Archive for category Life in Japan

March 2, 2006 – Bananaphone

Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on July 11, 2016

Yes, I live in Japan and have a whole country full of exciting things to discover. Instead I spent most of my free time today looking at flash animations in my apartment.

This made me laugh – it contains Raffi music and bad language. It’s funnier for me because I saw Raffi live when I was a kid (Baby Beluga Tour represent!!)

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March 1, 2006 – Keeping cake out of the rain

Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, The Penpal on July 2, 2016

Happy birthday to my wonderful fiancee The Penpal!

I worked an early shift today, finishing at 5:00pm. My plan was to cook birthday dinner for The Penpal. In the past I didn’t cook for The Penpal very often in my apartment because chances were good that one of my roommates would be around. However, Palmer has just moved to Hokkaido and Azeroth was working a late shift, meaning that The Penpal and I had the whole place to ourselves for the evening.

I decided to pick up a cake on the way home at one of the fancy department stores near Numazu station. Fancy cakes in Japan are an art form; the biggest challenge I had was which one to pick. It was raining a little when I entered the store, and pouring when I left. To keep the cake dry, I had to hold the cake bag up directly under my umbrella. I must have looked ridiculous wearing a shirt and tie, holding a cake at eye level under my umbrella as I walked through a downpour to my apartment. It was worth it, the cake was dry when I got home! (I was not)

The Penpal and I had a good evening together. I really hope NOVA is not in a rush to find us a new roommate; I could get used to having free time in the apartment!

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February 28, 2006 – Hypnotize

Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on June 28, 2016

SOADHypno

I just picked up the new album “Hypnotize” by System of a Down and I can’t stop listening to it! SO COOL!!!

Foreign CDs are expensive in Japan, but still cheaper than CDs by Japanese artists, which makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

 

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February 27, 2006 – I hate garbage day

Posted by Barniferous in Azeroth, Friends and coworkers, Life in Japan on June 23, 2016

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I REALLY hate garbage day. Not just the regular pickup, but the big day where everything can be collected: plastic, glass, cans, old clothes, paper, and almost everything else that we are allowed to throw away.

Living with two other guys who rarely cook and who enjoy beer means lots of plastic and lots of cans. You can’t just drop stuff off, you have to sort everything by material, colour, and sometimes size. The volunteer garbage police supervise everything and don’t hesitate to let you know when you’re doing it wrong.

As stated in this previous post, we tried to send Palmer out as often as we could for garbage day. Even the strictest members of the volunteer garbage police are reluctant to tell the tall, muscular, bald Australian guy that he’s sorting his glass wrong.

I’m going to miss Palmer when he moves to Hokkaido because he’s a good guy. But I’ll also miss him because now Azeroth and I will suffer the wrath of the garbage police.

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February 26, 2006 – Rain delay

Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on June 23, 2016

Today I worked at Fuji school to cover a shift swap. I was raining during the day, and absolutely pouring when I tried to leave.

The rain was so hard that my train home was delayed 30 minutes. Fuji serves just under 9000 passengers a day. Even with that relatively small number the platforms were absolutely packed. I can’t even imagine what a rain delays would do for a bigger station! Stupid rain.

2016 Bonus material

There were some train stations that I used regularly in my time in Japan. Fuji was the least busy of my regular stations. Numazu averages around 22,000 passengers a day, Kawasaki was about 164,000, and Shinjuku is somewhere near between 2-3 million daily.

No, that wasn’t a typo. Shinjuku station is bonkers.

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February 21, 2006 – Give an octopus

Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on June 17, 2016

Learning a foreign language can be a daunting, intimidating task. I have sympathized with my students who have struggled to learn the many terrible irregularities in the English language, the whole time clinging to a belief that Japanese makes a lot more sense. That is until today’s Japanese lesson.

In my Japanese lesson I learned that “tako wo ageru” can mean both “fly a kite” and “give an octopus”. The difference is easy to spot when reading, but verbally they are the same.

