Addendum

I'm getting busy as the semester wraps up, but looking back at my last post I feel I should probably update some information. For one thing: it is not a Japanese thing to leave the windows open all the time. That's just my host mother, and her crazy love for fresh air. Apparently the importance of fresh air trumps that of having feeling in my hands. I am growing increasingly proficient at typing with gloves on. On a somewhat related note, apparently all Japanese air conditioners are heaters as well. While there is one in my room, no matter how high I set the temperature on it, it does nothing but blow cool air, which while still warmer than the temperature in the room, really doesn't help anything. Thanks Japan.

On things which are heated:

Author's note: (as if this whole thing wasn't an author's note) I fail at once a week. Whatever.

It's finally getting colder in Japan. This honestly makes me really happy, as it had been unseasonably warm lately, and I prefer cold weather to hot weather. Warm weather is of course best, but being from Minnesota, what seems warm to me is cold to everyone here. Whatever. The point being, as the Japanese feel colder and colder, things begin to become heated. Sometimes things that should be heated, and sometimes things that should not.

Houses -
Japanese houses are not heated. Nor are they insulated very well at all. It doesn't get nearly as cold in Japan as it gets back home, but still, as I write this, my hands are cold enough to make typing somewhat frustrating. I understand why they don't heat their houses, but what I don't really get is why in the hell they leave the windows open. Seriously. You complain when it's cold outside, and yet you leave all the windows open. Including the ones in the bathroom. This is unpleasant, and I don't understand.

Tables -
To compensate for non-heated houses, Japanese people have something called a kotatu, which is basically a table with a heating element under it and a blanket over it that they pull out when it gets cold enough, and everyone sits around it. Very comfy. Has yet to come out.

Toilet seats -
This is nice, particularly with the windows always being open. Turns what would be extremely unpleasant into... very strange. See, the thing that always comes to mind for me when I sit on a toilet seat, only to find it warm, is that someone has just been sitting there before me. Kinda gross, kinda not. Whatever. It's just strange when it doesn't go away.

Trains -
This one seems like it might be a good thing, but... somehow it manages not to be. See, it didn't start getting seriously cold (below around 50) here until this week, but the trains have been heated for three weeks to a month. And by heated, I mean very heated. Even before, it was enough to make a person (not just me) sweat while just standing there. And even now, when it is cold enough that I am wearing a light jacket or sweatshirt, I want to take it off on that damn train, because it's too warm. The strangest thing is it's not even every train. It is in fact one train; the first train I take every day. Trains should be heated, but this gets a "you're doing it wrong".

I don't really want to take this blog in the direction of "I'm in Japan and everything is weird and different, and please laugh at my funny commentary," but this time I couldn't resist writing about it.

...please laugh at my funny commentary.

I guess it's been a while since my last update. If I'm going to keep doing this, staying consistent will be best, and so I'll do my best to get at least one post in per week. Had a stellar Monday this week. Really. This weekend was the Kishibe Festival held every year by the college I'm attending here, and all of the foreign students were invited to participate. And by invited, I mean forced to do it in a very passive aggressive, please do it if you want to (and you DO want to) Japanese way. So that took up pretty much all of Friday and Saturday, what with working on preparing food, selling food, set up, clean up, and general business. For whatever reason, the Japanese students got Monday off. Something about needing rest after a full weekend of hard work. Clearly, as foreign students, we did not require such a break, nor were we given one. The entire campus was dead on Monday, except for the foreign students, and the professors that teach us. Even the on campus food service was closed. Cool. We don't need to eat either. On top of all this, I spent all of Sunday feeling gradually becoming more and more sure that I was getting sick. Woke up Monday, and sure enough, definitely not feeling well. As luck would have it on this day-that-should-not-have-been, I had a presentation to give. So I went anyway. Felt mostly ok throughout the day, at various points wondering if I didn't have a mild fever.

Last class of the day, presentation time. Definitely not feeling superb. Fairly sure I have a decent fever going at this point, but I've been in class for six hours now. Why go home now? Got up, gave my presentation. Did not have a powerpoint presentation. Guess most people did. Didn't matter, because I rocked it anyway, with a high fever going, no powerpoint, and about ten minutes of prep time. Go me. Went home and was greeted by my concerned host mother who took my temperature and decided that I definitely had a fever, and dragged me off to the hospital(conveniently
literally next door. As in building next to this house.). Had a flu test done. I guess in Japan they do this by shoving a special (as in designed to be extra painful) cotton swab waaaaaay farther up your nose than anything but air is meant to go. After waiting a half hour, during which my name was called twice, I guess for no reason, I
was informed that I probably did not have the flu. I was shown a pregancy test looking plastic thing that basically showed one line for no flu or two lines for flu, and lucky me, one line. I feel like a teenager again. Went home and slept solidly for about 14 hours, woke up with no fever, and apart from a cough felt pretty much 100%.

