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「rambling」カテゴリーアーカイブ

Random photos

I was going through my phone, deleting pictures I didn’t need anymore, and I came across some that I thought would be neat to share. Things I just snapped on a whim. You can find top-notch photography of Japan almost anywhere, I’m just trying to give a glimpse of how down-to-earth life can be here… in the best meaning possible. 🙂

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This is Kinkakuji, in Kyoto… the Golden Pavilion. I still can’t believe I took this on a cell phone! This was from my first trip to Kyoto, with two very good college friends. All three of us ended up getting similar jobs after graduation, but those two have already returned home, leaving me alone! Tragic.

My college days were spent reading histories of Japan, and a professor who was particularly interested in architecture indirectly taught me how to appreciate these places.

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And on the opposite, modern end of the Japanese spectrum… I found a Super Scope in the trash. Then again, most might argue that this is the best place for it…

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This is a picture from Christmas time, at Roppongi Midtown. They had this neat sort of light show thing set up, and I love, love, love the blue lights used during Christmas.

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This was during hanami, or the time in May, when the cherry trees bloom. Near my house is a river, and the shops lining the river bust out the food and drink stands. This was on top of a restaurant? I think? Or some shop. I guess the shop dog was just chillin’ up there.

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A month or so ago, I heard phantom drumming near my house. After following the sound and some children in yukata excitedly cheering about all the junk food they’d get to eat, I found myself at this festival! Lotsa dancin’ and good eats. Festivals rock.

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And just this weekend. For some reason, Sunflowers are growing in a lot behind a nearby restaurant. I thought, oh, how nice, and then I saw these GIANT BEES.

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I love Roger Dean’s art. I love his covers for Yes. I love Yes. I love transcendental ’70s “Roundabout” Yes, with the 20-minute songs with tons of tenor harmonies and guitar and keyboard solo tradeoffs; I love commercial ’80s “Owner of a Lonely Heart” Yes, and all the underrated cheese and surprising rock they bring. I want this book so bad.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with Japan whatsoever, other than the fact that it is a version published in Japan, in Japanese, and I am standing in a Japanese bookstore.

I’ll go through my camera’s older memory cards next!!

James

Oakhouse Facebook

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There’s a Facebook page for Oakhouse, for any of you on Facebook.If you’re an Oakhouse resident, or even if you’re just interested, please check it out! It might be a good way to make friends even from other houses! 🙂

Oakhouse official Facebook page

I’m on there too but I’m still trying to take a good picture of myself!

Tokyo? No Problem

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I recently got wind of an up-coming book called “Tokyo? No Problem”, which is geared toward people wanting to try their hand in Japan.

After having been here for awhile, you start to get lots of questions from people wanting to experience it too. Some of their questions seem unanswerable, some seem like they’d take pages upon pages of emails to answer, and some are flawed from their very premise. I have a hard time trying to figure out how to help my fellow adventurers out, and it helps me understand why there weren’t many people available to help me out when I was coming over here.

tokyonoproblemcover s.jpg The book is called Tokyo? No Problem and while it will be available on Amazon, there is already a good bit of introductory information up for browsing, which will help to narrow down your search through the table of contents to find the section addressing your particular needs.

Not only that, but the information on the website is additional and complementary to the book, which means great, free info!

The The book is geared for people who are planning to be in Japan for the
long haul as well as those on a working holiday visa or visiting
students. Lots of people end up wanting to stay and still have so much they want to learn. This book should help out.

And it’s nice that the book encourages you to learn not just enough Japanese phrases to get by, but a basic start on reading too, which should serve as an encouragement to anyone under the false impression that Japanese is too hard!

The author, Teresa Ramsay, is open to hearing your own information, comments, and questions, so be sure to visit the website for more information. I’ll let you know here too when it becomes available.

Summer Sonic

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I just got back from a huge music festival held in Japan every summer, called Summer Sonic. It’s two days in Osaka and Tokyo, with several stages and tons of huge acts.

