Trash

  I've actually been having quite a bit of trouble with Japanese trash cans.  They seem to be big on recycling, but every place wants it separated differently.  Some places want aluminum cans and plastic bottles in the same bin, others want them separated.  Some places want you to take any wrappers off the plastic bottle, others don't seem to care.  One place wants newspapers and magazines in separate places.  Some places just have two bins, "combustible" and "non-combustible".  Sometimes the signs are in english, but most of the time its Japanese.  Which leaves me with the following options:

1) pull out a dictionary every time I want to throw something away

2) dig through each trash can to see what kind of trash is in there

3) toss stuff in at random and hope nobody notices

4) always throw everything in the "other" bin, even if it could legitimately be recycled.

5) just hold on to everything until I get back to my apartment

Food and drink

  Several dining experiences to share.  First, Friday we went to some little diner.  In the front was a vending machine, except instead of pictures of Pepsi cans, there were pictures of food (rice, noodles, chicken, etc).  You put some money in the machine, press the button of the food you want, and a little ticket gets printed out.  You sit down at the table, and in maybe 3 or 4 minutes, someone brings your food.  Amazingly efficient, very cheap, and you don't have to worry about not speaking Japanese... as long as you can figure out what the food is from the little 1.5" x 1.5" thumbnail pictures.

  With the exception of fast food joints like this, most Japanese restaurants that I have found are very small.  Some have only 4 or 5 tables.  If you try to go anywhere with a group of 10 or 12, forget it.  Perhaps somewhere they are hiding the huge BW-3 style restaurant with like fifty tables and a hundred TV screens showing World cup soccer, but if so I haven't found them yet.

  Bars are pretty small too.  Another thing: in my experience in the U.S., a bar is something that is on the first floor.  You walk in off the street, and there you are.  Maybe in some urban areas or in a large hotel there might be a bar on the 2nd floor or down in the basement.  In Kyoto it is not uncommon for there to be a bar on the 8th floor of a building.  You go up the elevator, and there's a small room in the back which is a bar.  There's a different bar on the 7th floor, and a different one in the 9th, and maybe even two or three others on the 8th floor as well.  Because of the huge number of small bars, some of them seem to be very specialized or highly themed.  

  The little 8th floor bar we were in on Friday night specialized in American beers.  Except that beer was $10, while scotch and bourbon were only $8.  I've never been in a place where whisky was cheaper than beer.  Coke, by the way, was $4.  

  Then Saturday night, we went to a sukiyaki place.  This is kinda like a fondue restraurant.There is a burner at your table, and they bring you the pot of uncooked beef or whatever, and you cook it at your table.  Our Japanese was not all that good... we understood that the lady was saying $15 each, which we initially thought was pretty good.  But the pot was really pretty small, and we were kind of disappointed in the quantity of food for the price.  When they brought the check we realized that it was $15 per pot, so it worked out to only $5 per person.

Cultural insight #1

Japan is a cash based society. Credit cards are accepted only at very large department stores and very large hotels. Everything else is cash. I actually have not used my credit card since I got here (as opposed to the US where I can go two weeks without a single dollar in my wallet). When I showed up, they handed me my entire stipend for the summer in cash (the equivalent of $3000 in $100 bills). 

This has surprised me greatly. Us Westerners have this impression of Japan as being highly technologically advanced, yet they have not caught on to the idea of electronic money very much. 

Some of the implications: the smallest bill is 1000 Yen (approx $10), so you always have to carry change around with you. In the US I carry no change with me, and if I get any, I just throw it on my desk at the end of the day... where it piles up until Angela needs some quarters to do laundry. Now, I have to make a point to put some change in my pocket every morning. I make exact change at restaurants and stores very frequently now.

Now, it seems to be a very safe society. I think violent crime is fairly low, so nobody seems to mind carrying $500 in cash around downtown. 

meet the lab

Today I moved to Kyoto to meet my host researcher where I will stay for the next nine weeks. They seem to be fairly impressed by my Japanese skills, not necessarily by how much many words I know, but by my pronounciation.  I think all those hours of listening to Japanese CDs while commuting have paid off.

