of the US on which he asked us to pin our names. (I was the first person from Texas!)

After the guys did a round of something called a “shotgun” (not the American kind with beer involved–this was a double shot made of soda water and vodka, vodka which was apparently 95% alcohol, which I would argue, is not vodka anymore), we were all prompted to try a free shot of the most bizarre drink I have ever tried, and probably will have ever tried, in my life. Don’t worry Mom and Dad, this was an actual item on the menu and not some creepy concoction made in the back for unsuspecting foreigners. The owner brought out a clear bottle filled with a clear liquid. Also in the bottle–I shit you not–was a dead iguana. All four of us were handed a shot, though it was not one you were supposed to down in one go. So we sat there, sipping our lizard sake. Actually, it didn’t smell or taste like anything. It didn’t sting either, and was really quite smooth.

Through out the night, we also became friends with the staff. Of course we chatted with the owner quite a bit, as I mentioned, but one of the waitresses was first year student at Kansai Gaidai, and she was great to talk to. She was also quite pretty, and at one point in time I remember an older guy waving her over so that he could ask her, in English, “May I have your name?” After she told him, he asked for her “second name” (her last name), and she replied back in Japanese “I don’t have a second name,” and walked away. First time witnessing rejection in a foreign language! I thought it was hilarious.

As the night went on, the older guy sitting next to me, too, started talking to us, in horribly broken English, but mostly in Japanese. He asked us the usual, where we were from, but when he heard that Jace was from Australia, he suddenly got very excited. He asked us a question, which kind of baffled us. He asked “You know how the ground in Australia is red? Why is that?” We told him we didn’t know, and wondered why he was asking. He began to explain to us that mukashi-mukashi (a long long time ago), due to a large amount of iron and bacteria in the ocean, the tides turned red. The water level rose and rose until it covered Australia. When the water level sank, it left the residue on the ground, turning the earth red. This he explained in Japanese.

For some reason, this guy (who we later learned was called “Tsuu-san”) went on for another hour or so explaining various other scientific and historical phenomenon. We still have no idea why he did this, and I occasionally exchanged glances with the owner, who was listening in on our conversation a bit, and would always give me these “What is this guy smoking?” kind of look. But he was great fun, all the same.

As the night went on, we discussed how Japan came to adopt Chinese characters during the Han dynasty (It’s pronounced “Han” in Chinese, but in Japanese it’s pronounced “Kan”–this is the “kan” in “kanji”), as well as why Australian animals have pouches, John Nash’s Game Theory (think “A Beautiful Mind”), and–I am not joking about this–Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. All in Japanese.

When we left Jin’s Place, it was pouring down rain, but it didn’t bother me. It had been a great night.

Even though Nara was on our list of places to go, the boys ended up heading off to Hiroshima after we arrived back in the Kansai area, and I stayed in good ole Hirakata. But before I get ahead of myself, I have to tell you about Nagano and the snow monkeys.

When we arrived in Nagano, it was already dark, and we managed to catch a cab to our hostel. It wasn’t until the next day that we were able to explore. At the hostel, we relaxed with the strangest beer I’ve ever had–Chocolate Beer. It was pretty good, in Paul and my opinions, but Jace was not fan. To me it just tasted like a really really dark beer. Though lacking in snow,  Nagano was still a cold place, and we kept our sole heater turned on for as long as possible before falling asleep. Nagano the city is pretty average as far as Japanese cities go. The transportation was really expensive to get anywhere, and the hostel we stayed in smelled like smoke, but the dodgy neighborhood reminded me of Tennoji back in Osaka. Things were starting to feel familiar again.

However, our destination in Nagano was actually outside the familiar looking city sprawl, and way way way out in the countryside. It cost a hell of a lot to get there, but it was worth it. It was called Snow Monkey Park. Even though Nagano city was dry, the park which was way up in the mountains was still covered in a blanket of white. After taking a pricey train ride and a bus, we then had to hike for a good half hour to find the park. The trails were very deceiving, and the signs didn’t help at all, and after taking a good hour or so of getting completely lost, we found the monkeys.

As cute as they are, you may be wondering what is so cool about these guys. The cool thing is that the monkeys at this park aren’t here just to live–they’re here to relax. At the Snow Monkey Park, there is a hot spring (an onsen, remember?), but it’s not for people to enjoy. It’s for the monkeys.

After having our fill of squealing over the adorableness, we headed back into the city. We still had a few hours of daylight to kill, so we decided to hit up a shrine on the way home.

We bummed around Nagano station until it got dark. We were going to take yet another night bus. These moments were easily the most boring of our trip. Waiting for the next train, bus, subway, ferry, car ride, whatever, to the next destination. But we were used to it by now, I think. For five hours we snoozed our way to Kyoto, though for a good hour of the bus ride the damn bus driver wouldn’t shut up. How many safety procedures do we really need to know?

The bus dropped us off in Kyoto, where we took the first train to Hirakata city. It was still dark outside when we arrived at Hirakata station. Having no where to go, we waited for the nearest Starbucks to open so we could have a warm place to rest. As the familiar area became light at last, we met up with some Kansai Gaidai friends of  ours. That night was sort of the last night of the trip for me. It wasn’t over for Jace and Paul, who went to visit Hiroshima (I’d already been before), but for me, I spent the night somewhere else. Since I wasn’t able to move into the dorms until the following morning, I had no choice but to stay at a manga cafe.