This year I went because of my other job, but it was still really cool. This year the big headliner was Stevie Wonder, who was unfortunately playing at the same time as Dream Theater… I had a hard time deciding, but I went to see Dream Theater, who were incredible as usual. My coworkers told me Stevie was great!

It’s been going on since 2000, and looking at some of the posters from past events I wish I had known about it then!

There are lots of other huge festivals in Japan too, like Fuji Rock, held in the summer at a ski resort in Niigata; Rock in Japan, Loud Park, which features hard rock and metal acts, and various jazz, punk, etc festivals around the country.

If you’re not familiar with a lot of Japanese music, you can catch some pretty interesting acts. One of my favorites is a band called ‘te, which is an instrumental post-rock band with very long album and title names. Atmospheric yet energetic. Good stuff!

I’ll see if my coworkers took any good pictures and put them up!

Eifukucho area

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Today I went and took a look at some of the surroundings by Meiji University, founded back in the 1880’s. It was so, so, so dreadfully hot and has been since the summer rainy season ended. I wish it would rain a bit longer! I ducked inside convenience stores and air-conditioned shops as much as I could and still wanted to melt. Still, the whole place had enough charm to keep the heat off my mind!

First, we looked around Eifukucho Station.

There’s construction being done around the entire Eifukucho Station area, but I was pretty impressed with what they’re doing with it. The scaffolding has artistic designs on it that also double as advertisements for the new building under construction, and the detour was lined with children’s art from local elementary schools. Even the worst ones are better than anything I could do!

Here is a fresh fruit and veggie stand near one of the exits, and also there are two of me in this picture and I hadn’t noticed at first.

The surrounding area is pretty well-stocked. Lots of restaurants, big drug stores, convenience stores… you’d have it pretty easy out this way.

This particular coffee house was really cute. The sole worker inside was a dapper older gentleman in a sharp bow-tie.

I really liked the lines this building created and how it utilized space with its arch designs and small bricks and zigzag metal staircase and… actually, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just thought this looked cool.

Though I do not often find myself in need of buying flowers, I thoroughly enjoy walking by flower shops.

This machine says Hojicha, a type of tea, but I’m not really sure what it does. Oh well! Sort of looks like a giant shaved ice machine.

All of a sudden, we made a left turn and here was a large, quiet Inari Shrine. Shrines dedicated to Inari are all over Japan, and usually you see random tiny ones along the road peeking out from in between houses or buildings. I haven’t usually seen ones this big.

Inari is usually depicted as a fox.

Off to the side there are very small boxes of shrines dedicated to various figures for different purposes, like Sugawara no Michizane, patron saint of learning.

I hope I’m not boring you!

A building covered in Ivy. I wonder what the Japanese equivalent of the Ivy League would be? The Wisteria League? Cherry League? Haha, this is dumb, sorry.

…wait, I’ve got it! Kudzu League!

If I told you this nice example of traditionally-minded architecture from the 70’s offered lessons in something, what would you guess that would be? Tea ceremony? Calligraphy? Karate?

Answer: Tap Dance! (seriously)

The first floor of the building that the new Oakhouse is in has this bakery called Again, run by an NPO called Madoka. We were merely eying the menu and a woman cheerfully came out and invited us in!

They were making pound cakes at the time, and they explained to us all the different things they make and all the flavors they use. It was very, very pleasant.

Oh SNAP, chocolate chip madeleines fresh from the oven!

We definitely bought some stuff.

Seriously, if you come to live in this area, pay them a visit. You’d be living right above a bakery and I don’t know if I can stress just how cool that is.

After we checked out the house (I’ll show you in the next entry!), you come out of the neighborhood and upon this river.

Take a rest and sit on a snail shell or two, I guess!

A part of what I’m sure is a lovely winding nature path, and the back of our Chinese language correspondent!

Part of the Izumi campus.

So nice to be around all this green! I DO wish there were more trees in the city.

This building was impressive; would be more so if I could have fit the whole thing in the frame and gotten something else for scale.

View from the footbridge.

Okay, so now it’s lunch time! What to eat?
I found this Okinawan restaurant that looked good! …
…but alas, I’m not in the mood today–just had some soki soba two days before!

