Last Days in Fukuoka

Picking up where my last post left off, a couple weeks ago my host mother, a couple of her friends, another student that was also staying at her house (from Italy), and I went to an onsen (Japanese hot spring). No pictures for obvious reasons. First off, let me say this for those who don’t know: in an onsen, everyone’s naked. You get a hand towel if you kinda wanna cover yourself up, but that’s it. That said, it wasn’t really that embarrassing. At first it was kinda awkward, but it’s really…not that bad. You’re there to relax and everyone’s very civil about it. One of the nicest parts about it was the part of the bath that was outside. Unfortunately it was overcast that night so we couldn’t see the stars, but it was still pretty cool. By the way, the water is…really hot. I can’t give you an estimate for how hot it was since I don’t have any benchmarks to go off of, but I’ll just say that I had to get out and just sit down on a bench for a while to cool off. I suppose that’s probably normal, though. We were there for about an hour, so that’d be a pretty long time to be immersed in a hot spring. One of the (male) friends of my host mother that we were with gave us the advice of going into the cold water bath for about 10 seconds before leaving because, as was the case, you felt warm when you got out. It felt like sitting in an ice bucket, though.

After that there was a bit of a gap in me doing interesting things because going sightseeing almost every day is tiring, especially when I have 5 hours of intensive Japanese classes every day. I need time to chill, yo. This is also why I haven’t posted in a while.

The next few weeks saw me going to my host mother’s friend’s house to eat a few more times. While free food is always nice, I always felt like I was being rude because I’d never finish all the stuff they seemed to be expecting me to eat. A line I often heard during these meals was “takusan aru kara, takusan tabete kudasai” which means “There’s a lot, so please eat a lot”. I’m…not a terribly big eater, so it was kinda troubling, stressful even. She’d keep putting more food in front of me and I’d just smile and say thank you while mentally wishing she’d stop because I don’t know how to politely refuse something like that in Japanese. Anyway, here are some pictures of my host mother and said friend. Also, me and my host mother.

I went on another expedition with my pop culture class, this time to one of the local game centers. We, uh, studied the games there and I had to ask the employees what the most popular games for male and female customers were and why. For men it was, predictably, the Gundam vs. Gundam games (based off of the popular anime, Mobile Suit Gundam). For women, they said Puyo Puyo (a puzzle game). Oh right. This was around the time when my ATM card decided to stop working. I guess my bank was trying to confirm some account details with me, but couldn’t because my cell phone doesn’t work here and they decided to close my account. Meanwhile, I couldn’t fathom why the card worked when I arrived in Japan, but then suddenly stopped. Despite this, my pop culture teacher was cool enough guy and paid for us to play some games. He also bought me ice cream for some reason, which was cool. Kinda surprised that there was an ice cream vending machine in the game center, considering how ice cream and arcade games don’t tend to mix well.

On the topic of the ATM card, I had to go through a bunch of stuff with calling my bank and being on hold for a million hours and having them express ship me a new card, only to not be able to activate it because I couldn’t reach the automated activation service by phone for some reason. I swear, I tried like every possible combination of country codes and the number I was trying to reach (with/without leading 0s or 1s, respectively) and it still wouldn’t connect. I ended up having to get some money from my parents’ account.

And so, last Friday my stay at the Genki Japanese and Culture School ended. After classes end on Fridays there’s a graduation ceremony where all the people leaving that week get a certificate saying how many hours they studied and at what level, and then have to give a brief speech. After that, I went to the game center with some friends and played the Gundam game again, the one where you get in a pod and it’s like you’re actually piloting it! Kinda. It’s such a moneysink, but it’s so fun. I recorded a couple videos at the game center, but Youtube won’t let me upload them for some reason. I’ll try again later. After that, there was a party at a cafe owned by one of the teacher’s family. The food was pretty good. They had fried chicken, sushi, bream, some sort of pasta, and some other dishes I don’t remember. For dessert they had some really good sorbet. Flavors included grapefruit, banana, apple, and green tea. And yes, the green tea flavored sorbet tasted exactly like green tea. It was kinda gross. Also, as I just found out, sherbet and sorbet are the same thing. Furthermore, it’s not spelled “sherbert” as I previously thought. Also, for some reason, the family has a couple of horses for pets. Here’s a group shot of everyone that went to the party.