Any language which can confuse these two very different concepts is not for the faint of heart. Seriously.

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February 15, 2006 – The classiest place I have ever gotten drunk

Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Life in Japan on June 12, 2016

Tonight we welcomed a new teacher to the Numazu / Fuji / Mishima area. He had arrived in the morning from New Zealand, so he was already tired when we started the party. He went home early, and the rest of us continued enjoying the evening in his honour.

Instead of hitting up one of our usual izakayas or karaoke rooms, we went to a small cocktail bar named Farao. The few staff were all wearing white tuxedos and the bartender can make pretty much any cocktail that you can imagine. Watching them make drinks is a treat – I asked for a martini and enjoyed watching them chip away at a crystal clear block of ice with shiny silver tools. The ice and premium alcohols were combined into a shiny silver shaker and expertly mixed before being poured into the nicest martini glass I had ever seen. They weren’t just creating a strong drink, they were creating art.

My roommate Palmer is friends with the owner so all of the teachers got discounts. We took full advantage of this situation and enjoyed a few more drinks than we would have at full price. Farao is the classiest place I have ever gotten drunk!

Also, martinis are strong!!

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February 9, 2006 – Never leave your beer unattended

Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Friends and coworkers, Life in Japan on June 8, 2016

After work I went out for some beer with Palmer, Azeroth, and Christopher Cross at our favourite izakaya.

For the past few months, Christopher Cross and I have become very competitive at chugging beer. I can’t drink a lot of beer, but I am able to pound them back pretty quickly when needed. This is a skill I acquired during my fraternity days in Canada, and that I have been practicing in Japan. Usually I am one of the fastest, but young Christopher managed to beat me more often than not.

We decided to order a round of beer for the next stage in our never ending competition. Coincidentally, we both had to go to the washroom at the same time, right after we had placed our order.

One of the many cool things about Ryoba is the urinals; they look like barrels cut diagonally, and they are filled with ice cubes. There is something strangely satisfying about trying to melt as many ice cubes as you can while using them. Please note: we did not attempt to compete with each other at this.

We returned to the table to find our beer had arrived, although it looked uncharacteristically foamy. Having already enjoyed a few beverages, we decided to ignore this and start the countdown for our race.

One, two, three, SALT!!!

We pounded back our beers in a few seconds each, and then did our best not to undrink them just as quickly. The foaming was caused by the soy sauce that Azeroth and Palmer had added to each of our beers while we were away. Soy sauce infused beer is NOT good.

Christopher and I decided that the best way to get the salty taste out of our mouths was to order another round of refreshing beer, which we guarded very carefully.

Never leave your beer unattended!

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January 11, 2006 part 2 – How not to use a sento

Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Tokyo, Visitors on May 13, 2016

Disclaimer: UPS is the nickname of one of my friends visiting Japan. This post has nothing to do with United Parcel Service.
Image courtesy of the good folks at Wikipedia