(That said, Okinawan food is seriously awesome and you should all try some now)

Aww yeah, Turkish kebabs! This place also seems to sell pizza and ice cream, which I will not complain about. But still: it’s extremely hot and need to be chilled from within!

Here’s a supermarket, at which I briefly considered buying and consuming an entire watermelon by myself before I saw that they were 700 yen.

There were some options in this wavy building, like a Wired cafe and an Italian place and I think there was one more? But I was on a budget today.

I eventually settled for some cold udon at a noodle shop nearby, which was pretty much 100% perfect at that moment. 😛

And here’s the station, and Alice again.

Pretty chill town! I’m sure it’s got areas tailored to be a college town but I have yet to discover them. I’ll try to when it cools down!

Next time: Oakhouse Meidaimae!

Kuramae area

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After checking out Nishi-Kasai, I headed out to Kuramae, near the Asakusa and Ueno area. Deceptively quiet, there are always interesting things to discover out that way. In fact, I hate to admit, but I got a bit lost because I misread some addresses but certainly didn’t mind wandering around!

This was particularly humbling because even though I am fluent in Japanese I can only recognize a few of these kanji… with the 糸 part… 給, 継, 続, 緩, 綴, 綿, 緑, 絹, 編, 縮… barely 20%, ugh!

(This was a fabric store)

This was a Japanese paper craft store, and they had all these cute little origami on display. This year is the year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, so that’s why there are tigers in the middle. Hello Kitty on the bottom left, mixing new and old… and on the right, adooooorable Christmas themes, mixing East and West!

These fans were quite lovely as well. Reminded me of when I used to teach kindergarten and the teachers there got me a fan with a print of this on it as a gift.

This place is awesome; old-style Japanese spelling and a bunch of old buddies hangin’ out. I wish I had friends like that!

Some cool lanterns. These things are hand-painted and if you’ve ever seen them do it it’s amazingly detailed and I don’t know how they don’t make mistakes!
Bottom left, there are some with portraits of famous people.

There are a few temples around these parts.

This little guy was TINY. I had to turn on the digital zoom on my camera to snap him! It was too cute to pass up.

I literally have no idea. Maybe they’re kappa?

I have some other things I’ve gotta do today so I think I’ll stop here for now… ridiculous, I know, since we haven’t even gotten to the house yet!! That, and more, next time; promise!!!

Seoul Power

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I just came back from a brief trip to Korea! I was pretty busy most of the time, as I wasn’t there on vacation, but I ate lots of meat, lots of kimchi, and got by on the only two Korean phrases I know!

I taught myself to read Hangul in preparation for someday taking a trip to Korea, but never got to the ‘vocabulary’ phase… so I can read everything, I just have no idea what it means! Helpful with loanwords from Japanese or English but not so much with native words. Japanese seemed to work better overall but sometimes some people spoke English better, so it was interesting changing it up like that.

I firmly believe that almost all big cities have their own distinct personality… San Francisco and Los Angeles, for example, though both in the US, feel like completely different places once you’ve been there long enough. However, at the same time, in this modern world, cities sort of start to look the same, with the same stores (or the same kinds of stores), same bright lights, same gaudy advertising — the only thing that is readily and apparently different from the start are the letters on the signs.

That said, at first Seoul didn’t feel very much different from Tokyo… but soon I grew to feel that things seemed just a little bit wider, streets seemed to make a little more sense, advertisement usage and placement somehow seemed so much more tasteful than Japan. I was pretty impressed with that.

The food was pretty awesome too, but though I can eat anything and do enjoy spicy food, I grew a little tired of full-blown spiciness at every meal. 😛

Another thing that was really cool was that department stores are open until 4 or 5 in the morning! It was perfect, since I was on business for most of the day and didn’t finished until pretty late, so it was nice to be able to try a little bit of shopping. Prices are pretty cheap too!

