January 7, 2006 – Welcome UPS!
Posted by Barniferous in Friends and coworkers, Visitors on January 8, 2016
Disclaimer: UPS is a nickname for my friend. This post is in no way associated with United Parcel Service.
After correctly considering the effects of the international date line, my friend UPS was scheduled to arrive in Japan today for a short visit. I took the local train (the cheapest option) from Numazu to Narita airport. The last time I picked up friends or family from the airport, I lived in Kawasaki, which was a lot closer. The trip from Numazu took me almost 4 hours!
I got to the airport early, which was fortunate because UPS’s flight arrived an hour early. This must be an absolute first in aviation history. UPS greeted me at the airport with a case of Moosehead beer! The last time I had Moosehead is when a group of friends visited in 2004 and we drank some very expensive imported Moosehead in Tokyo. Visitors to Japan: drink local beer, it’s way cheaper.
We took the Narita Express from the airport to Tokyo station, the shinkansen from Tokyo to Mishima, and then the Tokaido line from Mishima to Numazu. This trip took only 2 hours, but it seemed faster as UPS and I spent the time catching up on news from home and discussing our plans for his 4 days in Japan. For only a few days, we have a pretty packed agenda! I also learned that it’s pretty much impossible to talk about recent movies with someone from Canada, because most of the big movies come to Japan several months after they are released in North America. I was behind on everything.
We dropped off UPS’s luggage at my apartment, he had a quick shower, and we went out to an izakaya with some of my coworkers. UPS is one of the most outgoing and fun people I know, so he instantly got along with the English teachers. After we got home, we watched some videos that the fraternity guys from Canada recorded for me during their annual Christmas bottle exchange. It’s good to see that nothing changes there.
It’s going to be a fun 4 days!
January 6, 2006 – Forgot about the international date line
Posted by Barniferous in Friends and coworkers, Visitors on January 7, 2016
My friend UPS was supposed to be arriving in Japan today. However, in all of our conversations about arrival date, I realized that we forgot to think about the international date line; his flight will actually be arriving tomorrow.
I met UPS when I joined Delta Upsilon Fraternity. His father is from India and his mother is from Vietnam, but they met and got married in Canada. UPS sounds and acts Canadian, but likes to describe himself (accurately) as a brown guy. The nickname UPS comes from the courier company’s tagline “what can brown do for you?”, which I believe UPS has used a few times a pick-up line.
He just recently graduated from University, and decided to take a 6 month tour of Asia, including his parents countries, but also Cambodia and Laos. I told him that if he was on my side of the planet that he should stop by Japan for a few days. He called his travel agent, made changes, and will be spending 4 days in Japan. It’s going to be a lot of fun!
I ended up using my day off to clean up the apartment and my room, and to be very lazy.
January 5, 2006 – Short day back at work
Posted by Barniferous in Teaching English on January 6, 2016
Today was my first day back teaching English after a nice long New Year holiday. I only had to teach 5 lessons today, which was a nice way to ease back into work after some time away. I didn’t get too used to being back at work, because I have a friend coming to visit from Canada so I will be starting some paid vacation time tomorrow.
January 4, 2006 – Last day of holidays
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan on January 5, 2016
Today is my last day of the New Years Holidays. I spent the day relaxing and mentally preparing myself to go back to work.
January 3, 2006 – Learning about Uzbekistan
Posted by Barniferous in The Penpal on January 4, 2016
I am still off work after New Year, so once again I got to meet up with The Penpal. Today we went to Gotemba to meet one of her friends.
BTW – I have no idea why Gotemba is usually spelled with an “m”. In Japanese all of the consonant sounds except n have a vowel sound after them (ma, mi, mu, me, mo). Occasionally when there is an “n” sound in the middle of a word, it is written in English as an “m”. Technically the city name should be Gotenba, but since all of the major businesses use an M on their English signs, I will too.
Regardless of spelling, Gotemba is a small city on the east side of Mt. Fuji with some amazing views. It is famous as the home for a US military base and a giant outlet store. The Penpal and I met with her friend Saori, who does traditional Japanese dancing. We had some food and she told us about her recent trip to Uzbekistan.
Before talking to Saori I knew nothing about Uzbekistan, other than it existed and was near some other “stan” countries. Saori had developed a passion for the country, and had recently gone for sightseeing and to educate Uzbeks about Japanese culture. She loved the country so much, that she was planning to return, and had even found one of the few Uzbek speakers in the whole country of Japan to study the language.
