Recent Trips

Yumi and I are continuing the "post-Ph.D. celebratory tour" of Japan, i.e. she keeps dragging me out to do stuff since I can't use the Ph.D. as an excuse to stay home anymore. The last two trips were to Odaiba (an area of Tokyo), and Ibaraki (a location well north of Tokyo).

Odaiba is a nice, waterfront area in the south of Tokyo which offers nice views of the Tokyo metropolis as well as the interesting architecture of the Fuji TV building and the cheesy Statue of Liberty replica. We mostly just wandered around all day and watched the ubiquitous dance performances which I was not sure were a regular feature or just happened to be going on the day we were there.

.

.

The Ibaraki trip was last Saturday and I wasn't too pleased when my lovely wife informed me that out that our bus tour left Yokohama station at 7:00 am necessitating a 6:00 am departure from our apartment and a 5:30 am wake up. We boarded the bus with about forty 60- and 70-somethings and headed north. We arrived at the first of 3 destinations around 11:00 am (4 hours after we left Yokohama!). The first stop was the picturesque Fukuroda no Taki waterfall, followed by the Ryujin pedestrian suspension bridge (Japan's longest at 375 meters) and then a nearby park. We got back to Yokohama around 8:00 pm and home around 9:00 pm. Thankfully we got some sleep on the bus. In addition to the sights, the other attractions were the local delicacies from natto (fermented soy beans - yum!) to apple pastry to dango (cooked rice flour in a sweet sauce).

Odaiba Pictures

Odaiba Pics

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Ibaraki Pictures

Ibaraki Pics

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Japan Articles

The Japundit website went through an overhaul which eliminated the need for contributors such as myself. That coincided with my ascendance to the interim principal's role at school which has resulted in more work and less time. Nevertheless I am still reading the news and listening to NPR and still come across interesting articles on Japan from time to time.

I came across several such articles recently:
1. Japanese Yakuza (Mafia); The New York Times

2. Brazilians in Japan; The New York Times

3. Japanese General Revises Pearl Harbor; The New York Times

4. Japanese Convenience Stores; Washington Post

5. Yankees' Pitcher Heading for Japan; ESPN.com

6. Japanese Attitude Towards Obama; Washington Post

The first article is interesting in that it discusses the underside of Japanese society and also highlights the vast differences between our societies (the mafia are careful to be polite and separate their trash properly so as not to irritate the neighbors). The second article highlights the touchy subject of foreigners and racism, which of course touches my life directly. The Japanese are alleged to be quite xenophobic. I don't know if they are empirically more so than other countries, though. The third article highlights an ongoing struggle between the extreme right and the rest of the country which flares up from time to time, often over historical revisionism. The fourth article discusses the Japanese phenomenon of convenience stores, of which I frequent almost daily. The fifth article piques my interest; I understand why he wanted to leave the Yankees (he lost his starting pitching role) but it is not clear why he wanted to be traded to a Japanese team. The last article is an interesting observation of Japan's view of the U.S., Obama, and the Democrats.

My last two articles on Japundit which I never cross-posted are:

Japanese Women Today (Washington Post)

Sukiyaki Western Django (Slate.com)

Serendipity Squared

The first bit of serendipity occurred when I was on the train going home from work and a guy sat next to me with a lanyard around his neck which read "Ohio State." I'm not one to usually accost strangers, especially in a foreign country, but when he pulled out his cell phone and it, too, had an Ohio State strap (hanging accessory), I had to ask him his connection to OSU. So we talked during the 5 minute or so train ride about how he and his wife had lived in Findlay, Ohio for almost 4 years while he worked for a Japanese company in Upper Sandusky. We both got off at the same station and it turns out we live a literal stone's throw away from each other. We exchanged email addresses. He wants to keep up his English and I want to practice Japanese so we decided to get together.

.

