The Tokyo Train, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Crushed Between that Old Lady Muttering to Herself and the Suicidal Businessman

The infamous Japanese train system.The most crowded train system in the world. In fact, during rush hour (around 8AM) there are over a MILLION people per kilometer of track. I figured I'd take an entry to describe in more detail what the train system is like, since it is so different from home, its astounding. Hopefully this will give you a better idea of what its like for me every single day.

On Tuesday and Thursday morning, I have the privilege to ride the train during rush hour, when it’s so incredibly crowded, you can literally hear the train screaming “Okay! I give up guys! You win!”. Luckily, my station is sort of near the beginning of the line so it’s not too crowded at first, but as the train approaches Tokyo, it gets a little nutty. There are times when I’m standing there, getting crushed by the little old lady reading her book and the salarymen with his manga, when we pull up to Hata no dai station that has 15 people lined up to get in the car that I’m thinking to myself, “The laws of physics will NOT allow all of these people to get on the train. The train is going to explode!” and nonetheless, they all get on. Usually, it’s a salaryman that does the grunt work. Usually what happens is the salaryman at the end of the line turns around and walks backward toward the train door. And then he basically shoves everyone in, so that the whole crowd of people pretty much falls back onto each other. When everybody is squeezed in, there’s actually a guy who works for the train company who helps push the door closed because it can barely shut with so many people in the train. I’ve seen people’s wrists get stuck on the door, and the train still goes and only when the train arrives at the next station, can they pull it out.

The sickening thing about the trains is their punctuality. I know by me at home, when Metro-North releases its monthly statistics on what percent of the time the trains were “on time”, 95% is an extraordinary figure. When I mentioned this to my Japanese friend Motoko, she said that if that was the case in Japan, the entire group of conductors would be fired on the spot. You can set your watch by the trains. Not only that, but there are a bunch of other really convenient things they have at the station that should be adopted in America. For instance, they have these LCD screens that show you where the train is in respect to your station, either when its two stations or one station away from yours. There are also little jingles that play at every station whenever a) the train is approaching, b) the train has arrived, and c) when the train’s doors are closing.

The Yamanote line also has these really neat TV screens, one of which has a map of the Yamanote line with all the stops and how many minutes it’ll take to get to each one, plus info on delays, accidents, etc. The other screen mainly has entertaining ads, but also has horoscopes, the weather, news, sports, and “etiquette” lessons. There is also a daily English lesson, which is quite hilarious to the normal English speaker. For instance, last week the lesson taught the phrase “it’s all Greek to me” and all of its uses. I couldn’t help thinking to myself how I’ve never ever used or heard that phrase used in any type of conversation, and picture Japanese businessmen running around saying “It’s all Greek to me!” at any chance they get.

Exiting the train is a whole other game. It’s (unsurprisingly) very difficult to exit the trains when they are packed, because a lot of the people don’t have to get off at your stop and if you are at the opposite door, you need to make your way through the crowd (with a huge backpack in my case) screaming “Orimasu! Orimasu!” (“I’m getting off! I’m getting off!) in order to make it. I wish I had a video camera when the train pulls into Shinagawa station in the morning, one of the busiest stops on the Yamanote line. Usually I’m right in the middle of the pack and don’t really want to get off because I want to get to the other door for the next stop, which is the stop near my school, in order to be physically able to get off the train before the doors close. At Shinagawa, everyone BUT me gets off. So here’s my strategy. I grab on the one of the hanging bars and pretty much hold on for dear life. I kind of liken it holding onto a small stone in a rushing stream – the people pretty much flow right around me as I stand there, trying not to be swept away toward an eminent and messy end. It’s quite a scene.

Another weird culture note. EVERYONE on the trains reads either books or manga. In fact, Japan is the largest retail book market in the world. The weird thing is that everyone, and I mean everyone, who is reading has a little, paper bag cover on the book that hides the front and back covers so no one can see what they are reading. Why? I have no idea. And it’s not just a few people that have it – everyone does. When you buy books at a book store, they actually wrap the book up for you in its cover so you don’t have to do it yourself.

Another sound/sight that I’m going to miss is the sound of hundreds of feet trying to stay upright as they are thrown off balance when the train starts. You just have to accept that you are going to be closer to some stranger than you ever wanted to be in your life. Usually it’s okay. Unless they smell bad. Not fun.

One last, slightly depressing note about the trains. The Sobu and Chuo lines are notoriously famous as the train lines that the businessmen use to jump in front of and commit suicide since they run rapid through a lot of the stations and thus are a quick way to, for lack of a better word, “go”. You also see delays on those lines in the afternoons, which is the most popular time because the salarymen would never think of delaying the trains in the morning when everyone is going to work. To combat this problem, train companies have installed suicide (yes, suicide) doors on the front of the train. Basically, they are these doors that can sense if people are in front of the train and in a matter of milliseconds slam open, causing the person to fall into a little compartment under the train safe from harm. Pretty unreal right? The whole thing would kind of freak me out: expecting to get hit by a train at 60 miles per hour only to wake up in this little room under the train. Only in Japan, friends, only in Japan.

Hopefully that gives you a better insight into how the trains run here. It’s quite a fascinating system and I am really getting spoiled here before I go back to New York. Before the semester’s over, I’m determined to get a picture of the train when its super crowded to show you all what it looks like, because you really don’t understand what I go through until you actually see it.

In other, unrelated news, I have had two meetings with Japanese speaking partners this week (and one tomorrow) as I embark on my quest to speak more Japanese for the last half of the semester. The girl I met with today, Naoko, had me correct one of her essays about Columbus Day today. She was writing about how even though Columbus killed a bunch of Native Americans, he has a holiday that celebrates him, etc. etc. Two funny moments ensued. At one point, I was reading over one of the paragraphs, when out of nowhere, she says in broken English “Genocide…not good!”. Correct, Naoko! Correct indeed! Later on, when I try to have her explain to me what Columbus was like, she goes “Columbus…he was real bastard!” You hit the nail on the head there, Naoko. I was going to propose naming her essay: “Genocide – Not Good. Columbus = Bastard”, but decided against it.

