sapporo

THIS MAY be my favorite ad of all time. Unfortunately, my picture has bad lighting (it was on the subway wall) but the lighting in the picture itself is awesome. And there's so much bound up in the characters' faces.

shibamata, vol. 1

LAST WEEK I was given Taishakuten as an assignment. Taishakuten is a Buddhist temple, rather well known in these parts. It was an achingly hot day. My shirt kept sticking to me all day as I dreamed of surfing and cold mountain waterfalls.
In Japan, you know you're really in the countryside when you start using train lines you've never heard of before. I had traveled for more than an hour and barely occupied trains, until I was literally off the Metro map. My train slowed down for the last time: it was the end of the line, Shibamata.

I knew something was different as soon as I disembarked - I blinked, half expecting to have my head jerk upwards after dozing on the train. An empty plaza stood in front of me, quietly holding in the summer heat. A bronze, life size statue of a man in a suit stood in the middle. The village roads bent around the plaza, and a small yakisoba(1) stand stood on the left, cooking steam silently escaping from its roof, as large characters silently advertised tasty noodles. Very little has changed in Shibamata since the Edo Period - the street vendors, the temples, even the streets themselves are small and narrow, as if cars haven't been invented yet. I felt like I had walked into a Miyazaki film; Shibamata is 5% myth.

Not particularly inclined to follow maps, I took the most promising street(2), which led me past a yakitori stand (right), an ancient toy store, and several restaurants. The street gradually broadened into a sort of promenade introducing the temple up ahead. Venders and souvenirs shops began to multiply rapidly; so did the people. There were mochi sellers, imo ice cream(3), fishmongers, lantern sellers, and a lady selling 25 different kinds of daikon who had lived in New York and spoke decent English. She gave me a few samples of the vegetable on toothpicks. All and all a grand time. Yes, and I ate all of the above food stuffs.
















Above: jars of senbei (Japanese rice crackers)
right: stores and tourists approaching Taishakuten

(1) yakisoba is an originally Chinese dish of fried noodles and toppings like pork, cabbage, ginger, and bean sprouts. Easy to make, very cheap, yakisoba is the hamburger of Japan.

(2) streets mean something different in Japan. here a street can have pets, small vans, motercycles, and pedestrians traveling both ways at once, missing each other by inches, in a space that is narrower than, say, the tire-to-tire width of a Hummer.

(3) imo is potato. Potato ice cream is delicious. It's also slightly purple. You can usually only find it at rural, touristy places, so I leaped at the chance.

tempura, anyone?

HERE'S AN example of what I do. Last week I went to what is now my favorite tempura restaurant of all time. Below is a short review I wrote about it, which will appear on my company's website in its September debut.

IMOYA
RATING: 4.5/5
REVIEW:
Imoya is one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo. I ducked under the white sign at the door and sat on a waiting bench for one of 15 seats at the bar. At first I was worried about the long wait, but the turnover rate at lunch time is surprisingly fast - I was seated in 10 minutes. A friendly old man asked each customer one word as they took their seat: "Tempura?" Every once in a while there's some maverick who wants more "ebi", “ebi teisyoku” is on the menu, but most of the time everyone simply nods. When it was my turn, I asked for tempura, and was immediately given hot tea and sat back to watch the old man carefully drop breaded strips of fish and vegetables into a giant wood cauldron full of boiling oil, his hands just inches away, red from the heat.
Imoya is clean, bright, and minimally decorated. Everything is metal or exposed wood - the ceiling's wood beams, the metal cooking equipment in front of you, the great wood tempura cauldron.

I received my food in 10 minutes. Hot miso soup, hot tempura, and more hot tea; it was a Tokyo summer day and I perspired helplessly, but I didn't care: the miso soup was "asari," made with very small clams and slightly sweet. I've never seen it executed this well, and this is a tempura shop. I was handed a plate of tempura perhaps 10 seconds old, and a large bowl of rice to eat it over. The ebi, sweet potato, parsley, and eggplant were all very fresh, and the batter itself tasted light and crunchy - I just wanted more.
I had all I wanted to eat for 600 yen - that's cheaper than McDonald's! I'd go back if they tripled the price.
There's no English whatsoever, but just say "tempura" - it's all the Japanese you need to know.




