Am I Beautiful Yet?

Purikura are photo booths. For girls, mainly. We tried. Here's what we got for it.

 

Which one's your favorite?

Uncanny Signs Part 2

It's that time again, folks. Let's look at what we've got this time around. You can check out the ones from last time by clicking here. Only three this time, but I love them so!

6: Vegitables
Location: Cafe Pronto, Kayabacho
Category: Engrish

This salud has lettus and avacado in it, too. Ouch, guys. Spell check, please!

7: GENTLE CHILD
Location: Shopping bag, lady on a train.
Category: Engrish

The glare of the light doesn't make it easy to read; it says the following:
"You gave all these gentleness of me and strength. Strong child treasure cute kid good child your word is like magic GENTLE CHILD SPLEASE PRAISE ME."
 Sounds like voodoo.

8: Fucking Hell
Location: Hakone
Category: Lost in Translation

Fucking hell! It's the perfect gift!
Complete with gratuitous swearing.

Interesting Tidbits: この言語は無理

I'm trying to teach myself to read Japanese. It's a long grueling process. I've been told that, in order to be able to read the newspaper here, I'd need to know approximately 2000 characters.
 But it's not even that simple. Setting aside the actual spoken language, the process of learning in reading and writing Japanese is similar to that of venturing into a never ending labyrinth, where knives lurk around every corner. It's just...tricky.
You see, there are 3 "alphabets" in Japanese. Technically, you could establish a (barely) similar comparison with roman letters; where we have 2 alphabets: 'UPPER CAPS' and 'lower caps.' Though there are 26 letters, there are actually 52 symbols to memorize. Upper caps and lower caps serve a different function, though these functions are quite simple to remember. The three Japanese alphabets are the following:


1: Hiragana - ひらがな - 48 symbols.
 Hiragana is the basic written Japanese. The baby shit, if you will. Each of the 48 symbols is a sound, such as ka, ki, ku, ke and ko. You can technically write everything in hiragana, but it'd just make shit confusing as hell, since a lot of Japanese words are homo-phonic and would be written in the exact same way. But this is the first form of writing you learn at school.

2: Katakana - カタカナ - 48 symbols.
 Same as hiragana, katakana is also associated with sounds. The same sounds, even. However, people use katakana to write words that aren't Japanese in origin, such as foreign names, or brands, or words that don't have a Japanese origin, such as "hamburger," the Japanese word for which is "hanba-ga."


3: Kanji - 漢字 - over 50,000 symbols.
 That's right. 50,000 motherfucking symbols; but to be fair, only 2000 to 3000 are in common use. Each symbol is a word, or a part of a word. See, this shit is confusing. Depending on how you combine these symbols together, they have entirely different and unrelated meanings to other combinations of the same god damn symbols. For example, 日本 reads "Ni/hon". It means "Japan."　本日 reads "Hon/jitsu." It means "This Day." You see what happened there?  Though 本 stayed the same in terms of its reading (Hon), 日appeared in both those words, but was read completely differently in each occasion, going from "Ni" to "Jitsu." That's because one symbol often has multiple readings. Often two, sometimes three. Or four. Or five. There's no quick way to learn this. You just have to drill them into your head. By the way, some of them have like, 20 strokes. They suck.


As of now, I know 200 kanji symbols. And I already get 'em mixed up sometimes. Shit.

Mount Takao: A Brief Visit

 Stemming from a decision taken on a whim, pretty much, Ken and I (and a rather shy 13-year-old named Jun) went on a small side trip to a mountain just off the side of Tokyo, named Mount Takao.
 In terms of elevation, it wasn't all that difficult a climb, but the mountain's proximity to Tokyo allowed one to get a good view upon the geography surrounding the actual city. Given the low-difficulty and quick reward of the 90 minute climb, the spot is understandably quite popular with families or friends just wanting to go for a quick hike.
 That aside, the paths are well kept and the area is lush with a vegetation hiding a number of animals (that we didn't really get to see.) Vines and roots were so abundant that both of my companions almost stepped on the same snake (not a small snake either. A pretty sizable snake,) and didn't even notice until I yelled it out - in excitement, not in fear. I tried to grab the thing by the tail but it slithered into the underbrush before I got a chance at it.

As good a picture as I got. Too bad it was a cloudy day.

Housewarming (Of Sorts)

As the days go by, I'm settling into my apartment quite nicely. Just yesterday I even hosted a (ghetto) housewarming, with Ken, Sofie and Erika (with little Max) as my guests. It was fun, despite most of the evening consisting of origami, watching Adventure Time, and picking up the stuff Max threw on my tatami floor. We overstocked on chips. I now have several months' supply, I think.
My place isn't fully furnished yet, but I'm getting to like it a lot. There's a fridge that's still on its way.


