Archive for category Life in Japan
June 27, 2004 – My family arrives in Japan
Posted by Barniferous in Hello House, Tokyo, Visitors on June 27, 2014
A mere 19 days after I dropped off my University friends at Narita airport, I was once again taking the cheap trains to pick up visitors. This time I would be picking up my parents and sister.
My parents would have never considered traveling to Japan if I wasn’t living here. In fact, they have never traveled outside of North America before. My parents are in their mid 50s and live in a small town west of Winnipeg. My father is an air traffic controller – he was in the Canadian Forces for 27 years, retired, and then started doing the same job as a civilian. He is one of the friendliest people I know and has no issues starting a conversation with complete strangers. My mother is a teacher’s assistant at an elementary school. She specializes in helping hearing impaired and deaf students. My sister is a University student who lives in Winnipeg. She is in her early 20s, short, and very smart. However, she will believe almost everything I tell her, a fact that I occasionally abuse for comedic effect.
When I picked up my friends from the airport, I ended up having to wait a long time for them to clear customs and immigration after their flight landed. I had considered arriving about an hour after my family’s flight landed, but was worried that if they somehow got through early, they would be worried that they couldn’t find me. I got to the airport exactly when their flight arrived, and ended up having to wait about 90 minutes for them to show up.
At this point it had been 9 months since I had seen my family. My sister looked mostly the same, but my parents looked older. They all commented on how skinny I looked, since I had probably dropped about 5kg (12lbs) since moving to Japan.
We got tickets for the Narita Express and were on our way to Shinjuku from the airport. Just like my first train ride into Tokyo, and my friends after that, my family was amazed at the size and density of the city. Everyone always gets excited, and then they realize they are only in Chiba and things are only going to get busier.
We made a brief stop in Shinjuku to look at the skyline. The largest city my family had ever been to was Toronto. Tokyo is like stacking a few Torontos on top of each other. I taught them all how to use the train ticket gates, and we headed off for Noborito.
I couldn’t get the same guest room in Hello House East that my friends had, however I got a bigger, nicer room in Hello House West for my parents. They were impressed with the room (and the price), but were a little concerned about sleeping on futons on the floor. My sister was going to stay in my room on my futon, and I would sleep on my foldy floor couch. After giving them all of the key information on Hello House (where the bathrooms and coin operated showers were located), we decided to head out and get some food.
My dad can be pretty adventurous with food, but my mom and sister aren’t as much. To ease them into their Japan experience, we ate at a Spaghetti restaurant near Mukogaokayuen station. We walked from Hello House, and my family enjoyed looking at all of the different businesses along the way. Everyone ordered fairly non-threatening spaghetti (no squid ink sauce for anyone), and we had our first meal as a family in 9 months.
I really missed my family and was happy they came to visit me! It’s going to be a great few weeks!
(2014 update) My dad told me later that he had brought two apples to eat on the plane. He finished one, and kept the other in his carry on luggage. When the customs staff asked if he was carrying any fruits or vegetables, he pulled out the apple. The customs staff told him that he would have to dispose of the apple before he could enter the arrivals lounge. He considered arguing or eating the apple in front of the customs staff, but instead tossed the apple in a nearby garbage bin.
June 13, 2004 – Music and movies with The Penpal
Posted by Barniferous in Hello House, Life in Japan, Movies, The Penpal on June 26, 2014
Today The Penpal came from Numazu to visit me in Kawasaki again. We hung out in my room at Hello House and listened to music. Afterwards we watched my Pixies DVD. I also practiced my Japanese by trying to retell the story about Green attempting to eat 20 Frosties at Wendy’s in Japanese. The Penpal understood my explanation of the story, but couldn’t understand why someone would try to eat 20 Frosties at one time. If I can’t explain it in English, I have no chance of explaining it in Japanese.
After she returned to Numazu, I went to the video store and rented American Beauty and Silence of the Lambs. I had seen both before, but they were both excellent.
(2014 Update) The ending of Silence of the Lambs continues to be terrifying even years later.
June 12, 2004 – Kiosk!
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Life in Japan on June 25, 2014
After work I had some Kiosk beers with co-workers. Going for a beer or two at Kiosk at Kawasaki station is becoming a regular event for some of the teachers. It is a great way to unwind after a shift, and watching all of the people in the station is never boring.