Also, I’m trying to plan a trip with two friends to Phuket, Thailand after the semester is over before my dad comes. The hotel is $40 a night for a four-star single room, which can’t be beat. It’ll be really nice to be able to relax on a beach for a few days! I’ll keep you posted.

Jaa mata ne!

Go Tell It on (Taco) Mountain

Another weekend has passed by as I march toward and past the halfway point of my semester in Tokyo. Can you believe it? I surely can’t. I’ve started to single out the last few big trips I want to do before the semester is over in order to fit them in into the remaining weekends. But looking back on what I’ve done, I’ve really had no regrets so far. Though I’ve mainly left most of my sightseeing to the weekends at this point, I really have done a lot of cool stuff so far; much more so than a lot of the other people here. I find it crazy that a lot of the people in my program are satisfied with sitting in on a Saturday and watching South Park all day. I can’t bring myself to do that. But hey, if that’s how they want their experience defined, than that’s fine! I’m still having a great time.

On Friday night I was invited by my friend Rachel (born in America, moved here when she was four) to a private party at a club in Roppongi. She said she could only stay for an hour, but I figured I’d go out and meet her anyway. The club was really cool (and admission was free!), though there were a lot of middle-aged men there hitting on the Japanese girls, which kinda creeped me out. I met a few of Rachel’s Japanese friends and we all hung out in our own little corner, away from the glances of the weird old men. Soon enough, Rachel had to leave, and I contemplated leaving too, since I really didn’t know anyone else there. Luckily, instead of having to talk to the weird men, I spotted a girl from my Asian Business class and went over to her and joined her group. She was there with a few friends as well from Waseda University. They were really nice and we all chatted in Japanese and then actually got up and did some dancing. Go me! We left the first club around 9:30 and went to nearby Gas Panic! (great name) to join a “hipper” club scene. All in all it was a lot of fun to get out and meet a bunch of Japanese friends.

Yesterday was fairly uneventful, save for an Engrish shopping spree in Harajuku. My friend Dave bought two fabulous Engrish shirts, with these huge paragraphs of destroyed English printed all over. I bought a non-Engrish track jacket with some cool Japanese lettering on it. My first fashion purchase in Japan. I need to find some more Engrish stuff before I go back for sure.

Today Dave, Emily, and I decided to go hiking at Mt. Takao (pronounced Tah-cow, though I just called it Mt. Taco) for the day. We got to the mountain around 11:30 and took this rickety old ski-lift halfway up to the main base area. We decided to take the easy, paved trail up which wound though the forest (and past the Monkey-themed amusement park) until it reached Yakuo-in Temple. Yakuo-in reminded me very much of Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, since it was very elaborately colored and detailed and had a certain air of opulence to it. I’ll never tire of the temples here, no matter how many I see. After Yakuo-in, we continued up the mountain until we reached the summit, which I think was about 580 meters above sea level. The view was, though a bit hazy, very nice and I could actually make out Mt. Fuji in the distance. Mt. Takao is also famous for its soba restaurants, so of course being the tourists that we are, we had to indulge. Dave and I had some delicious soba with these cool little mushroom things on top. Emily had some with shredded yam.

We want a more strenuous hike on the way down, so we decided to take a trail that wound down the mountain alongside a river. The trail reminded me a lot of a hiking trail in the Northeast, except, of course, for the occasional shrine and temple along the way. For the first half of the walk we were literally walking in the river, which meant traversing across slippery rocks, which of course resulting in each of us slipping several times much to the horror of the other Japanese hikers, who always ran over urgently with these surprised looks on their faces as if we had spontaneously caught on fire. We emerged unscathed and made it to the bottom of the mountain in just under an hour and a half. The hike was really awesome and it was nice to see a more outdoorsy aspect of Japan, though I was upset that we didn’t get to see any of the wild monkey that were advertised all over the place. I guess there were all in the monkey amusement park.

Pretty busy week ahead of me; after my last midterm on Tuesday, I have a full schedule of meetings with Japanese speaking partners Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon. I’m looking forward to practicing my Japanese more, a goal that I made for myself for the last half of the trip. Since I’m living with all Americans, I really haven’t practiced as much as I wanted, which has lead to mishaps like those described in my last entry. I’ve made it a point to go out of my way to practice in this last month and half and hopefully improve my speaking even more. I’ve definitely improved my reading greatly, especially reading the kanji for town and city names.

Next week is our second four day weekend (a “spring break” of sorts), so I’m going down to Nagoya (by Shinkansen, the super fast bullet train – SWEET!) for three nights. I was originally going to go by myself (since everyone else is going to Kyoto, but since I’m going after the trip with my dad, I didn’t really want to go twice), but my friend Bernadette (the first Bernadette I’ve ever met!) had expressed interest in going, so hopefully she’ll be able to coming along and’ll stay in my room or something like that. We’ll figure it out.

I wanted to watch some of the Oscars, but since it’s on at 8AM here, I doubt that’s going to happen. Oh well, it’s pretty boring anyways. Hope all is well back in the states and keep in touch ya’ll!

Jaa mata ne!

Dan's Mistakes in Japan

Since I haven’t done much sightseeing or traveling this week (midterms have made life a bit crazy, though relatively speaking it isn’t even that bad) I figured I’d dedicate an entry to describing a few funny experiences I’ve had in the first half of my semester in Tokyo (hard to believe it’s half over already!) These are real stories. I'm not making this stuff up. Laugh all you want at my expense, it's quite alright. Enjoy!

