Christmas in Yanasegawa

On the 25th of December, Kat and I ventured out to 柳瀬川(Yanasegawa) which is part of Tokyo. The distance itself is not that great, but the train connection is slightly odd: 4 lines, 3 transfers and 3 different train companies. Roughly 1 hour and only 760 yen later, we arrived in Yanasegawa and were picked up by Mariya’s grandfather and taken to the nearby store called Summit, where Mariya, Jesse and Mariya’s mum and brother were shopping.

Once we got to Mariya’s grandparents house, we sat down, had a little talk and were suddenly surprised by a truckload of Christmas gifts from everyone. I was so surprised! They were gifts from the family and from Kat’s mum. We spent the rest of the day sitting at the table chatting away, a good part of which was in Japanese. The grandparents are so lovely, I was so amazed! They made a big effort to make us feel at home, comfortable and to involve us in conversations. Kat and I both truly appreciated their kindness and openheartedness that was so rare to find even in the past few days before and during Christmas.

That evening we went to bed before midnight, so Kat, Mariya, Jesse and me played a couple of games we found in the room: かるた, Fang den Hut, and Packesel. We had so much fun we lost track of time and went to bed around 2:30am.

The next day we sat together again, had our lunch and then headed out on our way back to Tama. It was so sad to say goodbye to everyone, and especially to the grandparents as they have been so great to us, giving us various home grown/made things to take home with us. Mariya and Jesse will be here until just after new year, so we will definitely get to see them again.

Before we headed to the trains, Kat and I succumbed to the cheap prices in Summit. Kat got a truck load of cheap clothing while I looted the 100 yen shop and bought 2 long sleeve shirts (290 yen each) and a huge sweatshirt (1199 yen). Bargains! I was especially happy that each one of those clothing items had weird English on it that made me laugh such as “PERFECT INANE – That fell on the way, later to wake from the trance. And let life’s pursuit put them in a twisted stance?  – GRAND HONORABLE HIGH SOLDIER”. Super cool.

Christmas (no, not Xmas.)

It’s Christmas time even here in Japan, where I believe Christianity is not too common. (1-3% if I recall Ian’s lectures correctly?) In the end it’s just like in most countries in the World where it’s celebrated: commerce. I really dislike seeing Santa Claus & Co. everywhere I go, but no mention or depiction of Jesus anywhere to be found. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly interested in religion in that way, it’s just that the reason for Christmas is, well, Jesus Christ’s birth and thus the name of the day. It just seems odd that because the religious explanation doesn’t sell well, Santa Claus was invented and now celebrated instead.

Anyway, enough complaining. I bought Christmas lights!

1500 yen at Donki!

They make for a great atmosphere, very soothing. I might get one or two more Christmas ornaments, but it would be a waste of money to get too many things, as they can be used only for a couple of days and will be thrown away once I leave Japan.

Tom, Kat and I were talking about making it all homely and Christmassy so that we can get together one of these days and spend a whole day in: watching movies, listening to Christmas songs, eating sweets and a nice meal. Personally, I would love to do this on the 24th as it’s tradition in Germany, but Tom already has plans, and Kat and I have plans for the 25th. I wonder if and what day we will turn our hope of a great, festive day into reality?

Luxury Of Illness, Dr. Speedy Gonzalez

So I suddenly got ill Tuesday midnight 2 weeks ago. I’m not sure to this day what exactly it was. I suddenly felt really weak and left a gathering to go to bed. That whole night I had a high fever and started to develop symptoms I later found out perfectly match the flu. Now, with all this swine flu hype going on at the moment, my first reaction was obviously: “Oh no.” The next day I was sent to a clinic to get checked. It was a tiny clinic close to the university; maybe 5 minutes walk away. After signing up for clinic membership (yay in English!) and waiting a short while, my temperature was taken. 6 times. The first couple of times it displayed 39°C so the nurse thought that can’t be right, as I was clearly looking half-well and not dead. With a different thermometer it showed 35°C. Hrm. Two more times later it displayed I think 38°C so she thought that was appropriate enough for her liking. After this adventure, I got taken to the doctor, who checked my heart beat at about 15 different points at a rate of  0.5 seconds per place. After that he said something Japanese I didn’t understand which according to the the nurse translates into “not flu, cold”. 2500 yen later I was free to go home and rest.

I informed the Foreign Affairs Office here at TUFS of what happened and they said to rest until I feel better, and that because it’s not swine flu, I’m not excused, so every day of rest is marked as absent. Great. Let’s see my attendance requirement to complete my Japanese language class is 80%, so 4 out of 5 days, I’ve been here almost 8 weeks, so I get to miss 8 days…… right, OK that’ll work out. Just can’t afford the luxury of being ill again.

In total I missed 5 days of class, so it wasn’t too bad. My tutor helped me during this time to think of ways to get those 5 days attendance loss back, including going to a different clinic, but that would have involved more time, effort, money and nerves lost. Sigh.

