Fan Mail

Everybody, this post is long overdue. This is just to prove I may neglect, but I don't forget the little people that make this blog possible. Here's a response to your questions:

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007
HHHHHAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUTTTT

Luke writes: "Interesting concept but what about all of those famous Japanese bath houses?"

- Thank you for this great question Luke-san. Some of the Japanese bath houses, or Onsens (that's pronounced as a long O ... like "Ownsens") are naturally heated because the water is from the ground. They are essentially hot springs. Others not heated from ground water, I have no idea. They may feed the customers free beans before entering the bath. I guess that would also be considered natural heating as well.

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Friday, March 16, 2007
Ladies, there's enough to go around.

Doris said...
"Just how comfortable is the back seat?....

What kind of car is it? You ARE in Japan. Is it any brand or model that we know?"

Doris-Chan, great questions. The back seat... With 1 guy and 3 girls, the back is pretty cozy. With 4 girls, it's even cozier.... Uh, so I heard from the old Japanese lady that owns it.

The car is a Mitsubishi Minica. I believe this was the successor to the Eclipse. The closest you'll come to seeing one in the U.S. would be a hot wheel.

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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Happy New Year!

Auntie Kim Sensei writes:
Regarding The Last Samurai... "They show and tell where the monasteries are where the filming took place. loved that scenery, too. have you made it to hiroshima yet?"

Haven't made it to Hiroshima City yet. I will go there my second year here. In response to The Last Samurai, in April I went to Chio-in Temple which is where some of the movie was filmed. Here is a picture of the gate to go in and the actual ginormous temple.

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Monday, November 27, 2006
Hello Fatties

Luke said...
"How did you find Pumpkin pie?"

A foreigner runs a restaurant / pub in Tokushima City and had a Thanksgiving dinner party. Damn, now I want pumpkin pie.

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Thursday, September 28, 2006
What's all this expensive food?

Doris said...
"I want to know what the weird frozen things are. Animal, mineral, vegetable? And, why did you buy them?"

This question is only 9 months old. So the weird things sat in my freezer for quite awhile. I think they had shrimp in them so I didn't want to chance it and gave them to somebody. It's perhaps the equivalent of a North American hotdog. Contains the parts of the shrimp nobody talks about.

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Well, that's all for the questions. Thanks for all the fan comments and questions!

Krispy Kream?

One thing you can find everywhere in Japan are bakeries. They are everywhere, each with good fattening up food. One thing some bakeries have are Curry Donuts. This is not something I would normally buy, but the baker seemed to like me that day so he gave me a couple to try. It is bread with an interesting texture on the outside and it has curry in the middle. It was... interesting. Not gross, but put it this way, I haven't bought another since. I asked my students in a class if they liked it and about 75% said yes.

Japanese Buddhists

Buddhists likes ass. This picture is from one of the temples about 15 minutes from my house. There is a crack in this statue. Can you find it?

Mr. Miagi 20 years later

This is what Mr. Miagi had to do once his little Bonsai trees grew up and got big.

HHHHHAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUTTTT

This is the hot water system. The temperature gauge is on the control unit. There are no hot water tanks here. From what I can tell, it heats a small water reserve when you turn on the hot water and it heats the water on the fly. That way it doesn't waste energy heating water that isn't being used during idle times. Therefore, all washing machines only use cold water. It is like this everywhere in Japan. What this also means is good luck finding hot water in a lot of public places...like public bathrooms.

The big picture!

I completely forgot to show where in Japan I live. You all know my mansion, but you have no idea where Kamojima is. Below is a precise map.

The balcony

Remember I said I have a washing machine. Well, here it is...On the balcony. And the drier is over...wait, there are no driers here. That would be the clothes line. Which is fine (and conserves energy) unless it is winter when it's cold or June when it is rain season and your clothes don't dry (You have to take them to dry at the laundromat). From the balcony, there's also a nice relaxing view of the landlord's house or a parking lot.