The Money Story

On Monday I wore this pair of jeans that I have that has a small hole in the pocket. Not being any good at sewing (I barely passed Home and Careers in 8^th grade), I’ve kinda just let it hang there and haven’t really worried about it. I got off the train at the usual stop near my dorm and was walking toward the vegetable market nearby to pick up some salad stuff for dinner that night. As I was walking, all of a sudden a 10 Yen coin rolled out of the bottom of my pants leg. A nice Japanese woman caught it before I did and gave it back to me. I continued walking. A few seconds later, another coin rolled out. I ran over, embarrassed, and picked it up. A few seconds later, another. Then another. Then, for a period of about, I’d say, twenty seconds straight, coins were literally POURING out of my left pants leg, as if, to be crude, I was peeing money. This, of course, sent the overly friendly Japanese into a frenzy. It seemed like the whole town was running around try to pick up all the coins while I was there discharging Yen like a slot machine. It was a real team effort. Finally, the stream of coins stopped and I was stuck standing there extremely embarrassed. It was quite a scene though, seeing a bunch of Japanese people chase the coins that had run down my pants leg. Perhaps I’ll get to sewing that hole up sometime soon. A little old Japanese woman came over to me and said, quite seriously in Japanese, “I think you have a hole in your pocket.” Thanks, Grandma.

The Train-Catching Story

People run all the time here to catch trains. It’s just part of life. If they hear the “Doors are closing” song (yes, they have songs to tell people when the doors are closing), people will spare nothing to get on that train. It’s madness. I’ve also started doing the same thing. On the way home from school last week, I was going down the escalator at the station to catch the Yamanote Line (the main line in Tokyo) to my connecting station to head home. I was halfway down the escalator when I heard the menacing “Doors are closing” song. Uh oh. Then, I heard “Mamonaku doa ga shimarimasu, Go chui kudasai.” (The doors are closing momentarily, please be careful.”) I really wanted to get on this train. I sprinted as fast as I could down the escalator (on the right side, as opposed to the left in the U.S.) and raced down the platform. I was going to make it! The doors were still open! I was really out of breath at this point but kept running. Maybe it was the adrenaline? Or my stupidity, perhaps. Whatever it was, I reached the train door and lunged inside. I made it. I stood there for a second and looked around with a sort of “Haha! I’m awesome” look on my face. But the doors weren’t closing. People all over the train were staring at me and laughing. I was panting trying to catch my breath. I thought I had just made it. It turns out, that the train on the next track over was leaving and the one I was on wasn’t leaving for another minute. I realized this and, of course, put on my best “I meant to do that” face and sat down sheepishly. At least I got some exercise.

The Foreigner Attempts to Use Japanese Story (or stories, rather)

The first Japanese mishap I had on this trip was a doozy. I was in a small, ramen restaurant during the first week, eating with a few friends. We were excited, because this place was a real, authentic hole in the wall where no one spoke English. Of course, everyone designated me as the translator/orderer since I was the only one that knew some Japanese. The menu was really hard to read, but eventually we all got served some sort of ramen, which happened to be quite good Anyways, it was time to ask for the check. I sifted through my brain’s English-Japanese dictionary in search of the word for “check”. What was it? I was having a really hard time remembering it. Some works can be “Japanized” and will work, like “restoran” (restaurant), etc. But check really couldn’t. I also couldn’t use my famous “we want the check” hand signal – they probably wouldn’t understand it here. Ah! I finally found it. I called the waiter over and said “Suisenjo, kudasai”. He looked at me, completely puzzled. I repeated it again, “Suisenjo, kudasai”. No response. Okay, I’ll try another word, maybe this one was right. “Ano… (Um…) suiso, kudasai.” Now he was laughing. My friends were all staring at me. Finally I gave up and just made a hand motion. He understood and ran off. What had happened? I thought that was right! A Japanese woman sitting at the next table was also laughing. She walked over to me and asked in broken English, as she gasped for air since she was laughing so hard, “Do you know what you just asked for?”. “No…” I replied, worried. “You first asked the waiter for an academic recommendation. And then you asked for some hydrogen.” Great.

The second Japanese mishap I had was even worse. There are a lot of words in Japanese that sound very similar, but have one or two syllables switched. Since there are only 26 or so sounds that the alphabet makes, this is bound to happen often. For example, one I always mess up is keisatsu (police), kisetsu (season), seikatsu (lifestyle), and keiretsu (a large, Japanese business). See what I mean? Though switching those words in a conversation might just confuse the listener, there are a few dangerous word pairs that would be a lot worse to mix up. Case in point, my experience a few weeks ago. I was on the train and was kind of in a weird mood. I was a bit upset that I hadn’t been using Japanese as much as I wanted, so I was trying to ask people directions and stupid stuff like that just to get some practice. I was on the train home with my friend and this woman boarded with a little baby girl. She was adorable! She had on a little pink hat and pink shoes and was clinging to her mom’s leg as she boarded the train. The little girl looked at me as she got on. I smiled and decided to walk over and say hi. I walked over and said to the mother, in my cutest voice, “Kowai desu ne!!” or what I thought was “Awww…isn’t she cute!” People say this all the time! Everyone does! But something was wrong. The mother shot me the dirtiest look I had seen on this entire trip. What did I say!?! I was trying to be nice! I said it again, adding emphasis “Sugoku (extremely) kowai desu ne!” She got up and pulled her daughter away from me and stormed in the next car. The other people sitting nearby also shot me knife-laden glances. I turned to my friend, who spoke as much Japanese as I did and asked what I did wrong. She was in tears laughing. “It’s ‘kawaii’, Dan, ‘kawaii”.” Oh…no. I realized my mistake. This was bad. Kawaii is the word for cute. And it sounds awful like kowai. This mistake wasn’t as harmless as the one I described before. I had just walked over, me, a tall, American stranger, to an assuming Japanese woman with her little child, who must have been not over the age of three, and said , “Boy, she’s ugly." To make it worse, the second time I had reemphasized my feelings about her daughter's appearance, saying "Boy, she's extremely ugly".

I hope you enjoyed those few anecdotes. I’m sure there will be a bunch more in the second half of the semester, and as they come along I’ll be sure to forward them over. As for this weekend, I have a field trip for my Japanese Culture class to Zozoji Shrine, which I already visited a month ago. I did want to go again, though, so it won’t be too bad. Sunday we’re planning a hike up (or down, depending on how ambitious we feel) Mt. Takao. It’s supposed to be really cool, so we’ll see.