Not gonna say much about this, but yesterday I saw the new Evangelion movie. Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime series that came out around 1997 and happens to be my favorite anime. Recently, a series of movies has been coming out that’s remaking the original series and adding new stuff. Being the huge Evangelion fan that I am seeing it in a theater was amazing. It was epic by itself, but seeing it on a movie screen was way too good. They were selling movie-related goods at the theater, which was pretty cool. I picked up this pamphlet that has a bunch of stuff about the movie that I can’t read yet. Someday I’ll break the Da Vinci Code and read the delicious contents those devious kanji are hiding. Oh right. Japanese movie theaters are unreasonably expensive. Going to see the movie set me back $18. I was also gonna go see the Fukuoka Tower and I heard it was best to go at night, but by the time I got there it was closed. All I have to show for myself is a grainy picture.

Earlier today I got on the Shinkansen, left Fukuoka, and am now in Hiroshima. Tomorrow I’ll be checking out the Peace Memorial Park and later on be heading to Kyoto. After I do stuff in Kyoto, I’ll be in Tokyo for three days and then come back to the US.

Random observations:
More people use parasols here than I’ve seen anywhere else.
It’s not uncommon for stores to, instead of taking your orders in person, have you buy a ticket from a vending machine that has your order on it.
It’s damn near impossible to find notecards here.

One of the students at the school showed us these videos on “how to speak Japanese without saying a word”, which are hilarious imo. The first one I linked is part 2, but it covers everything that’s in part 1. As a small warning, the second one has a bit of foul language.

Random pictures:
Pokemon promotion thing at McDonald’s
I did a double-take when I saw this
Nanak, Kyushu’s self-proclaimed oldest Indian restaurant
Sign in the subway warning against smoking and littering
Dragonball-related stuff in a jewelry store. Really, Japan?
Soylution. It loses a bit of the effect if it has to be explained.
The name sounds cool until you realize it’s a dry cleaner.
Do we have this kind of mannequin in the west?
A lunch of things I wanted to try in Japan: manjuu, chocolate cornet, and melon bread.
Picture of everyone at GenkiJACS
An amusing shirt
Lizard I saw outside my host mother’s friend’s house.
These are…kinda creepy
Interestingly enough, this shop is named “Don Quixote”. Why they have a penguin as their mascot, I’ll never know.
Freshness Burger
Me standing in front of the Shinkansen

Karaoke Adventure

Let’s see, where to start…

The week that followed my last post was largely uneventful. I suppose the highlight of the week was going to this huge anime/manga/game/etc. store called Mandarake. It’s a pretty awesome store. The first floor has a bunch of recent manga and games, including really old stuff like NES/SNES and Game & Watch. The second floor has a lot of older manga, doujinshi (any work that’s published by the author without going through a professional company), and anime. Also, the sales counter on that floor had most of a series of games that I like lined up (and that can only be found in Japan), along with some of the games’ soundtracks which was pretty awesome. I ended up buying my favorite one. The third floor, around the escalator, has a bunch of cosplay stuff. The rest of that floor is mostly girl’s manga, so I didn’t spend too much time there. The fourth floor had way overpriced box sets of anime (like, $200-300), music CDs, and really old models and trading cards. The music they have playing in the shop is interesting as well. I haven’t paid much attention to it, but I’ve noticed a few anime and video game songs. Here are all the pictures I couldn’t fit in the above paragraph:

Cosplay outfits
Apparently figures are expensive (Note: 100 yen = $1)

On Thursday of that week, I went on another sightseeing trip offered by the school. This time we walked to a shrine (the other people pictured are, from left to right, Takahiro (our guide), Jessica, and Mandy (two other students)). We walked through a mall to get there, which was actually reasonably large. For some reason, in the mall was this huge parade…thing that people carry during some festival (as illustrated in this poster; apparently a given person only has to carry it for 100 meters or so before switching out). Not sure how best to describe a shrine, so I’ll let the pictures talk.

Rope thing tied around a tree
Not sure what to do with this
Shrine exterior
Koi
Corridor of torii – Part 2
Fountain
Stone torii
Some sort of ritual utensil storage room
Fountain for washing your hands?
Barrels of sake
Display of rocks I’m not entirely sure, but from what I understand of what our guide was telling us, I guess sumo wrestlers come here and if they can lift one of these stones up onto that shelf they get their name engraved on it or something?

