Happy Halloween!

I had assumed that Halloween wasn't really celebrated in Japan, so imagine my surprise when pumpkin paraphernalia started showing up in stores about six weeks ago.  I first noticed it in the imported foods store, then the florist and gift shops, and by now pretty much every store everywhere, including restaurants, have pumpkins and ghosts and orange all over the place. (The spiderweb donuts at Krispy Kreme are really good, btw.)

I immediately quizzed our Japanese teacher about what we should expect in terms of trick-or-treating.  She had no idea what I was talking about.  She said, "So children come to your house and you have to give them candy to get them to go away?".  I told her that pretty much summed it up and she said that it didn't happen here.  She also said you couldn't get real pumpkins of carving size, only the tiny ones sometimes.  I haven't really seen any decorated houses either.

Oddly enough I have seen a couple of tiny displays of costumes, mostly Disney stuff.  Disney is popular here because there is a Disneyland smack in the middle of Tokyo.  Mickey and Minnie do a good job of ingratiating themselves into the more international holidays.  I think the costume display I saw was optimistic on the part of the store....after all, Japanese people do love to dress up in costumes.

While on the subject of holidays, I am sad to report that Japanese stores jump the gun just as bad as American stores do---in other words, Christmas has arrived!  But I refuse to say more than that until it is at least Thanksgiving. ;)

Disney costumage

cactus pumpkins in Cainz

shelves and shelves of cheap junk

Kaldi, the imported foods store (six weeks ago)

spooky pumpkin at the florist

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Chad has been trying for awhile now, via mail, to complete all the necessary paperwork to be able to transfer money between our US bank account and the one we have here.  It hasn't been easy because they keep sending it back with a note that the says the "signature doesn't match".  When you sign an important document here they will scrutinize your signature and make sure it matches all your other signatures.  If you're like Chad, and myself, it doesn't always look exactly the same every time you sign something.  Plus sometimes I use my initials, sometimes I include my middle initial, and don't even get me started on that dang apostrophe.

Anyway, we went to Citibank on Saturday to try to take care of it in person.  While there, they showed Chad the signature they were trying to match to (his alien registration card, I think?) and had him try no less than three times before they got one they would accept.  They were hung up on how the "M" that is his middle initial looked.  Geez.

He offered to use his hanko [hane-ko] to do it but they wanted to keep going with the signature.  A hanko is a stamp that Japanese people can use in place of their signature.  I suppose they do it to get around the trouble we went through.  Chad got one when we first got here---he had to go have it registered (at city hall, I think) and he has to carry the registration papers with it.

the hanko (it just says "D'ESPOSITO")

Success at Last!

I finally found my first geocache in Japan!  For those of you who have no idea what a geocache is, it's a container hidden by someone with a GPS for other people to then locate with their GPS.  There are geocaches and people finding them all over the world, for lists of them and more information on what on earth I'm talking about, go here.

Chad introduced me to geocaching years ago, but he doesn't like to do it much anymore so these days I usually hunt them by myself.  He did get me a really nice GPS a year or two ago but unfortunately it didn't come with maps of Japan (I think there are some you can buy now but they can get pretty pricey).  No matter though, because now there is an iPhone app (made by the official site) that works really well.

This was not the first time I had looked for a cache here in Japan, I nearly got irretrievably lost in Ginza looking for one and risked a divorce trying to find one in Odaiba with Chad.  I prefer the method of geocaching whereby you look for them during the normal course of your day if you have some time to kill (the iPhone app makes this super easy).  This is also called "caching-for-numbers" because you can find a lot this way (i.e. run up your "found" number) but the downside is you can see some pretty boring caches in annoyingly crowded places.  Some people only cache when they can make an event of it and concentrate on the more interesting/isolated caches---this is more what we did when we first started geocaching.

At any rate, after our Krispy Kreme breakfast Sunday morning, Chad headed off to Akihabara and I fired up the app.  There are about a million geocaches in Tokyo and more throughout the rest of the country.  I can tell by the descriptions and logs (on the website) that Japanese people geocache too, but fortunately most of them are are written in English.