Jaa mata ne!

A Walk Down Candy Lane

So the last few days saw a return to normalcy in terms of actually having to GO to school, instead of sleeping late and seeing cool places, though I did some good sightseeing this weekend.

Spent another Thursday afternoon at TIS; this time I helped kids in both Paul (one of the other 6^th grade teachers) and Fiona’s classrooms with PowerPoint presentations they were doing on various brain disorders. I’m quite jealous of the kids, because they each get their own MacBook laptop. All Ossining High School gave us was 15 bomb threats, security guards that looked like famous singers and actors, and the freshman pit. Oh well.

The kids were actually doing quite well on their PowerPoint presentations and were learning to do good, quality research on their own. The prize moment of the afternoon, however, was when one of the kids, out of nowhere, just screamed out “ADHD IS SO COOL!” Yes, Andrew, yes it is.

Friday night was sweet because we went to this amazing Hawaiian burger chain in Gotanda that we found out about from a friend. It was really nice to actually have a real, American-style sandwich (besides Subway), because most of the sandwiches here are extremely weird, made with white bread (with the crust cut off, oddly enough), and have tons of mayo all over. So, it was a nice change, especially for the people who had burgers, since they were infinitely better than McDonalds, or even Mos Burger (the Japanese equivalent of McDonalds).

Yesterday, a bunch of people went to nearby Kamakura with TUJ, which is supposed to be really cool, but since I didn’t really feel like going with a group of 40 people (and because we had planned to go as a smaller group in March), I took a trip to nearby Kawagoe. People here always wonder how I find out about all these places, but it’s really as simple as using a guide book or just typing in “Tokyo Day Trips” into Google. It’s amazing what you can find!

Kawagoe was about 30 minutes away from here by train. I had heard that there was some cool stuff there, so I decided just to go and worry about the details later. Luckily, I found an English map and guide in the train station. The guys who gave me the map were very nice and, of course, asked me where I was from (EVERYONE in Japan asks where you are from, no matter what; asking what your job is/marital status, etc. is strictly off limits, so asking where you come from is the default small-talk question when you meet a stranger). I first headed off toward Kitain temple, a large building dating from the 18^th century. There was also this beautiful pagoda right near by that was quite a sight. I went inside the temple and happened upon this group of Japanese woman (and one man) in the middle of a painting class in the temple. The painting “master” was this old guy who looked like he came straight out of a Kurosawa film: bald head, large, imposing eyes, bushy eyebrows – it was cool. There was also this big statue of this fat man and people were touching and rubbing it; supposedly you get good health for the body parts that correspond to which ones you rub on the statue. I could make a bad joke, but I'll restrain myself. There was also this really cool collection of 500 or so stone Buddhist statues near the temple, all which had a different expression on their face. Some were really funny to look at and it was quite amazing that the same guy (supposedly) actually made all of them!

After the temple, I walked over toward the old Edo part of town, an area with tons of buildings that has been preserved fairly well from the Edo period, including surviving a few really large fires. The area was extremely cool to see, because all the buildings looked very traditional with the thatched, sloping roofs, sliding doors, and huge windows. Of course, the area was quite touristy, for example these guys that offered to pull you around in rickshaws for some exorbitant amount of money, but I hadn’t really seen many historical buildings (save the shrines and temples) yet, so it was nice. By far the best part of that area was so called “Candy Lane”, a winding road of shops that just sold various (and sometimes weird) types of Japanese candy. I really can’t describe (partly because I have no idea what it was) all the types of candy there were, but to give you an idea, I saw a whole bunch of crazy stuff, ranging from the tame: bean paste patties, dried fruits, and rice cakes to the weird: mayonnaise flavored corn nuts, dried sardines (candy? I think not), fried octopus balls, etc. By far the best item was this amazing snack I bought from this little stand on the side of the road. It was a waffle-type thing, shaped like a fish for some reason, that had melted chocolate inside. Usually they have bean paste in them, which I don’t really like, but this was like hitting the jackpot. It was amazing. And it was only 100 Yen (about 80 cents).

There was also this really cool guy who had a bunch of spices, like orange peel, chili powder, and sesame seeds, and for 500 Yen (about $4.30), he would mix them all together into some new sort of spice concoction that tasted nothing like any of the ingredients he put in. Another cool shop I came upon was this store that a bunch of antiques imported from around the world, including these really really cool wooden model cars and airplanes. I was curious, so I asked the guy where they made and he said in China. Odd, I thought, for such antique (and American-looking car). Then I asked when it was from and it turned out it was made LAST YEAR by this Chinese company that had been contracted by an American company to make old looking model cars and planes to sell to the Japanese. So much for antiques!

So, it was a fun and leisurely afternoon nonetheless. It’s also another option for a day trip that I can do with my dad when he comes, though the list of things I want to do with him is getting pretty lengthy at this point. I’ll have to narrow it down to the best ones.

Today was pretty eventless. I wandered around Hibiya Park for the afternoon, which is a nice little park in the middle of metropolitan Shimbashi in Tokyo. They had a bunch of booths for the Tokyo Marathon, which was held for the first time ever today. The route looked extremely daunting, though not longer than any other marathon, I suppose. I got some nice pictures of the lake and some flowers in the park, as the lighting happened to be quite nice since it had just cleared up after raining the entire morning.

Hope all is well with everyone! I can’t believe how fast it’s all going and I miss you all!

Jaa mata nee!

Just for reference, the first picture is of a small temple I came upon in Kawagoe. The second is of the 500 Buddhist statues in Kitain, the third is of a candy display in Kawagoe, and the fourth is one of the lakes in Hibiya Park.

The Swiss Alps, Japan-Style

Holy moley! Two entries in the past three days! How could it be!

It was a four day weekend, that’s why, and I had a fun-filled, action-packed, (insert third phrase separated by a dash here) two days.

