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.