And so ends Febuary
Trip Start
Jan 27, 2008
1
6
Trip End
May 31, 2008
Hirakata, Japan
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
I recently bought a cell phone. It's really pretty cool. I got the most basic of plans and the most basic of the phones, but it still comes with a bilingual option (which is rather essential), a navigation dot - this particular application stayed in Japanese so I have no idea how to use it -, An FM radio - which is really neat, but I keep forgetting my headphones that work with the phone so I don't get to listen to it often --, a kanji scanner/translating feature (this one hardly works at all, you have to have an incredibly steady hand, which I don't and the translation it gives is really just an explanation of the word in Japanese), there is also a Japanese -English dictionary which works about half the time. I'll type in the furigana and it'll show me the option of the kanji that I'm trying to look up, but when I click 'DEFINE' more times than not it'll say "no matching data". So in theory all the applications are awesome, but they never actually work . I got the AU A5527SA, shiny white model. It's still cool.
This past weekend was a bit of a disaster. Originally there was a plan to go on a trip to Asuka. We were going to take all day and rent bicycles and go around to sights up there, graves, shrines, temples, mythical rocks etc etc. We were going to have a picnic lunch by the river. It was going to be way awesome.
That was the plan. This is where it all goes wrong. So I got up at 5:50 in order to catch my bus to Hirakata Station at 6:43. Turns out, I looked at the Hejitsu (week day) schedule, on the weekends the first bust comes at 7:12. So I went running out to my bus only to get there at 6:40 and realize that it wasn't coming for another 30 minutes. So I went back home for a half hour. Then at 7:12 I took a bus to Hirakata Station, and had absolutely no trouble figuring out how to purchase a ticket to Tambabashi Station. I left myself extra time just in case I couldn't figure it out, I have a predisposition towards getting lost on mass transit. I walked up to the platform and my train was already there so I got on the express and got to Tambabashi at 7:50. When I look back on it now, my train prowess was actually quite of an accomplishment on that day.
My entire class was set to meet at the ticket machines at 8:30. Yeah, I was a little early, but better early than late right? Especially when we were transferring trains at Tambabashi from the Keihan line onto the Kintetsu line which we take us on the 1 and ½ long trip to Asuka (840 yen). I was starting to get worried when no one showed up, but at 8:15 two other foreign students from one of my professors' other classes showed up. One was from Finland and the other from Norway. 8:40 came around and no one else had showed up. We decided that somehow we were waiting at the wrong ticket machine so we bought the tickets and hurried down to the train, it was set to take off in 4 minutes. Just as we were about to get on the train our professor comes up. "Oh, the field trip has been canceled. Did you not get the email?" No actually. I'm a home stay. I don't have internet at home. If you didn't send out the message before five o' clock yesterday evening I didn't get it. Luckily I was able to get a refund for my Asuka ticket and just ended up wasting 420 yen on the train to and from Tambabashi.
I had told my host family that I was going to be gone all day and so they all made plans. If I had gone back home my Okasan would have cancelled her plans because she felt obligated to be at home with me. I didn't want to make her do that, so I went to school and abused the internet for a few hours. I also got a hold of some friends and met up with them at 2 to go to Kuzuha Mall. That turned out to be a lot of fun.
Then on Sunday I met up with a different group of friends to go to Kyoto. We spent an hour or so looking for what we then believed to be a nonexistent English book store, before giving up for a while and getting lunch at Mr. Young Man. Good food, far too many people smoking indoors.
Then we wandered around in the snow for a while before we found a different bookstore. It was in a department store-ish building so we attempted to use their bathrooms as well, but my bad luck continued. As it turned out the only working women's toilet in the entire store was one of the squatty potties that none of us could figure out how to use. I don't know if it was a good thing or not that no Japanese women were waiting to use the bathroom. On the one hand it would have been horrible embarrassing to have them look at us like we were nuts, but on the other hand they could have explained how to use the toilet. But that would have been an incredibly awkward conversation, probably using words and terms that I have no idea what their English equivalent would be, and no doubt this entire conversation would have involved way too much gesturing. I ended up buying the next book in my series from there.
At BAL - the department store - we ran into a British man who knew where the non-existent English book store was and gave us better directions to find it. So we eventually did. But all the books there were ridiculously expensive so we didn't stay long. We all took a moment to browse the manga, but the cheapest one was 25000 yen (about 25 USD), its kind of funny to thing that these books originated in Japan (where at the most expensive would have been about 3 dollars) and then were sent to the US where they were translated (and would have been about 10 dollars) before they were sent back to Japan (and then because of shipping and handling and supply and demand principals have now become 25 dollars).
