A friendly face

Stace is currently visiting me in Japan, which is very nice. ^_^ Yesterday I met her in Kawasaki (where she is staying) and we went into Tokyo to see Harajuku (famous for its interestingly-dressed people) and Yoyogi Park. It was awesome, we got to see the Rockabilly club. All these people in Grease-esque costumes, dancing to 50s music, and combing their Brylcreamed hair, hahaha...



Yoyogi Park rocks. You see so many interesting people doing a variety of things. So there are couples sitting talking, there are groups of people having raucous picnics, there are people practising random dance routines together, there are people practising juggling, there are strips of bands competing for who can be the coolest.

Today we went to Sankei-en garden, a traditional Japanese-style garden. It's very pretty, and was almost deserted because of the weather. (It was raining and unseasonably cold. In fact, the maximum temperature was 17 degrees. This time last week, it was 27.) We had tempura and soba for lunch, with free hot tea. I love tempura. ^_^ At the end of the meal I distinguished myself by walking straight into a glass door which I thought was open. Hahaha!



Then we headed to the harbour. The weather made it somewhat unpleasant but we looked around the main buildings and in the evening we met up with Ryu (my hairdresser) who is always enjoyable company, and went to an izakaya.


The Landmark Tower, which has no top, but continues forever into the clouds...

I was slightly amused because Stace said that after 9 months in Singapore, she'd never had to eat anything strange or disgusting. But within two days of coming to Japan she has eaten chicken's heart. (This was not intentional on my part!)

[Edit, two days later: Whoops. She has now also eaten beef diaphragm. This was also unintentional on my part. I thought I was ordering horse meat but I got my vocabulary confused. Hahaha! To be fair, we both liked it (it was in yakiniku, delicious Korean barbecue. :))]

I came home and on my way home I heard a meowing noise. There was a cat huddled under a bit of shelter, meowing hopelessly. I patted it and it tried to climb into my lap (difficult, as I wasn't sitting down). When I crossed the road, it ran after me. I gave it a piece of bread but I couldn't let it in my building, unfortunately. But I've heard a few lonely and saddened cats crying in the rain today. :)

It's nice to have a friend here in Japan. ^_^ She'll be here a couple more days yet.

Lost in Translation

I'm watching Lost in Translation, which I haven't seen since before I came to Japan. Before, at least there was some sense of 'wow, Japan looks so interesting' so I could kind of look past the non-story, and enjoy some parts of the movie. Now that Tokyo has become a familiar place, I'm having a lot of trouble concentrating on watching the film, which is why I'm on here blogging...

One cool thing is that I can now understand the film director when he gives that barrage to Bill Murray (you know, the 'more intensity!' scene). He is, in fact, not saying much worth translating ('the whisky is on the table, turn to the camera, do it slowly, with feeling, like you're greeting an old friend, make a toast, man we don't have much time, hurry it up', etc).

School of rock

In my last post I mentioned a new student, a rock music fan. I had my lesson with him today. He was wearing a different shirt, but also with a skull on it.

I can honestly say this is the only class where I've found myself writing on the board, sentences like:
'His singing style is similar to David Bowie.'
'My favorite KISS song is _____.'
'They played "I was made for loving you" on loop.'

It was certainly the only class where we've had rock music playing in the background the entire time.

I enjoyed it very much. ^_^

I love private lessons ^_^

Next week is a special week where some types of classes are not held. So we offer extra timeslots for private lessons. It seems like quite a few students like the chance to take a once-off private lesson, so the week usually fills up pretty well.

Anyway, a lot of my private lessons next week are just free conversation. That's the best kind. It's so easy. One guy wants me to talk about Australia, and places I've visited. For another girl, I'll pretend to be a customer, so my student, a waitress, can practice taking orders and describing specials in English.

Best of all is a brand-new student who I only met today. He's a big guy with a shaved head, and a huge flaming skull shirt, who enthusiastically told me about his interest in motorcycles, KISS, and heavy metal music. Apparently he has a collection of around 30 guitars.

He wants to take a private lesson to talk about music. He'd like me to bring a few of my favourite songs (I'm gonna burn a CD) and he'll do the same, so we can listen to each other's music in the lesson. I don't think anyone communicated to him that I really don't like rock music, so it should be interesting...

Still, I'll find my cooler pop-rock songs and bring 'em in, see if I can find a few good Aussie rock songs... looking forward to that. He was so nice, I'm really looking forward to the lesson. Even if we have different tastes in music, I *love* talking about music. I've gotten a few students on my iPod recently. ^_^

Teaching stuff

Been busy lately, with quite a full schedule. Haven't written much about what I actually teach.