The first time we got together, he and his wife met Yumi and me for coffee. Today, just he and I met for breakfast at McDonald's. As it turned out, his 70-something father rode his bike up to get coffee. (I think everyone here has a bicycle). He told us he was heading to a local elementary school where his wood carving was displayed at a local art fair and said we should join him. Incidentally, my new friend lives with his wife and mother-in-law next door to his father and mother. So we walked over with him and saw the wood carving and the rest of the fair (it was all contained in the school's gym). Then he asked if we wanted to attend the Japanese Tea Ceremony that the school was holding upstairs.
.

I had wanted to see a Japanese Tea Ceremony since I first visited Japan in 2005 but never seemed to get the opportunity, so I was quite happy to accept the offer. It was done by a local middle school club, so it wasn't the most professional tea ceremony, but I got the gist of it. It was, well, very ceremonial. The only thing that really "happens" is that the guests (7 in our case), get served a snack and tea. But it took about 20 minutes because everything seemed to happen in slow motion and with great care, not to mention bowing about 10 times. Twenty minutes sitting on my knees was an eternity. The whole thing was a bit confounding, but interesting nonetheless. I have a feeling that Kabuki will result in a similar "huh?" experience. I can now check it off my list and look forward to the next cultural encounter. Note to self: heed the Lonely Planet's advice to never wear holey socks in Japan as you never know when you'll be taking your shoes off.

カタカナ (Katakana)

Katakana is one of the 3 alphabets used in Japan. It is largely the province of adopted foreign words such as　デパート (depa-to = department store), アメリカ (America)　and　テレビ (terebi = television). It's sort of a game I play to try to figure out what signs in Katakana mean. Here's a few I've seen recently - see how you do! Remember, Japanese has no sound for 'l' so 'r's can be 'l' or 'r' sounds. Also, almost all characters are consonant-vowel combinations (vowels and 'n' are exceptions) so double consonants (th, sh, br, tr, st, etc.) and words ending with consonants are rare - you'll see almost all words are consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel. (answers below)

.

1. レストラン (resutoran)

2. アップル (apuru)
3. ゴルフ (gorufu)

4. エスカレーター (esukare-ta-)

5. トンネル (tonneru)

6. クリスマス (kurisumasu)

7. ボックス (bokusu)

8. スケジュール (sukejyu-ru)

9. スチール (suchi-ru)
10. ブライアン　エンゲル　(buraian engeru)

photo: tatoo which says 'kyasarin' (presumably Katherine or Kathleen)

1. restaurant
2. apple
3. golf
4. escalator
5. tunnel
6. Christmas
7. box
8. schedule
9. steel

10. Brian Engel

Other Random Thoughts

1. Irony: The only website which regularly crashes my MICROSOFT Internet Explorer is MICROSOFT (Windows Live/MSN) Hotmail.

2. One day Yumi was complaining about my internet usage (with some validity) and called it the axis of evil (I asked her to spell it). I thought it would be better labeled the access of evil.

Gankoyama

This past Thursday and Friday I, along with my 2 colleagues, took 20 teenage students to Gankoyama - a campsite in Chiba - the big, rural peninsula near Tokyo.

.

Overall I'd say the trip was a success. The most stressful part of the trip was getting there because I wasn't sure about the bus from Yokohama to Chiba -- if there'd be space on the public bus for us all and how to purchase tickets. I met 15 of the students at 8am at school and herded them from school to the train station, onto a train, to Yokohama station and through the massive station to the bus terminal. We arrived at 8:30am where we were supposed to meet my 2 colleagues and the other 5 students. The students were there but the teachers were not. I was not pleased. Eventually we all bought tickets and boarded the 9am bus. Around 10:30am we transferred buses to a private charter we booked which took us another 1/2 hour to the campsite.

.

Almost immediately after arriving, it started raining and it pretty much poured until just after we left the campsite the next day! It was a cold, wet, muddy mess but it was fun. The kids made bow and arrows, cooked, chopped wood, relaxed, and fooled around.

.