     Let's see, what have I learned from living on my own in Tokyo?

1. One roll of toilet paper lasts forever when you're just one guy who takes a dump once in three days.
2. It's easy to wake up early when your window faces east and you have no curtains.
3. Potted plants make for good friends.
4. Cooking is synonymous to saving money.
5. I can't cook.
6. Any bag is a garbage bag.
7. Tatami floors are easier to sleep on than wooden floors.

A view from the bridge right outside my apartment.

A Rant About Work and Why I Enjoy It So Much

I'm the poster boy!

It's been confirmed that, by the end of this month, I'll be receiving my full-working visa, courtesy of the company. This is good news! The working holiday visa that I'm currently on can only last a total of one year, and time's going fast. Luckily, Big Boss seems to be very pleased with the way I do things, so I should get those papers soon enough.

 Speaking of work, my vacation's come to its end. It worries some of my friends how dearly I speak of the good time I have at work. "You're not one of those workaholics, are you?"
 Eh, in regular cases, not really. But seeing the kids makes me happy. Like it or not, I'm a little lonely in Tokyo, so it's nice to have familiar faces come to play. I'm a big kid, myself, and sometimes this city's a little too serious. As I've often said, I need these kids as much as they need me. As much as I like my workmates, they seem to have a closed circle of friends; one which I'm not part of. So naturally, I relate to the kids better.

My favorite group! The all-girls Champions class!

It's hard to meet people in Tokyo, man. Damned hard. Thanks to Ken, who I'm pretty inseparable with, and the occasional presence of Erika, I ain't completely friendless in Tokyo, but I'm not a long way from there. In this city, no one my age lives on their own. I get it, the place is expensive. But people here live with their parents until their late twenties and early thirties; totally commonplace. The Japanese folk, they're a tough bunch to connect to, and as a foreigner, it's difficult to just integrate myself to the community without maybe murdering a local terrorist or becoming a J-Pop singer or something.
 When people ask me about how people are in Canada, I establish the following comparison: it's easy to make friends back home, but hard to have a meaningful connection. The opposite can be said for Japan. It's hard to make friends here, but I think the bond is deeper. The easy alternative is to make foreigner friends, with the downside being that I won't be learning any of the language at all, and such friendships also tend to be on a shorter term. Unlike myself, most gaijin aren't here to stay. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
 So that, my friends, is why I enjoy work. The kids are my buddies. They actually look up to me and that's nice (since no one else in their right mind would.) There's actually this one little girl who seems to be taking after me and wants me to teach her acrobatics. So until I expand my network healthily, the kids will always be around to provide an element of human contact to my life. All I have to do now is sit the fuck down and study hard. 'Cause God knows I won't be making friends if I can't speak properly.

Scenic Hakone (Part 2/2)

Continued from yesterday, this is the second part of our Hakone trip!

And so, down to lake Ashi we went, using the ropeway cars. As I had begun mentioning yesterday, the lake is actually the result of a thousand-year-past volcanic eruption. Today, it's kind of a touristic spot. Cradled by the mountains, the area does have a primordial charm to it. I do find it interesting what they've done to the place to gather tourists. I mean, the swan boats and canoe rentals I can understand, but they also put a pair of pirate themed ferry-boats going across the lake. Eh, I can dig it. Pirates are cool.

As we landed on the other side, we decided to take a trail leading up one of the peaks, which was rewarding in its own way. The hike was short, but provided us with plenty of opportunity to carve stupidities into trees and whatnot.
 The day was nearing its end, though, so from the end of the trail we took a bus back to our Bed & Breakfast place, which, for some reason, reminded me of some kind of mental institute. Not necessarily a bad thing, I figure. It did have a hot bath, so that's an added bonus.


 The Bed & Breakfast place we established base in was also part of some kind of resort network for the damnably rich, called Yunessan. Although things in the resort were somewhat pricy (20$ to go into a swimming pool? Hell no!) There was some good to be found there too, including a museum of trick photography, where visitors were invited to take part in optical illusions formed by cleverly done paintings on the walls. Such as the following!
I'm actually laying down on the floor on that picture.
But of course, I couldn't be bothered to take all these pictures properly, choosing instead to deliberately mess around with the optical illusions, producing something the likes of the second picture, here. I think it has its charm.

But alas, all good things have to come to an end, and so too did our trip to Hakone. That being said, though, many more adventures and misadventures await me back home in Tokyo, and I'm quite excited to write about how things have been developing at my workplace.
All in all, Hakone's definitely beautiful and worth a visit or whatnot.

