A Friday Night in February

I'm sitting at my computer, finishing up a bit of work. My wife is laying back on the bed with her Nintendo DS. After years of wondering whether it could possibly be done, I have finally managed to achieve the one feat which I am convinced is all that's required for someone like me to secure a beautiful, funny, talented wife:

I got her interested in video games.

Turning back to look at her, I see her completely absorbed in her game of Mario Kart, to the point of swinging the DS around in Stevie Wonder-like swoops to make her turns.

I grab her by the knees and say, "Honey, I can't believe I've turned you into a video game nerd!"

Very urgently, in the manner of someone shooing a child away from a sleeping cobra, she replies:

"Baby. Baby. Stop. You're gonna get me killed."

Yeah, not entirely sure how I didn't see that one coming.

Consumer Cowabunga #1

Hello!

I'm back in action after a lovely weekend bout with an intestinal bug that caused me to earnestly project my colorful personality through both major orifices, north and south. I initially thought it was food poisoning, seeing as how I'd eaten some fairly medieval-tasting convenience store tortilla rolls earlier that evening, but after speaking with Hodezor I learned that both he and Lorne, our friend who we had eaten dinner with at Hodezor's house last week, had come down with the exact same thing at the exact same time.

There can be only one explanation. You guessed it: that stygian child-daemon, Hodezor IV, is at it again.


When he learned that this latest chemical warfare scheme of his had come to fruition, he clapped his hands twice, burped loudly and fell on his butt. Well played, short one. Well played.

Anyway. Today's entry is the first in what I intend to make into a series of short installments, highlighting the funny, tasty, useful, not-so-useful, weird and wacky things that line the shelves of Tokyo's stores. Convenience shops, toy stores, train station souvenir kiosks, hair salons, panty vending machines -- whatever its place of commercial origin, if it's uniquely Japanese, uniquely funny or simply new to a small-country bumpkin blondie, it's going in here.

So, kicking things off slow, today I have two moderately exotic items for your viewing enjoyment: strawberry-flavored Meiji chocolate and apple-flavored Fanta.




















The chocolate, as is the case with most Japanese chocolate I've tasted so far, is absolutely delicious on the first bite. Smooth and creamy, with a delightfully subtle hint of croquant crunch at the center. One bite and you're flying. The first few seconds are DJ Shadow. They're Blade Runner. The color aquamarine.

By the third piece, however, Shadow starts sounding more like Spears. By the fourth, Blade Runner turns to Battlefield Earth. By the fifth, aquamarine gives way to muddy brown. By the sixth, already-labored metaphors run completely out of breath and resort to massive hyperbole to save themselves. By the seventh, every quantum eventuality in the imaginable metaverse collapses upon itself in a cataclysm of unimaginably epic proportions.

The Fanta, meanwhile, tastes like apple juice with carbon dioxide in it.

I'm not sure what I was expecting.

So!

Hiya.

Today's post is going to be a bit of a grab-bag; a few pictures, a few tidbits about Tokyo and Japan, a few notes on what it's like to live here, a few observations on the people and the place. And, of course, for those of you who come here not to read the words but just to look at the pictures: pictures. In fact, here; if you're one of the people who only look at the pics, then just scroll down until you see the big bold type slightly down the page, which I've put there solely for your benefit. There's quite a block of text coming up, you see, and I'd rather not you went scampering off to Flickr every time there's a paragraph change. All for your benefit, you see? Say I don't love you.

-

So. The first and most pertinent thing about living in Tokyo, naturally, is the language. Moving to a country with a Germanic or Latin language, where you can pick out a word here and a word there from inference based on common roots, is one thing; moving to a country where the language not only doesn't share common roots but is in fact built, from the ground up, grammatically and conceptually, in a completely different way from yours - that's kinda tough. In addition, most people here don't give a flying Hasselhoff about speaking English. If you don't have a few basic Japanese phrases to fall back on, you're going to be stared at quite frequently with a look that can only be described as apologetically hateful.