Top: fresh tempura; middle: Imoya interior;
bottom: entrance, with traditional shoji sliding doors

My Job

MY OFFICE is in a 5 story high-rise in downtown Akasaka, a Tokyo business district. It has a balcony. This morning I took a few minutes to look out at the city and relax. They are building yet another skyscraper next door, or else the big red crane lies. Two other towers are almost finished, rocketing up 50 stories or more. I think of them as candles, burning in reverse - each skyscraper rises at the same speed as the others, but some are higher, some are lower. They've been hammering away the whole time I've been here, and I hope to see something like the finished product when I leave. Soon my baby neighbor skyscraper will outgrow my own building, until my balcony is dwarfed. Maybe I'll get some shade then; it's ridiculously hot here.


OK, let me introduce my bosses (I have three of them, sort of): Masa, Jun, and Yoshi (left to right). Yoshi hired me, Masa is my navigator, and Jun laughs at my jokes once in awhile. They're all great people to work with, and I'm sure they'll make cameos throughout this blog.
Today I journeyed to Ginza to review the Sony showrooms, wherein lie the highest-tech electronics the brilliant minds at said company have come up with over the years (I pity my Japanese friends who are trying to read that last sentence). I took pictures of it before I got too narcissistic with a video camera.

OK, I'm going home.

Above: Yakitori restaurants in Hibiya, Tokyo

I'm Back

Hello,

I am now back in Japan after a year's absence at school. This summer I am working in Akasaka, Tokyo, at a English-Japanese social interface web service company, Active Corp.
My duties consist of riding the train train to work (probably the topic of a future post), scouting out and reviewing interesting Japanese destinations (restaurants, temples, museums, nightclubs), and helping to make my company as English friendly as possible as we develop a powerful website for English-speaking expats in Tokyo.


I've been in Japan for about 2 weeks, and a lot has happened. I doubt all of my posts will be in strict chronological order for the next month, but hey, you'll never know. It should be interesting.

From top: me drinking Turkish tea; man preparing sashimi in Shinjuku restaurant; tempura dinner

grand finale

Well folks, I'm at the end of my internship in Chiba. It's been a really great year and I'm really going to miss the friends I've made and the places I've been. I have one last flurry of photos for all who are interested. They come with their own convenient captions. Again I apologize, many of these were taken with my cell camera, I didn't have my digital with me. If you squint they won't look so bad.



I recently took Channing, our newest team member, on a tour of Tokyo. After visiting the Imperial Palace Gardens we stopped by Tsukiji fish market for lunch. I've been told that every restaurant of note in Tokyo buys its sushi-grade fish at this market. After sushi we stopped by this street vendor selling mussels - grilled in the shell. Yummy. Those are sea urchins at the bottom. The inside has the richness of fois gras but taste of the sea. Great over rice.


My friends Haruna (holding chopsticks) and Sayuri, and Uchi (not pictured) prepared a delicious farewell dinner for me in a friend's apartment. The main course was chirashizushi. Imagine a bed of rice with snow peas, small slices of sashimi, sugar, and egg on top. It doesn't get any better.

This is Kenji, a college outreach staff member, looking his best. His English is very good and he often translates for me if I talk myself into a corner. Kenji and Channing also attended the dinner party. The background is a typical college apartment. What you see in the picture is about 25% of the entire living space, including the kitchen.

Dan and Carol are my host-parents. Dan is the Chiba team leader, English teacher, Bible-study leader, and pastor of Oyumino Church - for starters. Sometimes I think he gets more work done in a day than I will do in my undergraduate career. Carol is a KCS (soon to be CCSI) teacher and mother of nine kids. She also is very involved in the community. Thank you, Dan and Carol, for putting up with me for a year and being so nice about it :-)

It was a typical Sunday morning. I arrived at church a few minutes late for my Bible study at Honda Chapel, set up a few chairs, and tried without much luck to decode the Japanese sermon. (One nice thing is that many of the praise songs are in hiragana, not kanji, so that younger kids and people like me can pronounce them. This way I'm able to sing most of the songs in church, which is nice, even if I'm not certain of their meaning.) During the announcements, Nagata-san told congregation that I would be leaving. "Peetah-kun.... America ni kaerimasu...sui-yobi.... etc." Then before I realized it, he invited everyone to sento that night to see me off!

For the uninitiate, a sento is a traditional Japanese public bath. For details, try wikipedia, or watch Spirited Away. If you think that it's just a glorified hot tub, you need to experience it for yourself. Due to the nature of the sento, I did not take photos inside, but here are Ryosuke and Toshi relaxing and drinking coffee afterward.

