Archive for category Places in Japan
November 11, 2003 – Spaghetti Dona
Posted by Barniferous in Asako, Life in Japan, Tokyo on November 11, 2013
Spaghetti DONA
(complete rewrite of original post)
Today is Remembrance day in Canada. Our family has a military history, so growing up I always went to some kind of Remembrance Day service. It was strange not doing anything special to mark the day. Never forget the people who made sacrifices for your freedoms.
Instead of celebrating Remembrance day, I went out for lunch with Asako, the keyboard player from the Beatles cover band that I saw at the John Lennon museum. Her English was fairly basic, so I got a lot of Japanese practice. We were able to talk a little about food, music and family.
Lunch was at a chain called Spaghetti Dona that specialized in, you guessed it, spaghetti. They had a 780 yen lunch special that included a huge plate of spaghetti, salad and a drink. Since I asked Asako to go for lunch, I picked up the bill. This caused some confusion and protest from Asako. I learned later that usually on this kind of date both parties split the bill (betsu betsu). We took a brief tour around Shibuya before going our separate ways, with a promise to meet up again.
November 6, 2003 – Gay Tokyo
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Tokyo on November 6, 2013
Original Post
Had a beer with the trainees again. Also learned a whole lot about the gay scene in Japan. Don`t ask, I won`t tell!
2013 Update
During the post work beers at Kiosk, the subject of conversation turned to the gay scene in Tokyo. It turns out that one of the new teachers was openly gay, and somehow knew that one of the senior trainers was also gay. A few of us were surprised about the senior teacher because we didn’t know he was gay. He wasn’t hiding anything, the subject has just never come up before.
There is a bustling gay scene in Tokyo in the Shinjuku Ni-Chome area with around 300 bars and clubs catering to all tastes. There are also some other popular areas in Ueno and Ikebukuro. In my experience in Japan, the subject of homosexuality is largely ignored, and it isn’t a big issue like it is in Western countries. It exists, but people generally don’t talk or think about it often.
It was interesting to learn about a side of Japanese life that I didn’t know about previously.
November 2, 2003 – First visit to Numazu
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Shizuoka, The Penpal on November 2, 2013
Goyotei Memorial Park
Rewrite of original post
Today I went to visit The Penpal in Numazu. From Noborito it was a 2 hour train ride; first a train on Odakyu line to Odawara and then switching to Tokaido line to Numazu station. Compared to Kawasaki, Numazu is a beautiful city. Numazu is on the ocean and the skyline is full of mountains. I wonder if NOVA Numazu needs a new teacher?
I met The Penpal and one of her students who likes to be called Williams (his name is Akira). Together we went to Goyotei Memorial Park. This used to be one of the Emperor’s houses in the Meiji, Taisho and Showa era. The house stopped being used in 1969 and became a museum in 1970. US President Grant visited the Emperor at this house. It was very cool to see.
We went for lunch at a trendy restaurant where I tried to explain the many uses of the work “fuck”. Normally it isn’t polite to explain “fuck” and all of its variations in a restaurant, but this is Japan and I am an English teacher. After our lunch we went to karaoke. This was my first time with Japanese style karaoke, which is usually in a small private room instead of on a stage in front of strangers. I absolutely rocked on Monkees songs and Bohemian Rhapsody, but totally sucked many others. I really need singing lessons! After Karaoke we drove around and went to a massive sushi restaurant. I love sushi!
2013 Update
This was the day that started my love of karaoke. To say that I sung Bohemian Rhapsody well would likely be very generous.
October 30, 2003 – Kill Bill is NOT a good date movie
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Yokohama on October 30, 2013
Kill Bill!
(full rewrite from my original post to tell the story better)
During my first month in Japan I tried to find some people to practice Japanese with. At one of my many post work trips to the internet cafe, I signed up for a local language exchange website. After some back and forth conversation, I had both a meeting with a language exchange partner and a movie date for the same day in Yokohama. Conveniently I was working at Yokohama Nova, which reduced the amount of travel needed.