Though the stores and markets are open late, the subways and trains stop at 12-ish, just like Japan! What’s the point?! 😛

I was there for two days for work and I only got a brief glimpse of the city. Next time I’ll hopefully be able to speak enough Korean to get around on my own! 🙂

By the way, if you’re thinking of traveling while in Japan, a ticket to Korea was cheaper than a ticket to Hokkaido!! Keep things like that in mind. 😉

More pics of Kichijoji

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I had a few more photos…

Here’s a view from I think the 3rd floor balcony. It’s nice being in an area where the surrounding buildings aren’t terribly high, and you can see some trees around as well as the taller complexes closer in to the rest of Tokyo.

I’ve been in the city for about 2 and a half years now, and the contrast between urban and rural here feels so much more stark than back home, but that could just be me. The most glaring point is that there really almost seems to be no concept of suburbia. Where I’m from in America, I may not have lived in the big city but I lived comfortably and conveniently pretty much right smack in the middle of typical American suburbia. Schools, shopping, everything was within easy reach.

When I first came to Japan, it was to spend some time at an orphanage, literally out in the middle of nowhere. The orphanage seemed like a few cabins surrounded by an endless expanse of rice fields. You could make out a hospital and an elementary school on the horizon, and it was a 40-minute walk to the nearest convenience store and then another 40 to the closest train station. That didn’t seem to matter much as the kids and I were very well taken care of.

Then I came back to take a job in the city, and I missed the green and the immediate friendliness that is born of just being glad to see another person face to face.

I do think that things are changing, and I’ve seen city planning changes in outlying areas that are contributing to the slight blurring of that line. But is it a good thing or a bad thing?

And does it really matter? In the end, I don’t need my Japanese experience to be a total analog to that of my experience back home. Somehow, I’ve been more adaptable than I thought I’d be.

I’m thinking of switching it up and trying out another Oakhouse… they’re super cool about helping you move in to another house. That will be more convenient for work and stuff, probably.

Oakhouse is for living in Tokyo, but have you ever gotten outside the city? Awhile ago, some people living at the Oakhouse I’m in now invited me to go to Nikko with them. It’s up north in Tochigi, sorta in the mountains. It’s a historical area and it’s got plenty of nature, as well as the tomb of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Shogunate in the 1600s. I don’t know if any of you are interested in that kind of stuff, but who couldn’t use a vacation, right? 😉

There are a few palm trees around, and I meant to take a picture of the bigger one last time I was here, but it was raining and palm trees look so depressing in the rain, fronds sagging under all that weight! They literally look like they’re sighing, haha.

Pretty soon I’m going to go check on another house open soon!

Hello World

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There is so much to do and see and learn while in this country that is not my own – so much so that I can’t imagine limiting myself to just one sort of living experience.

My name is James, and I’m an American in my mid-20’s and have lived in Japan for a few years now. I got out of the English teaching gig because I didn’t want my Japanese skills to go to waste. Since then I’ve dabbled in translation and entertainment. I love music and performing and if you’re particularly astute you can catch me playing an instrument behind someone more important on TV or on stage.

In addition to music, I love stories, and learning. The best way I found to do that was to create a living situation that didn’t mean I was coming home to an empty home, neither listening nor sharing.

You could deal with the hassles of traditional Japanese real estate… with things like key money and high security deposits, needing to provide a guarantor, or being refused because you aren’t Japanese… thankfully these things are getting better, but it’s nice feeling like I’m bucking the system for the time being.

You could nonchalantly just pick some random guest house that pops up on your internet search, without really looking at location or price. But what I like about Oak House is that not only can you interact with others from outside Japan, but also with other Japanese people, which I feel is the most valuable thing to a real experience in Japan.

I’ve lived near isolated rice fields out in the sticks, in the city’s trendiest district, and in sleepy suburbs on the verge of waking up. Each situation had good points.

I just feel that, instead of doing one thing and living in one place, it’s been best for me to try out many different things, and gradually hone down where I eventually want to spend most of my time, doing something I really love. You can often surprise yourself with revelations!

I’ll be talking about new guest houses coming up, others that catch my eye, and sharing pictures that hopefully get across in one image just as much as I try to express with this pile of words. Thanks for reading!