Tuesday, May 30, 2006

More Conversation

This week's number one learning goal is improving my conversation skills: I met yesterday with Yoriko-san for a conversation practice dinner & today in Ueno Park with part of the class crew for a follow up. Being a very mixed class has the benefit that for some of the students, such as the Koreans, it is now easier to try to converse in Japanese than in English and this means lots of opportunity to practice. It's quite amazing what you can manage to get across even with a limited vocabulary, for example I learned today that "in Korea most pigeons living in tourist spots are so fat (from too much/generous tourist feeding) that they can no longer fly and hence only stagger about". Who would have guessed a few months ago that I would be discussing this wonderful topic in Japanese soon?

Yoriko-san continues her quest to teach me the "tomodachi-fomu" (i.e. colloquial Japanese) and I am slowly beginning to get it, at least in theory. This is a great pleasure as it significantly adds to my coolness factor in class during breaks ;)

In other news my German friend Christine has come to Tokyo to visit, giving me a reason to get those tourist-must-sees checked of my list, so expect more photos soon...

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Disaster Prevention

Today's weekend excursion took us to Tokyo's "Disaster Prevention Center", an interactive experience with great simulations such as the magnitude 7 earthquake simulator that we are enjoying in this picture (and which in no time convinced me, that i do not need to experience a magnitude 7 earthquake, ever - but at least I was not wearing shorts like some of the guys who came out with badly rug-burned knees...). Other fun 'rides' included the typhoon simulator, a burning kitchen, a burning building maze & a 3-D movie of a Tokyo earthquake scenario, complete with burning buildings crashing down on us. Man, do I love Japanese exhibition design!

Friday, May 26, 2006

So, what else is going on?*

[* title loosly inspired by the Australia Tourism Campaign: So, where the bloody hell are you? if you haven't seen this comercial/spot, you must check it out on the website above -- you'll want to go to AU asap.]

Apart from spending geeking out on my jp language addiction, here's a digest of other fun stuff happening over the last week:

EU Film Fest
Last Thursday I had the chance to go to one of the EU Film screenings that were taking place as part of the "Friendship Week" put on in Tokyo by the European Union. I went with two friends from school, Ben & Ina, from AU & Indonesia respectively, and it was quite a treat to see both their and the rest of the audiences reactions to the movie we had chosen: the Swedish Ketchup Effect. Should you want to know what it is like to be a teenager in Scandinavia this is the film to watch.

Hidetaka Lee Fashion Show
Friday last week Yu-Ching (former AMZN.co.jp) had invited me to her new company's first fashion show, held at a club/bar in Aoyama. I took two of the girls from my class with me (Opal & Vera, who both study design) and we were not disappointed. This was my first real pro fashion ever, and I loved seeing the fancy make + hairdos up-close, of course along with the beautiful Hidetaka Lee clothes. As a special bonus, i actually won a Hidetaka Lee shirt in a prize drawing - so i am now the very proud owner of a Japanese couture item - how cool is that?

Design Festa
Saturday it was time for a visit to the Tokyo Design Festa - this is a biannual event where young and upcoming artists can apply for permits to put their work on display. The Festa takes place in a tiny part of the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center, and still it is *huge*, in other words the TBS itself turned out to bit quite impressive - I don't think I've ever been to a convention center the size of the LAX airport.... We spent about 7 hours at the venue and made it through a good 2/3s of the exhibit. It was a fun mix of all kinds of more or less obscure types of art and design work: everything from Manga, to Pseudo-Porn (-- such as the "School Girl Karma Sutra Illustration Series" displayed by one artist, this is JP after all, anything goes...) to cutesy stuffed animals in every shape and color, to hip hop music, jewelry, clothing, bags, engrish language t-shirts, art work, body painting, you name it...

Yoriko-San
Monday of this week, it was time for my first get-together with Yoriko-san, who has kindly volunteered to be my new Japanese Conversation partner. Conversation Partners are Japanese 'buddies' assigned to the language school students to provide language exchange outside of the class environment. Yoriko-san is a 30 old Tokyo woman, working in Chemicals B2B and speaking English with a lovely Oxford, but who most importantly patiently listens to my nascent Japanese. She has also promised to help me learn 'informal' Japanese, which i am very excited about. This almost merits a post on it's own, but essentially the Japanese taught in Schools is always the formal way of speaking, which to some extend is good, as it means you won't end up being too much of a rude foreigner, however it also means that you are constantly addressing you buddies in a "how do you do today, sir?" kind of way, until you start learning the informal verb conjugations.