I'm a fan of words and languages, and the Japanese one so far represents a very intriguing enigma, a hard code to crack. I can't wait to tell you more about it, but I'm afraid my limited knowledge at this point precludes any further musings. So, until I glean a deeper understanding of this beautiful and unique language, let me share with you this Engrish I found.

(Ha ha ha, yeah. Cheap shots are easy. But hey, after two solid months of saying "thank you" to people when I almost swerve into them on my bike and saying "that was yummy!" when people give me my change back at the grocery store, I deserve a bit of release. And anyway, you're gonna find it funny.)

So last weekend, in Hakone, we went to a soba restaurant (soba is the word for Japanese buckhweat noodles; like regular noodles, only thicker, vaguely bluish-tinted, 10x healthier and 100x less tasty). It was a lovely, cozy, mom-and-pop style establishment (Hakone is one of the few places in the world where McDonald's hasn't managed to stretch its filthy tentacles), and within a minute of reading, it became readily apparent to us that the English menu had on that fine day been bestowed upon us solely through the good graces of our friends at babelfish.altavista.com.

The delights on offer included "The enjoying the moon of the buckwheat noodles," "The flattery turtle of the buckwheat noodles," and the very succinct "It boils guts." Additionally, if that wasn't enough to sate ya, they graciously offered "It puts with the grated yam and it eats," and, to finish you off, the delicious "it piles up 3 paragraphs of cold buckwheat noodles."

I am absolutely not making this up. I wish I'd taken pictures.

Anyway.

-

The second thing a small-country bumpkin like me notices is the sheer size of everything. The buildings. The place. The population. Being able to walk out of your door and disappear into a large crowd of people, most of which are dressed funnier than you, is an exhilarating experience for someone who's lived the bulk of their life in a place where your cousin's best friend's cousin totally heard you sneezing three seconds ago, and your sister's already sending you an SMS about it saying "OMG is it true??" because she needs to confirm it for the local paper who are about to run a four-page spread on it for their weekly exposé, "PEOPLE WHO TOTALLY SNEEZED THIS WEEK OMG."

I can go anywhere here and be anything. I can walk into a restaurant and pretend to be a German opthalmologist (as long as none of the patrons suddenly need emergency retinal surgery, in which case I'm in trouble [especially since I only speak German]), or storm into a shoe shop and pretend to desperately require clown shoes.* And I can do it all without worrying about anyone recognizing me at the next house party or dinner date or funeral I go to. It's really quite something.

And the buildings. Oh dear, the buildings.

(HI, PICTURE PEOPLE. HERE IS WHERE YOU SHOULD BE SCROLLING TO TO SEE SOME NICE PICTURES OF JAPAN. THANK YOU. I AM DOING GOOD AND HAVING MUCH FUN HAPPEN TO ME IN TOKYO. BYE BYE.)



































Some of the architecture here truly and sincerely boggles the mind. I haven't been this flabbergasted by buildings since... well, ever. The whole concept of what even constitutes a building is so different from home that I'm thrilled to my fingertips whenever I walk down a new street.

Here's some more:



































-

Aside from the buildings and the language, there's just the sheer novelty of the place. There are so many things about the Japanese way of life that are so subtly (and radically) different from the way we do things in the west. A couple of examples off the top of my head (more will be forthcoming later):

- When you walk into a store, without exception, every person who works in the store says "Welcome." Usually they keep saying it to you - at regular intervals - until you leave the store, at which point they say, "Thank you." Every single one of them, even that dude stacking the shelves way over in the corner. And before he hands you your change, the clerk will have said, in this order: "1. Welcome. 2. Yes. 3. Thank you. 4. Your purchase comes to [amount]. 5. You have given me [amount]. 6. This is your change, [amount], in bills, and this is your change, [amount], in coins, off the original sum, [amount], which we have charged you. 7. Here is a bag, in which I am putting your purchases. 8. Thank you for shopping here. 9. Thank you so much. 10. Thank you."

- Japanese people are world-class me-firsters. I thought Icelanders were rude when it came to butting in front of people, but I see now that I've been swimming with the goldfish my whole life. The Japanese can butt in with the best of them. If I find myself at Shinjuku Station during rush hour, I might as well just sit my ass down with a book, 'cause try as I might, I'm not going anywhere unless I pull some serious Hulk Hogan shit on people. I'm talking clotheslines and triple suplexes here.