Transformer

Now let me introduce my transformer room. It is wonderful as it serves so many purposes.

12:00 p.m. - 4:59 p.m. : the guest room.
5:00 p.m. - 6:59 p.m. : the dining room.
7:00 p.m. - 10:59 p.m. : the family room.
11:00 p.m. - 11:59 a.m. : the bedroom. (sometimes later on weekends)

It consists of a kotatsu table, a desk and chair, a clothes closet with storage above, a little wooden shelf with a small POS T.V. that I never use, and my futon.

(By the way, that chair 'cover' that was left to me is now in the burnable trash)

The Pantry

Off from the kitchen is a little door. Is it a pantry? Nope. It's the bathroom of course. Watch the elbows. It is terrible if there are people over and you have to use the toilet. Why? Because you have to shut the door and once you do that, it's like squeezing a sumo wrestler into a Geo. You have to take vaseline in just incase you get stuck trying to get out. There is also a mini shower in there.

The Kitch

Let's start with the first room when you enter the house.
First the genkan where you take off your shoes. Next is the kitchen. As you can see, it's every woman's dream. I have A gas burner. The food must be prepared on the table. The dishes go on a bookshelf because both of the cupboards are taken. One with tupperware and one with dry food. In addition, I have an oompa loompa size fridge. The mini microwave on top also serves as an oven. That's about it for the kitchen. If Martha Stewart is reading this, I'm sure she'll now never move to Japan.

Paradise

I just realized I've been divulging all this information and haven't even invited you into my home. Well, I think it's time. The town I am in has about 24,997 Japanese people and 3 foreigners. My apartment is pretty big so I will have to split up each room into a separate blog entry each day of the week. Today will be the outside of my house.

As you can see, it is painted in a very attractive orange color. I'm thinking of painting my house in Salt Lake the same color. The best part about living here is if I have to give anybody directions to my house, I tell them to just look for the big ugly orange building and they find it every time. It is about a 5-7 minute walk to the train station, a 5-7 minute walk to the grocery store, and about 5-10 minutes (depending on how much sleep I got) by bike to my schools. There is also a great ramen shop right next door. Across the street is where I get my haircut and there's also a laundromat next to that. That's about it for the outside. Stay tuned for details on the inside of this mansion.

More Soba

On my bike ride to school today guess what song was stuck in my head

THE DAMN SOBA SONG

What's that I hear?

In September, we were having a typhoon. Not a peep was outside, but I heard this blaring sound coming down the street. I thought it was a typhoon warning or something. Nope. It was the damn soba truck.

Whether sun, rain, sleet, or typhoon, the soba truck will cometh. If there's something I can count on, it's that the Soba truck will be coming down the street Sunday night at 7:00.

The U.S. has ice cream trucks. Japan has soba trucks.

The truck drives super slow and plays a really loud annoying song. It sounds like a first grader wrote this song for a talent show......and got a tomato thrown at them while playing it.

This soba truck sells bowls of soba noodles for your pleasure. I've never seen somebody actually buy noodles from him. I kind of feel bad and have been tempted to buy a bowl, but I don't want to encourage the guy to drive down my street anymore. There's only so much soba music an individual can take. And the worst part is, at the most random times of the day, the damn soba song will get stuck in your head.

The driver was probably convicted of a felony and they let him choose prison or driving the soba truck for the rest of his life. Dude made the wrong decision.

(Click below to see the infamous truck)

Looks like doodie

Whenever somebody in Japan goes on vacation, an unwritten / polite rule is that they buy omiyage (souvenir) for everybody at work. It is usually food individually wrapped with the place it's from written on the package. One piece is placed on each person's desk, usually in the morning. This can get quite expensive if you travel often. It's at least $20 or more per trip for teachers and adult conversation class. I have learned not to advertise my trips. Instead, my weekend vacation to Osaka becomes a weekend 'vacation' in front of the TV.