It took me about three minutes thanks to a good hint and a low difficulty level.

the cache

contents (I didn't take anything to move,
who knows when I'll find my next one)

signing the logbook...I realized while looking at this photo
that I dated it in August rather than October...I don't know
what I was thinking.  I noted it on the weblog later.

standing next to where I found it

Stop in Shinjuku

This past weekend we spent Saturday night in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo.  Unfortunately we got a late start and didn't have quite as big an adventure as I had hoped.  First we had to go to Citibank to take care of some banking matters that had become rather complicated.... but more on that in a later post.  We had been invited to dinner on Saturday night with some fellow American expats that live near Shinjuku---we had a good time hanging out with them and comparing city life to country life.  And it's always nice to be able to speak American English at full speed!

that night we enjoyed the panoramic views from our room

Shinjuku is known as where Tokyoites go to party....it's a very lively area and has almost become the center of the city in recent years.  There is a lot of nightlife, including a red-light district and areas for those who lead, um...alternative lifestyles.  Right now the city still isn't very lit up at night....Chad remembers Shinjuku in 2005 as being a lot brighter.  You can go here and get a good idea (these photos are way better than mine) of what it can look like.  There are also some good photos of Shinjuku station which is famous being the busiest train station in the world.  Over two million people go through it in a day and I think I bounced off about half of them over the weekend.  There is no way I can stop and take decent photos in there without losing Chad, or my camera, or one of my feet.

There are also lots of street performers around Shinjuku....we saw all manner of instruments being played and some truly, truly terrible street karaoke.

I think this was some kind of lute

you also see random puzzle buildings....

and monsters....

and endless little pedestrian streets
full of tiny shops

One of the big selling points of our hotel was that it has a Krispy Kreme right next to it.  That's right, Krispy Kreme is in Japan.  This isn't the first one I've found, there is one at the Kita-Senju train station which is where we always stop on our way in and out of the city.  The donut selection is pretty much the same as in the US, maybe a little less variety.  Most importantly, it tastes right. ;)

Skin's can't be far behind, right?  right?

There also just happened to be a Mexican restaurant on the ground floor of our hotel which was a pleasant surprise (and a good lunch).  As you all know that's almost like wandering across a yeti.  I'll be posting a little more about our trip later in the week... meanwhile there are a few more photos on Shutterfly.

century southern tower hotel....yum!

Goodbye Garden

I had a tiny kitchen garden here this summer that did pretty well.  I kept us in tomatos, oregano and basil.  Also a little parsley, but apparently Japanese caterpillars like parsley so what little bit I managed to keep was always appetizingly surrounded by squashed caterpillars.  It was pretty easy to find seedlings here at the various big-box stores, although there wasn't quite the variety to which I'm accustomed.  There are lots of seeds available but I'm too lazy (or not bored enough yet) to start them indoors.  I didn't see too many of my neighbors growing tomatos....eggplant is really popular though.

I'll be taking it down in next week though, it's gettin' cold and looking pretty sad. 

back in it's heyday

where it ended up
(brushetta + salad = dinner )

More on the local rice crop: Our teacher told me that it is customary for restaurants to put out signs that say "We have new rice!".  Apparently freshly harvested rice is the most delicious.  However, because of lingering radiation concerns, the going joke in these parts is that the signs are now going to say "We have old rice!".  Ha!

Check back next week, we have an adventure planned for this weekend!

Fun with Adjectives & Idioms

I love learning Japanese idioms.  And I am good at remembering the words for various adjectives.  So when they are combined it makes for a fun class.

To indicate that someone can't keep a secret you say they have a "light mouth". 

To indicate that someone can keep a secret or doesn't talk much, you say they have a "heavy mouth".

To indicate that someone is lazy you say they have "heavy hips".

And to indicate that a woman is, <ahem> ...."easy", you say she has "light hips".

Corporate Shill

Those of you who also use Blogger know that it gives you the option to "monetize" your blog.  For those of you who don't, it seems to be a fairly easy process by which you sign up to have ads placed on your blog and then depending on the volume of your traffic you will receive money.  I've investigated it a little bit and determined that I don't have or want (although I appreciate each and every one of you reading this) enough traffic to make it worthwhile.  But I am forever curious as to what kind of ads would be placed on my blog.  See, it uses "GooglePrescientRobotSense"  to determine--based on the content of your blog--what ads to place on it.  I have a bad feeling that I would end up with Japanese p--0--r--N (see me try to trick the robot there?) plastered all over the place. 