Hidden Gems
Tuesday was spent in search of hidden gems, but to make a long story short: upon wanting to visit an Indian Style temple I ended up having sushi at the Tsukiji Fishmarket (the sushi btw. was ridicously good, by far the best i have ever had) and stumbling upon the House of Shiseido corporate museum, a very cool little exibition space, with some very groovy interactive display cases (look for the 2nd floor "archive table" on their website to see pictures). After Sapporo's cool Yebisu Beer Museum and this one, I am seriously considering only visiting free corporate museums in JP from now on... What was quite funny about the Shiseido Museum as well, was that their current Art Deco show features mainly photographs of and from the Metropolitan Hotel in Shanghai, which in turn happens to be right down the street from where i stayed while i was there. I passed it everyday when heading for the subway and little did I know that it is considered a monument of Art Deco architecture...

ダウインチ コード
The week's final event, worthy of honorable mention: The Da Vinci Code, watched on Wednesday, which is Ladies Day at the movie theaters in Tokyo, meaning half price. Nice introduction to extremely fast moving Japanese subtitles (luckily they do not dub movies), but hey, I managed to catch a "Nani" and an "Arigato" here and there :)

日本語がだいすきです。I love Japanese!

A bit more on this topic... I'm not really sure why learning Japanese is such a whale of a time, but it reminds me a bit of when I was in second grade and went through 3 years worth of Danish-books within 6 months [-- which had the unfortunate side effect of driving my teacher crazy, something for which she blames me to this day & which has led to unpleasant screaming scenarios in downtown Augustenborg, DK when visit my family, no joke, but way too much information I realize :)].

I think i get my language kick from the feeling of entering a new world, it is as if i am slowly opening a door to a wonderful world and given my impatient tendencies, the desire to fling the door open instead makes me greedily want to absorb as much information as in any way possible on any given day... Successfully buying stamps at the post office [-- while explaining that i want to send these 5 cards now and get 5 extra stamps for later - "so you mean 10 stamps total?"] or ordering my morning coffee at Starbucks and finally being able to explain that i want it in the take out cup [in 'real' japanese, rather than resorting to the 'take-out-o kudasai' cheating route] are great little moments of new found language joy.

So, there it is, i'm a language Geek (-- language Otaku?! :) and loving it :)

ちょっと いそがしですよ。-- A bit busy...

I am afraid the blog is suffering a bit again. With just a bit over 4 weeks left in Japan i find my self struggling to do everything i want to do and currently the blog is the number one victim of this fight. Probably rightfully so, but still I'd love to add more updates as there is simply so much to tell you about, but at the same time there are only so many hours in the day...

What's keeping me busy is a blend of intense language studies and an everlasting list of things i want to do and experience in Tokyo/Japan [-- combined with a bit of leg work needing to happen before I start university in the August (which is, (wow!) just a few months away now!]. Mostly this is a very good kind of business as I have to confess that my love for Japan and Japanese continues to grow by the day, but at the same time this exact fondness makes me sad to think that I'll be leaving 'so soon' and that i won't get to the bottom of this wonderful (subarashi!) language this time around, which in turn just makes me want to do more and see more -- you get the picture.

Anyway i have been contemplating new an improved blogging strategies and think i will shift to more frequent, but shorter updates, why do I talk so much anyway?! :)

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Kanda Matsuri

This past weekend offered a couple of interesting activities. First on Saturday there was the annual "Thai Festival", a show case of Thai culture & food, which i visited with Opal from my class who is from Thailand and hence was able to provide excellent guidance when it came to picking from the many delicious foods and snacks being offered. Unfortunately Saturday was also miserably cold and rainy which put a bit of a damper on the tropical festivities (- note however that this may have been a good thing in the end - apparently last year's Thai Festival was "unbearably crowded", now it was just "crowded"). The weekend highlight however was supposed to be Sunday's "Kanda Matsuri" a festival/parade in honor of the Kanda Shrine, located not far from Akihabara (electric town').

I never found out exactly what the purpose of the parade was other than carrying around some of the sacred shrine objects (such as the one seen here, while passing Akihabara's 7 storey SEGA "Gemusentaa" - arcade) and making lots of noise. But it was interesting, crowded and as you can see for some reason the men did not wear pants... I'll be fair, they did wear loin-cloths, but there was still a quite surprising amount of manly flesh on display by Tokyo standards, in some cases a bit too much maybe ;)

イケア = I-KE-A

Just got back from a little outing to the new IKEA store located in Minami Funabashi. It's the first IKEA to open in Japan (well, technically it is not actually the first: apparently IKEA tried to conquer Japan in the eighties and it didn't work out, so let's say the first in 20 years...) and it is is *huge* (for those of you familiar with the Seattle IKEA, think 3x that size) and due to some stroke of business brilliance it is located right across from Minima Funabashi station. Granted, M-F is not exactly central Tokyo, but still I can't imagine what it takes to get a chunk of land like that within 30min of Tokyo center - kudos to our Swedish friends.


