The half-way point

Howdy, readers! Sorry about the lengthy silence, but I was studying hardcore for my exams. My last one was on Saturday, so I am finally free to enjoy two months of break. Unfortunately, those two months are the coldest in Japan, so I won't be doing a lot of adventuring around Tokyo, but I certainly welcome the break.

In spite of the frigid weather, I am going to the Snow Festival in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, next week. My friends and I found a great deal online that includes a round-trip flight, four days/three nights at a hotel, and tickets to a TV station (they happen to be popular tourist spots in Japan) and the Sapporo zoo for about $300. So around the end of next week, expect a post about the festival. I'll make sure to take LOTS of pictures!

Even though I'm on vacation, I still plan on doing a lot of work over the next two months. At the end of March, I'll have to take the placement test again, and I'm determined to get into at least level 6. So I'll be studying kanji and grammar every day. I've also vowed to only speak in Japanese with my friends as of last Sunday. It's going to be quite frustrating, I know, but it's the only way my speaking is really going to improve. It's just too easy to use English everyday. I must resist!

This is also a good time to take care of things for when I return to CMU. I need to make my senior year schedule, for starters. I have to apply for my Seniors Honors Thesis by the start of April. I've decided to do a project on Japanese video games in America (surprise). I'm very excited about it, and I hope to do some research and interviews while here in Japan. I've also started writing again. My Creative Writing advisor has agreed to do email correspondense with me for Fiction Workshop credit to help clear up my senior schedule a bit.

So that's about all that's going on right now at the start of break. Shout out to Mel: Happy 21st Birthday! We'll be celebrating with okonomiyaki tonight, a delicious Japanese dish ^_^ Also, love to Mark, who fell down the stairs earlier today, but seems to be alright. And to my fluffy white cat, who set his tail on fire yesterday. Don't worry, he's fine, but my god the mental image is HILARIOUS. Imagine a fat, long-furred pure-white cat running around with little flames on the tip of his tail, my mother running after him trying to pat the flames out. That'll teach him to sit on the kitchen counter while a candle's burning. Cheers!

New Year's Day

Howdy, homies. Forgive me if this post isn't particularly entertaining; my final exams are coming up and my brain is already beginning to fry from the mountain of studying I'm subjecting myself to. Oh kanji, how I loath thee...
But anywho, I thought I'd do a post about New Year's Day here in Tokyo. Unfortunately, I got sick the day before and couldn't go celebrate, but my friends went ahead to Asakusa, an area of Tokyo that is famous for its many temples and shrines.

Asasuka is most famous for the Sensou-ji, the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. The outer gate of the temple is called Kaminari Mon, or "Thunder Gate", and is a popular tourist attraction because of its giant chouchin, or lantern, seen here.
Beyond the Kaminari Mon is the Nakamise-Douri, a 250 meter-long shop-lined street selling a large variety of traditional and modern Japanese goods and souvenirs. Here it is decorated for the new year.

Here is a look at one of the shops. I especially like the masks. Very attractive. I wonder what my sister would think if I brought one back for her as a souvenir...

On New Year's Day in Japan, families flock to local temples and shrines to pray for good fortune throughout the coming year. Asaskusa boasts one of the largest crowds in Tokyo on this day. People wait as long as two hours to get inside the temple. Maggie said they only had to wait for forty-five minutes, though.0_0 Holy cow, that is a lot of people.

By the way, major thanks to Maggie and Melanie, to whom these really great photos belong. And shout out to my grandmother, who is awesome, as always. She knows why. See you after finals!

My rice cooker makes me feel inadequet -_-

One of the toughest things for me to find in Japan has been whole grains. White rice is pretty much the golden standard here, so I quickly gave up hope of ever finding affordable brown rice in Tokyo.

And then I found it at Seiyu last week. Go figure. Remember the Japanese store owned by Walmart? Now I can buy all the Great Value brand brown rice I need to keep me well-stocked in whole grains. Huzzah!