It was interesting for us to learn about a country we hadn’t known about before. It’s also always fun to learn about what attracts people to learn about a new place. I originally became interested in Japan because all of my electronics and video games came were made here. When someone says they want to visit Uzbekistan, it’s always interesting to find out why.
I have now gotten to spend three days in a row with The Penpal on this holiday. I am really enjoying all the extra time we are getting together lately.
January 2, 2006 part 2 – Japan in a wheelchair
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, The Penpal on January 3, 2016
Today I spent some time hanging out with The Penpal and some of her friends from NICE (Numazu Association for International Communications and Exchanges). We went to karaoke together in the afternoon which was memorable for two reasons: there was no drinking, and I learned how challenging it could be in Japan for someone in a wheelchair. Since these are two very different themes, I am going to make them into separate posts.
Japan in a wheelchair
One of The Penpal’s friends was a young Japanese man in a wheelchair. I had never really considered it before, but there are a lot of challenges to having a wheelchair in Japan. There are good facilities in large businesses and train stations for people in wheelchairs – elevators and accessible bathrooms for example, however there are a lot of places with narrow aisles, minuscule elevators, tiny washrooms, and lots of stairs. There are some older places that would be difficult or impossible to navigate in a wheelchair, and I can’t imagine what life would be like in a mountain town like Atami where steep streets make bicycle travel only possible for diehard cyclists.
The karaoke place we went to had three steps from the entrance area to the karaoke rooms. There was no elevator or ramp, so the group of us worked together to help move the wheelchair up the stairs. A chair and passenger can be a lot heavier than you would expect! The entrance door to the karaoke room was also just barely wider than the chair, which made getting in a bit difficult.
Japan is not completely inaccessible to wheelchairs, but the experience is very different from Canada where basically everywhere is required by law to provide accessibility.
If you are planning to travel to Japan in a wheelchair, there are some good resources online to help you get around. Check out Japan Accessible at www.japan-accessible.com. You can also find an interesting personal story on lonely planet here.
January 2, 2006 part 1 – Karaoke without beer!?
Posted by Barniferous in Karaoke, Life in Japan, The Penpal on January 2, 2016
Today I spent some time hanging out with The Penpal and some of her friends from NICE (Numazu Association for International Communications and Exchanges). We went to karaoke together in the afternoon which was memorable for two reasons: there was no drinking, and I learned how challenging it could be in Japan for someone in a wheelchair. Since these are two very different themes, I am going to make them into separate posts.
Karaoke without beer
I have lost track of how many times I have been to karaoke since coming to Japan almost two and a half years ago. Karaoke in Japan is great – there are private rooms to sing with your friends, there is a phone on the wall to order food and drinks, and alcohol is usually cheap and plentiful. I rarely touch a microphone without having at least one or two drinks. Most of the time I go to karaoke with other English teachers at the end of a late shift. Today I was out with The Penpal’s friends in the afternoon, and nobody was ordering drinks.
Don’t get me wrong – it is both possible to do karaoke without alcohol, and possible to have fun. However, when you sing sober, you become aware of how terrible your singing actually is. I am not a great singer, but this never usually stops me. Today however, I avoided a lot of my regular songs with notes that are outside of my one octave range. I also was a lot less theatrical; no dancing around or striking rockstar style microphone poses. In addition, I did not pick up the spare microphone to duet on songs that I didn’t really know well.
Overall, it was a very different experience than usual, but I still had fun and got to spend some time with The Penpal and her friends. After singing we all went out for yakiniku, which is a great way to end any day.
January 1, 2006 – Part of the family
Posted by Barniferous in Life in Japan, The Penpal on January 1, 2016
Happy New Year!
Today I went to Mishima Taisha with The Penpal and her parents. The weather was beautiful; sunny and 10 degrees ABOVE zero. Usually in Winnipeg it would be sunny and somewhere around minus 20.
As usual, the shrine was completely packed with people going to pray for good luck in the upcoming year. As a rule, Japanese people are not religious, but they do regularly visit Shinto shrines for big events, likely more out of tradition than religious obligation. We worked our way through the crowd up to the front of the shrine, dodging flying coins from people who didn’t have the patience to get all the way to the front. As I clapped to get the attention of the gods of the shrine, I decided that 2006 was going to be MY year.
After surviving the crowds, we returned to The Penpal’s house. The Penpal and her mother went into the kitchen to prepare dinner, while The Penpal’s father and I watched TV and talked. I got some good Japanese practice, and felt like I was part of the family, which was pretty great.