I like Kiosk!
June 11, 2004 – Avoid 50% off sashimi at all costs
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Teaching English on June 24, 2014
After work last night I once again found myself at Daiei’s supermarket looking for some discount food. I decided on a delicious looking rice bowl covered in sashimi (raw fish). It had been marked down 50% because it had been sitting in the deli section unsold for the entire day. 50% is the maximum discount that Daiei gives, so I was pretty excited to dig into my giant fishy rice bowl.
I woke up this morning feeling terrible. My stomach was not happy with me, and after making three rapid trips to the bathroom I decided to call in sick and go back to bed.
After a day of sleeping and running to the bathroom, I finally felt well enough to get out and rent some movies. I spent my evening watching Terminator 3 (not nearly as good as 1 and 2) and Dreamcatcher (not as good as the book).
(2014 Update) Calling in sick at NOVA was fairly easy and painless. An English speaking operator answers and asks for your name, your branch, and the reason for missing work. If you sound particularly sick they also ask if you need any further assistance. As long as you call before certain times (8:30 for early shift, 10:00 for afternoon shifts) there is no penalty for missing your shift, other than not getting paid.
When I told them that I wouldn’t be showing up due to discount sashimi, they didn’t sound impressed. I found out later that sushi and sashimi were by far the most common reasons that teachers would give for missing work. Japan has fairly high food safety standards, so it is likely that some of the sushi and sashimi calls were actually booze related.
June 10, 2004 – Setting up the month of pain
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on June 23, 2014
I used up all of my vacation time and did some shift swaps to get the time off for my friends recent visit to Japan. To get time off for my family’s visit I did all shift swaps. I have basically destroyed my June and July work schedules, and have a stretch of 20 work days in a row. July is NOT going to be a fun month.
(2014 Update) In case you are looking at the dates of my posts and wondering why there are large gaps, it is entirely due to the non stop work required to get time off for my visitors. Nothing really interesting happened on most of those days other than work.
June 6, 2004 pt2 – Lost plane tickets
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Hello House, Team Awesome Sauce on June 19, 2014
The guys are leaving tomorrow, so after returning from our rainy day in Kamakura, everyone slowly started packing. We also watched the hockey game on the Hello House TV (Calgary lost again) and tried to finish any leftover alcohol from Canada.
All of the guys booked their flights through a travel agent in Green’s home town in northern Alberta. The travel agent was a friend of Green’s father. For some unknown reason, the travel agent booked all of the tickets from Winnipeg to Chicago to Tokyo instead of the faster, easier Winnipeg to Vancouver to Tokyo. Also, not everyone was on the same flight home. Flounder was flying solo at 2:00pm, while Green, Code Red and Hippie were on a 4:00pm flight.
During the packing, Hippie couldn’t find his ticket. He carefully checked all of his bags and still couldn’t find it. We searched my room that Hippie and I had been staying in from top to bottom – no ticket. Flounder, Code Red and Green searched through their room and suitcases carefully – still no ticket. After about an hour of careful searching, we took to the phone.
Due to the time, we couldn’t get in touch with the airlines. Green called the travel agent and someone in the office answered the phone. Green explained that he and his friends were in Japan, leaving tomorrow, and one of them lost a ticket. The travel agent told Green that they were closed and hung up on him. Hippie then turned to his last resort – calling his parents for help.
We got a call back at 4:30am from Hippie’s father who had just talked to United Airlines. Hippie could show up at the airport with ID and fill out a lost ticket form. He would receive a new ticket in exchange for $100 US dollars. Hippie was not thrilled about having to pay, but was happy that we would be able to go home.
It turns out that Hippie losing his ticket was a good thing for the whole group, but we didn’t find out until we got to the airport…
(2014 Update) It’s hard to imagine that only 10 years ago it was that difficult to get in touch with an airline.
June 6, 2004 pt1 – Kamakura in the Rain
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, Karaoke, Team Awesome Sauce, The Penpal on June 18, 2014
A rainy day in Kamakura.
Today was the last full day in Japan for my visitors. Breaking with our trend, we all actually got up early. The plan for the day was to meet The Penpal and her friends in Kamakura and see some of the sights. It was raining steadily as we left Hello House for the station.