Usually, I make rice on the stove and let it cook while I prepare the rest of my meal. But with only one burner, things aren't that easy. So today I broke down and bought a Japanese rice cooker. Though it looks ridiculously high-tech, it was the cheapest one available at Seiyuu (~$60).

I spent about 45 min reading the instruction manual (with the aid of a dictionary), but in the end I had to enlist the help of a friend who has never not used an Asian rice cooker ^^. With her expertise, we were able to determine the (hopefully) correct water-to-rice ratio and let the cooker do it's thing.

Fortunately, the rice came out wonderful. Soft, fluffy, and delicious. Much better than my stove top variety. And that is how I lost to a rice cooker >_<.

I also had some green tea and wagashi, a traditional Japanese confection, for an afternoon snack. The wagashi I had today was daifuku: mochi (glutinous rice paste) stuffed with anko (sweet red bean paste). I know it doesn't sound delicious, but trust me, it is. The mochi paste is lightly sweetened, and the core of the mochi is usually filled with sweet red bean paste or white bean paste. The one I had (shown here) is made from green tea flavored mochi and the inside is red bean paste. Wagashi are usually served with tea, especially matcha to help balance the bitterness of the powered tea, and can be molded into many different shapes. The most common shapes I've seen are flowers, fruits, and animals like rabbits and cats.

As much as I miss Ben & Jerry's, I gotta say these Japanese sweets are growing on me. At first I thought it was silly to eat a "sweet" that wasn't very sweet at all, but now that I've been removed from American-style desserts for four months, Japanese confections taste more like sweet treats to me. I think I will miss them very much when I return to the States. But until then, I'll enjoy them to the best of my ability ^_^.

Oh hey, I forgot about that...

Today is the first official day of winter vacation at Keio, and I must confess I have spent the entire day online watching movies. Huzzah!

But tomorrow, the studying begins. Oh yes! Though we've two weeks of holiday, none of us exchange students can forget that very soon after we return, final exams begin. So from tomorrow onward, I will be reviewing material, praying that my brain retains enough knowledge to get me through the exams. I also have to complete my research project on culture shock. Good thing I'm already an expert on the subject.

I remembered yesterday that I have yet to post about the Keio school festival, called Mitasai, which was held in late October. It's two months late, but better late than never, right?

School festivals in Japan are a huge affair, especially at a prestigious university like Keio. High schools also have fairs, though I haven't been to any myself. The school grounds are transformed by a veritable maze of food stalls erected by student organizations selling everything from chocolate bananas, crepes, and waffles, to okonomiyaki, noodles, and beer. It's a great way to sample native foods. I myself took a walk on the adventurous side and tried takoyaki, or fried octopus (shown on the left). I couldn't really taste anything except fried goodness, so it was okay. Don't think I'll make it a habit, though.

In one area there was a stage where music and dance organizations performed. My friends and I stopped to watch this group perform a traditional song and dance routine of Okinawa. The guys with the big drums onstage banged away enthusiastically while the girls in front of the stage preformed hand movements. Both groups chanted in time with the musicians playing the sanshin, a three-stringed banjo native to Okinawa.

Clubs also took over the classrooms of several buildings. There were many student-erected bars, including one where I challenged a friend to a soccer match on a PS2 that was projected onto a large screen. Mark and I had our fortunes told by a tarot reader, and the lot of us enjoyed a traditional tea ceremony performed by a sado (tea ceremony) club.

Though it was a lot of fun, it was also somewhat exhausting. You have to constantly fend off swarms of students trying to drag customers to their booths. There was one stall that was especially enthusiastic: the egg stall. I think they were just selling boiled eggs, but my god were they excited about it. Their stall was at the end of a long narrow alley, so anytime someone approached the end, a group of about seven male students would crowd around them shouting, "Tamago! Tamago!", except in our case it was "Egg! Egg!". I ended up going past them at least four times, and they did it to me every. single. time. I'll give them points for persistence, but jeez.