Today I got some omiyage on my desk. Remember happy poo from a few entries back? Well, this omiyage looked like his close relative, without the smile.

April Fever

It is April. And April only means one thing. Baseball!!! Fortunately, it also means the same thing in Japan. Therefore, we took a weekend trip to Osaka to watch the weekend series between the two most popular teams in Japan: The Hanshien Tigers vs. The Yomuri (Tokyo) Giants. If the subject of baseball comes up, you will most likely get asked, "Like Tigers or Giants?"


Everybody in the stands has plastic bats they hit together so we decided to pick some up. They aren't short of merchandise vendors outside the stadium. Inside, just about everybody is wearing a jersey, even the little kids. Imagine a college football atmosphere without letter painted bare chests and more organized. There is one guy in the front with a bass drum and higher up are two trumpet players. Then in the front of each section is the section's cheering 'ring leader'. They sing, root, cheer, and hit their plastic bats in unison the entire time their team is up to bat. If you are a better player, they make a song for you and sing it over and over every time you get up to bat. Also, beer, kids and plastic bats do not mix. If you're not getting hit in the noggin by a kid, it will be a drunk guy. Then during the middle of the 7th inning, they all blow up big, long balloons and wave them to a cheesy song. After the song is over they let the balloons go and they fly all over the place. Needless to say, it was a blast and the 4 runs in the bottom of the 12th was a good way to end the game.
It was also interesting to note: no peanuts (YAY), no crackerjacks (YAY), no hot dogs (BOO). Instead, Grilled Squid (Boo), Skewered chicken (YUM), and yakisoba. They also don't care if you bring food and beer into the stadium from home. Good news for those of us (Hong family) that jam pack our pockets (and extra large purses) when going to events and movies. In fact, in good Asian fashion, some people had tupperware with home cooked food and vegetables in it. (Although if it was our family, it would be cottage cheese and sour cream containers instead of tupperware)

Also in Osaka, we visited Himeiji Castle, which is voted best castle in Japan, and visited a pretty cool aquarium. Then ate supermarket sushi and bread (Japan has tons of bakeries) on the 2-1/2 hour bus ride home.

Pimp Masta!

Ok, I found the REAL lady killer in Japan. I didn't actually meet him but I saw his car in a Udon shop parking lot and that was enough. It put my automobile to shame. The guy is smooth. Because there's only 1 seat, his lady friend only has one place to sit.....

End of Korea

Day 3:
First we went to see the ‘Blue House’. This is where the head honcho of South Korea lives. It’s the equivalent of The U.S.’s White House. There were police everywhere. Particularly interesting were the ones in booths in the middle of the street. We definitely didn’t see this many police officers in D.C. near the White House. Perhaps because it wouldn’t be very detrimental if something were to happen to the current resident of the White House.




After that we went to a huge palace that was very amazing, right behind The Blue House. The palaces in Korea consist of a very large area of land you walk around with many different buildings. You don’t actually go in the buildings, but walk around them and maybe peek inside.

When we finished the palace, it started raining really hard so we took a taxi to the farthest tourist attraction from where we were (about 30 minutes in traffic). I feel bad for the cabbie because wet clothes and 4 wet guys isn’t the freshest smell in the world. We got out and saw the East gate of the city. Originally there were 15 gates and a wall built around Seoul, but GUESS WHO burned down / destroyed the wall and all but 2 gates (either they ran out of matches or wanted to rub it in their face that their two gates were no good without a wall). This was also a huge shopping district so we went in some big buildings with 8+ levels of wall to wall shops….mostly clothing….and most of the clothing was women’s clothing. After this we went to dinner at a very famous Korean BBQ restaurant that was very good. After dinner we headed back to Korea Tijuana Town to look around.


Day 4:

Left for airport around 8:00 a.m. On the way back to the airport, our full size bus was weaving through very heavy traffic. At one point, the driver cut through some cones onto an onramp which merged about 100 feet later just to pass 2 cars. This guy would make millions driving in Nascar.