Scenic Hakone (Part 1/2)

  Two months ago, I requested a week off from work during June. It's tough to get in any kind of request of the sort. My workplace only allows one person in the company to take a day off at any given day, and it just so happens that, when I was looking at the calendar, two months ago, July and August had already been booked by my co-workers. And so I took a week off in June. "What luck," I thought.

 Japan's rainy season is in June, folks. And I am a dumb-ass.

 And so Ken and I tried to figure out what we could do with a week off in rain season. The days closed in on us, and we threw several plans out the window and ended up with a single one. A three day trip to the mountainous area of Hakone.

 Hakone's just a side trip from Tokyo. A train leading out of the city can take one there in an hour and a half or so. But despite the short distance, there's no comparison to establish between Hakone and Tokyo. This is a tropical country. Hakone's there to remind us of that.

 The area has a network of cable-cars and railways and boats going to and fro and across mountains and lakes. Though the area isn't huge (nor small, by any means) there's lots to see.

Hakone's got the mountains. It's got the trees and the rivers and the lakes. It's got a steaming volcano and hotsprings. Hakone's amazing. Buy purchasing a 3 day pass for just around 65$, one gets to and from Hakone for free, and gets to use all the transportation within the area for free as well, with a bonus of a bunch of small discounts on some touristic activities. Considering the round trip without the pass is already 40$ or so, the pass is altogether a great move. 

Our first stop was Odawara Castle. Though technically not in Hakone, whatever, man, it's a fucking castle. It's awesome. Ofcourse we stopped here on our way. The place is surrounded with a colorful garden, there's a cage full of monkeys right outside, and there's this shack with two old men who rent out samurai costumes for the likes of 2,50$. The inside of the castle itself was turned into a museum, which, to me, seems kind of too bad. But hey, whatever pays the maintenance fee to keep the place running, I guess. Odawara Castle is one of the many traditional old castles in Japan that still stand to this day. There's more than a good handful of them dispersed around the country. Odawara's I don't think is one of the most famous or nicest of them. But hey, I got to dress up as a samurai for 2,50$. It's all good.

Out of Odawara we headed into the actual Hakone area. We booked into a quaint little hotel, enjoyed a hot bath, and were up the next day to witness the best of what the area had to offer. A rail-car leading someways up the mountain brought us to the foot of a suspended car-lift, which whisked us off the ground and over the volcanic valley formed by the topmost peaks in Hakone. Damn right, I said volcanic. The hot springs in Hakone are natural, fueled by a steaming subterranean volcanic source water. And, using said lift, up the volcanic valley we went.

The top of the mountain attracts quite a number of tourists, for its obvious sight-seeing value as well as its one promised delicacy: the specialty "Black Eggs" served at the small restaurants crowning the valley. The black eggs are made through some process involving the volcano or something, but I wouldn't know, because I don't eat eggs. Ken didn't eat the eggs either. As a matter off fact, I couldn't really be bothered to give a damn about the eggs, so read about 'em off wikipedia or something. But damn did they advertise those eggs like crazy. Mascots and posters and all that stuff.

Asides from the fuggin' eggs, the volcanic valley itself was quite a sight to behold. Poisonous vapors rise from the cracks in the mountain stone, though, threatening to blind, intoxicate or kill any adventurer manly enough to stick their head in them, so walking in the shadow of the valley itself was prohibited to tourists. But to merely see the smoke rise out of the valley is enough to draw the awe of tourists. And the smell of sulfur permeating from the area had me not quite willing to venture any closer even if I could.
 From here, we took the suspended car down, and over to Lake Ashi, a lake formed by a volcanic crater many thousands of years ago.

Alright, I'm sure none of you want to read more than that much at a time, so I'll cut here and post more about Hakone tomorrow. Here's a picture of me and Ken being gay ropeway attendants, the way we often are on our free time when no one's watching. Part two coming soon!

What I've been up to

Though the last few days have been a blur, what with moving and all, I did manage to enjoy going out some in the presence of my buddies. I didn't bother making individual posts for each outing, since nothing really screams "Japan," but hey, here's what I've been up to in case anyone was wondering.

There've been a couple of work parties recently. They're fun, but most of the time I can't
really understand what's being said. My boss is the guy on the left.

I went to see "Dark Shadows" with Ken, Erika, and this guy David. I didn't really like
the movie so much, but it had its charming moments. This was after the screening.

I went to a club with Ken and Sofie, but it was pretty dead.
We met a bunch of fun people that night, regardless.

This girl was cute. We danced.

I hung out with Lisa for the first time in a while at the first ever
Ben & Jerry's to open in Japan. Neither Ben nor Jerry were there.

And that's about it! I have a week off vacation from work starting today, and I plan on going on a small trip to the beautiful Hakone area. Expect some nice pictures when I get back.