However, if I were able to choose my own ads I would be all for it, money or no.  I would restrict myself to only American companies who will ship stuff to me in Japan.  I like to shop, and I have my stores to which I am loyal.  But if I find that they won't ship stuff to me here, well, sayonara.  Those who do, will have their praises sung: Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Modcloth are among them.  They may charge a little for the shipping but it's still less that if I had it mailed to someone in the US and then they shipped it to me (which can cost a fortune).

But the reason for this post is that I just found the best of them all....and it is not at all who I expected it to be.  I need some winter pajamas so I went to the American Eagle Outfitters website fully expecting to cross them off the list.  You should know that when I am on the Internet under our Japanese IP address (we have an American one through VPN too) most websites recognize that I am in Japan.  And some of them have pop-ups in Japanese and a rare few ask me to clarify exactly how I would like to see their website.  But this is the only one I have seen that recognizes that I may live in Japan, but read English, and want to see prices in dollars (or pesos for that matter).  Now if only they had long pajama pants for sale.....

that is some sharp programming right there

Oh, and I'm not going to say which companies won't ship to me (I've already probably got Google after me now) but let's just say that you shouldn't put the words "imports" or "world" in your name if you don't ship internationally.

Curiouser and Curiouser

As I am still suffering from horrible jet-lag, (not having a job to go to during the daylight hours hinders recovery--I know, I know, cry me a river ;) I am going to phone in a post I've had on the back-burner for a long time.

Most of the houses in our neighborhood (but not ours) are surrounded by concrete walls that are about, oh, six or seven feet high.   For some reason that is unknown to me, almost everyone has a tiny little door (I would have to hunker down pretty low to go through them if that gives you any idea) built into their wall.  Chad and I disagree as to what is on the other side of the doors; I think it's Wonderland but he thinks it's John Malkovich's mind.

Side note: I asked someone about who owns the paddy fields near our house and was informed that they are the property of small-time local farmers.  I also received what I refer to as the "foreigners-sure-do-ask-ridiculous-questions" look.  I get this look a good bit (along with vague answers and/or laughter) which is why sometimes I just don't ask. 

I also call them the "hobbit doors" in my head

 

 

 

 

Update: Since I wrote this post, I have learned that these are "kitchen doors" that were put into older houses as a place for deliveries to be made.  So there you go.  Mystery solved. :)

Harvest

One of the first things we noticed when we arrived back was that the paddy field behind our house was mowed down.  I had a feeling we were going to miss the harvest and I was disappointed.  So imagine my surprise when I rode to the supermarket today and along the way encountered two other fields mid-harvest!  It was the one time I didn't bring my camera along so I had to drop the groceries and dash back out to try to catch what I could. 

one of the last stalks standing

little boys like machinery the world over

you can't tell but they were feeding the stalks into the machine
(they were also laughing at me and the little boy watching them)

as far as I can tell, this machine cuts it down, hulls it (is that
the right verb?) and then spits it out

very efficient

now it's just a hay field

I have a theory that the fields in our neighborhood belong to families around here.  Like, that's their year's worth of rice in that field.  Or it's some kind of co-op situation.  When we take the train into Tokyo we go through vast, endless paddy fields interspersed with green houses.  I think those are the corporate fields. 

Observations

We arrived back home this weekend from a week-long vacation in the US.  A few observations I made on my first trip back since we moved here:

1. America really is a "melting pot".  So many different ethnicities, nationalities, accents....Japan, on the other hand, is a big pot full o' Japanese people. 

2. Moe's and Target really need to expand into Japan.  I'm seriously considering a letter-writing campaign.

3. The flight (and jet lag) from Japan to the East Coast is tiring, but tolerable.  The flight (and jet lag) from the East Coast to Japan is a miserable, miserable experience.  You somehow lose a whole day and spend 24 hours awake.  It's like achieving time travel but in the worst possible way.



Also, yesterday (Monday) was another national holiday here.  It was Health & Sports Day.  This holiday was created after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics to commemorate the opening ceremonies.  At some point it was moved to fall in with the Happy Monday System.   Poor jet-lagged Chad had to go into work for a conference call even though the offices were closed.  I noticed one of my neighbors playing ball with some of the neighborhood children in the street....could have been coincidence, but I've never seen her out there before so I'm going to believe she was celebrating. ;)