Image courtesy of the good folks at Wikipedia

After an epic night out in Roppongi, I woke up in my tiny coffin at the capsule hotel in Shibuya. It had not been a restful night, as people in the other capsules were snoring impressively. Also, someone’s alarm clock starting ringing just before 6:00am and continued for about half an hour. My head was spinning and I was tired from lack of sleep. UPS got me out of my capsule and we decided to get cleaned up and checked out. The capsule hotel featured a sento style bath, which UPS was eager to try out in the name of gaining cultural experience. I had never been to a sento before but I knew the general idea – clean yourself first, then sit in the shared bath.
We walked into the changing room outside the bath, still wearing the yukatas that we changed into when we checked in. There were large wicker baskets, which we assumed were for holding our yukatas and personal items. There were also two stacks of towels – large bath towels, and smaller towels that looked like long facecloths.
UPS and I removed our yukatas and underwear, wrapped the large towels around our waists, and walked into the bath area. The first thing we noticed (other than the other hungover naked men) was that nobody had the large bath towels in this area. We returned to the changing room, left the bath towels in our baskets, and confidently reentered the bathing area nude.
As we walked in, we got some very strange looks from two men who were walking out. At first I assumed that the cause of the strange look was that UPS and I were very brown and ghostly pale, respectively. However I quickly realized that everyone in the bath area were covering their naughty bits with one of the smaller towels, while we were exposing ourselves to the entire room. We quickly returned to the changing room one more time, this time equipped with privacy towels to hide our foreign members.
UPS and I proceeded to the washing stations. Each was equipped with a small bucket to sit on, a hand held shower nozzle, a mirror, and an impressive array of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. I reminded UPS that we had to be completely clean
and soap free before moving into the bath. After a few minutes of hungover scrubbing, we moved over to the tub of extremely hot water to soak.
Japanese people have a national obsession with soaking naked in extremely hot water. I’m sure it’s relaxing for some, but the experience for me was like being boiled alive. After only a few minutes I needed to get out. UPS suggested we check out the nearby sauna room. Nobody else was in the sauna when we entered. We took a seat and pretended we could understand the business report showing on the wall mounted TV. After a few minutes, a Japanese man entered the room. He took one look at the two foreigners inside, turned around, and walked right back out the door. We laughed at how unpopular we were in the bathing area.
The rest of our time at the capsule hotel was uneventful. We shaved with free individual use razors. We brushed our teeth with free individual use toothbrushes. We ate a free but unmemorable breakfast, got dressed, then checked out. I still couldn’t believe that we had just stayed in Shibuya for just over 3000 yen. My only complaints were the rampant snoring and my hangover, and only one of those could really be blamed on the hotel.

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January 9, 2006 part 4 – Karaoke makeouts

Posted by Barniferous in Friends and coworkers, Life in Japan, Visitors on January 15, 2016

Disclaimer: UPS is the nickname of one of my friends visiting Japan. This post has nothing to do with United Parcel Service.

After enjoying bubble tea with The Penpal , my friend UPS and I met up with my coworker Vivian and her roommate Chrissy. Vivian had met UPS a few days ago, thought he was fun, and brought out her roommate to hang out with us. Over drinks UPS and Chrissy started immediately flirting with each other.

After a few too many drinks, we went to Uta Club, the favourite discount karaoke place for Numazu area teachers. It was at this point that Vivian and Chrissy, both British, unleashed on us one of the worst pop songs to ever come out of the UK: Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum) by The Cheeky Girls.

Some of the greatest music ever written has come from the UK. Musicians like David Bowie, The Beatles, The Who, Radiohead, and so many others have created amazing, timeless music that has brought joy and enhanced lives around the world. Unfortunately, for every fantastic musician, there is one horrible, soulless, pop monstrosity that summons an awful hit song from the depths of music hell. The Cheeky Girls represent the worst parts of pop music.

Cheeky_song_(touch_my_bum)

Usually I would link the song, but I have too much respect for my readers to link a catchy earworm that includes lyrics like “touch my bum, this is life”. You can look it up yourself at your own risk.

While we were singing and drinking, the flirting continued between UPS and Chrissy. Vivian and I were singing an epic duet, when we turned around and saw UPS and Chrissy making out like teenagers. Vivian mentioned that she didn’t want to see that, so UPS and Chrissy crawled under the table and started making out there.

Vivian and I sang a few more songs, deliberately being off key and horrible to try to distract our friends from their not very stealthy makeout session. We eventually realized that UPS and Chrissy were no longer interested in singing and wanted to call it a night. Chrissy suggested that UPS and I should go over to their apartment for another drink (read: more makeouts). I was tired and wanted to get home, but since UPS didn’t know his way around Numazu and didn’t have a phone, getting separated would create some problems for the next morning. Vivian said that if necessary I could crash on the floor in her room, which is exactly what ended up happening.

Vivian and I fell asleep next to each other on her floor, trying our best to ignore the giggling noises from Chrissy’s room. UPS was absolutely making the most of his short time in Japan, and who was I to stand in his way?

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