Now that I've relaxed into teaching much more, I find that I've gotten better at answering questions, explaining grammar points, and presenting ideas in a simpler way. I find myself explaining new words or pointing out grammar structures a lot more in class.

Some things I explained this week:

When to use 'in' and 'has' in questions like 'Which hotel is the cheapest?', 'Which hotel has the best view?'

the meaning of the word 'proponent'

The difference between 'I appreciate your showing me...' and 'I appreciate you showing me...'

the northern and southern hemispheres

the difference between 'myself', 'by myself' and 'for myself" (this is much, much more difficult than you would imagine -_-)

the expression 'err on the side of caution'

the meaning of 'g'day'

how we change 'do you believe in' to 'did you believe in' when asking about childhood beliefs

the meaning of 'way' (as in 'way too hot')

how 'probably' is more certain than 'maybe' (in Japanese, there is one word which can mean either 'probably' or 'maybe')

the difference between 'danger' and 'peril' (a challenging one)

how we say 'I don't have enough money to travel', but 'I don't have much money for travel'

how to use 'is this yours?' vs 'are these yours?' and 'I can't find it/them anywhere'

Having always been a bit of a language geek, I must confess that I love this sort of thing. I never get tired of answering questions about English.

One of our students went scuba diving in Okinawa this week and brought us back a big box of mango cookies. I really love my job sometimes. ^_^

I am so glad one of my days off is Monday

I just found this photograph of a Tokyo swimming pool complex during peak season.

One can't help but think: why would anybody bother?!

Onsen story

Today I went to this place called Oedo Onsen Monogatari. It's a bit like an onsen (hot spring) 'theme park' in Odaiba, Tokyo.

Let me tell you, the major Japanese holiday pastime is going to hot springs. In Australia, when we have holidays, lots of people head to the beach; in Japan, it's hot springs. And there are so many hot springs in this country. I recall when I was in a car with a GPS, the GPS had an option to search for the nearest hot spring. Even in Tokyo there are quite a few.

Now that I've been to one myself, I can tell you, it's extremely relaxing. Just as good as a leisurely day at the beach. ^_^

Anyway, I'd never been to a proper hot spring before (I'd taken a hot spring bath, but nobody else was there at the time).

So, I went with two friends, one male, one female. (I should give them names here; I see them often. The guy is Andy, the girl Jess. I climbed Mt Fuji with Jess.)

The system goes like this:

Enter the building and leave your shoes in a locker; take the key with you.

Go in and pay for entrance. You're given a locker key on a wristband, and select your choice of yukata (Japanese light robe), men and women go on into separate changerooms. In the changeroom, you can unlock your locker.

Once you go in through the changeroom, everyone, men and women, are walking around barefoot in yukata. This immediately gives a very casual, relaxed feeling. This part of the park is an indoor venue designed to look like an old-style Edo (Tokyo) street. There are souvenir stores and lots of small restaurants.

Within the park, you can pay for everything by scanner. Any time you buy something, they scan your locker key, which you keep around your wrist, so you can walk around without having to carry anything. At the end you pay the total when you leave.



It's a pretty cool system. We had lunch (I *love* tendon - tempura on rice) and pottered around the outdoor foot spas in a garden; it was really peaceful, only the huge tall buildings in the background reminded you you were in Tokyo. There were these ponds you could walk through, the bottom of which were lined with rocks. The website claims these rocks 'stimulate the soles of the feet', but in fact they just hurt.

But we got some unusual foot therapy!! There was this pool full of small black fish. They love eating dead skin, so when you put your feet in, they all go for your feet. They don't have teeth, so they nibble at you with their lips. It's the strangest sensation - really, really tickly, almost hard to keep your feet in the water at first, but then it becomes relaxing, like a vibrating massage. We had to pay extra for this but it was really, really cool. Apparently this treatment is kind of famous here.



This is one of those great things about living in Japan; sometimes you end up doing the most random things. "What are you doing this weekend?" "I plan to let fish eat my feet."

After a while, Andy had to leave, so Jess and I went off into the women's-only section. The other sections were men/women, but the hot springs proper was sex-segregated. And as soon as you go in there, you see a lot of naked people. It's very rare for people to bathe in hot springs wearing swimsuits. At first you feel a bit self-conscious but then it's no big deal.

One interesting thing is that in Japan, tattoos are usually associated with the yakuza; therefore a convenient way to keep 'undesirable' types out of places is to ban tattoos. So a lot of hot springs and swimming pools have a 'no tattoo' rule. