Alien Babies and Emo Knives

First off, sorry for the lateness. Last minute plans last night = me not having time to type up a post. Also, I'm lazy :P This week will probably be a little shorter than normal. I did stuff, but it was mostly just get togethers and stuff like that; not much to comment on.

This week it snowed. It snowed a little bit last week as well, but it didn't stick. This time, the weather decided to rectify that error.

It was snowing all day Tuesday, but it only started to accumulate towards the evening.

Wednesday morning, looking out my apartment window. It piled up a bit more throughout the day. Yeah, no exactly a blizzard or anything, but I liked it. I'm actually really pissed at myself, because I saw a scene that would've made a great snowy picture on my way to work, but I passed on the chance of taking it because of that whole embarrassment thing. Decided to use my self loathing constructively by utilizing it to browbeat myself into taking more pictures in the future. It's actually been working... hooray for using my shortcomings as weapons against my other shortcomings?

I had Thursday off, and although it had stopped snowing, it was still pretty cold. What do you do when you have freezing cold days off in the middle of the week? You go to nabe (hot pot) parties, of course!

Yuko (my coworker that invited me) is not in the picture :( but, from left to right, there's me (hah, bet you didn't guess that one!), Yuko's friend, and Yuri (also known as Jessica. She's of Japanese descent but is actually Brazilian. Yeah, it kinda confused me at first.)

The nabe was delicious! If you've never heard of it, it's basically a pot that you put on a portable burner on the table. You fill it with either water or various kinds of soup, depending on what kind of nabe you're making (ours was filled with water), then you add in meat, vegetables, tofu, and other stuff. You can either eat it plain or with sauce (that's what's in those bowls in front of us). We had two kinds of sauce. One was kind of like soy sauce with yuzu (the lemon-looking fruit I posted a picture of last time), the other... I have no idea what it was. It was a bit thicker, brownish, and had black specks in it. It was the better of the two, but they were both good. The only thing I didn't like about the nabe was the fried tofu. Between its consistency and its flavor mixed with the sauce it soaked up (it was like a sponge), it tasted like chewing on soggy bits of vomit. When I finished, there were about 5 pieces of it leftover in my bowl... Yuko laughed at me >< We also had donuts and shu kurimu (cream puffs). They were delicious. Especially the shu kurimu. :D

Friday and Saturday were pretty much just normal workdays. Of course, Saturday was Christmas, but that hasn't meant all that much to me for a few years now. Pretty much just worked, came home, drank some beers, had some chocolate, and watched tv. Ho ho ho?

Sunday was takoyaki (octopus ball. Octopus and cheese baked inside of some kind of batter in the shape of a ball) party time! :D

From left to right: Mika (the hostess. Well, her and her parents, but she's the one that invited me), Mika's friend (I really need to get better at remembering names. It's always been a weak point of mine), Tor (He's a Dane!), Yuko (the same one that had the Nabe party), and Yuri again. Pretty sure you know who the other dude is. Maybe. If not, you just hurt my feelings and now I'm crying. Jerk. This was actually towards the end of the meal, as evidenced by that massive amount of candy and sweets on the table.

The whole thing was really nice and well put together. First of all, Mika's family's house was freaking gorgeous. It was an older, Japanese-style home. The inside was full of amazing artwork and decorations, and the back yard was a beautiful garden with stone lanterns and everything. Mika's dad also showed us how the snow-viewing screens worked (two-part paper and wood screens that covered the back sliding glass door. You can pull the bottom part up to look at the snow.) The meal started with WAY more than just takoyaki. There was salad, noodles, hotdogyaki (my own word. It's like takoyaki, only with hotdog inside instead), rice covered with the fried tofu I mentioned earlier (not as bad when it's not soggy, but still not very good), and a lot of drinks. Seriously, hellsa drinks. In addition to the soda, grape fruit, and green tea we brought, they had coffee, koucha (black tea), and warm green tea. Mika's mom was really good at making traditional green tea. In fact, after I mentioned that I liked to try to eat salads without dressing because it's healthier, they all seemed to think I was a health nut and only served me various kinds of tea for the rest of the evening XD

This was their cat. It's 13 freaking years old. I don't think it looks like it. That's Mika's mom holding it up in the first picture, and it's perched on a space heater in the second. That second picture is what it looked like most of the time I was there. The thing was freaking hilarious though. It would jump down from the space heater, walk up to people, and meow then rub against their leg like it wanted some petting. The second someone besides Mika's mom petted it, though, it would meow angrily and run away. Crazy cat >< I mentioned to Mika's mom (oh, by the way, this isn't actually a case of me forgetting names. Mika's parents actually introduced themselves as Mika's "Otousan" and "Okaasan", aka her father and mother. Names are for people who aren't badass old Japanese people) that I liked cats as long as I didn't own them, because taking care of them is a pain. Her response? "You don't have to take care of cats. You just let them do what they want." O.o I'm pretty sure I just got wtfpwned by sage wisdom from an Asian elder. Guess I can cross that one off my "to-do" list...

Last night, my last minute plans were going over to Sarah's place with Seiji and having leftover ham and peas with turkey soup. Yum :D We also watched a crazy Japanese drama about a doctor from the present that got sent back in time to the Edo Period. I'm pretty sure he was sent back by an alien baby. Every commercial break it showed a really far away shot of it floating in a jar, and the dude hallucinated and saw it at one point. I got in the habit of yelling "ALIEN BABY!" every time it was shown. Seiji found this highly amusing. He also really liked this impersonating comedian we saw. He did a really extended performance/song where he impersonated a hundred different people for his 30th year anniversary of being a performer. Sarah and I were very confused by most of it >< Both of them were sick, which was something I did not know before going over... hope I didn't catch it ><

Sarah had these at her place. It might be hard to see, but they have smiley faces. In my imagination, this set also includes a knife, but the knife has a sad face. Poor emo knife, it can cut everything but itself :(

Random stuff time!

1.) This week my head teacher had two bandages on the sides of her face, near her eyes. I asked if she was alright, and she said they were "eulogy scratches" then apologized for being so ugly O.o o.O O.O ...I'm now scared of my head teacher.

2.) Christmas music here is... different. For example they REALLY love the song "Last Christmas" I hear it at least once a day. Hardly the cheery fare from America. I also heard a song made up entirely of pig oinks, and an entirely different song of dog barks... wtf Japan?

3.) I. Love. Engrish.

Wanna know the sad thing? I took this picture inside of our school. This was on one of our whiteboards. The picture is really cool though. Let's all make a wonder Christmas!

Toss away tobacco, toss away JAPAN!!!!

4.) In yet another embarrassing development that I have no idea why I'm sharing with you, I can't figure out the fucking garbage system over here. Everything has to be separated, but not in a way that makes any logical fucking sense. Some burnable things aren't allowed to be put in burnable garbage, and some things that I'm pretty sure aren't supposed to be burned are. If you get it wrong, they don't collect your garbage. Everything also has to be in specific bags, which I didn't realize until recently. It's been five weeks, and I haven't been successful in getting my garbage collected even once. Didn't even know for sure where to leave it until last week... collection again on Thursday... 11th time's the charm? ><

No food challenge this week because of all my other plans. Maybe some extras next week, but I'm not promising anything. Happy Holidays everyone! (Look at me, I'm politically correct!)

Manageable Mishaps

I'd like to start this week with something completely unrelated to Japan or me being in it. If you don't like that, tough; I don't like your face.

I found this on the intarwebs while I was eating lunch at a restaurant and got weird looks for laughing out loud hella hard. I miss Mass Effect :( (PS - I once did this twice on the same mountain. Almost broke a controller.)

Okay, on to things that are actually relevant. This weekend was freaking beautiful. The temperature rose by about 16 degrees (leaving it in the 60s, which I think is pretty comfortable) and it was sunny the whole time. Of course, it chose to do this on the one weekend so far when I already had plans that take up almost all of both my days off. Screw you, weather.

Sunday was pretty much all errands. I had actually set aside a big chunk of time to reach a new level of nerdery by playing DnD over Skype, but somebody (*cough* Ryan *cough*) was wrong about when it was being played. I had forced myself to get up after about 5 hours of sleep in order to play, so I pretty much just went back to sleep for all the time I would have been playing. Why was I so tired, you ask? Because Saturday night was Open Mic Night! Of course, I didn't sing or perform because I have about as much musical talent as an alley cat at midnight (the point I'm going for here is that people throw old boots at me and knock me off wooden fences. True story). Since open mic is for people that actually have talent, I chose to just observe. During the last half of the event I even got over my embarrassment of being noticed and took some pictures. Yay baby steps! Unfortunately, it was too late to get any shots of Sarah (who invited me. Seiji was hosting it), but here's some random pics of a few performers!

This is Seiji. In the short time I have known him, I have quickly decided that Seiji makes everything more awesome. Why have I decided this? Well, take this picture for example. He wasn't part of this performance. He didn't even know the words to the song. People weren't being excited enough for him, though, so he jumped up, grabbed the mic, and just started making sounds that fit the tune of the song. It was awesome. The guy sitting in the background was the actual singer for this one, by the way.

This dude. This freaking dude. He was KING of the damn guitars. Seriously, every time he joined in a song, it instantly got better. 

This guy was pretty cool. He talked to me for a little bit before going up, but it was the same old story: his English wasn't good enough and neither was my Japanese. The chat was short :/ After that, he just stood up there and fulfilled the role of the stereotypical supporting electric guitarist. Completely. As proof, he was in this stance for at least 90% of the night. Occasionally he nodded his head to the beat. He got one solo in the night, and he was also really good. To be honest, all of the performers were great, and they all appeared to be proficient in pretty much every instrument available. It was a bit intimidating.

Bass and another supporting electric guitarist. There were about six people who could play guitar, and they all seemed to just rotate about between the various kinds. Especially in the last hour or so when it pretty much morphed into a jam session that was one really long song.

Here's Seiji actually performing on purpose. He's a good singer when he knows the words and isn't so drunk that he's falling over.

The owner of the venue had a dog. It was adorable. I asked if I could take a picture, and she tried to get it to pose, but the thing just wouldn't look at the camera. Whatever, snob dog, your face was a jerk anyways. I felt a little bad for it though. First of all, she dressed it up in a sweater (dressing up dogs is just something I object to in general). Second, she was holding it all night, and there was more than one occasion when it very obviously wanted to be let go, but she just held on tighter. Oh well, that's what it gets for being a tiny toy dog :/

So yeah, the night was really fun. Only downsides? It was fucking FREEZING when Sarah and I left, so I was shivering on the entire bike ride back home. Then there's the ever-present problem with going to any event ever over here: my sweater reeks of cigarettes. Again. It's enough to give me a headache.

Today was full of a lot of errands as well, but I took some time off to visit another shrine (I'm sure you're already getting sick of seeing these. Tough luck. I love them. I know people say all the pictures look the same, and maybe they're right, but I don't agree. Every single shrine and temple has its own character and feel to it, and I'm not planning to stop posting about them anytime soon. In fact, I still have to visit the part of city called Teramachi (Temple City), so yeah, get used to it). 

Not part of the temple, just some interesting decorations in the park across from the city hall (had to stop by there today).

So yeah, found this on my way back from the city hall. Hooray for always trying to take different routes! This was behind the shrine. It had to have been open at one point considering the stairs and Torii in the second picture, but not anymore.

This is the actual entrance, complete with a dude hanging up decorations! That road to the left is actually leading onto a highway, so this shrine is really tucked away in the middle of everything.

There seems to be a lot of moon motifs in this city. One of my pairs of chopsticks has them too. Not sure if it's a general thing in Japan, but it's not something I've seen in a lot of "stereotypical" shrine and temple pictures, so maybe not?

Purification stone/basin! This one actually had water that looked clean, unlike the older ones I found...

Don't know if these lions were getting ready to pounce or kneeling in obeisance. Considering that they're guardians, I'm inclined to believe the former. Most of the lions here were like this though.

They look really old and worn down, but I think it's because of what they're made out of. Looked like a really coarse sandstone, which seems to me like a horrible thing to make statues out of. Dunno.

Hey, look, someone is actually at this one! ... it was the dude putting up decorations. Think the car is a funny thing to have in a temple pic though :D

Very nice looking lanterns.

This one was opened up. Maybe the guy was getting ready for some kind of event?

The inside was very fancy.

Omikuji! Jisho.org informs me that means "written oracle". So maybe like a fortune? They were only 20 yen (notice the honor policy here. To my knowledge, all temples are like this), so I bought one. The parts I could read were just the generic "you will be happy, yadda yadda yadda" stuff, and it was hard as hell to open (it ripped in a few spots). I ended up tossing it :/

Mini shrine with happy lions :D I like the one on the right, he seems more friendly.

Mini mini shrine apparently marking this fucking creepy looking tree.

These are on the opposite side of that wall of plants from earlier. Definitely used to be an entrance of some kind. In case you haven't noticed by now, the lions always flank pathways, entrances/exits, or the front of shrines/temples.

I like this picture. This is what I mean when I say every shrine has its own personality. This place is obviously pretty popular, but a lot of parts are really run down. Yet, despite the fact that it is no longer able to serve its function, this torii still stands tall. Just because no one recognizes its purpose doesn't mean it's going to stop. This is a proud torii, and I feel like this picture shows that.

Random pictures I liked.

This has to be one of the most well preserved sculptures I've seen here. Seriously, it's barely touched at all.

And it has a baby lion!

Probably because it's protected by the awning there. Or it's new.

Too bad this is all you can see from the front. You have to be an annoying tourist and walk around the side to get a good look.

Lion on the other side of the same building. Also in decent condition. The discoloring makes me think they're both older, just really well protected. Notice the lack of baby lion. Not sure what that signifies.

Hard to see, but the eyes are actually some kind of shiny material. Prolly glass.

Creepy hidden horse sculpture is creepy.

There used to be something here.

Now it's only this. Doesn't look like it burned down, because nothing is charred. Thomas is confused.

Again, notice the baby and lack of baby. This time the side that's a mommy is switched. This is gonna bother me.

Another creepy abandoned part of the temple. Not really sure what function it served. I tried to get close and look in the cracks, but it was too dark. Plus, I kept feeling like I was tempting fate too much by setting up the perfect opening to a horror film, so yeah.

Okay, so only the central building seems to be popular. Everything else is neglected.

Mini gate. Had to duck to get under this one.

What kind of sad shrine? Seriously.

Hey, look, another one covered in those tiny fox sculptures!

A whole host of hewn hardware hidden with horticulture! (Hey, you try finding a word that means stone or mineral and starts with an "h" sound. It was either hardware or headstone, and headstone is a bit of a misnomer...)

Another one I liked

Here's the gate heading out.

And a view in minus the dude on the ladder.

My omikuji. Notice the rips. Yeah...

So yeah, finished up there and went off to get my first Japanese haircut! On the way back, I went through a portion of town with a lot of shops to visit. It really drove home to me the fact that I will never be able to explore this whole city, let alone all of Japan. Especially with how sedentary and antisocial I am. Every weekend I have the choice of staying home and actually resting or forcing myself to go out and about and start the next work week feeling like I didn't have a day off. Don't get me wrong, I like doing things, it just requires so much effort on my part that it pretty much feels like I'm working. I hate it. But yeah, that realization was a bit depressing :/ But yeah, not looking to turn this into a repeat of last week's post, so let's check out what happened when I got my hair did!

First off, haircuts are fucking expensive over here. The average place I see is about 2,000 yen (around $25). I went to one in Saty that was 1,000 yen (About $12.50), and that's the absolute cheapest I have seen. It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. It's a little bit longer than I'd prefer, but at least I still have hair. Also, they're freaking immaculate about getting loose hair off your head after the haircut here. First the dude used a blowdryer like they do in The States, then he used a dry towel to kind of "dust" my head and shake the hair out, then he used a kind of soft brush on my forehead, face, and sides of my head, THEN he wiped my neck off with a towel after taking the little hairguard cape thing off. Seriously. It was kind of weird, but there was almost no loose hairs left over afterwards. So yeah. (PS - I definitely didn't have to take like ten pictures of myself before I found one that didn't make me cringe long enough to put it up. Nope. Definitely not. I never do that. Ever.)

Okay, random crap section now (anyone else that I have apparently decided to format my blog the same way every week. I didn't even intend to. Guess that says a lot about my personality. I like order).

1.) My work plays English songs in the lobby through overhead speakers. They're not loud or anything, but they're easily audible. This week they played an unedited version of "Love the Way You Lie"... seems like an interesting choice to me.

2.) Apparently Japanese people have a REALLY hard time making the sound "BZZZZZ". One of the conversations for my classes had it as one of the lines, and both the students just ended up saying "BUZUZUZUZUZUZU" even after I spent a couple minutes trying to help them do it the right way. Odd.

3.) They have winter tires here. Like full on, you buy these and only use them during winter tires They have deeper treads than normal for better traction and a single set lasts multiple years since you only use them for a small time each year. Why the fuck don't we have these back home?!

4.) I'm now officially a registered alien! Got my Alien Registration Card today. I'd post a pic, but it has some random info like my passport number, address, and junk. Probably nothing any kind of criminal could do anything with, but I'm a paranoid dude. It's okay, I can take comfort in being a spaceman. Why do I suddenly have the urge to eat some cats?

5.) Krugle, Danielle, Sheldon, and Leonard are awesome.

6.) One of my students had her last lesson this week. :(

7.) I have a new student to add to my "favorite students" list. Remember the one that looked at me all crazy-like because I haven't had curry? Well, turns out she's awesome. She takes private lessons, and she's always hella funny. It seems Japan has no shortage of adorable old ladies. This week she gave me a present. It was a bag of food, and it was the sweetest thing ever. A few of the notable items:

She gave me some mandarins as well as some normal oranges. But she didn't call them normal oranges. No, that wouldn't be hilarious enough. She called them "angry" oranges. "These oranges are very angary!" she informed me in a very serious tone.

Holy crap, she was right. That's one angry orange. Joke's on him though, I ripped off his face then ate him... wow, um, that was supposed to be more funny and less disturbing.

Apples here are huge and individually wrapped.

Thomas' Play at Home Food Challenge Day 7: Oyako-donburi

Green onions, eggs, chicken, and rice. Was actually pretty tasty. I'm especially proud of this one considering that the recipe is pretty damn complicated. A few random notes if you plan on making this at home (by the way, is anyone actually playing at home? Am I just wasting my time linking these things?): the recipe only calls for 1/4 pound of chicken. That's bullshit. Especially considering that the unaltered version is supposed to feed four people and use 6-8 cups of rice. Do yourself a favor and use some more chicken. It also says to use 4-5 eggs. I used 4, and I feel like it wasn't enough. 5 is probably better. Also, pouring eggs around the edge of a frying pan is hard... don't be a loser like me and make a big mess. Finally, be sure to take the whole thing off the heat quickly. I wasn't sure when the edges of the egg were adequately "bubbling", so I feel like I kept it on for too long. Still, I liked it.

Recipe: http://bento.com/trt-oyako.html

Score to date: Thomas -3 Vengeful Food Gods - 2

Thomas' Play at Home Food Challenge Day 8: Fried Salmon, Rice, and Awesome Juice

So, this is actually another episode of  "Thomas Did Something Stupid!" You see, that was actually supposed to read BAKED salmon. I found a really nice Japanese recipe for baked salmon, and was psyched to try it. Of course, I didn't actually check to see if I had a dish to make it in. I don't. At all. So, I made fried salmon instead. I also tried to make some nikuman (or nikumanjuu), which is basically meat dumplings. They need to be steamed. I don't have a steamer. So I decide that I'm gonna be TomGyver and use my colander with a pot of boiling water and a pan top to make them. My plastic colander. "It'll be fine." I told myself, "Just keep a close eye on it and it won't melt."

I don't have a colander anymore. Fucking nikuman weren't even that good.

This is called a yuzu. I was going to use shavings from its peel for the marinade in the original recipe. It smells like hairy donkey ass.

Dessert! Definitely delicious.

Anyways, the fried salmon turned out well, but I have to give this round to the Food Gods for two reasons: 1.) It technically wasn't a Japanese recipe, which is kinda what this whole challenge is about. 2.) It wasn't what I set out to make, which means I autofail. So yeah.

Recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/pan-fried-salmon-recipe2/index.html

Score to Date: Thomas - 3 Vengeful Food Gods 3 (Is anyone else noticing that every week is ending in a tie? Oh well, at least I'm not losing by a huge margin or something...)