Doing well

I'm proud to say that this week, I finally memorised my own phone number. And after only ten months, too!

Moero!

Today I went to my first-ever baseball game. It was great fun. In fact, I'm going again tomorrow. ^_^

I supported the Tokyo Yakult Swallows at the Yokohama stadium. I'd wanted to support the home team, Yokohama Bay Stars - seeing as I live in Yokohama - but my hairdresser Ryu is a Swallows fan. After he gave us a whole bag full of Swallows cheerleading equipment, I felt we didn't have much choice.

As it turned out, the Swallows did lose, 12-8. But actually, for a long time it was a terrible game. At the end of the 8th inning (there are 9 innings altogether), we were losing 12-3. That's a very bad way to lose. But in the last innings, the Swallows got a whopping five runs. So they turned a crushing defeat into a fairly respectable one.

Any time the Swallows were at bat, the whole fan section would cheer in unison, using these cheering bats like claves. Any time the Swallow got a run, the whole cheer section became a mass of novelty green umbrellas. We had Swallows umbrellas - complete with cute mascot on the top - just for that purpose. Hahaha. Ryu said he has about 8 pairs of cheering bats at his hair salon. Haha...

I feel baseball is a more interesting sport than soccer (mind you, I'm going to another Frontale soccer game on Sunday and looking forward to it ^_^).

Summer

There's nothing very interesting to say at the moment... I am on summer holidays now. They're shaping up to be a lot nicer than my last holidays in Japan, over New Year (when I was bored, it was freezing, and I got food poisoning). I met my hairdresser last night for a drink and he's giving me free tickets for a baseball game and a soccer game this week. ^_^

(as usual, click on a picture to see it larger)

Summer activities

Last weekend I went to a couple of festivals. I bought a yukata (Japanese summer-style 'casual' kimono) to wear at the festivals. However, the yukata was too difficult. I couldn't put it on by myself, even after a co-worker showed me how, and after watching some YouTube videos. So, after spending about $70 for the ensemble (actually cheap when you see how many different components there are), I went in normal clothes...


This is one of the festivals; the woman in the foreground is wearing yukata. As for what all those people are doing, apparently throwing water on the asphalt road is good for the environment. No, I don't understand why.


The other festival, in Kawasaki.

Last weekend Pete and I also went to Zushi beach. It's my first time going to a beach since I left Australia. It was so nice to go swimming again. There were a few fish jumping out the water. I don't know why they were jumping...

Because of volcanic elements, the sand was kind of dark, so it didn't feel as clean as an Aussie beach. However, there were some nice things you don't get on Aussie beaches.



For example, public areas here aren't dry zones, so you can have picnics in parks or on beaches while drinking beer etc. Drunken loutish behaviour seems to be pretty rare here. The beachfront was lined with big outdoor restaurants and bars, so after we went swimming we sat outside with some drinks as the sun set. And, since it's summer, a whole bunch of people were lighting firecrackers and sending them off into the night.


Beach bar.

Seasons

I've mentioned Japan's preoccupation with the seasons before, because it really is noticeable. The seasons are not allowed to pass unacknowledged, you see; every season change means new store displays, new product lines, new campaigns. The greeting cards in stationery stores, for example, are season specific. Right now there are lots of festival-themed cards, and cards with fireworks, since they are very famously 'summer'. In a few weeks it will all change to autumn leaf themes.

Cafes and restaurants bring out seasonal food and drinks. Even chocolates follow a seasonal theme; in spring they had (horrible) cherry blossom-flavoured Kit Kats; now they have watermelon ones. Back in the days when women wore kimono as a matter of course, you would choose your colours and patterns based on the season; each season had its own styles.


A cold summer noodle dish. ^_^

People also seem acutely aware of flowers. I suppose in Australia, virtually everyone has a garden, so you will see all manner of flowers and trees on your daily commute to work. And in Australia I had only the vaguest idea of when various flowers bloomed. But here, people know. Stores will decorate their sign with the current flower; students will tell me they're going to such-and-such a place to see the flowers.

If I recall correctly, this year it's gone something like:
late February - plum blossoms
late March - cherry blossoms
April - tulips
May - wisteria
June - hydrangeas
July - azaleas and agapanthus

The strange thing about this is that there's a small park near my house. It's an entirely unremarkable park. However, any time there is a particular flower in season, I'll see that flower in the park. It's actually quite remarkable, how suddenly different parts of this small, boring park, will light up. I wonder if they are planted there deliberately each month, or if someone took great care in planning a park that would bloom in different places all year around?

Also, all summer there've been sunflowers. I *love* sunflowers.

Japanese

I have been studying Japanese really hard. You'd be impressed. I definitely decided to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, level 3. I have a whole textbook full of grammar to complete before I'll be ready for the grammar part. But I think the vocabulary, listening and kanji sections should be okay. I found these great kanji flashcards which have all the JLPT3 and 4 kanji.

Gokiburi

There is a Large Cockroach in my apartment.
I got it with a few good blasts of spray, so I expect him to die soon.
I hate him.
The problem is he's crawling all over everything before dying.
I'd love to remove all hiding places for him, but I can't, owing to the fact that I actually don't have a big enough cupboard to store my winter quilt, which is taking up half my floorspace, even when folded.
Cockroaches don't buzz or whine like flies or mosquitoes, but they are so big you can hear them scuttling and flying.
There's something really unsettling about hearing an insect moving around your apartment...
:(

Neko cafe

Last week a student was telling me about a new cat cafe in Kawasaki. If you haven't heard of them, they are one of those uniquely Japanese innovations, I think. Basically, it's a cafe full of cats that the patrons can play with/pat/look at. ^_^ I wanted to go there, because I miss cats...

Tonight Pete and I were looking for somewhere to have dinner when we came across a dude in a cat costume, advertising that very cafe. The friendly cat showed us where to go. I'm happy! ^_^

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was a big room with small tables on the sides, but the kind of atmosphere where you can wander freely around; you're not restricted to your table. It was late so there were only a few other people there. There were big, elaborate scratching posts and bowls and boxes and ramps for the cats to climb around on or sleep in, as well as lots of toys on strings for pouncing.

You leave your shoes outside and wash your hands before you go in. The cafe is mostly full of overgrown kittens, around 4 months old, I think. They mostly had very, very soft fur. There were a few Birmans, too; my favourite cat; but also Norwegian forest cats, tabbies, Burmese and Persians.

They're obviously used to each other and having a lot of people around, because they didn't seem too stressed like you might expect from such an unnatural environment. I'd been slightly worried that I would go in feeling really sorry for the cats, but they seemed like they had a pretty good life. The cafe was playing classical music, which set an atmosphere of calmness; nobody was harassing the cats, but playing with them gently or just watching them.

So it was nice to get a cat fix; there were at least thirty in all (but cats could wander off into a back room if they wanted to be alone). ^_^ Pete had his camera but he doesn't have Internet now; some day I might get them and post some here.

=^. . ^=

Riding the floor

There is an earthquake happening as I am writing this.

I was lying here with my feet on the fan, and I felt this vibration; I thought my fan was about to malfunction badly. But the whole floor was rocking back and forth.

We had an earthquake on Saturday as well, while we were at work. At first I didn't realise anything was happening, but a student said. Then I stood up so I could 'surf' the earthquake as the whole floor moved.

How cool is that?

Random posts

Am in a writing mood and have thus written a lot...

Clumsy

I really must learn the Japanese word for 'clumsy'. I've never been particularly coordinated, but I may be getting worse. While teaching, I drop my pen and/or papers at least once per class. I've dropped my iPod on the cement ground, lost my DS stylus in my hurry to leave a train, and spilled green tea all over the DS itself.

This morning I almost fell down the stairs. In the last fifteen minutes, I've contrived to up-end a bowl of pineapple onto the carpet, dropped a bunch of gyoza (which I was transferring the vast distance of 3 inches) onto a freshly laundered pot holder, and almost knocked a plate off the shelf.

One mitigating factor, I suppose, is the severe untidiness of my apartment. It's no wonder I keep knocking things over and dropping them when there is stuff piled in every nook and on every surface around me...

(A few minutes after writing the above, I knocked over an entire glass of water with my foot. There's really nothing to do but laugh...)

Air conditioning

I took my inscrutable remote control in to work. To my relief, my manager immediately found out how to set it to 'cold' (something I was sadly unable to accomplish), and I have learned that my air conditioner is quite effective.

Somewhat less relieving is that the discovery that every time I turn the air conditioner on, all these little chunks of black stuff periodically fly out of it and settle on the carpet, or futon. I have tried cleaning out the grate, and have turned it on and off many times, but there seems to be no end to the amount of crud coming out.

Another undesirable discovery is that of the water that leaks out of the air conditioner. The drips land approximately where I place my head while sleeping, so my current band-aid solution (bucket on the carpet) is not going to be very feasible come late summer, when I need to leave the air con on all night...

MTMs

Although I have an ATM card which theoretically allows me to withdraw from ATMs for free, it's darn near impossible to do so.

Tell me this: why do ATMs charge an 'after hours' fee? So, if I queue up behind a long line of people in the afternoon, I can withdraw money for free. But if I come by at, say, 9:30, or on a Sunday, I have to pay extra.

Now, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I wasn't aware it cost extra, or required extra manpower, to process my ATM transaction outside of bank hours. If we look at the name ATM, it does mean Automatic Teller Machine. Surely the point of them is their convenience; you can access them any time, rather than needing to go to a bank during bank hours.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in Japan, when the machine says 'confirming card', there is actually some harried bank clerk at a computer somewhere, looking up your number and details on the other end, and manually confirming every transaction.

Jouzu da ne...

They say Japanese people typically express great admiration when foreigners show the most basic knowledge of anything Japanese. Now, for example, I don't really use any Japanese words in the classroom (apart from the occasional food, which can be nigh impossible to translate effectively), but once, after class, I was talking about learning Japanese, and I said 'konbanwa' ('good evening') in an example of something.

The student gasped and said 'wooooh, Nihongo ga jouzu!! You speak Japanese very well!!'

Now, I have had many people say this to me, but usually I've had to produce at least a full sentence, or several phrases, in order to 'earn' it. That said, I've been told my Japanese is very skillful after saying such complex and astonishing sentences as:
'It's good, isn't it!'
'Yes, please. This one.'
'I am studying Japanese.'
'Thank you very much.'
'The doors are closing, please take care.'

If I say anything at all in Japanese, it never goes unremarked-upon, but is always praised. I know the praise is therefore completely meaningless, but it still makes me feel heartened. Getting a 'waaa, Nihongo ga sugoi jouzu!' is much more encouraging than getting a blank, uncomprehending look. So I think the encouragement of random people is a good motivation for me in learning Japanese.

But just try to imagine, if you will, an equivalent situation in Australia. I find it very difficult indeed to visualise an Australian - any Australian - getting excited over a Japanese person's ability to say 'hello'.