Yesterday (Monday) I did a little bit of homework/midterm prep in the morning, got sick of it around lunchtime, and decided to head over to Ikebukuro, an area that I hadn’t really been to yet. Of particular interest there was this huge cemetery and the nearby Gokoku-ji Shrine. The area that the cemetery was eerily quiet and sort of looked like it was uninhabited. All that meant for me was that I was pretty much all alone in the cemetery on a beautiful, sunny day. Good times. The cemetery was real neat and much different than a traditional American one. The tombstones were much more ornate and often had bonsai trees and shrubs planted all around them. Also, every tombstone had a bunch of wooden fence-like planks in the back of them that had Japanese kanji written on them. Not too sure what that was (if anyone has any idea, let me know!). Gokoku-ji was also really neat, especially the giant statue of Buddha in the main square.

After that I wandered over to the main area in Ikebukuro which was absolutely packed since yesterday was a national holiday (National Founding Day – I can probably guess the story behind that one). It was wild and crazy and mayhem-like, so I basically walked around for a bit, had enough, and then headed back.

Today, as I mentioned in a previous entry, I headed out to Nikko (all the pictures in this entry are from there, by the way) – a town about 2 hours northwest of Tokyo. Originally, no one I knew wanted to go (everyone was going to Tokyo Disney but a) it was about $50 admission and b) it looks exactly like the one in Orlando, so I wasn’t too interested), so I was going to do it alone. However at the last minute, I heard through a friend that another friend of mine, Marcella, was going to go as well if she found someone else to go with. Bingo!

So we met this morning at 9:00AM and hopped on a train out to Nikko. The ride was a little more than 2 hours long and only $13 one way (there were faster options, but we were in no rush, and on a budget). Nikko is bordered by the Japanese Alps to the west, and beautiful rice patties to the east, which makes for truly gorgeous (I need more synonyms for "beautiful" because I repeat the same words in every entry -- I can't help it, everything is so great!) scenery. The town sort of reminded me of a Swiss town, with its winding roads lined with little shops and the mountains in the distance.

We got to Nikko around 11:30 and walked up the main road toward the shrine area. After a quick lunch, we headed over in the direction of Toshogu Shrine, which is commonly referred to as the most beautiful shrine outside of Kyoto. And they were NOT kidding around when they said that. In comparison to the other shrines and temples I’ve seen thus far, Toshogu was about 50 times more opulent than all of them combined. All of the buildings were lined with gold plating and the roofs were all made out of huge planks of wood and bronze. There were also these extremely intricate carvings all around of Buddhist monks, dragons, and other various creatures. One building has the famous “Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil” monkeys carved into the side (supposedly this where they originated).

Words (and even pictures) can’t do justice to the beauty of this shrine. The combination of the towering, gold-plated buildings, a huge five story pagoda, and the surrounding forest really made for an incredible sight. One of my favorite parts was in this particular area of one of the shrines that had a huge dragon painted on the ceiling. The monk explained that if you clap two wood blocks together in a certain spot of the room, the acoustics make it sound like a dragon screaming. He demonstrated, and sure enough it did (though I’m not really 100% what a dragon scream sounds like, but I’ll take the nice monk’s word for it).

After Marcella pried my away from Toshogu, we decided to go down to see Kendo Falls in nearby Lake Chuzenji. We finally found the right bus, after several wrong turns and several convenience store stops to ask for directions, and headed down (or rather up) to the lake. The bus ride was on this extremely windy road pretty much straight up this mountain. As we got farther and farther up, snow started to pile up all around. To add to that, you could see huge snow-covered mountain peaks all around you. Again, very much like Switzerland.

We got to the Chuzenji after a little while (where it was about 15 colder than Central Nikko), walked over to the falls, and quickly realized that it was totally worth paying 1000 Yen ($8.50) for the bus over there. The falls were not spectacularly tall, but were surrounded by huge cliffs and trees. What really sealed the deal was that all the cliffs and trees were covered in snow and part of the falls had frozen over near the middle. It was quite something. Again, the pictures don’t really do it justice, but it was sort of like a landscape out of Middle-Earth or something like that.

After the falls, we realized we had to head home and officially put an end to the four day weekend. Overall, I would say it was a definite success, though it’s definitely going to be hard to head back to school tomorrow.

Nikko was amazing. It seems like every week I find another place in Japan that makes me say to myself “I have NEVER seen a place like this before and everyone in the world HAS to see this place and it’s amazing and AHH!” and then I outdo myself with another place the next week. Japan never ceases to amaze me and everyone should try to come here if at all possible.

Jaa mata nee and be sure to check out my album from the graveyard/Gokoku-ji and my other album from Nikko on Facebook. I will try to put some on Flickr ASAP.

Oh-oh-Odaiba

Well, thankfully there are no more exciting weird food experiences to share that have occurred in the past few days.

Friday night I went with a friend to nearby Kamata to grab dinner at this great place that serves ramen for 390 Yen ($3.00). Who says you can’t get a cheap meal in Japan! In fact, I really think you can find a cheap meal mush easier here than in New York. So after dinner, a bunch of us just went to our favorite local bar and hung out and played darts. I met my Japanese friend Kasuke there and we were TRYING to talk about politics, but something must have gotten lost in translation somewhere because by the end I thought we were talking about politics whereas I thought I heard him ask me who was going to win the World Series this year. Oh well.

Yesterday I went back to Ueno Park to the Western Art museum that I tried to go to last month, but was closed. Well luckily it was open this time and even better, because it was the fourth Saturday of the month, it was free. It was a really nice museum and had a bunch of great work from Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. It also has one of the largest collections of Rodin sculptures in the world, which was neat to see. After the museum, I wandered around the area and came upon this fantastic guitar player (ironically, named Daniel) who was playing for a large crowd. Considering he both had the best name ever and was an amazing acoustic player, I bought his DVD, though I didn’t know Japanese parents named their kids Daniel, though I suppose he could have been searching for an amazing name to use on stage and decided on Daniel for OBVIOUS reasons. After that I went over to this really cool temple nearby where the plum blossoms were just beginning to bloom. The plum blossoms precede the cherry blossoms in Japan, but are just as pretty.