In the morning I met my language exchange partner. She was a housewife looking to improve her English as a hobby. We hung out at Starbucks and talked for a while. Things went well and we set up a future meeting.
Next stop was working at Yokohama Nova. One of my lessons had two giggly teenage girls. In the lesson they asked me what kind of girls I liked. Since Nova has some very strict rules about interacting with students and there were supervisors teaching in the next cubicle, I tried to avoid the question. I like to think that I was able to avoid the question casually and look professional while doing it. In reality I probably blushed and stammered.
After work I met up with my date at Yokohama station. She was a university student who was both very outgoing and very good at English. We started out by getting conveyor sushi in the station. We ate really good sushi and I even spoke Japanese a few times. Things were going well! When we finished dinner, my date took me to a discount movie ticket store that was a few minutes away from the theater. I didn’t know such a thing existed, and am not exactly sure the economics behind it, but any chance to avoid paying 1800 yen for a movie is a good thing.
A few days earlier I was in the Voice open conversation room at Kawasaki Nova. We were talking about movies and I mentioned that I was going to take a new female friend to see Kill Bill. At that point, my students explicitly warned me not to do that because Kill Bill was a terrible date movie. They said it was violent and cruel and we would have nothing to talk about after the movie. I explained that when I was talking about Kill Bill, my date said she was excited to see it because Lucy Liu was in the movie.
Apparently the date thought since Lucy Liu was in Charlie’s Angels that Kill Bill would be similar to Charlie’s Angels. I think it was during the first knife fight in the movie where she started to feel uncomfortable. By the end of the movie when The Bride was hacking her way through The Crazy 88s like a human blender, my date had resorted to covering her eyes and peeking from time to time. On the way back to the station we really didn’t have a lot to talk about and the walk back was awkward and mostly silent. I sent her a text later apologizing for the bloody movie and asking if she would like to hang out again sometime. I never heard from her again.
5 years of being off the market does not help someone who has little to no skill with the opposite sex at all. Also, when someone tells you strongly that a movie is NOT a good date movie you should really take the time to listen. They just might be right.
October 26, 2003 – John Lennon Museum
Posted by Barniferous in Asako, Life in Japan, Tokyo on October 26, 2013
(rewritten from original post to add much more detail)
Today I went to the John Lennon Museum in Saitama, which is a city just north of Tokyo that belongs to the Greater Tokyo Area. I met up with some of the teachers that I went to orientation with. We had exchanged contact information at orientation night, and shortly afterwards made plans on a mutual day off to meet up and visit the museum.
In early afternoon we met up at Akabane station and switched to a train heading towards the Saitama Super Arena. Since we were all pretty new to Japan, we took the local train instead of the express and got off at the wrong station. We left the station area and started looking around for a large arena. With a name like “Saitama Super Arena” we figured it would likely be a prominent part of the scenery. After a few minutes of wandering on both sides of the station, we decided to walk into the nearest Koban and ask for directions.
A Koban is also called a “police box”. It is a small office usually staffed by a few officers who patrol the local area and provide directions. Not knowing whether or not the officers would speak English, I decided that it would be a good time to put my University Japanese education and phrase book to use. I looked up the word for museum – hakubutsukan. This was combined with “wa doko desu ka” (where is it) from my Japanese course. After a few practice runs I walked into the Koban and politely said “すみません、(ジョン・レノンの博物館はどこですか？” (excuse me, where is the John Lennon museum). The officer took one look at me and answered in perfect English “oh, the John Lennon museum? This is the wrong station. You need to get back on the train and go one more stop. Get off at Saitama Shintoshin station and follow the signs”. This was a recurring theme in my Japanese adventures – when you don’t expect someone to speak English, they end up speaking it very well.