That's about it. I may post a few more photos when I get back to the states, but Nashi Fruit is ending. This summer I'm continuing my Japanese studies at Stanford University and will be attending Georgetown University in the Fall. Thanks for watching!

Yu-chan

ads i've seen on the train

I took these with my cell phone. Sorry for the shakiness.

hanami

I recently excurded solo to Tokyo for hanami (flower watching).


Flower watching - usually sakura, or cherry blossoms - is a serious spectator sport in Japan. Families will eat picnic lunches under cherry trees, sometimes lingering long into the evening and talking over beer and cigarettes. Since Japan is a very vertical country, some people even take month-long trips, starting in the south and driving north, to follow the sakura blossoming. Hardcore.

These pictures are from Ueno park. I was really impressed with how the lantern (?)...indwelt.... the tree behind it in this picture. The branches are just where the artist went a little crazy, or where he gave his sculpture an organic halo.

Homeless people inhabit the green and blue shelters in the background. Interestingly, even people at this level of society line their shoes neatly outside their shelters.

I'm waking up, the house is very still. It's a beautiful, quiet, sunny morning. My window is open and I hear a faint voice getting closer. It's a van with a loudspeaker on top. A voice talks matronly to the silent neighborhood, like the airport lady asking you to keep an eye on your luggage. The voice then chants a few intelligable lines in singsong fashion before it repeats. I don't know Japanese very well, but it sounds like an appeal. The effect is eerie - I feel like I'm in an Orwellian world where people cowering in houses listen fearfully to condescending exhortations from the state.

easter

My church celebrated Easter Sunday with extra-praiseful music, lunch together, and games and a choir concert afterwards. There were close to 200 people on Sunday - many people brought friends and relatives. I should've taken more pictures, but I never remember. Here is one of my pastor, Dan, talking to students after lunch.



Our church building is beautiful, and spacious by Japanese standards. Pictures possibly forthcoming.

food update

The neighbor lady just brought me over a pot of takeinoko miso, made with wild bamboo shoots. During this time of year Japanese people hunt for takenoko in the woods in Chiba and cook them in soups and rices. No, I didn't save you any.

kamakura two

The woodwork here is truly amazing. The carvings under the eaves look like a complicated jenga tower to me.




Prayer cards, 700yen.




This prayer card is asking for good fortune in upcoming college test results (Ayumu).




My postcard to you, my readers. A massive 700-year old metal buddha, or daibutsu. He looks a little irritated from this angle. Maybe a 350-year old itch he hasn't been able to scratch?

kamakura one

Ayumu, a college student from my church, took me on a sightseeing trip to Kamakura, an area famous for its numerous and beautiful shrines (Shinto) and temples (Buddhist). A shogun - whose name escapes me - once made Kamakura his capital, accounting for the concentration cultural buildings in this now relatively quiet prefecture.


I'm always impressed with how well Japanese architecture and aesthetic harmonize with nature. I felt very peaceful walking through the valley.









(spring flags, to hazard a guess - my friends couldn't read the kanji. Kamakura.)







(detail of a wooden gate, approx. 7x10 cm. Kamakura.)

geisha

McSweeny's just gets weirder and weirder. Find out about real geisha here.

tokyo outing

I took a solo walking trip around downtown Tokyo last Monday, on which I walked past interesting stores like this one.

And this one. You always find interesting stores off the main drag. Tintin books, Tintin TV shows, but most awesomely, Tintin and Snowy figurines, two of which I bought.

Also happening in my life: I've suffered from tea poisoning - oolong, more specifically - during the last 72 hours. Thankfully it's clearing up, but yeah, apparently oolong has a nasty tendancy to flush out important oils and whatnot from one's stomach. I'm stickin' with green.

typhoon

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. I have become very entrenched in my daily routines of teaching, sleeping, eating, grading, etc. Japanese university students have been on vacation for the last month, so all of my college-level classes and activities have temporarily ceased. I have been using my extra time to coach my American students, especially in trig, algebra, and Latin. Tomorrow I'm meeting with Soichiro, a university student, for lunch and possibly a Bible study. More Chiba updates coming.

It's midnight right now. We have been expecting typhoon-level winds, and they just hit by the sound of what they're doing to the house :-) The weather's fierceness makes my workspace all the more cozy. Now just add a dash of indie internet radio...

snow camp

Yokohama and Chiba college outreach teams arose with the sun Wednesday morning. They headed north - by van or by train - to Nagano prefecture for a three day snow camp. I entrusted my life – what choice did I have? - to Nagata's ancient Toyota mini-van for the four hour trip. In my car were Yuko, Hajime, Nagata, and myself. None of them spoke fluent English, so I thrust my beginner Japanese on the lot of them.