After going to the shrine, we stopped by this folk museum that had some sort of ye olde Japan stuff.
Traditional Japanese room
Old toys
Textile machine
Old mailbox

One interesting thing to note is some of the customs associated with a shrine’s donation box. For those who don’t know, the custom for donation is as such: 1) Toss the coin in the box 2) ring the bell 3) clap twice and bow 4) while keeping your hands together, pray for whatever it is you want to pray for, and 5) bow once more. Then you can leave. Also, it’s important to take note of the denomination of coin you drop in the donation box. They’re puns in Japanese, though, so bear with me as I explain. For starters, “yen” in Japanese is pronounced just as “en”. Their word for “five” is “go”, so 5 yen is “go en”. As it turns out, “go en” is a formal way of saying “opportunity”, especially when referring to a chance of meeting someone and starting a relationship. So if you want to meet someone, 5 yen is a good amount to give. Though, with that small of a donation, don’t expect to be finding a lover or anything. If you want some more luck, you might consider donating 50 yen, which is “go juu en”. In this case, “juu” is taken as an abbreviation for “juu bun”, which means “plenty” or “sufficient”. A 50 yen donation is stronger than a simple 5 yen donation. 10 yen is also acceptable for luck in other areas, using the same meaning of “juu bun”. Any multiples of these are also acceptable. Another interesting shrine tradition is that of the ema block. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but if you want to wish for something you can buy one of these, write your wish on it, and then hang it up at the shrine. It’s kinda cool, because you can look at all the blocks people have left and see what they’re wishing for. Wikipedia informs me that it’s usually used for “annual success, success on exams, marital bliss, to have children, and to ward of illness”. Indeed, one plaque that I looked at read “This time for sure I’ll pass the exam!” Also, you can pay 30 yen to get a written fortune.

The weekend following that was uneventful. I went back to Mandarake and picked up a game for a friend back home on Saturday. On Sunday, some friends of my host mother invited us over for dinner, so I went to that. It was, uh, interesting, but I didn’t have much to talk about with them. I could understand what most of them were saying, though, so I guess that was pretty cool. Something that’s interesting is that apparently mayonnaise is a common dressing for salad in Japan. Other things we ate included potato salad, fried chicken, and…some sort of salad that I didn’t really know what was in it, but it wasn’t bad. For dessert was some sort of cubed gelatin with fruit. Then we had tea. I swear, tea will never cease to disappoint me. I know I’m in the wrong country to be not liking tea, but no matter what kind I try it always comes off as bland. It’s weird, because the tea they served even smelled really good. It was some sort of vanilla-strawberry stuff. But then when I tasted it it was…eh. Oh well.

On Tuesday of this week, after school I went to karaoke with some other students from the school. I have to say, it was pretty fun. It’s nice, because it’s not at all about how good you are at singing; just whether you do or not. I was really taken aback by one of the other students’ voice, though. He seemed good enough to be a professional singer as far as I could tell. I was also surprised by the large selection of western songs that were available. Since pretty much everyone else was singing American songs, I decided to make up for it by singing a bunch of Japanese songs. My selections included Cruel Angel’s Thesis, Sorairo Days, GONG, and Yuusha-Oh Tanjou.

Wednesday heralded another trip back to Mandarake, this time with my Pop Culture class. I say “class”, but I’m the only one in it right now. To make it an actual activity, I had to fill out this worksheet-thing describing what’s on each floor and stuff. I ended up finding a doujinshi manga I had been looking for, so that was pretty cool. It ended up being more expensive than I anticipated, though (~$20). Apparently doujinshi are expensive, as my teacher commented. Also, we had a lot of fun making fun of how the covers of boy’s love manga (a popular genre for girls) all look the same. There’s always one guy standing behind another guy with one or both arms around him. Other options include either or both guys being shirtless, chains, or handcuffs.

Tonight we’re supposed to be going to an onsen (hot spring), so I might make a short post after this describing that.

A couple things I wanted to mention that didn’t fit into any of the above paragraphs. First of all, it’s not easy to find the same kind of beverages that we have in the west. Restaurants often don’t have a beverage section on their menu and just provide you with water or iced tea. The ones that do will usually just have Coke and some juices. In fact, there don’t seem to be many western carbonated beverages in general, especially not outside Coke. I think the only other one I’ve seen is Mountain Dew, and only in one store. Also, in my previous entry I posted a picture of a sign that requests that you don’t walk and smoke. It was brought up in class the other day, and apparently the reason for that is because if you’re holding a lit cigarette and have your hand at your side, that’s just about the right height to hit a child in the face. Admittedly, I would not have thought of that.

As usual, random pictures:
Poster for the Lion King
Statue in front of the shrine
Yakitori restaurant
Traditional Japanese wooden sandals. I see people wearing these every so often
The creepiest hats you will ever see
A truly Japanese sub
Japanese stop sign. What’s on the sign is also written on the street in large characters.
A selection of Japanese novels in my room
Dunno how I forgot to mention this before, but the bathroom near my room has an automatic toilet. There’s a control panel on the wall that has various bidet options, seat positions, and two different flushing options, big and small.

Also, I made a brief video tour of the house I’m staying at.