The place was called Ring. It was actually more than a manga cafe. You paid by the hour for free access to a ton of things. You could sing karaoke, you could play pool, darts, ping-pong, read manga, surf the internet—AND get all the free non-alcoholic drinks you wanted. For me though, it was just a place to spend the night. If you ask to use the internet, you are given your own little booth with a couch, TV monitor, and computer with headphones and everything. So, with blaring music and obnoxious drunken laughter in my ears, I went to sleep, glad to be back in a place I call home.

The end.

School is back in session now, and I’m already up to my ears in new kanji to learn. I feel settled at last in the dorms, and I’m loving it. I’m glad to announce that after this post I will resume normal, regular blogging about Japanese culture and the like. I hope you all enjoyed hearing about my adventures!

Happy rice making, kids.

Because there is no bridge or land mass which connects Honshu, Japan’s main island, to Hokkaido, we took a four hour long ferry ride to our frigid destination. From Aomori we rode to Hakodate, at the southern most tip of Hokkaido. The ferry ride was really fun, and we had a lot of room to ourselves.

Upon arriving in Hakodate, we were a bit at a loss at where to go next. We knew that in a few hours we would be taking a long bus ride to Sapporo, however, at the time we were nowhere near civilization, it seemed. The port was a very drab, industrializing looking place. We went to the office nearby and told them our plan. We kept asking them where the bus stop was, but this seemed to confuse the staff, and we waited as they discussed things to each other in Japanese to figure out what to do with the crazy gaijin. Little did they know how much Japanese I could actually understand, and before they came to talk to us, I was able to inform my companions that we needn’t worry, because we’re getting a lift to the bus station. We were used to this kind of thing by now anyways.

At the bus station we grabbed some food at a coffee shop nearby, and then we were off. The bus ride was beautiful, riding through the snowy countryside as it got darker and darker. At last we arrived at Sapporo station, where we managed to navigate ourselves via subway to the stop near the best hostel (and living accommodation period, for me) of our entire trip. It’s called Ino’s Place.

It’s run by the nicest couple in Japan, both probably in their late thirties, and speak fluent English. It really felt like we were living at a friends house, and not at all a hostel. Downstairs in the lounge were couches, computers, free coffee and tea, movies (Japanese and Non-Japanese) and a communal kitchen. The wife (Miwa) was incredibly friendly and informative. She spoke to me in Japanese the whole time and taught me some Hokkaido-ben (dialect) too. Her husband, Eiji, to our surprise, was a juggling master. In fact during our stay they were in the middle of building shelves in the front of the lobby, because they wanted to open up a juggling shop right there. Eiji’s been juggling for around 10 years now, and Jace was able to learn a few tricks from him. Paul and I also had fun trying to spin plates and such. You can find pictures of us on Ino’s Place’s blog. Scroll down, there are two pictures of us (one under “enjoy juggling” and one under “Annie&Friends”–although they got Jace and Pauls’ nationality wrong.)

While in Sapporo, we knew we had to visit the Sapporo beer factory museum. It had lots of information about the history of Sapporo beer and how it’s made. Most of the information was in Japanese, but it was still interesting.

The museum tour empties out in a small bar, where you can sample the various beers offered by Sapporo. How clever of them. Paul, Jace and I decided to go for the triple sample one, where you get to try three difference kinds for only 400 yen. We didn’t realize how amazing a deal this was until we found out that what they meant by “sample” was really “a whole glass”.

I mentioned earlier how Western Hokkaido and Northern Japan looked. Near Sapporo was something called “Historical Village”. It is technically a museum, but it’s not just one building. It’s exactly as it’s called: a village, recreated in the style of architecture when people were moving to Hokkaido. It sounds like Hokkaido wasn’t really included (or discovered?) in Japan until much later in its history, as seen in the heavy Western influence on the architecture. Of course, it wasn’t completely un-Japanese.

Sapporo was also the first place we ate sushi during our trip. Luckily there was one nearby our hostel, and was quite good. It was similar to the one I went to with my host family, where you can either order your food, or just grab it from the passing cha-cha line of sushi next to your table.

Mt. Moiwa is another sight to see. Or rather, a place to see a great sight. There’s a rope way that goes up the mountain, and then shuttle buses which drive people to the top where there’s a fantastic view of Sapporo. If there’s anything I’ve learned about going up to high places to sight see, its that its always better at night. This place also took the cake on being the coldest place I’ve ever been in my life. Subfreezing temperatures + high altitudes + wind chill + snow = Annie’s feet fall off.

Yes, it was devastatingly frigid in Hokkaido. However, perhaps its because of this that the hot springs, or onsen (温泉) are so popular. I don’t have photos of inside bath that we went to, of course, but you still wouldn’t be able to understand the feeling of the contrast between the stiff frozen air and snow to the hot bath water. We went to an outdoors hot spring, called a rotenburo (露天風呂), which sounds intimidating when you think about walking around butt-naked in the middle of winter in Hokkaido. But I’ve been to hot springs when it’s hot outside, and believe me, it’s much better when it’s cold.

After bathing, we ate dinner at the restaurant attached to the onsen, where I had a famous meal called “jingisukan”–Genghis Khan. You take slices of lamb and cook them on this round grill. Around the edges you cook various vegetables in a brother, and the juices from the lamb drips down as they cook. Definitely one of the best meals I’ve had in Japan.

Now, with all this snow and mountains around, I probably don’t need to elaborate too much on what else we did.

Skiing was about the last big thing we did in Hokkaido. To this day, I still miss Ino’s Place. Sapporo was one of, if not my favorite, place we visited. It’s really a beautiful city. But after a week, it was time to head back south to our last destination before home. It would take us 11 hours of traveling to get to Nagano.