Me: Where are we going?

Nagata: We are going to Nagano.

Me: What are we going to do?

Yuko: We are going to ski.

Me: Is that so? How many children do you have? (etc, etc)

The Japanese countryside was very beautiful, even through a dirty van window. It's interesting how a few places in Japan, like Tokyo and Nagoya, can be so crowded, while vast stretches of green in other parts of the country only boast a few houses and farms. Location, location, location.

~

I get carsick in Japanese vans, I'm not sure why.

~

Snow Camp was a very memorable experience. I was the only person there who spoke fluent English. This proved initially frustrating, but by the end I felt exhilarated because of all the Japanese I had learned. The ski resort didn't have snowboard boots in my size (they stopped about 7 cm shorter) so I tried skis for the first time. By the end of the day I was poling my way around with relative ease, although I wished I had learned more Japanese curse words when I attempted a mogul run.

~

Here is a picture of Shinya leading worship in the evening. Next is a snapshot of the group before we went our separate ways. I made a lot of friends that week, had many interesting conversations with people even with my limited vocabulary.

my morning view

I drink at least one pot of green tea (matcha, Japanese) every day. Two pots if my math students aren't paying attention. I drink at least two pots of green tea every day...

jinja

I was able to recover a few photos from the smouldering remains of my CompactFlash card. The first is a shot of my neighborhood's jinja - Shinto shrine - after the 30-year snow. I don't know exactly how it works, but I think that, unlike Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines aren't social places. I've never seen monks live near them. Jinja literally blend into the countryside, growing alongside the grass and bamboo trees. Many of them are very beautiful and reflect the Japanese' skill in working with and complementing natural surroundings in their architecture.

The word "Shinto" is made up of two Japanese kanji. The first one is pronounced "kami," and can mean "sacred spirits which take the form of things and concepts important to life, such as wind, rain, mountains, trees, rivers and fertility." (Wikipedia: "Shinto") However, we Christians use the word "kami" to describe the Christian God. It is obviously very easy to confuse the concept of God the Father with the animistic spirits in the collective consciousness of Japan. I wanted to highlight just one example of the difficulties missionaries face when communicating with a people that has no memory of Christianity.



Tokyo's busiest train station, Shinjuku Eki services approx. 750,000 passengers per day, although Wikipedia ("shinjuku") sets the number at two million. Shinjuku is a business, government, and entertainment hub of Tokyo, especially for the younger generation. Sushi, Karaoke, Gucci, you name it.

-- -- -- --

My teaching life is changing quite a bit this month. I have now taken on two additional English classes on Thursdays. The age groups are 8-10 and 40-50, respectively. Teaching such diverse age groups keeps me on my toes with respect to presentation and technique. I have found that younger children respond far better when I use varying tones of voice, over-emphasizing almost every point I make. Dynamic and visual presentation is essential for teaching Japanese children. In this respect, they don't differ from American children very much.

The 40-50 English class is supposed to finish by 9pm, but if everyone participates heavily it may finish as late as 10. My 40-50 year olds (ha!) speak conversational English, so it is my job to smooth out their grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. Although I loosely follow a textbook, my primary goal is get my students to hold interesting English conversations with each other. We talk about Japan, Japanese food, America, American food... Actually, politics and economics are pet topics as well. I sometimes learn as much about Japanese culture as my students learn English.

I also started a 2 hour/week speech class today for my MK students in the Keiyo Christian school where I teach. Although I will have to be flexible and open minded because I am dealing with students of all ages - between 8 and 16 years of age (!!!) - I hope that it will one day resemble Nate Wilson's rhetoric class which I attended at New Saint Andrews College (Moscow, ID) a few years ago. My goal is 1) to provide a positive opportunity for the younger kids to speak to an audience, and 2) to provide further practice and accountability for my English-speaking high school students in persuasive speaking/writing. The speech class will be fully integrated with the HS students' other studies, providing a place for them to read their essays and research papers from their other classes. I'm really excited about speech class - please pray that it will be a positive experience for all the students.

I'm sorry for the lack of photos recently, but most of my photos got deleted by accident, which is really lame, because my Prefecture had a 30-year-snow recently (like, a foot), and Chiba looked really beautiful covered with snow.