And yes, it does appear to be true that drinking is a big part of Japanese culture.  My host professor and all of his lab took me out to dinner, and then drinks at an Irish pub afterwards.

culture shock

So the Japanese cultural experience just got real. I stayed with a local family for the weekend. Dinner the first night was a huge affair. The husband and wife, the wife's co-worker (American), two kids, the neighbor, the neighbor's aunt and uncle, somebody's grandmother, and somebody's relative visiting from the South Dakota. So there's maybe 11 of us, 3 Americans. After dinner, the 12 year old girl Midori pulls out the violin and plays the Star Bangled Banner. I'm looking around like maybe I should stand up and salute at this point.

After dinner, the guy asks me if I want to take a shower. So he says they put some towels in my room. I go grab one and commence bathing. As I'm drying off, I start thinking this towel is really big. Like it's probably bigger than any towel I've ever used in my life. Now this confuses me a little, because I was expecting things to be smaller than in the U.S., not bigger, but whatever. So then after the shower the guy is like let me show you how to setup the futon bed. He's unfolding the mattresses and he's like, “hey, where's the blanket?”. Ah... um... about that. It appears I've used a blanket as a towel. The next day I made sure to ask if I really had a towel.

Now the first morning, I'm up at some godforsaken hour in the morning (the sun comes up at like 4:30 am and apparently they are not as strong believers in curtains as I am). Anywho, it's just me and the 10 year old boy awake at this point. Now, the parents speak pretty good English, but the 10 year old boy speaks maybe 100 words in English, and I speak maybe 100 words in Japanese. They are not the same 100 words. We try to carry on a conversation but its pretty rough. Eventually he starts to show me his toys (little spinning tops, godzilla dolls, etc.) Finally, he pulls out the Go set (traditional Chinese/Korean/Japanese game, little black and white stones. It's like the oriental equivalent of chess). Now I can actually play Go, although I don't think I'm all that good. So we start to play and I wipe the board with him. I'm feeling kind of bad about beating a 10 year old boy. The next game we play I give him a 2 stone handicap, still beat him. Then a 4 stone handicap and I still beat him. Later his sister comes down and starts talking to him as we're playing. I don't really understand a word they're saying, but I imagine it was probably “What the hell, this crazy white bastard plays Go?”, “Yeah and he's beating the pants off me!” “Holy crap”.

Now, for food, I was going with the “When in Rome” strategy. I was prepared to eat anything. I ended up eating pancakes with chopsticks. And by pancakes I mean squid, shrimp, cabbage and bacon pancakes. With soy sauce on top. They also offered me some mayoannise to go with it, but I drew the line there... Walking around, we did see McDonald's, which I expected. And then KFC, which I wasn't expecting but I could believe. And then, in downtown Tokyo, a Denny's. Seriously? Denny's?

We did some sight seeing in Tokyo. The “Japlish” was amusing. I saw a store called “Nudy Boy”. On a lamp post nearby there was a large sign stating “No Smorking”, which I could understand, but also “No tout”, which I have no idea what that means. Also a sign on a display “dose no touch, please”. 

Finally, we saw a few temples (Buddhism) and shrines (Shinto). The one we went to was called Daibutsu. I'm pretty sure that this translates as “Huge-Ass Buddha”. Not quite statue of liberty size, but still pretty damn big for a Buddha.

First look around

So here are my first two interesting photos.  First, we found some interesting chocolate bars called "Crunky".  I had to buy one just to take a picture of it.  Next, the Hotel Chapel Christmas, which was right across the street from our hotel.  My associates went over there to see if they had a bar.  Turns out, it was a "love hotel" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel .  Rooms were $20/hour.  I think you can figure out what they were for!

Free cardboard

  I am in Japan now.  Too tired to think of much to write, but here's something amusing from last week:

How to get a free cardboard tube from FedEx.

Step 1: get a poster of some kind, and take it to the FedEx store.

Step 2: explain that you are going to Japan, and that you think it will be a big hassle to carry this poster on the plane, so you were hoping to ship it, and also you need some kind of a tube to ship it in.

Step 3: The FedEx guy will give you a tube. Put the poster in it. This is important: make sure the poster is in the tube BEFORE you ask for the price.

Step 4: Ask how much it will cost. FedEx guy will say $117 to have it there in a week.

Step 5: Tell him that that is ridiculous. Suggest that you just buy the tube from him and carry on the plane instead. It may be a hassle, but not a $117 hassle.

Step 6: He'll tell you that there is no charge for the tube. It's free.

Step 7: Say thank you very much and walk out of the store with your new free cardboard tube.