I left the temple and couldn’t help but notice this amazing smell in the air. Finally, after searching for literally 10 minutes, I found its source – sweet potatoes. It’s this great delicacy in Japan and they sell them right on the street out of these large carts. Of course, I had to have one. The guy basically cut a huge potato in half, wrapped it in paper, and gave it to me to eat. Sometimes you can get whipped cream on it, but I just had it plain this time. It was great. Perhaps I can bring that idea to New York City and sell them next to those great smelling peanut stands. I wonder if it would catch on.

On the way back, I stopped to watch another street performer, this nutcase name Hiryu, who was part magician, part acrobat, part juggler, part madman. He did a bunch of cool stunts and juggled and etc. and made tons of funny jokes in Japanese that I just laughed at to look cool. Then he balanced on top of a bunch of chairs (see picture). Yeah, I can do that.

Today Emily, Ashley, and I went to Odaiba, this man-made island in the northern part of Tokyo. It was total sensory overload. First, there are like 10 malls filled with every type of shop imaginable, including this huge theme park with like 50 rides, all indoors. We first went to the Fuji Television building, where they film a lot of the popular shows in Japan. The building is super cool and is built with a bunch of cool passageways and this enormous orb-shaped observatory on the 27^th floor. Touring the studios reaffirmed that Japanese TV is so incredibly out there, its unreal.

After that, we went back to the mall and happened upon this crazy store that, get this, allows you to pay 800 Yen (about $6.50) to sit in a room for as long as you want and play with forty or so cats. Emily decided to go ahead and do it and said that most of the cats were just incredibly lazy, though she did say one cat bit this little boy. Great business plan guys. Along the same theme, we also saw this shop in another mall that, yes, rented dogs out to walk for 1000 Yen an hour – and there were tons of people doing it. Oh Japan.

We also went to a place called Palette Town (seriously, don’t even try to figure out what the names of these places mean, I have no idea – the first mall we went to was called the “Island Mall” connected to the “Seaside Mall” which was right next to the “Venus Fort”). There was this huge impromptu rock show going on with literally hundreds of Japanese girls all screaming for this pop star named Kato something. So of course, I joined the girls in screaming for this guy, much to the amusement of everyone around me, including this policemen who, for some reason, tapped me on the shoulder and made an “X” with his arms. No idea what that meant, though I’m assuming it meant “Stop doing something” or maybe we playing some sort of weird game of Tic-Tac-Toe.

To finish off the day, we rode the giant Ferris wheel nearby (my second in less than a month, yay! Before that it had been literally three or four years since I had last ridden on one) and then headed home.

The four-day weekend continues tomorrow and Tuesday, though I suppose I’ll spend a portion of tomorrow doing some work and stuff for midterms coming up, though I doubt it’ll take me the whole day. Tuesday I am heading up to Nikko (about 2 hours away) for a day trip. I’ve heard great things, so I’m excited about that.

Keep in touch, ya’ll!

Jaa mata ne!

A day of body parts

I don’t think I’ll ever trust a Japanese chicken restaurant ever again, but more on that in a minute.

First, I have put pictures from my weekend at Hakone up on Flickr for those non-facebook folks, so check them out! http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickenteriyakiboy. Next, this weekend is a long, four day version of the regular thing, so I'm hopefully doing a bunch of fun stuff, such as taking day-trips, etc. Look for pictures (there will hopefully be a bunch) and a new entry at some point during the weekend. Finally, I apologize for the lengthy entry, but trust me, you'll want to read it through.

So life has been pretty routine since Sunday. Monday was another Japanese lesson with the kiddies at school, which went fairly well, although at one point I was asked to help a kid analyze a Japanese poem, which was kind of hard considering I knew about three words in the poem and the rest were written in ye olde tyme language.

Classes are going alright. Marketing is a COMPLETE waste of time, but at least I’m doing well on all the quizzes and stuff. Asian Business, even though it is a 100-level course, is definitely turning out to be the most challenging of all my classes, probably because its run by the Dean of TUJ. He likes to shoot questions at people rapid fire about the reading and records if we are right or wrong as part of our “Participation Grade”. Scary. Midterms start next Friday for me. Crazy, huh?

Today was certainly the most exciting day of the week by FAR. As referred to in the title of this entry, today was a day of interesting experiences with various body parts. I went to the International School for the “Humanities” lesson I usually help out with, but got to the school and was informed that Humanities was not on the menu today. Instead, Fiona (the teacher) informed me that we were going to be dissecting pig’s brains with the kids and that they were all extremely excited/nervous/freaked out. I didn’t mention that I was sort of feeling the same way at that point. But I was a good sport and said I’d be more than happy to help out.

So we went to the science room and set up table and then Fiona nonchalantly asked me to “sort out the pigs brains into 8 trays for the children”. Wait, you mean handle them? Um, okay. I opened the fridge and low and behold, there they were in all their glory, just waiting to be cut up. Poor pigs. So I organized the brains and covered them with tissues, which I thought would be cool to build up the suspense for the kids even more when I snapped away the tissue like a magician and revealed the brain to all of them like it was a rabbit I pulled out of a hat.

So the kids ran in and were screaming and talking about eating brains and all of that sixth grade-type stuff, but finally settled down enough to learn about safety. One of the rules that Fiona mentioned was “Don’t eat any parts of the brain”. Good advice, though I do wondered how a medulla oblongata that had been soaked in formaldehyde would taste. I handed out the brains and was assigned to three groups of three kids (my “brain trust” HAHAHAH!). Oh! Before that, Fiona wanted the kids to break up into groups with people “they knew they could trust but didn’t know as friends” in order to encourage the kids to meet other people. Though that wasn’t funny in itself, this little boy named Julian walked over to Fiona and said, very seriously, “I don’t trust anyone, Fiona. No one,” like some kind of bad guy in a movie. It was cute.