We left on Friday at 2pm and retraced our steps back to Yokohama around 5pm. Despite the whole trip lasting less than 48 hours it seemed a lot longer!

.

For the spring we are considering a bigger trip to Hiroshima.

.

Hiking Japanese-Style

Saturday, Yumi and I headed out to Mt. Takao to meet up with Kayo to climb the mountain (elevation 600 meters = 1900 feet). Apparently there are ugly big-headed monkeys there but we didn't see them. It was a beautiful day and we had a nice time. At higher elevations we got nice views of Tokyo, Yokohama, and other mountains. It wasn't the clearest day unfortunately. If it were clearer we could have seen Mt. Fuji. We left the apartment at 8:30am and arrived 2 hours and several train rides later. We climbed from 11am until about 3pm then headed to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo to do a bit of window shopping and have dinner. We finally got back home around 12 hours after we originally left.

.
A few observations from the hike:
1. Japanese love dogs; specifically small dogs and they love taking them everywhere they go.
2. It is particularly Japanese that the whole path up the mountain was paved.
3. It is also typical that there were shops and vending machines all the way up.
4. Of course there were shrines, temples, and various other statues along the way.
5. Perhaps needless to say, in this country of 125,000,000 people squeezed into the size of California and being just outside of a conurbanation of 35,000,000 people (the largest in the world), it was crowded!

Mt. Takao Pictures

Takao

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Last Weekend

Last Saturday, Yumi, my friend Tomo, an acquaintance Misa, and a colleague Jonathan went to see the Carp play the Bay Stars. On the up side, it was a gorgeous day and to paraphrase an old adage, the worst day at a baseball game is better than the best day working. On the downside, the Carp not only lost, not only lowered my record while watching them to 0-5, but lost to a downright horrible team who has a record of 48-94 (0.338 winning percentage) and came into the game having lost 14 straight games! The hapless Bay Stars not only won but beat up the Carp 14-5 and knocked around their pitcher, Colby Lewis who came in with a spectacular 2.45 ERA! Tomo says I need to go to a shrine and rid myself of this evil spell; maybe he's on to something. Things to notice in the photo: the background features Japan's tallest building (Landmark Tower), the YMCA building right behind the scoreboard is where I work, and the score was 13-3 in the 6th inning and the Bay Stars had men on 2nd and 3rd.

.

.

On Sunday, Yumi and I went to a small, local festival and ate lunch before running errands. While some things were familiar (some music, games, rides, kids), some things were a bit different...

.

Playoff Baseball

I love baseball, but usually I need to be invested in one team to really enjoy it. Even with Cleveland out of contention for half of the season, I loved the end of this season. Entering the final weekend, after 159 games played and 3 to go for each team, 2 of 8 spots were still up for grabs. The games all seemed to be dramatic, too. Extra innings. Walk-off homeruns. 1-0 pitcher duels. The White Sox got swept by the 2nd place Twins to go from ahead by 2.5 to be behind by 0.5, then both went 1-2 the final weekend. The White Sox won their make up game with Detroit to pull even, then beat Minnesota in a one game playoff 1-0. Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and the NY Mets were jockeying back and forth for the two final spaces in the NL with Milwaukee winning by 1 game after CC Sabathia won his second straight start on only 3 days rest. He was absolutely incredible this season after a slow start and almost single-handedly dragged the Brewers into the post-season.

.

As far as Cleveland goes, it's really a shame that they had so many injuries and coudn't get it together. They started the season with two of the best pitchers in all of baseball, last year's Cy Young winner, Sabathia and this year's likely winner Cliff Lee who ended up going 22-3. In the end they went from about 16 games under 0.500 to break even by the end of the year. If they had gotten it together earlier (and not traded Sabathia) they could have made the playoffs. Oh well, wait 'till next year. In the meantime I'll enjoy the playoffs - and the Hiroshima Carp - Yokohama Bay Stars this Saturday (and hopefully finally see a win after 4 losses!)