So yeah, sorry it's so late, but I was pretty dead in November. Merry Christmas everyone!

Gods Bless Us, Everyone!

Guess what I'm doing?

I am sipping strawberry tea, snacking on my mother's homemade banana bread (world's best), and enjoying my shiny new iPod Nano. Christmas is usually on the 25th of December, but for me it's today because I got my winter box from my mom!

In addition to my winter clothing, she sent me my Christmas present (the iPod), a badly-needed computer game, a 4GB flash drive, and waaaaay too many baked goods. I asked for banana bread, and instead, she sent me the bread, a huge tin of peanut butter cookies and another giant tin of brownies. Why? I've no idea! But at least I have something tasty to share with my dormmates. Food shared with friends tastes better.

I used the promise of food to bribe one of my girlfriends to help me carry the box up the stairs (another good use for baked goods). She is trying to persuade her own mother to send her a package from America. Out of everyone in the dorm, I probably get the biggest boxes from home, but I know I'm not the only one that gets them. Packages from the home country are necessary for survival, especially if you're on medication. But when my friend asked her dad to mail her medicine from home, he said, "Can't you just go to Walgreens and get it there?" Uh, no!!

Not only are there no Walgreens here, but medicine is different in Japan. They of course have different brands, but more importantly, the strength of Japanese medicine is much less than Western medicine. It's also more expensive here. So when I had a cold in October, instead of going to the pharmacy and paying too much for weak medicine, I just weathered through it and had my mom ship an assortment of American meds for the rest of winter. Someone also told me that it's best to ship toothpaste from home as well; apparently, they don't put fluoride in Japanese toothpaste. I don't know if that's true, but I'm not taking any chances.

I also always have her include a jar of organic peanut butter and my favorite preserves. Not essential, I know, but we all have those comfort foods that we can't live without, and natural peanut butter is mine. Spread some on an apple slice with a sprinkling of cinnamon: it will become your favorite snack ever, promise!

On Tuesdays, I meet up with my Japanese conversation partner, Shoko, and some other girls for lunch at school. It's a great opportunity to chat with students my own age and improve my casual Japanese. We usually bring our own lunches, and today I brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich and a pear. Pretty normal American lunch, right? But Shoko had never heard of a pb&j sandwhich before! Her friend, who usually eats with us, knew what it was on sight, so together we explained what was in it and how popular it is in the US. Everyone was especially impressed that the ingrediants had been shipped over from the States by my mom ^^. They thought it was so strange and cute that I brought such a foreign lunch with me, they made me pose with the sandwhich and pear for pictures!

You may be wondering what they, the Japanese girls, bring for their lunch. Sometimes they buy premade salads, sandwiches (like egg salad), or onigiri (rice balls) from the University co-op. But they often bring homemade bento, their term for boxed lunch. It's usually half rice, some fish or cooked meat, and pickled vegetables. I've also seen them bring homemade salads. In contrast, I've brought homemade stew, steamed veggies, pb&j, but also onigiri and always a piece of fruit. When Mina came to visit, she bought me a bento bag with containers to take to school with me (shown here). She thought it would help me fit in better with my Japanese friends ^_^. She always encourages me to spend more time with natives.

I'm off to play with my iPod. Cheers!

"Happy Merry Christmas"

It's everyone's favorite time of year again, and even in Japan, lights adorn trees, seasonal signs are hung from department store buildings, and obscenely large amounts of people crowd every shopping center in the city.

But unlike America, where gift-giving is as sacred as Christmas Day itself, in Japan Christmas is more of a couples' holiday, a time to spend with that special someone, not your distant relatives. Gifts may be exchanged between couples on Christmas, but not between family members.

It's New Years that the Japanese really get excited about. New Years is the most important holiday in Japan, and people exchange gifts for the sake of the new year, not Christmas. Children receive money from their parents, and adults give gifts to people to whom they feel socially indebted, like their boss or a neighbor.