December 31, 2005 part 2 – Hungover computer teacher
Posted by Barniferous in Azeroth, Drinking, Friends and coworkers, Life in Japan, Uncategorized on December 31, 2015
I woke up on on uncomfortable futon, feeling like death. My mouth was dry, my head was pounding, and I was sweating. I looked over and saw Okonomi still sleeping like the dead. I sat up and waiting for the room to stop spinning, but it merely slowed down. This was the penance for an epic night out that had us returning to Okonomi’s apartment around 6:00am.
In addition to going out for drinks, Okonomi had wanted me to come and visit to teacher her how to use her new computer. I gulped down several glasses of water before starting up the PC and checking it out. My first step was to delete some unneeded software that seems to be installed on all new machines, and then to make sure that everything was updated.
After about an hour, Okonomi rolled out of bed like she was a zombie rising from a grave. We realized that we both needed some food and fluids. She got dressed and we walked outside into the blazing horrible daylight. Okonomi’s apartment was half way up a hill, with a small grocery store near the bottom. We walked carefully down the bright, loud, gently spinning hill, picked out some bread, onigiri, and sports drinks, and then lurched back up the hill to the comfortable, dark apartment.
We rode out the hangover exploring her new computer. I taught her how to burn CDs and how to use bittorrent software. It was a nice relaxing afternoon after a crazy night out.
I returned to Numazu in the early evening, fell asleep for a few hours, and woke up to watch New Year’s Eve TV shows with Azeroth and one of his friends. Since I had enjoyed myself too much the night before, this turned out to be one of my quietest New Year’s Eves ever.
Happy New Year!
December 31, 2015 part 1 – Hostess Bar Job Interview
Posted by Barniferous in Drinking, Friends and coworkers on December 30, 2015
My friend Okonomi and I started our night out in Noborito with dinner, drinks, drinks, karaoke, and drinks. It was now 3:00am, a few hours away from the first train, and all of the regular bars were full. Okonomi suggested we got to a hostess bar instead.
A hostess bar is a place where well dressed, attractive women pour your drinks, laugh at your jokes, compliment your karaoke, and generally make you feel important. Of course, this doesn’t come cheap: drinks are overpriced and you pay an hourly rate for companionship. Okonomi suggested the Filipino hostess bar near the station, because the rate was only 4000 yen per hour. Since I was drunk, on holidays, and not wanting to sit around a train station for a few hours until the first train came, I agreed and we were on our way.
While we were walking (stumbling) to the hostess bar, Okonomi had told me that she had considered trying to find a job at a hostess bar to supplement her teaching income. Being able to maintain a conversation with students is a useful skill that can be transferred to a hostess job, the money could be pretty good, and there would be lots of free drinks. It would also be a great way to improve her Japanese in a hurry.
Upon entering, we were shown to a table by two beautiful women in evening dresses, and we ordered some drinks for both us and our hostesses. We all talked in English, Japanese, Okonomi impressed with the little bit of Tagalog that she knew. We took turns doing yet more karaoke, and had a good time hanging out. Despite the late hour and the fact that we were obviously drunk and not Japanese, the hostesses worked hard to make sure we were having fun.
Okonomi started asking our hostesses about how they liked working at the bar, and mentioned that she had considered it before. Within minutes the mama-san (bar manager) was over at the table having a conversation with her in Japanese. The offhand comment had suddenly turned into a job interview on the spot! Mama-san asked Okonomi about her availability, and asked her to stand up and turn around. After a few minutes of talking, Mama-san said that Okonomi’s Japanese would need to improve a little, but then gave Okonomi her business card and told her to keep in touch.
When I left Canada to teach English in Japan I knew I was going to have some interesting experiences. I never imagined that I would be watching a friend get an impromptu job interview in a hostess club sometime after 4:00am on an epic night out.
We left close to 5:00am, tired and drunk, and with our wallets feeling lighter. The hostess bar was close to Noborito station, where we caught the first train to Shin-yurigaoka. I had switched to non-alcoholic drinks at the hostess bar, so I was a little more sober than Okonomi. This presented a problem because her apartment was about a 20 minute walk up hills, and I had no idea where it was. We decided to get a taxi instead.
By the time we actually found a cab, Okonomi’s impressive language skills had deteriorated quite a bit. Since street addresses mean nothing in Japan, we had to give the driver landmarks and turn by turn instructinos. Okonomi kept slurring and switching languages, leaving me to translate for the driver. The taxi driver did not seem very sad to be rid of us.
We finally got to sleep around 6:00, knowing that we were in for a painful day.
Drinking in Japan 
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