11/28/07 Labor Thanksgiving

This Friday we observed Labor Thanksgiving Day. Where better to celebrate labor on a Thursday night than under the revolutionary eye of Che Guevara at the local Cuban bar? I met a few new people as well as a few mojitos. Earlier in the day I bumped into an American working in Ashikaga that I hadn`t met before. I think that its amusing that I am still meeting foreigners after almost four months in this city. I think that there are a lot more people from other countries still hiding... Ashikaga isn't as small as it feels sometimes. So, this guy has apparently slightly elevated himself from English teacher to the person who keeps English teachers in line. I snagged his card and then we were out the door. Don`t know if I will ever actually call, just nice to network a little sometimes. Then back at communist headquarters I met a couple that is fairly new in town. A French guy who had met a Japanese girl in Hawaii and had moved to Japan with her. I gather that they are engaged. Relationship stories can become humorously complicated here. English is a second language to both of them. I get along with them quite well and have already hung out with them on a separate occasion. Fun times.


Last week Japan began its program of fingerprinting and photographing every foreigner entering Japan`s borders(with a few small exceptions, none of which apply to me). It is unfortunate that Japan is following the United States down a path toward police state, simply to combat a shadowy threat that may or may not exist. I find it especially amusing that while Japan claims to be doing this in order to stop terrorists, all of Japan`s recent terrorist events have been carried out by the Japanese themselves, most notably the 1995 Sarin attack on a Tokyo subway. Now every time I enter Japan my fingerprint information will be taken and kept forever by the Japanese government. I think that this is ridiculous, and I hope that the number of visitors to Japan decreases as a result. Here is the propaganda poster I`ve seen a couple of times explaining this nonsense.


It`s hard to be too mad though, as the US has been harassing its own visitors for some time with the US-VISIT program. Invasive laws might not seem like a big deal to an American living in the United States, until you realize how many other countries this annoys, who will then reciprocate with annoying procedures of their own. Americans entering Brazil are now required to provide prints and a photo. Just Americans.


On the lighter side, I recently graded another fat stack of students` essays. This time the students wrote about their dreams for the future. Here are a few short highlights.

My dream is to eat all kinds of fruits. I want to be a fruit doctor.

I want to be a loan shark ... I want to see people`s smiles.

I want to eat butter potatoes.

The future is bright.

11/26/07 Technical Difficulties

On my first day in Ashikaga, by the time I was dropped off at my apartment it was already well into the night. I received a quick tour of the apartment, but large portions of the explanations of things were unable to penetrate the fog of my jet-lagged mind. My only wish was that my escorts would depart so that I could go collapse on my yet unmade bed. When I was finally alone, I sat down on my bed and opened up my laptop to see if I could pick up any unprotected wireless networks. I found one! It was good fortune akin to finding a twenty under my pillow. Well, this weekend the wireless gravy train made it`s last stop. It was like the death of a rich friend. The end of an era. Me and free wireless had a good run together, but now its time for me to move on.

I will go ahead and get my own access setup, but it will probably take at least a week. This is an especially annoying time to be without internet, as Angelica is going to visit next month and I need to make arrangements and do research on travel stuff. Unfortunately my multimedia presentation of my parents` Tokyo time will also briefly be put on hold... Too bad so sad.

11/21/07 Family Time in Tokyo

I took my first ever vacation day on Friday, and me and the fam went out to discover Tokyo.

We had been thinking about visiting Kyoto, as it is pretty much the cultural heart of Japan, with many of the tradtional things that Japan brings to mind. I also figured I could show them the Ritsumeikan University campus as well as some of the places I used to hang out during my semester there. Unfortunately, we waited till the last minute and were unable to find any lodging. Once those leaves start changing colors, every old Japanese lady in the country has an undeniable urge to go to Kyoto and see all the pretty trees.

Tokyo, though, is nothing to be upset about. I've been there a few times now and there's still a ton of stuff that I want to do there (watching a Japanese baseball game and sumo match are presently high on my list). So, off to Tokyo we go. We got a hotel that I think was sort of on the border between Narita and Chiba. You might recognize Narita as the place where the Tokyo area's giant international airport resides.