Just South of North Korea

Last week 4 of us took a little swim across the ocean to South Korea. We got there around 5:30 p.m. and a van took us to our room about 1-1/2 hours away. The traffic was God awful. Everybody in their little Kia’s and Hyundai’s drive like mad. And you’ve gotta look out for the Daewoo buses. It was a near death experience every time we hit the streets.

Luckily these automobile thrills were cheap. A 5 minute taxi ride in the city costs $2. A 25 minute ride on the freeway cost us $4 a person.

We were there for 4 days, 3 nights. Here are the first 2 days:

Day 1:
Barely survived the ride from the airport. Ate some good Korean nabe (boiled beef then wrapped in lettuce with rice balls) and kimchii. Then we checked into our hotel and went out for a few drinks. Our hotel's name was: Gang Hang Hotel (there are just too many jokes you can do with that name so I’ll leave it alone)

Day 2:
Our trip to Korea included a 1 day guided tour on a van with a family of 4. Only one problem with the tour, it was all in Japanese. The tour guide was also very organized as well. Good thing I brought the tour itinerary since she left hers at home and didn’t know where we were going. First we had breakfast, which was clear Korean noodles and kimchii. Next, we went to visit a palace which was closed on Tuesdays (and ironically it was Tuesday that day) so we took pictures around it. Then we went to another palace and lucky for us, we got to join a 1-1/2 hour tour in Japanese. We just wandered off taking pictures and every so often getting told to hurry back with the group by some Korean guard dude. There are a few palaces in the city and they are all really neat. The one thing they all have in common is at some point in time, they were burned down at least once by the Japanese. I didn’t realize how much of pyromaniacs the Japanese were until I visited Seoul. If it was burnable, the Japanese lit it on fire. Now in Korea, a Japanese person caught with a match has to do 10 – 20 years…. a Bic lighter is life. While wandering around the palace grounds, we found a few Japanese people hiding in corners rubbing sticks together.


Then we went to lunch and ate some bibimbap. After that we went shopping for a little bit in this area I like to call Korea’s Little Tiajuana. There were all these small shops w/ rip off brand goods for sell and little shop owners you could haggle with.



After that we went to a Korea History museum. It was interesting. Then we went to another smaller palace. After that we ate more Korea BBQ which was good.

Then we headed back to the hotel and our tour was over. While we were on the tour, we eyeballed a few Outback steakhouses (which there are 0 of in Japan). Steak?!?! So that night we went back into the heart of the city with one goal: Outback. The food was SO Good! Honestly, they could’ve fed me meat from a cow that died at 91 from old age and wasn’t found until 10 days after its death, and it still would’ve tasted like the best god damn steak ever. It has been so long since I had a steak and baked potato. Hell, I was at the point where I’d eat Mad Cow.

I'm not dead.

Just a quick update. I just got home from South Korea and Kyoto. Will write more later but I need sleep now.

Peace

Big Boys

One of the great things about Japan is the ramen shops on every corner. The drawback is that it's a little unhealthy for you. If you don't watch yourself, you can gain quite a few pounds real quickly. Today I looked in the mirror and realized I have let myself go too far. I'm ashamed but took a picture to share with you all.



I know it's hard to tell because of my superb Photoshop skills, but that picture isn't real. It was taken last weekend in Osaka when we went to watch one of the 6 yearly Sumo tournaments in Japan. It is really fun and interesting to watch. They are two week round robin tournaments where the fighter with the best win/loss record at the end of the tourney wins.

I also learned a lot about sumo. Many interesting things I didn't know. The most difficult maneuver to pull off is shown below on the left. It's called 'the ojisan'. It's when you pull up on the sumo's mawashi (like a big diaper/belt) and give him a wedgie until he surrenders by saying "ojisan!" which translates to "uncle!"