As a confessing IKEA-holic, I can report that the MF store is the real deal right down to the meat balls and Billy shelves, with a few Japanese quirks added: note that the kitchen display in this picture has a rice cooker sitting on the kitchen counter for example. This is the good old Mc-Shrimp-Burger approach (a JP MCD specialty) I presume, and I am a bit curious as to what the Japanese customers think of it -- it is still hard for me to imagine Japanese apartments decked out in IKEA's Swedish country style line for example, even if they do feature an added rice cooker.

Another fun little observation was the number of mothers / families with young children in the store. I've wondered for a while where the Japanese children are on a normal day. This may sound odd, but I always see plenty of school kids on the trains, however rarely any young (1-5) children anywhere. I now know that they are hanging out at IKEA in M-F. Maybe IKEA has a reputation of being a hot "where-to-go-with-your-toddler" destination in Tokyo, or maybe today was just "family day" - very peculiar.

The hot dog stand, complete with a JP style vending machine where you buy a ticket for your desired refreshment. The ticket is then handed to the hot-dog-stand person, who'll give you your food/drink.

See my hot dog ticket below - reading (for those not skilled in Katakana, he he):
"Hottodoggu" - Japanese isn't that hard after all, eh?!

Sunday, May 14, 2006

The Odd Shot

My collection of odd Japan photos continues to grow steadily and since tonight is photo night I thought I'd share a few:

Why wouldn't every train station have a Hello Kitty instant Pop Corn machine?!


Riding Yamaha's new electric scooter on Earth Day in Maronouchi.


Carrie & I meet a true Shibuya girl in Nagano.


"The Midget II" -- possibly the world's smallest pick-up truck.


Yen 100 fortune sold at shrine in Kyoto.


Dinner!


The electric toilet seat 'remote'...

Tadaima (I'm home!)

Golden week came and went in a blitz. My mom and sister made it to Japan safe and sound, and we managed to pull of our ambitious "Highlights of Japan in 6 days". In all honesty it was literally a blast, a whirlwind of sights and good times. To give you and idea of what we were up to I'll list a few things and add a couple of pictures below.

Tokyo
  • Shibuya (shopping with teenage Tokyo and Coffee in the "STABA" (Starbucks in Japanese) known from Lost in Translation (the one where you can watch the world's largest pedestrian crossing)
  • Omotesando (Ritzi stores like the green Prada diamond and the new Omotesando Hills complex -- as featured in the NY Times in March)
  • Harajuku ("Kiddy Land", a most fab 7 storey Japanese-cartoon-character store, Takeshita Dori (where the Harajuku girls get their Harajuku girl outfits...), Harajuku girls & the Meji Shrine)
  • Shinjuku (enjoying the, free, view from the Tokyo Municipal Government twin tower building)
  • Roppongi (the inevitable Cafe Daisy (danish food) treat)
  • Ginza (more ritz & glitz...)
  • Maronouchi & the Imperial Palace grounds (riding the Hello Kitty bus - yeah!)
  • Akihabara (electric town & yodabashi camera, home of the yodabashi camera jingle/song... ;)
  • Nikko
    Day trip north of Tokyo, world heritage site with a large number of temples & shrines, many devoted to the first Tokugawa shogun Ieyasu. Also known from a Japanese saying that goes something like "If you haven't seen Nikko, then you can't say you've really lived..."

    Kyoto
    Need i say it: another home of many a Japanese world heritage site and famously spared from most destruction during WW2 for that reason. As my guidebook states: "to get just a gist of what there is to see in Kyoto one would need at least 2 weeks"... alas we had to make due with two days, during one of the most crowded seasons of the year and still Kyoto shone as a place of extraordinary beauty and the epitome of Japanese Temple viewing. I wont try to list all the places we went to, but i think we covered a good mix of diverse sights, from the Gold & Silver Pagodas, to a couple of Zen-gardens, Geishas & the inner city, the Arashiyama forest and finally the hillside set Kiyomizu temple...




    Welcome to Japan! Aase & Julie getting in to the Japanese spirit by donning hotel Yukatas and taking daily self portraits...



    Aase meets "Harajuku girl"



    Danish treats.



    Japanese Treats in honor of the upcoming Soccer World Cup to be held in Germany.



    Back in the city: Akihabara (electric town) also sells 100Yen rain coats...





    Nikko is a place of epic beauty that lends itself to serious contemplation...



    ...among other things....



    Trying to blend in and be Japanese: family photo under a blossoming cherry tree in Nikko.




    Welcome to Kyoto...


    ...where there is no shortage of temples...



    ...or VIP moss (click image to enlarge)...




    ...or local beauties...




    ...and their foreign counterparts...




    Find Waldo! -- Blasting through the JP landscape on the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Kyoto back to Tokyo Fujisan is hiding in a deep layer of spring clouds.