And on top of this whole lovely adventure, I was waaaaaay too smart to dress warmly enough.

Kobe, and other things

Last weekend I took a day trip with two of my fellow OGU students to Kobe. When we got there, pretty much the first thing we found out was that the other train line is not only cheaper to get there, but is a straight shot from my stop. That's cool. I didn't need that money anyway. Not like I'm running out or anything (I am, but more on that later). The convenient thing about the way we got there is that it dumped us out right near the main attraction for Kobe. Harbor Town. Now fortunately, I remembered my camera this time, and I took a ton of pictures. Here's the harbor:

I love the view, despite one of my companions talking the whole time about how he doesn't like harbors because seeing buildings on the other side of the bay spoils pictures. I feel like it's a good view, but I guess he's right. Who wants to see scenery? I want to see a beach and then ocean out to the horizon. Water is much more interesting than buildings. Particularly this one:

and this one:

But I am clearly mistaken. Buildings are not interesting. Wandering around Harbor Town for a while, we eventually made it clear through and headed toward China Town. Toward, and past. I guess we decided to head the next street down, and cut over at the first alley. Which we did not do. We then proceeded to entirely skip China Town, for reasons that nobody could quite come up with afterward. After wandering around for a while, we figured we'd hop a train over to Shin-Nagata (still in Kobe) to see what we'd all mainly come to see. The new giant Tetsujin statue. Apparently the day we went was the day it was unveiled. On an unrelated note, I do not plan or research my day trips. One of my companions does, however. Just saying. Not related. What is related:

So yeah. He's big. There's a lamppost in there for scale. I did that on purpose for scale, not because I was too tired to notice a lamppost obscuring my shot. I promise. After that, we found a cheap lunch and wandered the streets of Shin-Nagata for a while. Which was awesome, because we found these guys:

I guess they're a group of guys who, every couple of weeks, all dress up in costumes like this and walk around Shin-Nagata in a parade. Because this is Japan, and everyone loves to play dress-up. Vending machines like to play dress-up too. Like this guy:

That is a Tetsujin vending machine. I'd love to tell you I bought a drink from Tetsujin, but his offerings were disappointing. For shame. After this, we went back to Sannomiya, which is the station we COULD have gone to in the first place if we were thinking convenience. Shopped around there for a while, and had Wendy's for dinner. Because one of my companions was Australian (he still is) and I guess they don't have Wendy's. At all.

After all that, I came back home and settled down for some good old internet time. I was then notified that the scholarship money that I was supposed to be getting this coming Saturday would be delayed indefinitely, because the Prime Minister changed office, and the budget was being reexamined. I guess in Japan, Prime Ministers change by surprise and the budget is almost never examined. That's the only explanation I can think of for us being told at the last minute. I mean if people knew about that stuff, surely they'd tell us with some advance notice, right? (We found out several days later that the money would not in fact, be delayed. Cool)

This whole trip was on 3000 yen, or around 30 dollars, which is all I have to last me until Friday. Want to know how to see Japan for cheap? You can't.

As a side note here, I'd like to comment on something I have observed over the last few weeks of hurrying around everywhere. Japanese people walk slowly. Normally, this is fine. I don't need to be in a hurry. But when I'm in a hurry to make my train, and I am trapped between a wall of slow moving Japanese people, moving slower than even my normal walking speed, I find myself... frustrated.

Me: Hey, uh... you're moving kind of slow...

Japanese person: Hmm, it must be kind of hard for you to get through, huh?

Me: Yeah, and I sort of need to get to my train. Won't you miss yours moving at that speed?

Japanese person: Heavens, no! I'll simply use my Nihonjin-teleport to get to my train before it leaves. Can't you... Gaijin-vanish or something?

Me: Uh... no... so if you could... maybe speed up a bit... or...

Japanese person: Zannen, ne... (continues walking at the same pace)

Tokyo Game Show

Tokyo Game Show was the weekend of September 24th through the 27th this year, and I got to go. I've always wanted the chance to go to a game conference or convention like E3 in the US, and if I hadn't gone to Japan this year, I might have tried to get into Penny Arcade Expo. Regardless, TGS is one of the biggest game conferences in the world, held each year in Chiba. Now, I live in Osaka, which is fairly far away from Tokyo. The fastest way to get there is the shinkansen, or bullet train. It takes about two and a half hours that way, and costs a lot of money. I, along with a fellow Minnesotan, went with a cheaper route. The night bus. Now, the night bus is super convenient, and fairly cheap. The problem, especially for someone like me, is that it is designed for the average Japanese person. This means that given my height, I had virtually no legroom. As in, less than flying coach. And since the average Japanese person is rather short, the seat back contours to fit them, and not me. This meant that while trying to sleep, my lower back hurt, or my neck hurt. There was no comfortable way to sleep, and for the most part, I didn't.