Time

Not enough of it! So I will just try to catch up with a few things that have happened recently.

We met up with our friend Koichi for his birthday celebration. We went to Shakey’s pizza place, which isn’t highest quality, but the reason we chose it was an insider joke about something Koichi said one day. Anyway, all you can eat for.. sorry can’t remember the price but it was cheap.

Intersting pizza combos, among them banana chocolate.

A couple of days later Kat and I went to Tatsu’s house for Nabe (鍋). He picked us up and we were surprised to see Hiroshi was in the car, too! Hiroshi lives in Yokohama and, while it’s not too far out, we rarely see him. On the way we picked up Saki, who we met at the halloween party,  from the train station. The Nabe was delicious and I really enjoyed the evening with everyone.

Hiroshi, Saki, Tatsu, Kat, NABEEEE(, TV)

I am currently on the second day of my week off. We have no classes because during that time, the 外語際 (Gaigosai) takes place. 外語際 is this university’s festival where there’s loads of little to big stalls where foreign food and drinks are sold. On top of that, there’s a centre stage with performances ranging from Hawaiian dance to.. pop/hiphop dance. Basically, the cultural サークル (Saakuru), or in other words activity clubs, each do a performance. At least so it seems, I haven’t gotten hold of any sort of event calendar. The weather was bad today, so it wouldn’t have made this great festival justice to take pictures. I hope tomorrow or the weekend turn out better.

I had to leave the festival at 2pm because I met up with a group of students to go to a middle school in 立川 (Tachikawa). There we introduced ourselves to about 30 children, talked to them and played games together. It’s an international oriented school, so I’m guessing the aim for this whole project was to get the kids familiar with international culture and people in general.

Other than these things, lots of other.. stuff happened such as paying bills, making dinners, having drinks with friends. But that sort of thing is usually a waste of reading time, so I’ll spare you of them.

Matsuri in Fuchu

Last Tuesday was Body Cultivation Day in Japan and so we had a day off of uni. Kat and I decided to go see the Matsuri (祭り) in Fuchu. The festival occured in at least one other place (Asakusa), but we went to Fuchu because our friend Tatsu is active in the community there. It was the first Matsuri for me, so I was very excited.

Once we arrived by train (too cold to bike) it was easy finding the festival location, as it’s right in the centre of town. There were 20 something wagons being pulled by festival ‘teams’ by rope. Each area/community of Fuchu has their own wagon and even districts of town that don’t exist anymore have a wagon. On top of the wagon are usually two to three children wearing masks and dancing, while behind them several people play the drums and the flute. It’s really fun to watch, as the masks depicted either ridiculously funny faces or some sort of Chinese dragon.

While watching the parade through town, we went to meet Tatsu at the shrine. Along the entrance walk to the shrine, there were food stands to the left and right selling delicious food like Takoyaki (たこ焼き) and Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) at very reasonable prices. Note to self: Matsuris are worth going to if not just for cheap and delicious food.

So we met up with Tatsu and he took us back to his district’s wagon (新宿山谷 – しんしゅくさんや – Shinshuku Sanya). There, he introduced us to his friends pulling the wagon. It’s really nice to see every generation taking part in this happening and everyone seemed so happy I wished we had that sort of thing back in Germany. Kat and I were invited to join in pulling the wagon for a bit, that was a bit awkward as we weren’t dressed up in festival clothing like the others (see picture).

The Matsuri started much earlier than our arrival, but the whole wagon parade ceremony lasted about 2 hours. Kat and I headed back home via Uniqlo to buy some winter clothing. It was a great afternoon/evening and we owe Tatsu for showing us around and introducing us to everyone.

LOTSA PEOPLEZ

Couple of wagons

Two goofballs holding the wagon rope (at standstill).

Kat taking picture of 新宿山谷 wagon. Tatsu's dad on far left.

A wagon by night

新宿山谷's entertainment group, including Tatsu on the flute!

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween 2 days early in Kichijouji (吉祥寺) at a party our friend Rie organised. It took place in a rented restaurant/bar sort of place and the whole night cost 3,000 for all you can eat and drink. We were afraid we were the only ones turning up in a costume, but pretty much everyone was dressed up. We had a great time, here are some pictures.

The Grim Reaper brought a friend

Dan, Hiroshi, Me

Kat wearing her awesome mushroom costume

Dan got a mask on the way to the party

Jacko (Tom) and the Girls

Karaoke Gang

The Bike

I vaguely remember researching cheap bikes in Japan a month or two ago. Scratch whatever I wrote then. I found a local bike shop with many used bikes for sale, but the shop keeper is ill and hasn’t been in for over 3 weeks now. Two days ago on Saturday Kat, Tom, Tatsu and me went to Choufu. While Tatsu and Kat were figuring out places to withdraw money from foreign bank accounts, Tom and I went to the bike shop and found the bikes of our dreams. The price was I think 10,900 yen for the bike and 1,500 yen for police registration (in case it gets lost). It was a rather impulsive buy, but ended up being only 1,000 yen over what I intended to spend. Tom got it in silver, I got it in wine red and Kat, rushing to buy one after she had found out we did, got hers in purple. Observe my new bike (and its owner) in all its glory:

Strahlemann hinterm Rad

My plan at the moment is reselling it when next semester begins and new arrivals are in need of a bike. By then I will have registered to rent a bike from TUFS for my remaining stay for about 1,000 yen.