We met up with The Penpal and friends, and got a quick lunch before sightseeing. During lunch, Flounder was trying to teach some rude English to the Japanese people in our group. He was trying to convince them that “motherf**ker” was a commonly used word between friends, and provided various examples. I think Flounder believes that we all live in a 70’s blaxploitation film.
After lunch we started our sightseeing at Hachiman-gu shrine. Despite the rain we saw yet another traditional wedding. From Hachiman-gu we walked to Daibutsu. By this point the rain was bucketing down and we were all soaked, even with umbrellas. Almost nobody carries an umbrella in Winnipeg, so Code Red, Hippie, Green and Flounder were all having umbrella fights as we walked.
The giant bronze Buddha of Kamakura
At Daibutsu we spent most of our time under cover trying to stay out of the rain. Since the rain didn’t let up, we decided to go back towards the station and find an indoor activity to do. We went to – you guess it – another game center. The game center had a large selection of print club machines. Print club machines are large photo booths that are popular with teenage girls. You can take your pictures with various backgrounds and then draw on the pictures or add cute pictures. At the end the machine prints out copies of your pictures. We loaded all 8 guys in our group into the print club machine and took some ridiculous pictures. After the game center, we found some nearby karaoke where we sang and ate.
We returned to Hello House soaked to the bone after a fun day. Going to Kamakura is always good, but today was was even more exciting because I got to introduce my girlfriend to my friends.
June 3, 2004 pt2 – All you can drink is not a challenge
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Karaoke, Shenanigans, Team Awesome Sauce on June 15, 2014
The floor is lava at Big Echo karaoke
(Author’s note) My memories of the evening are a bit fuzzy, and the notes from my original blog post are vague, so I am doing my best to reconstruct the events.
After witnessing the 20 Frosty challenge in the morning, we all had a relaxing afternoon at Hello House before heading out in the evening for Thursday evening karaoke. Green was still not feeling well, so he was a lot more restrained than usual. I believe the rest of the group decided to do some pre-drinking at Hello House.
We rode Nanbu line to Kawasaki and then took Tokaido line to Yokohama in order to meet up with my usual Thursday evening karaoke group. When everyone assembled, we all walked to Big Echo. Unlike the previous week, Code Red had left his video camera back at Hello House.
We had two fun hours of karaoke, making good use of the “all you can drink” policy of our karaoke room. Green was not drinking much, so Flounder, Hippie, Code Red, and I all decided to pick up the slack.
During the evening, one of Jem’s roommates, let’s call her Rana, was flirting with Code Red hard. Code Red was wearing a t-shirt featuring Stewie from Family Guy. On the walk back to Yokohama station, Jem’s roommate told Code Red that she really liked his shirt, and wanted to trade. Code Red did not want to trade his Stewie shirt for Rana’s shirt. She kept asking, and he kept refusing.
At this point, Green, Flounder, Hippie and I decided to act like helpful gentlemen and get Rana the shirt she wanted. We grabbed Code Red and pulled off his Stewie shirt while we were walking through the shopping area of Yokohama station. We handed the shirt to Rana, and then she proceeded to remove her shirt to give to Code Red.
While Code Red was shirtless, we all started slapping his exposed back, leaving huge red hand prints. Yes, this is the kind of thing that drunk frat boys do when they like each other.
Unsurprisingly, the spectacle of a shirtless gaijin guy being attacked by his friends while a gaijin female removed her shirt in a major train station attracted some attention. We received a lot of stares and laughs from people passing by, and also got noticed by the train station security staff, who watched us carefully as we bought tickets and waited on the platform.
Although he probably could have turned the “give my shirt back” game into a night outside of Hello House, Code Red instead insisted that he get his Stewie t-shirt back before our train came. Rana reluctantly agreed and they again swapped shirts.
At some point during our excitement, we actually lost Hippie for a few minutes. I can’t exactly remember the details, but he did turn up before the train left.
Through most of our adventures so far, Green had been the drunk crazy guy. With Green taking it easy, we all stepped up our game. As it turned out, our group was better when we only had one designated drunk crazy guy rather than four.