We walked around in the snow for a while just looking at all the neat little shops in the arcade. At one point we passed a large KFC. The menu was mostly the same but they do funny things to the biscuits. They make them donut shaped but like three donuts tall and generally fill them with honey (I can't testify to the taste because I have simply seen the TV ad for it). But outside of the KFC - and this appears to be the standard for all the KFCs I've seen - There is a large Colonel standing out there with his cane. Most of the ones I've come across are dressed up in scarves and hats - not unlike the Ojizo-san that are littered about - I think it's only scarves and hats because its winter and keeps snowing, it will be interesting to see how they dress the Colonel statues up come summer.
Then we went to a Giant Book-off. Two floors of one dollar manga. It was beautiful. All the walls were covered with manga, reaching from literally floor to ceiling. The bookcases that made up rows were close together to try and fit even more manga in the store. We went at a decidedly non-peak hour, and the store was absolutely crowded - Mom would have hated it, she can't even stand how cramped Anime Kingdom was before the new management took over and this was ten times more crowed - People were standing in every available space just reading the manga. On the second floor there were games, CDs and DVDs for cheap as well. The six of us spent about two hours in the store and that still wasn't enough time. I ended up buying about 10 mangas for the price of one. They're all in Japanese but that's okay, practice right? No one talked on the train back home because we were all too engrossed in our mangas. I felt very Japanese. We all made quite a sight too because Zan was the only one that didn't have some form of dictionary in their hand as they translated and read. I meant to take a picture of it, but I got to engrossed and forgot.
That was it for the weekend before last. This past weekend was just as exciting and eventful. On Saturday me and Lauren participated in one of the Experience Japan programs. It was a Sports fest. I got all my hopes up that we were going to a nearby school to watch, I brought a camera and everything, but as it turned out we just made our own. Me, Lauren and one other foreign student showed up and then the 5 Japanese girls that were hosting the Sports fest were the only ones that came. We went to the field out back and played volleyball, dodgeball and kickball. I'd forgotten how much fun kickball was. I had also forgotten just how much I suck at sports. But it was still a lot of fun.
Afterwards I went back to the seminar house to hang out with Ashley and Jen. The rules at Sem 3 are ridiculously strict. Among a long list of other things guests are not allowed to eat in the building, which is really hard because Ashley is always baking things and they're all so delicious. But as it turns out guests are actually allowed to eat cookies and juice. Not that this revelation changed anything. I was still eating over there regardless of the cameras. In fact I have food in the fridge for the times I do come over, just so I'm not always just eating their food. I came over with the intention of studying. That didn't happen. We ended up eating way too much and then just watching the first four episodes of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - well they actually probably continued watching it after I had to leave.
While waiting for the bus to take me to Hirakata Station I got a drink from one of the vending machines. It was manga pudding. It said to shake it five times so I did. I didn't realize how vigorously it actually wanted me to shake it. It turns out that it was literally manga pudding in a can. It was good though. I just wish I had had a spoon so I could have gotten all of it out of the can. It was just another vending machine adventure. I know it is considered socially unacceptable to eat in public (seated in a restaurant or lounge is okay but standing outside, on a bus, walking around, are all big no-nos) but I really want snack vending machines. They have drink vending machines, instant ramen vending machines, hot coffee vending machines, alcohol vending machines, cigarette vending machines (also they allegedly have used panties, bug, and pizza vending machines as well, but I haven't seen any yet. I'll definitely be looking for them when I go to Tokyo in two weeks) but there's no food snack machines.
When I finally did get to Hirakata I realized that yet again I misread the bus schedule. I don't think I will ever fully figure out the bus system, every time I think I have it I go and screw up again. So I recently discovered that one weekdays my bus to Koda actually runs until 9:30 which was great, but because I was thinking of that, I looked at the weekday schedule. On the weekends my bus to Koda stops running at 8:00. I got to Hirakata planning on taking the 9:30 bus only to realize that I had missed it by and hour and a half. Luckily in my first week I had made a contingency plan for just such and occasion. I caught the number 1 bus that takes me to Todana. Todana is about four stops before mine, but that bus runs until 11:00 at night, so I already knew that at least once (and probably more often than that) I would be forced to walk from Todana, so that's what I did. It actually wasn't that bad. It was the first time in a long time that it was actually relatively warm outside and it was only about a 15 minute walk to my house from there.