Schnipp, Schnapp, Haare ab

We went out to explore Choufu (調布) for the first time yesterday. It’s a part of Tokyo very close to us that we usually change trains at going in to Tokyo Centre, so technically we’ve been there many times, but.. you know. It’s a surprisingly lively town with a big department store right next to the station, several restaurants and various other shops. What’s obvious is the amount of Pachinko halls, that harbour machines comparable to slot machines, so you can imagine what sort of crowd hangs around in there. Rumour has it Yakuza pretty much control pachinko parlours in Japan.. oooo.

We walked around a bit and came across a barber. Now I have been trying to find a decent priced one for ages, but the only price range I have come across so far was 4,200-6,800 yen for a simple cut, which translates at the moment into roughly $47/€32/£30. But this barber offered a cut for 3,500 so I decided to get my hair cut while Kat and Tom ventured out to do more exploring.

The cheapest item on the menu was cut and shampoo. Everywhere else I have had my hair cut so far washed my hair before cutting, but in Japan it seems to be the other way around. Throughout the whole process of cutting and washing my hair, she used about 5 towels for different stages, heated my face twice and gave little massages in between, whilest being incredibly careful cutting my hair or touching my head. I felt a bit creeped out at first, but it worked out to feel nice in the end.

Finally getting hair cut.

Noise, Shopping, Women

As already mentioned, my pace of living here in Japan is quite fast these first few days, which is why I have neglected to write about a lot of things. A few I’d like to mentioned follow here:

My dormitory is situated right next to the sports area. This means, every morning (except Sunday) at around 8 o’clock I am woken up by screams, shouts, etc. of sports club practicing mainly on the big field: football, American football, rugby, lacrosse, hockey.. Frisbee. This could work out as an advantage for getting up in time for classes, but at the moment it robs me of sleep. They even practice in abnormal weather and seem to yell even more then.

Stop the noise

I have been stocking up on goods for my room such as shampoo, listerine, bin, kettle, cleaning things, etc. I also got me some cheap speakers because my laptop speakers are plain terrible. My wallet and I would like to thank Tatsu for driving us around Fuchu to shop in cheaper places than I could have possibly ever reached. We even got a rice cooker and made a delicious meal together in Tom’s room: Miso soup, gyoza, beef, rice, soy sauce.

rice cooker n shiz

too hungry, forgot before picture

After shopping with Tatsu, we went to an izakaya (居酒屋) that lured us in with a 10% off voucher. We had wonderful food (each dish 270円) and a few drinks. The most interesting part of the evening was, that in a booth further away from us in the same restaurent there were 7 Japanese women having drinks. At least one of them knew Tatsu, so they invited us over for drinks, and we accepted. We had fun times trying to introduce ourselves in Japanese and having little conversations. It was good practice for us, and for them we were the entertainment for that evening. I think at least one of them was hitting on Tom. We parted promising each other we’d all go hiking together one day, but I doubted they’d remember the next morning.

Women and us, Kat taking the pic (thanks Kat)

Speaking of restaurants, I also failed to mention that the day we went to buy our keitais, Koichi took us to a maid cafe. Basically, everything in there is cutesie, the servants are all dressed in a maid costume (revealing more than usual) and the prices are horrendous. Furthermore, you’ll hear cheesy cute music in the background and the maids talk to you in the same fashion. It was an interesting experience, but I doubt I’ll ever go again. Slightly creepy.

Shibuya

Yesterday Kat and I met up with Tatsu to go check out Shibuya and then meet friends for dinner. Shibuya is basically Consumer City with loads and loads of shops, department stores, restaurants, etc. Whenever you see a movie depicting modern Japan, it’s likely that they will show footage of the huge and busy crossing at Shibuya with all it’s lights, advertisements and thousands of people.

We went into a department store to look for some cute.. erm.. dongles to hang from Kat’s keitai, but were unsuccessful. It was interesting to see though how, while fashion here varies, girls all for a rather ‘crowded’ look. It’s hard to explain. Also, a lot of girls in Shibuya wear so much make up they look like surreal clowns.

Anyway, we had dinner at a nice restaurant high up in 7th floor. The food wasn’t mind blowing, but still quite good. After that the six of us went for ‘purikura’, which is basically a photobooth where Japanese take cute or funny pictures and get to edit and print them after. It’s interesting to see the result because pictures are taken with very high exposure, making faces really bright and eyes seem huge. If I can find the time, I’ll upload some.