We followed the nice officer’s instructions and entered the John Lennon Museum. The museum chronicled John’s life from childhood to death, with different rooms for different stages in his life and career. There was an extensive collection of John’s personal effects (thanks to Yoko Ono) that included John’s elementary school report card, a guitar with a Beatles set list still taped to the neck, Sgt. Pepper stage costumes and song lyrics written on various scraps of paper or napkins. I am more of a Beatles fan than a John Lennon fan, but it was still a great way to learn more about John before, during and after the Beatles. All of the displays were in English and Japanese. The museum was fantastic!
After the museum we went to the attached John Lennon museum cafe. The cafe featured live music by a band called Light Steel Blue who played Beatles songs. The female keyboard player kept looking at me during the show. Afterwards my teaching friends and I were standing around talking when the keyboard player walked up to hand out information about her band. I told her in Japanese that her music was great. She thanked me and we had a bit of a conversation in broken English and Japanese and exchanged phone numbers. She also took my friend’s numbers as well, but I think she did that as an afterthought to be polite.
I got to see all of John Lennon’s personal stuff and got a phone number. What a great day!
2013 Update
The museum closed a few years ago, but you can get some good details here: http://amoderngirl.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/goodbye-lennon/
October 15, 2003 – First Earthquake
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Yokohama on October 14, 2013
Earthquake and fire warning sign in an elevator.
Follow up training day in Yokohama. New teachers from all around the area went for training in Yokohama in a 10 story building. During the training everything started vibrating and shaking back and forth. The instructor calmly told us that it was just an earthquake.
JUST an earthquake.
After a few more seconds, one of the teachers asked us if we should hide under a desk or something. The instructor said we could, but it would be totally unnecessary and continued with the lesson like nothing was happening.
You can tell how long someone has been in Japan by how they react to an earthquake. With less than a month in the country I was absolutely scared shitless! The ground should never move. EVER.
October 13, 2003 – Canadian Thanksgiving in Japan
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, Life in Japan on October 13, 2013
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Well, its Thanksgiving in Canada today, and some sort of holiday here. But did I get any turkey???
It rained like crazy this afternoon. When the rain finally stopped, the water in the street was close to 30cm deep! I got some good pics which I will get around to posting when I can. The drainage in my neighbourhood leaves a little to be desired.
I was bored this evening so I headed to downtown Kawasaki to my usual internet cafe. Some scary lady was trying to hit me up for cash outside the front door. I just played the “gomenasai” (sorry) card and tried to walk away. She kept asking, saying something about her being a “kawaii onna” (cute woman). I respectfully disagree. I hope she is gone when I leave. I have to stop going to downtown Kawasaki at night.
Update from a few days later:
Well, the crazy lady was gone when I left, but the underground mall that I normally walk through was closed. So I had to navigate downtown Kawasaki at night and find my way to the station. I caught the last train with minutes to spare!
October 5, 2003 – Kamakura with The Penpal
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, The Penpal on October 5, 2013
The giant bronze Buddha of Kamakura
Today I went to Kamakura. Kamakura was the capital of Japan in the first two hundred years of the Bakufu (military) government. It is just south of Yokohama. I met The Penpal there. We went to a Shinto shrine where I was attacked by pigeons shortly after getting a “best luck” fortune. We also saw Daibutsu (Great Buddha) which is huge statue of Buddha built in the year 1252. It has been restored and rebuilt over time when it fell because of earthquakes or tidal waves. We finished the sightseeing at a Buddhist temple which was absolutely beautiful. More info when I have the proper names of the places I went to available. In Kamakura we saw a New Orleans style Jazz band playing in the street. Overall, a great day.
2013 Notes
I met The Penpal at Ofuna station. I asked her to look for me, because I am very easy to find in public. Also, I had not seen a good picture of The Penpal before, so finding her would have been nearly impossible.
