Memoirs of a Gaijin

Too tired to write about this. I'll explain later.

And other American activities

The other day my host mom offered me some gum.
Me: No thank you.
Host mom: Okay. You don't chew gum much, do you?
Me: Nope.
Host mom: It's funny, we Japanese think of chewing gum as a very American thing.
Me: Why's that?
Host mom: Well you always see American baseball players chewing gum.
Me: Uhh...I don't think that's gum...I think it's tobacco.
Host mom: REALLY??

It was funny. Maybe you just had to be there though.

Grey

Lately I've been noticing how the area I'm in is pretty ugly. Both Nagoya, the town my host family lives in, and all the towns I commute through in between. They're just so...grey.

1. For one thing, they seem so haphazardly thrown together. I don't know if there's zoning laws here, but it kind of doesn't seem like it. Walking down the street, I'll pass a Mom and Pop hardware store, three houses, a bicycle parking lot, a Japanese-style house, a tiny community center, a Western-style house, a sparkly Pachinko parlor, two more houses, a barber shop, etc.

2. Where are the trees? I live in the countryside in a town with less than 40,000 in the population, and where are the freaking trees???

3. Where is the grass??? Why isn't there any grass here??

4. Next, people don't have much in the way of front yards; their front doors are often adjacent to the sidewalk. If they have any at all, a lot of people don't seem to take especially good care of them. Front yards often have bicycles and random junk strewn all over them. Like curb appeal just isn't a big deal here.

5. Japan doesn't bury power lines, as you can see in the photos above.

6. It seems like some people who live in traditional-style Japanese houses can't afford the upkeep. I see a lot of the old-fashioned wooden houses that must have been lovely forty years ago...but need a major overhaul now. There's tape over the windows and wires running along the outside of the walls and the rain gutters are falling off the roof. I don't think I live in a ghetto area...but I kind of see a lot of these houses...

I'm not saying that Japan is an ugly country. I've seen some of its beauty first-hand.

But basically, a lot of the Japan that I see every day...just seems like no attention was given to aesthetics whatsoever. There's no loveliness anywhere except for the occasional temple or shrine which retains its traditional style. Everything is grey, efficient concrete, slapped down wherever the closest open spot was and squished as close together as possible. I have yet to see an apartment building in Japan that doesn't look like it was made from grey legos. Far away is my suburban hometown where houses in spacious neighborhoods sit on neat front lawns and people play basketball in their driveways. Or *gasp* in their backyards!!

Osu Kannon

Note: Right now Blogger is having technical issues and if you click on any of the pictures, a download box might open instead of the image becoming full-size. Just hang in there and hopefully they will fix it soon enough.

It's high time I introduced you to my favorite place in Nagoya, Osu Kannon.
Osu is an older section of the city, so it has a lot of character. When you first walk into the heart of it, you see this fantastic temple. Often a priest can be heard chanting inside.

The temple is surrounded by concrete apartment complexes, hotels, and other very grey ugly buildings.


This section of Osu Kannon is sort of an outdoor shopping mall with lots of funky little shops. Most of them are cheap, and a lot of them are consignment or thrift stores. There is a "per gram" store where the cost of the used clothing is determined by how much it weighs. One gram = 30 yen. Many of these thrift stores have kimonos in them, but they're pretty old and yucky, and the ones that are nice aren't very cheap. There are some goth/lolita stores here too.
Today two of my friends and I went to a cafe we had heard of. It's called "Dear Alice" and has an Alice in Wonderland theme. The front door was so short you had to bend over to get in. Inside was a cozy little cafe full of Victorian furniture, playing cards and checkerboard patterns. Waitresses dressed in Alice-esque maid outfits served us cakes and tea in fancy china dishes. Check out the Christmas tree drawn with caramel sauce on my plate. It was awesome.


Osu has a lot of surprises. Here the giant lucky cat is decorated in glorious gaudy Christmas "illumination," as they call it here.

My friends and I went to an arcade and spent money trying to win prizes from crane games.

The Barbie pink "woman ahead" sign was in front of a section of the arcade dedicated to purikura, or tiny photo sticker booths insanely popular with Japanese girls. So popular in fact, that only girls are allowed to use them, I guess. (If anyone can explain what the Japanese says on the sign, please let me know.) My friends and I decided to take a few.
Now, a good rule of thumb to remember in Japan is that anything the Japanese set their hand to, they take to the extreme. So these are not your ordinary photo booths. They're huge, they're well-lit, they talk and play music, they have a million different settings and options, and the stickers they print out are high-quality, full color and sometimes sparkly. After you take your pictures, you can use the touch-screen and stylus to draw hearts, stars, bunnies, text, or mustaches on your friends. Then the stickers are printed out with all your modifications. Girls put them on their cellphones, textbooks, cameras, pets, anywhere.

Outside the arcade we found a bunch of capsule toy machines. Right next to ones for children were a few that contained figurines that were most definitely pornographic. Yes, pornographic capsule toys. Right there on the street. 300 yen. As if breast pudding wasn't enough reason to worry about this country.

not again!

I've caught a cold for the second time in two months! What's up with that?
I think it's a conspiracy by the Japanese governmnent. They're trying to get rid of me. I already know too much.

I noticed this drawing lying around in the family room one day. Isn't it cute? The top says "I want to become a pilot."

Me: Did Whiney draw that?
Host Mom: Yes he did!
Origami Boy: MINE'S BETTER!!
Host Mom: Oh shush.

I've been making some mistakes in my Japanese lately.

Host Mom: Kelley, do you have any plans this week?
Me: Yes, I have plans on watermelon.
Host Mom: ...watermelon?
Me: Sorry, I meant Wednesday.

Guy: So you live in a dorm? (in America)
Me: That's right.
Guy: How long does it take you to get to your parents' house?
Me: About two years.

I meant hours. Two hours.

Plastic food

Yesterday I went on a field trip to Guyo-Hachiman with Japanese and exchange students. We did various things, including going to a plastic food factory! Japanese restaurants often display plastic replicas of their menu items in their store windows. These aren't your childhood plastic food toys. This is the real deal. You can see pictures and read about it a little here.

We were given a little demonstation and allowed to make some plastic food ourselves! One of the employees took a spoonful of melted something (probably wax) and slowly dripped it into a tub of hot water. The wax hardened slightly and took on a sort of crumbly shape, and the employee carefully wrapped it around a plastic shrimp. Voila. Tempura shrimp.

We made our own tempura shrimp, and also a head of lettuce and got to take home both!


My completed items, which greatly amused my host family.


There was sort of a display room of plastic food dishes, all looking delicious. I bought some presents too. It was a lot of fun.