I had heard from a friend that Ginza had some especially lovely seasonal decorations up, so I decided to take a short day trip to explore the area. Ginza, often referred to as Tokyo's Fifth Avenue, is one of the premier shopping centers in the world. I saw Gucci, Prada, Dior, Armani, and countless other designer stores. The most iconic building in Ginza is the Waco department store, which sits at the main intersection above Ginza Sation.

Because it was a Saturday, the main shopping streets were closed to the traffic and totally packed with pedestrians. I didn't really do any shopping (as if I could afford Dior), but instead went around taking pictures of the decorations. Many other Japanese were taking pictures as well, so I didn't feel so much a tourist.

And though it has nothing to do with the holiday season, I have to include this: as I was walking to the nearby Hibiya Park, I spotted a Japanese man standing near the entrance of a building dressed head to toe in cowboy gear. Now, I never go up to people and ask to take their picture, but this was waaaaay too good to resist! I explained that he looked like he was from Texas, and I really was from Texas, so could I take a picture. He agreed, and a nearby man who overheard offered to take one of both of us. So behold: a real Texan and a wannabe Texan! Can you tell which is which?

Payback

I was surfing around the net the other day and came upon a blog written by another Texan (woohoo!) in Japan, and he had a list up on things he liked and disliked about living here. I think that's a great idea. Here's how my list looks right now:

Dislike (let's start with the bad stuff):

1) People who stare (see previous, lengthy post)

2) Food I can't identify is cheap and food I can identify is expensive

3) Not understanding the majority of what I hear/read. Or when in Shibuya, what I see.

4) Everything is sooooo much more expensive here than in the US! Especially with the horrid exchange rate.

5) Some (not all) Japanese girls. Seriously, do they eat at all? I mean, I see them in restaurants, but do they actually order food? No wonder they think all Americans are fat! Giselle Bundchen looks fat in comparison to some of these girls! Seriously, eat something.

Like:

1) I can eat sushi/tempura without going broke

2) There are adorable dogs EVERYWHERE and their owners dress them up

3) I have to walk everywhere. Most people wouldn't agree with me here, but I love to walk. It's probably the thing I always miss most when I go home to Texas- you can't walk there without frying, unless it's inside a mall.

4) Unlike many humanities & social science majors, I actually use my major every day. Haha.

5) The people that will actually interact with you are almost always ridiculously nice. Like, I mean, take-the-kimono-off-my-back nice. I think there's something in the rice. (oh god, did that rhyme?)

Things I Love/Hate (it's not cheating!):

1) Saleswomen. Everyone knows that Japanese people are generally kind, hospitable, and make excellent tourists. But what you don't know is that they save the very nicest people, usually women, for department store sales representatives. In America, I love to just go window shopping to look at all the lovely things I will buy when I one day have money. I have none now, so I don't buy. But my god, the saleswomen here are so nice, and give you ridiculous amounts of tastes/samples, I no longer window shop for fear of what I might buy. I have already been roped into buying stupidly priced items I didn't really need twice. And even after you buy something, they don't just drop you- they keep giving you free stuff. Seriously people: be afraid. Be very afraid.

2) Japanese cakes. I have never been to France, and I no longer have any desire to go. If the Japanese are merely imitating French pastries, I do not want to go anywhere near the real thing. They wouldn't be able to fit me back onto the plane. I have never seen such amazingly creative or delicious cakes in my life. And it gets better/worse: they have cake buffets! I have been to two and my god, I never want to know how many calories I ingested on those nights. It's very popular amongst Japanese girls, which serves to further my agitation: how do these girls stay so skinny!?!

So these are a few of my favorite/least favorite/ambivalent things.

Oh, and speaking of the staring thing, I've come up with a new game: Make the Staring Japanese Feel Uncomfortable. Before, I simply ignored everyone around me and stared into space. But today, I decided it would be so much more fun to catch people staring at me, stare back, and try to make them as uncomfortable as possible. I did it to two people on the train home, and I was right- it is fun. If you can't join them, beat them at their own game.