The Penpal made a very good tour guide, taking me to Daibutsu, Hachiman-Gu Shrine and Hasedera. There were good English signs in the area, but she knew a little more about each place than was explained on the signs. After sightseeing we went to Baskin Robbins near Kamakura station. We got ice cream and talked for almost two hours. Since we had been emailing each other for over a year, we were fairly comfortable with each other and it was more like a meeting of old friends than almost strangers.
Overall, a very good day. Kamakura is highly recommended!
September 29, 2003 – Orientation Day
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, Shenanigans, Tokyo on September 29, 2013
Original Post
Today was orientation in Shinjuku (downtown Tokyo). Shinjuku station is the busiest train station in the world. We were oriented for 6 hours, with a break for some disgusting cold coffee. After, we went to Subway for dinner and the bar at the bottom of our building for a few drinks. The drinks were very expensive so we got a group of about 40 and wandered Shinjuku looking for a bar. About an hour later we found and English pub and the 20 that were left happily went in for a few drinks. Drinkng with English people is fun, I recommend everyone do it one in your lifetime.
Also, I got to see Fuji-san for the first time today!!! Simply awesome, even through the Tokyo smog.
2013 Notes
There isn’t really a traditional “downtown” area in Tokyo. There are a lot of built up areas like Shinjuku, Shibuya, Shinagawa or Ueno that have their own attractions and shopping.
At orientation we signed up for cell phones and bank accounts. If you decided to sign up for a cell phone at the start of orientation you could walk away with a functioning phone at the end. Most people opted for this. My phone was an awesome flip phone with a camera and web browsing features. It is primitive by today’s standards, but was far ahead of anything available in Canada at the time.
Other than learning about the company and the job, one of the topics that was focused on was drugs. We were informed that in Japan there is no difference between “soft” drugs like marijuana and “hard” drugs like heroin or cocaine. Drugs were drugs, and they were all illegal. The police have the power to detain you while investigating, and we were told in no uncertain terms that the company would not help us at all if we ran into trouble with Japanese drug laws.
After the orientation we ended up at the Rose & Crown pub on the first floor of the NS building. I feel bad for the Rose & Crown and their periodic invasions of new English teachers. Our group was loud and enthusiastic, but fairly well behaved. A few months after I started, one of the new teachers got extremely drunk and puked all over the restaurant. The senior instructors spent a lot of time apologizing on behalf of the teachers and the company.
After the masses left the Rose & Crown we were all keen on getting another drink somewhere. Nobody really had any ideas on where to go or how to get there. After about 5-10 minutes of everyone standing around I announced “follow me!” and randomly chose a direction. To my surprise, everyone actually did follow me. We slowly started losing groups of people who either found a bar to go to, or realized that the crazy Canadian guy at the front of the line had no idea where he was going. My group of followers ended up in Hub British Pub, which is a fantastic place to have a beer or watch some footy.
Lesson of the night – everyone will follow you as long as you look confident that you know where you are going.
September 26, 2003 – Where is the f**king ward office?
Posted by Barniferous in Greater Tokyo Area, Life in Japan on September 26, 2013
Original post
I ventured out again today with lack of anything else to do. I found the ward office and applied for my gaijin registration card. Thankfully I knew some Japanese or the application would have taken forever. The clerk was very polite and helpful. The map to find the office was not as I ended up wandering in a circle for half an hour. Would it kill them to name the streets here?
The rest of my day was shopping and killing time. Nothing interesting.
2013 Notes
The ward office in the Noborito area is just north of Mukogaoka-yuen station. The north side of the station is full of very narrow, congested streets with no names. I literally had sensory overload trying to process everything I was seeing – signs, bicycles, people, cars in every direction. When I say I walked in a circle, I mean that I literally walked for 30 minutes and ended up where I started by accident.
The clerk at the ward office spoke almost no English, which is surprising considering that they process gaijin registration cards. Other than the language issue, the service I received was exceptional. Public servants around the world could take lessons from Japanese public servants.
Drinking in Japan 
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