We took the bus, departing at 11:15 PM on Friday night. It's about 8 hours by car/bus (which gives you an idea of the speed of the shinkansen. It's faster than a plane trip from here to Tokyo), and the idea is that you sleep the whole way. Well, I managed to drift in and out and got maybe 3 or so hours total. We arrived at Tokyo Disney Land at about... 7:30 AM. We had to go there, because buses that stopped at Chiba were sold out for that day. Because the game show is BIGGER THAN DISNEY LAND. Had to take the train over, which was easy, and then got tickets and got in line. And what a line. Our original plan was to meet up with another friend from Minnesota based in Tokyo, get his ticket for him so he'd wait in line less, and get in together. But that proved to be impossible. I had not counted on a line 12 people wide wrapping around the entire convention center. Just finding him alone would have been impossible, not to mention him actually making it into the line without a ticket. So I ended up with an extra TGS ticket, which I still have. Souvenir? Regardless, we eventually got in, after what seemed like an eternity baking in line on a very hot day. The line we were in managed to move the entire way around the convention center, all the way back to where we got into the line, which was at the entrance, apparently. I took plenty of pictures at first, but the frenetic pace of the day, combined with my growing exhaustion, meant I abandoned that fairly quickly. I had a great time at what I later found out was the weakest TGS in recent memory. Plenty of major developers didn't even show up, and there were no new announcements made at all. Regardless, I got to play Left 4 Dead 2, which pretty much made the whole thing worthwhile.

By the time we got out of the show, it had reached 4 PM, and we headed to Tokyo station to get some dinner. Which was hard. Apparently, though it is a fairly huge hub for transportation, the area around Tokyo station is somewhat lame, and it took us a while to find a decent place for dinner. Bummed around the station for a few hours, and then headed back to Disney Land to find our bus. We figured we'd be tired enough to sleep the whole way back on the bus. We were half right. My companion, being shorter than me, had little trouble crashing and sleeping the whole way. Meanwhile, I found it still impossible to get to sleep for more than a half hour at a time, and wound up back in Kyoto exhausted. Somehow I managed to drag my tired ass back home, where I arrived at 7:00 AM or so, and promptly went to bed and slept the whole day. Woke up just in time to do some homework for the next day.

Final note: It was a great weekend, and I don't regret a single minute of it. Regardless, if you are tall in Japan, do not take the night bus if you value your comfort.

I went to Kyoto and forgot my camera.

This is becoming a theme. Maybe it should be the name of the blog. "I went to (somewhere) and forgot my camera." I actually went about a week ago, on Monday the 21st. It was Silver Week here in Japan, so we got Monday through Wednesday off. We decided as a group to go to Kyoto, since we'd all heard how great it was to visit. Met in the morning about halfway there, with nine of us going, and went via JR Line. I guess we did that because it's faster (it's not) and cheaper (nope, not at all). On the plus side, JR station in Kyoto is huge and really cool, and the Hankyu line becomes a subway, and is lame, so I guess it had that going for it. Kind of a grand entrance to the city.

And man was it PACKED. I guess I should have figured it would be on a holiday, but I was not prepared for the sheer amount. Lots of foreigners too, go figure. We couldn't figure out where we wanted to go first, and the lines for buses was huge, so we grabbed a map and headed to the closest random temple. We ended up more at the little bazaar that was set up there, shopping for random stuff and not so much looking at the actual temple. It wasn't all that great of a temple, other than that it was one of the few that actually had a five story pagoda rather than the normal three. Cool? It was too packed near the pagoda to get anywhere near it, so we just left after a while.

We figured we'd head back to Kyoto station and take a bus to one of the bigger temples. NOPE. Buses were still in huge demand, and we figured it would take longer to bus it than walk. But before we managed to leave, Luke managed to find friends. Now Luke is Australian, and in fact the only Australian at OGU. The friends he found were from his university in Australia. He knew they were somewhere in Japan studying. But finding them in Kyoto? The third biggest city in Japan? During a tourism boom? It was insane. On a somewhat annoying note, they had a Japanese hanger-on with them. He was an old guy, with pretty decent English (though he kept insisting it was horrible) who basically followed them around to practice his English. They were a group of two, and we were nine, so when we split up we gained a tenth. Great. He followed us for probably eight blocks, talking to us in English all the while. If he'd spoken Japanese it might not have been so bad, but as it was, he was kind of a nuisance. I guess after about that far he was either bored of us, or actually had somewhere to be, as he suddenly said "Ok, I have to go now!" and then did his Japanese teleport.