The hotel was nothing worth mentioning, except for its occupants. The first shuttle that we took to the hotel was full of US airline flight crews, on account of this hotel being of American branding and in very close proximity to the airport. They jabbered loudly wherever we went, as everyone seemed to know everyone else. Their conversations were very informative, though I wouldn't call it evesdropping because they were talking so loud that I had no choice in the matter. They talked about what routes they were working on, and what they did or were going to do in whichever exotic country. My understanding is that they are only in one place for a day at the most before they get spirited away to the next destination. As a result, I think that they retain their obnoxious tourist vibe no matter how many times they find themselves in the same city.

That would be a very unique way to earn a living, I think. Sort of an international waitress type of situation. Serving annoying people all over the world. Might be an interesting gig to have for a year or two.. seems like I would get disgrutled rather quickly, though.

We dumped our bags in the rooms and then went on to the big city. No one had their heart set on something they wanted to do, so I figured Ginza(wikitravel page here) would be a good place to start. Ginza is a glitzy shopping district in Tokyo. Expensive fashion brands like Gucci, Prada, and Louis Vuitton all have lavish store fronts. These are the kind of stores that have their own doormen. I don't have much interest in entering these places, but it is fun to stroll around and window shop. Ginza also has an apple store, which is kinda cool, as well as a Sony show room.

We went in the Sony building to check out what crazy gadgets are in the pipeline. Most of what was on display wasn't real impressive. TVs, cameras.. blah. One cool thing that they had were some laptops with really strikingly good artwork on the case. I couldn't understand if that was a custom thing, or if you could just buy a removable case like you do with a cell phone.

Then we found the gem that I had been searching for, some kind of silly little Japanese electronic invention. We were treated to a storelady-guided demo of Sony's Rolly. Rolly is a little egg-shaped music player, with speakers hidden in each end. She whipped through all the ways you could quickly pause, skip tracks, and so on with a simple turn of this little egg thing's dials. The cool part came when she set it down and put it in dance mode. The little guy spun around, lit up in rainbow colors, and flapped his little speaker caps to the music. But screw using your imagination, I took a little video. Hurray!

Dances much better than I do, I'm afraid. The Sony lady is giving me a pretty serious frown at one point. Don't know what that was about.

Despite its obviously fairly tiny speakers, the sound volume and quality were considerable. Pretty cool little gadget. I wonder how long it will take for this thing to make it to the US. Though, I wouldn't know if it was on sale in the US or not, now would I?

Unfortunately Sony's Playstation 3 products were housed in a separate show room, so I didn't get the chance to do any tinkering with any games. So, back out to the cold streets I went.

I spotted a street vendor selling (boiled?) chestnuts and I snatched a bag. I recently discovered them, and they have become one of my favorite little treats. The meat of the nut is very soft, but I assume that this has to do with how they are prepared. The Tanaka family showed me how to properly eat a chestnut, so I will now pass this sacred knowledge on to you.

Step 1: Buy a bag of nuts from a grumpy old man outside of a Kabuki Theater in Ginza.

Proceed to pick up a nut and admire it, like so.

Then, you use your finger nail to make a slight dent in the shell of the nut.

Applying pressure to the top and bottom of the nut will cause the shell to split along the little crack you made earlier.

Admire the deliciousness hidden inside.

It took me a bit of practice to get it right. Its the same game as many of the other nuts you might have shelled yourself. Sure, you can always get the shell open, but how many million pieces will you have broken the inside into in the process? Its a delicate art. Sort of like calligraphy.

11/20/07 Some Three-Person Wandering

I did my best to show my parents around Ashikaga when I got home from work. I took them to pretty much all of the shopping districts in town so that they could buy souvenirs or whatever and be entertained at the same time.

One of the big shopping areas is mercifully close to my house. A decent sized mall along with many smaller separate stores is only a few blocks from my house, and its a breeze to get there by bike. Its also where you can find a McDonald`s and a KFC, so while I only took my parents there a couple of times, I suspect that they snuck over there to pig out while I was at work.