- Being left-handed is considered generally rude.

- Old Japanese ladies are to be underestimated only at your own peril.

- When the Japanese try to do Christmas, they fail miserably.


-

So! A couple of things I'm thinking I might do with this blog. Aside from just sporadically reporting on whatever weird and wacky things I find over here, I want to have some semi-regular features. I'm thinking I'll do features on each of Tokyo's major districts (Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ebisu, Harajuku, et al), complete with pictures, a listing of major attractions, and my general jangled impressions of the whole shebang. I'm also going to do little profiles on weird consumables I find in Tokyo: funky candy, strange drinks, ridiculous food, etc. And if people want to try something for themselves, they just throw in a comment to the appropriate blog entry and a little care package will be on its way, containing the ridiculous food item in question.

Like it? Hate it? Wanna see it? Wanna see something else? Sound off. The comment button eagerly awaits your loving touch.

Okay, I think that's quite a bit of talk for one day. I'll check back in soon. Once again, much love and respect to one and all. Smoochies.



*in German, naturally.

Aaaaand Action

Hello!

Finally, finally, finally, it happened. I was able to get my camera, my computer and my camera cable to sit still next to each other long enough for me to be able to start this blessed old blog.

Welcome.

So, where to begin?

It's been about a month and a half since I up and moved to Tokyo to be with my girl. We live in a wonderful little room on the 5th floor of a building in Ebisu, which is a nice n' hip little part of Shibuya ward, right smack in the heart of Tokyo. Here are a few shots of our place:
















As an added bonus, our pad comes complete with a sumptuous view of the Tokyo Tower:


In the time since I arrived, I have most notably:

1) Gotten married
2) Bought a bicycle
3) Bought a phone (it has the internet on it and everything)
5) Gone to Hakone, a nice little mountain town
6) Generally farted around Tokyo, getting acquainted with the place

Let's take them in order.

1) O Frabjous Day!

So Thomasina and I arrived at the Shibuya ward office on October 3rd (the day I arrived), our innocent eyes aglow with anticipation. We were to be wed! The sweet smell of ink and vinyl seating filled our nostrils. Incandescent tubes of fluoride bathed us in affectionate whiteness. The red blink of the turn-o-matic LCD whispered sweet nothings to our expectant hearts. A vagrant hummed a jaunty little melody, then was escorted off the premises by a happy policeman. Yes, romance was in the air.
















After a riveting, passionate merry-go-round of signing some papers, waiting for three light years, falling asleep, signing some more papers, watching the papers get covered in stamps, watching our stamps get stamped, and then waiting a few more lifetimes, we were finally issued by the All-Seeing LCD back to that holy tabernacle, the Desk of Report Of Birth, Marriage And Others.

Expectantly, we watched as the lady whose sole authority we were to be wed under, the woman who the ward of Shibuya-ku had vested with the holy power to marry us, brought down a final stamp. She then put our papers in a folder. She handed us the folder and smiled pleasantly. No congratulations. No, "you are now officially married." Just a smile, the peculiar kind of Japanese smile that seems to politely indicate that it would be pretty nice if you left. So we did.

You can keep your Paris; this is romance.


2) Riding A Bike Is Just Like Riding A Bike

On my third day, we headed to the famed Don Quixote, which, as readers of my previous blog will know, is the Store Where You Can Buy Everything In The World (Including Bicycles, Bicycle Locks, Bicycle Headlights And Little Duckies With Pictures of Bicycles On Them). After not very much looking around at all, I settled on a nice little Jeep model (bonus points for you if you knew Jeep made bicycles).

I don't know the classification for it. It's somewhere between a mountain bike and a BMX, though slanted more towards the BMX stylee. Check it:


(I have no idea how I came up with that particular stupid grin. Numerous attempts to replicate it have met with no success.)