Then on Sunday a few of us went over to Lauren's host family's house to have a Girls Day Party. Girls Day is a Japanese holiday to honor girls. The whole day is seeping with rituals and traditions, that I didn't quite understand the explanation behind, but I get the feeling that a lot of it is simply untranslatable. What we did was eat a lot of food, eat a lot of sweets, drink a lot of alcohol (not me personally, I stuck to grape juice for the most part, although I did try the plum wine. I think it was the alcohol aspect of it that made it taste kind of funky, kinda like eating wasabi, it makes your whole mouth tingle) and set up the ceremonial doll set. The food was so delicious; we quite literally ate for three or four hours.
At a break between meals essentially, we all went upstairs to set up the doll set. At the top are the Prince and Princess, the step below them are the three ladies in waiting, below them are the five musicians, below that are the two warriors, below them are the three court officials. There is a specific order that you are supposed to place the dolls upon the dais. Once they are all up you give them all their accessories. It is a very complicated process. Luckily there were directions and pictures. But even having them it was still tricky. Supposedly there is also some superstition that if you don't put away the doll set by the time Boy's day comes around (a month later) its said that your daughter won't get married.
There were cookies, cake, omochi, really good homemade bread, a rice-egg and uzumaki dish that was decorative and delicious, and copious amounts of grape juice and alcohol. It was really funny to watch all the Japanese adult being so amazed at how much alcohol the foreigners could take. I was amazed too, at the end of the party there was a large stack of empty beer cans. It was a lot of fun.
That night I didn't want to even think about food, but I had already told my Okaasan that I was making spaghetti. Not that I didn't want to make spaghetti for my family, I did, but I was so full. The whole spaghetti thing came from various conversations about spaghetti.
Okaasan and I were talking about American foods and she asked me what my favorite American food was. I tried to explain that America doesn't really have a particular food - unless you count McDonalds - because America is just a mesh of so many cultures that each bring their own food, she didn't seem to understand. So I finally just gave up explaining and said that spaghetti was my favorite. The next night she made this dish that was pasta noodles topped with kind of a fruity curry sauce and various vegetables, mushrooms, onions, daikon etc. It was good. When Misa came home later that night she asked what we had had for dinner. Okaasan immediately replied with 'Spaghetti' I was shocked to say the least. It was good, but it certainly hadn't been spaghetti. When she asked me later that week if I would make some American food and I said spaghetti. I then told her how American spaghetti is very different from Japanese spaghetti.
Those of you who know me, know that I can't cook. You know I can basically set any kitchen appliance on fire by simply looking at it. You know 911 called me when I made cookies once. So I have to admit that I had an ulterior motive when I said that I would cook spaghetti. I could show Okaasan 'American Food' but it would also be exceedingly simple. Very few chances to screw up spaghetti. I had Mom send me Poppy's recipe and then I simple had to find spaghetti sauce - which is really rare in Japan - but I did find spaghetti sauce, not the one I'm used to but it was spaghetti sauce none the less.
So my spaghetti went off with out a hitch. I used Poppy's recipe and then I added the ground beef like Mom does. The noodles Okaasan took over after they almost boiled over, but that's okay, she's probably a noodle expert. I hadn't been able to find garlic butter to make my own garlic bread, so I chopped up some garlic and then I spread some butter on bread and threw on the garlic and stuck them in the broiler.
Everyone said that my garlic bread was good, I'm not sure whether it was just for the sake of manners of if it was truly good seeing as I don't eat garlic bread. The spaghetti was good. No where near as good as Poppy or Mom's but it was edible and everything got eaten so I took that as a good sign. In fact I was the only one that didn't go back for seconds (I wasn't sure if Maki's husband was coming over, he's usually over on Sunday so I made enough for six people just in case, he didn't end up coming, which is okay because I don't think I would have wanted him to taste my spaghetti because I'm 76% sure that he's a chef).
After that we made some Winney the Pooh brand chocolate cookies. It was a lot of fun and the cookies came out tasting okay (and extremely flour-y).
I've been very busy so I haven't been keeping my promise about updating once a week. Sorry. Feel free to pester me to keep me on schedule for updating.
Also I have just posted a bunch of pictures to facebook so go check them out. I haven't figured out how to effectively post pictures here yet, but I think that everyone on here that doesn't have access to facebook I have emailed a link too so it shouldn't be a problem, if you didn't get a link please tell me. Especially Uncle Tony et al. I don't believe I have your correct address and would like to remedy this.