June 1, 2004 pt2 – I don’t understand medal games
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, Life in Japan, Team Awesome Sauce on June 11, 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RROI52SdMIg?t=2m47s
After dinner, we all went to Kawasaki. I needed to get some shift swap paperwork signed, so I left Code Red, Hippie, Flounder and Green at a nearby game center. Since I was in casual clothes, I couldn’t go into the building to meet the other teachers, so I hung around in front of the building waiting for them to come out. Japan is a very safe country, but there are always a bunch of homeless people hanging around in the trees near the entrance to NOVA, so it’s not the most comfortable place to hang around.
Eventually the teachers came out and I got my paperwork signed. I walked to the game center to find everyone watching Flounder playing a large medal game. The game had bouncing balls, flashing lights, video screens, and a coin pusher, basically total sensory overload. Flounder was trying to manipulate the coins in order to push more tokens towards his collector. There were a number of other medal games in the area – horse racing simulators, slot machines, card battle games, and others.
Using gambling machines to win money is illegal in Japan, but you can win prizes. One popular example is pachinko, which is kind of like a high tech vertical pinball game. To play, you buy a bunch of little metal balls and feed them into the pachinko machine. Using a knob, you attempt to fire the balls through the game board into a small hole. Doing this wins you more little metal balls. When you are done playing, you can exchange any balls you have left for a prize. The loophole is that every pachinko parlour in Japan has a nearby prize exchange shop, where you can sell your prize for cash.
I was not familiar with medal games, but I assumed that they would operate on the same principle as pachinko. Flounder won a huge number of tokens playing the game. He took them to the service counter, where the tokens were counted and Flounder received a card that kept track of how many tokens he owned. The next time he returned, he could use his tokens again to play the games and attempt to win more tokens. I tried to ask the employee where the prize exchange was. The employee tried to tell me that there was no such thing for medal games. At the time I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, or just not allowed to explain about exchanging prizes for cash. I promised Flounder that I would look into it.
Medal games can be a fun way to spend some time, but there is no way to win money. If you want to try to gamble for cash, play pachinko instead.
May 30, 2004 – I just told her it was small, didn’t I?
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Greater Tokyo Area, Karaoke, Shenanigans on June 7, 2014
Where’s my microphone??
An uneventful day relaxing at Hello House was followed up with an eventful evening out in Kawasaki.
Code Red, Green, Flounder, Hippie got on Nanbu line headed towards Kawasaki, where we would meet up with some of my coworkers and friends. On the train, Green asked me how to say “you are beautiful” in Japanese so he could talk to some ladies. I got an evil idea, and then spent the rest of the train ride practicing Green’s new Japanese phrase, which was absolutely not “you are beautiful”.
We met with Jem and Rivers and went to a nearby izakaya for some food and drinks. By this point I had informed everyone except Green the meaning of the words that I had been teaching to Green. We were all having trouble containing our excitement. Green practiced a few more times to try to get the pronunciation correct, and then waited for his opportunity.
We pressed the order button in the izakaya – a wonderful invention that summons your waiter or waitress to your table. An attractive female waitress arrived and took the order for our group. At this point Green spoke up with the phrase he had been rehearsing for the past 30 minutes.
“Excuse me” he said in Japanese. The waitress turned and looked at Green. You could cut the anticipation in our group with a knife.
“I have a small penis” said Green proudly in Japanese. The waitress looked confused. Green, assuming his pronunciation was bad decided to repeat the phrase slower and more clearly.
“I – have – a – small – penis!” he repeated, again with a smile on his face. At this point the waitress started laughing and walked away, which caused our entire group to crack up laughing hysterically. Green realized what happened “I just told her it was small, didn’t I?” he cleverly guessed.
Green asked me how to explain to the waitress that it wasn’t small, but actually very large. I taught him how to say “very small” instead. His BS detector went off and he decided to give up on the whole idea.
After the izakaya, we went out to karaoke again. Karaoke quickly became the fun activity of choice for our group, mainly due to the incredibly cheap drinks. We spent a few hours rocking out and making liberal use of the all you can drink policy before heading back to Hello House on Nanbu line. The trip home was not boring – one very drunk member of our group started walking up and down the train cars with a condom in his hand. This presented the other passengers with an excellent opportunity to pretend that he didn’t exist, which they did very well. Never a dull moment!
Drinking in Japan 
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