There is an interesting cultural thing happening with the Kentucky Fried Chicken`s in Japan. First of all, most of them have a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders. That by itself is pretty amusing. One of the restaurants in Kyoto that I remember always had their statue dressed up in a funny manner. Sometimes he was wearing a kimono, sometimes he had a little hat on, and so forth. So when Christmas time comes around, colonels all over Japan are dressed like Santa Claus(I think that Santa`s wiki page is a pretty interesting read, by the way). Another interesting KFC phenomenon involves holiday feasting. Everyone sees Americans eating gigantic birds for the holidays and assume that they are chickens, because there are no turkeys to speak of in Japan. I don`t know what the deal is, but I have just never seen or heard of them existing or being eaten at all. Anyway, so when Christmas comes around, I hear that everyone flocks(hihi) to KFC to get a big rotisserie chicken to take home. Christmas and KFC are intertwined to the point that I have heard of people confusing the Colonel with Santa himself.

Tom and Mom chilling with the Colonel. Are you down with the Colonel?

Woa, this gets better. So I was just taking a peek at the Colonel Sanders wikipedia page, and it linked to the `Curse of the Colonel`. Long story short, whenever the Hanshin Tigers (Osaka area professional baseball team) win big games, the fans would jump off the ebisubashi bridge in downtown Osaka into the river below in celebration. Well in 1985, after a championship win, fans threw one of these Colonel statues into the river along with the usual non-statue type people. And they haven`t won a championship title since! Bum bum bummm. You have all been warned.

So after that sidetrack... oh, I also brought my parents to school with me on Wednesday. They got to see a couple of my classes and witness all of the glory. They also had the chance(were forced to have the chance) to have one of our delectable school lunches. It was pretty tame, no fishies at all... they really lucked out. The Principal took us to Ashikaga Gakko (oldest school in Japan), and we did an abbreviated tour of the grounds.

This cool looking suit of armor belonged to someone by the name of Ashikaga. Funny it would end up here.. It was displayed in the visitor center for the Gakko(gakko means school, by the way).

Oh there`s more. So much more. Too much more, you might say. Let`s all meet back here later, shall we?

One last picture for your consideration. This is another list of rules, this time for a local Pachinko hall. Its even better than the video arcade. Give it a look.

11/18/07 Back From Tokyo

I just returned from a long weekend of sightseeing with the parents. They will be returning to the US tomorrow morning. I Hope they had a good time... I have a good amount of stuff that I need to write about. There's still even a bit left from last weekend!

Nikko, Nikko. So many sights, so many pictures. After doing a solid amount of exploring we had all worked up an appetite, so we all walked to a nearby little restaurant and had a bite to eat. First, let me explain a little something. In my humble experience, every single city, town, or fork in the road has some specific food that it is "famous" for. So, whenever you go anywhere, you are supposed to buy and enjoy this food(I think that Ashikaga is supposed to be extra adept at making soba noodles... kinda lame).

Well, unbeknownst to me, Nikko has an extra cool famous food called yuba. Yuba is what you get when you boil soy milk and then peel off the skin that develops on the surface of the milk. Then, similar to tofu, you can do all kinds of creative things with it: smash it, roll it up, even close your eyes and pretend it tastes like fried chicken! So when we sat down to eat lunch, the Tanaka's treated us to lunch sets with several dishes included. One was sweet, one wet, one dry, but just about everything had some sort of yuba in it. Yes, just like Iron Chef!

Mom and Tom discovering the delightful world of soy milk skin.

The last stop on our excursion was one of the best. A very classic Japanese garden named Shōyō-en was decked out in autumn hues. Here are a few highlights.

Mom getting a closer look.


Go ahead and give this one a click to see up close. You might notice that the leaves of the Japanese maple tree slightly resemble cannabis leaves. As a result, I will sometimes see the occasional old lady or little kid unknowingly wearing a hat or a T-shirt with a big pot leaf on it. Quite humorous.

Whelp, thats the end of Nikko. What a great time. Now, I have tons of stuff to talk about from this trip to Tokyo, whew. Having adventures is hard work. Later!