So the brain mashing began, and there were various screams of “Eww” and “Cool” and “What’s that!?” as I walked from group to group. Some of the groups were really into it and cut the brain up into various pieces and commented how it looked like “chicken” or “marshmallows” or “cream cheese” or other assorted foods. I was trying to be as helpful as possible, including helping the kids think up the answer to the question “Describe the brain in 15 words” to which I offered such gems as “juicy”, “slimy”, and “cute”. They didn’t like “cute”. Overall it was really really fun and different and cool and soon enough it was time for the kids to dump the brain parts away ("BRAIN DRAIN" HAHAHAHA!) and head home.

But that was not the end of my day, oh no! After that, I went to Ginza, the super expensive shopping district in Tokyo, to walk around for a while and then grab dinner. The area was really really cool and upscale and expensive and just fun to be in, even though I felt quite out of place. I wandered into a department store which had a whole floor of chocolate vendors selling for Valentine’s Day (Note: In Japan, Valentine’s Day is when only the women give the men gifts, usually chocolate. The men return the favor on White Day, March 14^th by giving women marshmallows – weird, huh?) and proceeded to walk around several times gathering numerous free samples of chocolate. I should have gotten some disguises to fool the saleswomen.

So after that I wandered around for a bit, went into the Sony Building and played with really cool toys, and checked out some department stores. Soon, it was time for dinner. Little did I know the adventure that would ensue thereafter. Ginza has a famous strip of “Yakitori” restaurants under the train tracks, which are little pubs that serve chicken and other stuff like that for businessmen, etc. I decided to see indulge.

I went to a place recommended by my guide book, which was a tiny little place that was blasting David Bowie when I walked in. That's a good sign, I thought. I got an English menu (another good sign) and ordered the “Yakitori Set” which I thought was going to be just skewers of chicken meat, which is what I had gotten at other places. A little while later, the waitress brought me a plate with skewers of several different types of meat that I couldn’t identify, though I knew they all were not the chicken I was used to. But I was hungry, so I ate them anyways. I noticed near the end of my meal that the waitress and her colleague where laughing in the corner at me. Now I was worried. Was I doing something wrong? I called them over and asked what each type of meat was. “Chicken” she said and I replied that I knew that, but knew they all weren’t “regular meat”. She then brought over this little poster with a picture of my dish on it and kanji for each type of meat next to the corresponding picture. From what I gathered, one of the skewers was regular chicken, one was liver, one was kidney, one was these chicken meatball things, one was heart, and one was….something else I couldn’t understand. I was "semi-okay" with kidney and liver and "marginally okay" with heart, though I probably wouldn't eat it again. Then, I asked her what the "mystery meat" was and she kept on pointing down. Chicken stomach? I asked. No. Chicken intestine? No. She kept pointing down. Uh oh. I knew where this was going. I opened up my phone, started the dictionary, and typed in “penis”. I showed her the translated kanji and she said one word: “Hai”, nodded, and ran away laughing.

I had eaten chicken penis.

Good god.

Hakone...ne!

This weekend, 24 other TUJ students and I traveled to Hakone, the hot springs (hereafter called “onsen”) capital of Japan. It was my first real trip out of Tokyo (Yokohama technically was out of Tokyo, but was a city nonetheless) and allowed me really to experience the unique parts of Japan’s culture. The trip was packed full of fun stuff, so my descriptions here won’t do it complete justice, but I’ll try to be as concise and detailed as possible.

We left early (8:15AM) yesterday morning and took a chartered bus down to Hakone, which was only about an hour and a half away. What was good was that many of the people on the trip were from the other two housing facilities, so it was a lot of either new faces or faces that I had seen but not really gotten to know too well. After the bus ride, much of which was slept through by yours truly, we arrived in Hakone and headed off to a soba place for lunch. Before lunch, we were waiting in a little shrine nearby and this cute old Japanese woman was explaining the history of the temple, except all in Japanese. When I mentioned that I could understand some Japanese, she mainly talked to me and I was expected to translate. The problem was I got about 50% of what she actually said, so my translation was probably not too accurate, but hey, no one will ever know.

Following lunch, we went to the Hakone Open Air Museum, a collection of hundreds of sculptures and interactive art, all arranged on this huge piece of property overlooking the valley. Quite dramatic, it was. The sculptures were incredibly cool and a lot of them allowed you to climb over, in, through, or down them. For example, there was this egg shaped one that had a bouncy “yolk” in the middle that we jumped on for a while. There were underground tunnels and stone mazes and huge climbing nets and stuff like that. It was essentially an artistic amusement park. I had really never seen anything like it before.

After the museum we headed back to our hotel in the main town. The hotel was incredibly nice and had both western and Japanese-style rooms. Our room (three other guys and I) was Japanese-style. The main room was covered in tatami mats and had a large table in the middle. We slept on futon beds that were magically taken out of the closet and prepared for us after we returned for dinner. What service! I had never stayed in, let alone SEEN, a Japanese-style room before, so it was quite a unique experience. It was pretty comfortable, I must say!

So after dinner, which consisted of a HUGE meal of shabu-shabu (basically you cook your own meat in a hot pot with veggies, etc.), tempura, rice, dessert, etc. followed by karaoke (I did a duet of “Barbie Girl” with a friend – perhaps she’ll put it up on YouTube), we went into the onsen. For those of you not familiar with the Japanese onsen, you have to be completely naked when you get in. And it’s not like you have your clothes close by; you need to leave them in a cubby in a completely different room and only have a tiny tiny little towel to cover you. As expected, many people were a bit nervous (myself included) with the whole situation, but we knew that’s what we came here to do. So we went down, rinsed off (required before you get in), stripped down, and hoped for the best. The funny thing was, once we got in, all the nervous disappeared and was replaced by one of the most relaxing, fulfilling experiences of my life. An onsen is NOT like a Jacuzzi. First, it is about 25 degrees warmer and comes from natural underground springs. Next, there are a bunch of minerals and vitamins that naturally occur in the water, which give it a milky gray color. Finally, you really can’t stay in for more than 10 minutes. A few people tried to and quickly got out because they started to feel dizzy. Let me just say, faithful readers, that all of you MUST experience onsen before you die. I can’t describe how wonderful it feels not only when you are in the water, but after you come out, dry off, and relax. I felt like I could have laid down in the hallway outside the onsen and just fallen asleep. Quite a great experience!