This is a trait that all Japanese have. You will be walking with them, looking at them, talking to them, or anything really, and you will turn your head. And they VANISH. You then notice them again, 1o0 feet away. It is crazy, and I want to learn how they do it.

After he left us, we continued our walk to Kiyomizu Temple, which is one of the bigger and more popular temples in Kyoto. It was a long walk, and it was HOT. As in hot enough for Japanese people who don't know you to complain to you randomly about how hot it is. And they NEVER do that. People were hiding in shadows near crosswalks, waiting for the light to turn green, and making a dash for the nearest shadow across the street. So yeah, hot. Eventually we arrived at the temple, and... I don't really know what to say about it. It was really amazing looking, and we went all over it. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures of it. Luke has them, and I will steal them and link to them. Sometime. I took a few with my camera-phone, but even Japanese technology couldn't make those pictures come out well.

After the shrine, we dispersed and scoured the shopping district. Making frequent stops for water and sitting. All told, we were there from 10:30 AM or so until 9:00 PM, and that was only because the shops were closing. Due to a tourist miracle, we ended up right near the Hankyu line entrance, so we took that home, making sure to take the train that stopped at every single station to ensure that we got extra time to sit on the way home. It was not because we didn't want to stand and wait for another train, and were too lazy to find a new, faster one, at a bigger station. Rubbish.

Hopefully next time, I remember my camera. (Spoilers: I didn't)

I went to Osaka-jo and forgot my camera...

As the title says, I went to Osaka-jo (castle) the other day. It was a fellow exchange student's 21st birthday, so we decided to celebrate. It was a fairly simple, but fun night. Everyone took the train out to Kyobashi station and met there. The turnout was about 25 to 30 people, which I think surprised everybody. Included was Kumai-san, the woman working at the International Center at OGU that has the best English. She sent all the emails over the summer with every bit of information we needed. Or didn't need. Regardless, she showed up with a large group of people, stayed with us for about ten minutes to make sure that none of the underage kids would drink, and then... left? It was very strange, and nobody seemed to know why she'd shown up just to leave so quickly.

Everyone went over to the closest supermarket, got a bunch of Japanese beer, and walked over to Osaka castle, where we did something you can't do back home. Got drunk in public. Essentially we hung out near the final steps leading up to the castle and drank for about 6 hours. And I forgot my camera. We hung out, sang songs, learned how to say "cheers" in about six languages, and then I went home.

Which I should not have! Apparently the plan, which I was not aware of, was to just camp out on the ground near the castle. "I'll just take the last train," I thought. And what a good idea that turned out to be. I took off for the train station at about 11:00, figuring I'd be fine to get home by last train. As I walked up to the tunnel I'd walked through from the train station, a security guard was just beginning to lock up. NOT GOOD. With my weak Japanese (which I am tempted to believe actually improves with inebriation) I managed to get a string of words out of him, out of which I understood "stairs," "train," and "that way." I went "that way," found the "stairs," and eventually managed to make it to the "train." I have not yet mentioned that there are multiple train lines that travel around the Kansai area. I usually take the Hankyu line, which is more local and makes a lot more stops. The JR line is faster, nicer, more expensive, and generally closer to the places we want to go, so that's how we got there. Now I knew there was a JR station in Amagasaki, the city in which I live, but I didn't know where it was. Near OGU they're only about 400 meters apart, so I figured it would be within walking distance. WRONG. It's about 4 or 5 miles from my house, which I discovered when I got there. It took me about 15 minutes talking to one of the train attendants with a map, with him saying "Sorry, there are no taxis right now, you will have to walk. Take these roads," before a different person showed up and just said "...take a taxi. They're down those stairs." This was all in Japanese, and I was drunk. Meanwhile, I found out later that rather than camping out, everyone continued to drink for another few hours and then went and did karaoke until first train. I should have just stayed.

And let me just say that throughout the whole experience, despite not knowing where I was or how to get home, I have never felt safer in the middle of a city. Japan is great like that. And oh yeah, again I forgot my camera. So no pictures of Osaka castle for any of you. Then again, judging from my previous track record with pictures it will probably be sometime after I come back and graduate before I manage to get them visible.