There's something to be said for sticking some Jeru in your headphones, hopping on your bike and going for a ride in the big bad metropolis. Possibly nothing makes me feel like I'm living in the big city more than just those rides. I have also learned, somewhat to my pleasant surprise, that after only three hundred or so near-death brushes with old ladies, other cyclists, lamp posts and open doors, my earlier proficiency has now almost returned. I even totally popped a wheelie the other day. Well, almost.

I am proud to report that no one has suffered loss of life or body parts as a result of my bicyclic locomotion, though I often hear breathless whoops of alarm as I spasmodically whizz past people, messing up their hairdos with my bywind and severely disrupting their equilibrium. Sometimes, as I approach a pedestrian going the opposite way, I'll inexplicably turn in their direction, like I'm going to swerve right into them, which more often than not causes them to freeze like deer in headlights. I have no idea why I do this; there is no malicious intent whatsoever. It's like I momentarily get nervous about maybe hitting them, so my earnestly helpful but ultimately idiotic limbic system decides to just, ya know, go ahead and hit them. No fatalities yet, fortunately. I'll keep you posted.


3) My New Phone

You know, I don't really know why I made this into its own section. It's not very interesting. I couldn't even come up with an interesting name for it.

I got a phone. It's chromed and it has little animated stars on it when I close it. It has a camera and the internet, which is more than I can say for any phone I have ever owned. It's this one:




Very pretty. It's the Sony-Ericsson FOMA SO704i, if you're a gadget freak. You can Google it and then talk to me about it, but I will most likely just stare at you blankly. Then a small sliver of drool will make its way out of the corner of my mouth, like glistening dew from a very very bored leaf, and I will fall into a deep sleep.

Moving right along...

4) Mountain Town Blues (And Reds, And Greens, and Yellows)

This was just last weekend. Strapping our knapsacks to our backs once more, the wife and I headed to a quiet little mountain town north of Tokyo called Hakone. We switched from the Non-Express train (which traveled at a little bit over running speed) to the Hakone Mountain Express (all two cars of it, seemingly hand-powered), and as it languidly groaned its way around the mountain we were faced with some powerfully awesome nature, of which Japan has quite a bit. I am realizing as I write this that we took no pictures of the train ride. We are lax and horrible tourists, and we do apologize.

Instead, here are some shots of Hakone at large. Get a load of those autumn colors.































In our infinite wisdom, we had neglected to realize that the town's location to the geographical north of Tokyo meant that it might be colder than the dear old capital. Having packed no warm clothes, we therefore spent a great deal of this particular trip huddled inside our plush and spacious hotel room, drinking sake, doing yoga exercises (which I always pegged as lady stuff, but which I guarantee will make even the most hardcore MMA fighter excrete his pancreas with exertion) and watching crazy-ass Japanese television. It was a wonderful vacation.

Oh yes, and my wife somehow managed to drag me, pleading and whining, onto a ropeway. A ropeway, if you don't know, is kind of like a ski elevator, only it goes far higher and is immeasurably more terrifying, ours made even more so by the fact that it took us to the Mines of Moria:






























After walking around, looking in gift shops and generally wondering why we'd come to this unholiest of all unholy places, we decided that maybe it was time to head back. Our decision was aided when, chancing upon a walking path that seemed to lead into one of the mouths of Hades peppered about the site, we were confronted with a sign that basically said: "Hi. There are a lot of volcanic fumes in this area, so please try to keep your breathing to an absolute minimum. Volcanic fumes such as these can cause [insert interesting, enlightening and utterly terrifying list of horrific and crippling diseases]. People who are [insert list of conditions which basically amount to "alive"] should refrain from staying here too long."

All of which, I guess, is the polite way of saying: "ABANDON ALL FAITH, YE WHO ENTER HERE."

Satan didn't have us for tea that day, alas. We decided that being warm, drinking sake, and not contracting acute bronchopneumonia were all quite pleasant enough ways to spend our weekend getaway. So we did.

Okay, it's getting quite late now and I'm a bit pressed for time. I'll post a few more snapshots of Tokyo tomorrow, and give a little preview of some of the regular and semi-regular features I've dreamed up for this blog.

Be safe and take care. Much love to you all.

Cheers!