So after the onsen, all of us gathered in a friend’s hotel room, drank some plum sake and wine, and just hung out. It was really great to bond with the people there and meet/make new friends. That was definitely one of the trip’s highlights.

We woke up this morning bright and early, went into the onsen one last time, and then went off to nearby Odawara Castle. By far the highlight of the castle was that they rented out full samurai armor and swords for 200 Yen to tourists. Of course, we indulged and got some great pictures out of it. Next, we went to my favorite part of the trip, Daiyuzen, an enormous forested area full of temples and shrines. This is just one of those things that words won’t do justice (check out my pictures on Facebook to get a better idea). The best part was that the main temple was perched wayyyy on top of a staircase of over 200 stairs. It was quite the workout. We got to the top and were encouraging all of the Japanese tourists that were climbing the stairs, screaming stuff like “Ganbare!!” (try hard!) and “Ike!!” (go!). It was funny.

It doesn’t seem like a lot, but they certainly packed a whole bunch of stuff into the trip and it was great to experience many different aspects of Japanese culture, in addition to meeting a bunch more great people. Again, I definitely could not pack all of the details into one journal entry, so if you are interested in more of what happened, shoot me an e-mail and be sure to check out my pictures!

Jaa mata ne!

Honyaku de Michi ni Mayotta

I cannot believe that today marks 1 month of being in Japan. At the beginning of the trip I was thrilled because the days seemed like forever and it was like I had infinite time to go around and explore Japan. But once classes started, that all changed. Though it’s nice to fall into a routine in your everyday life, the consequence is that everything starts flying by faster and faster every day. The next thing I know, it will be April. I need to enjoy it all I can.

Enough of that.

On Monday, it was my Japanese teaching shift at the International School. The kids were all riled up because they were all going on an overnight ski trip the next day. I would NOT want to be a chaperone for that trip, considering that 5^th through 8^th graders will be pent up in a hotel for 3 nights with nowhere to go. I overheard one of the boys in my class saying “Yeah! I’m bringing my PRANK SET this year!” Best of luck to the teachers and chaperones, I’ll be thinking of you.

So the kids weren’t that productive, so the teachers just decided to show a Japanese film that they had found in the office. They hadn’t screened it before showing it. Of course, that meant there was going to be a sex scene, and alas there was. Most of the kids just screamed like a loud clap of thunder hit. I was just sitting back and laughing while the other teachers literally knocked over people running to the TV to turn it off. Can’t make that stuff up.

Tuesday afternoon I decided to visit Shinjuku again and go to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, better known as the hotel from Lost in Translation, pretty much my favorite movie and what originally sparked my interest in Japan and its culture. The hotel was pretty much the best ever (and you guys KNOW I don’t use superlatives often :p). It occupies the 41^st – 51^st floor of the Shinjuku Park Tower. On the 41^st floor was this fabulous lounge with bamboo growing everywhere (see first picture) where they serve tea and cookies all day. More on that later. I went up to the top to check out the famous bar (see right) from the movies. The employees were a bit skeptical of my picture taking, but once I explained in Japanese that it was my favorite movie, blah blah blah, they let me in for a few minutes (I’m assuming they’ve probably gotten that same stupid request many times before). It definitely looked like the bar in movie, though the whole room is a lot smaller than it seemed on film. I took a bunch of pictures and marveled at the $150 set dinner menu and then went back to the tea room. I figured I’d let loose and decided to order some tea -- 1400 Yen for about three cups worth of tea, plus cookies – a bit expensive, but SO worth it. The view was spectacular and the whole thing was very relaxing, though I certainly felt out of place with my dingy backpack and sneakers in a room full of the Prada-wearing elite.

After my tea, I headed back to the station and went to Shinjuku’s equivalent of Times Square, home of Takashimaya, one of the world’s most famous department stores. It’s about 12 floors or so and is pretty much packed full of extremely expensive clothing, houseware, kimonos, garden tools, etc. Again, feeling out of place, I headed over to the 11 floor bookstore and checked out some guidebooks (in English, thankfully) for a bit. Had a weird experience, though. When I was walking toward Takashimaya, I heard a voice behind me say “Do you speak English?”, so I turned around to see who it was. It was this guy and his wife, stereotypical hippies up and down, who had giant backpacks and looked like they hadn’t bathed in years. The guy explained that him and his wife, who had some spiritual name like “Soaring Bird” or “Breast-feeding Elephant” or something, had been traveling across the world (yes, the world) and needed some bus money to get to Tokyo Station. After further inquiry, I found out that they had left from Turkey almost a year and a half ago and went West, going through all of Europe, flying to NYC, going to LA and then to Tokyo. They set out with literally NO money and traveled only on donations from people that they met on their travels. Pretty unreal. Of course, their whole purpose was to unite the world under one God and all that, but I was pretty amazed. They slept on the street or in parks most of the night, unless people brought them into their homes to stay overnight. So after talking to them for a few minutes, I gave them 200 Yen and said goodbye. Amazing, huh?

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend of a friend who lives in Tokyo. This guy is a big deal. He’s around 50 or so and recently retired from being the Director of Japan Operations for Morgan Stanley. Wow. To top that off, he’s married to Yoko Ono’s niece. We had a great lunch at The American Club (sweet!), where I had falafel with eggplant and hummus spread on top. Nice to have that meal once in a while!

Anyways, today was uneventful for the most part, though I did spend some of the night playing Super Nintendo downstairs. Early Saturday morning we head to Hakone for one night and will return on Sunday morning. I’ve heard great things about Hakone, so I’m very excited to see what it is like.

Jaa mata nee!

P.S. Just in case you cared, the title of this entry LOOSELY translates to "Lost In Translation", though it's more like "I lost my way in the translation". No wonder there's so much Engrish here.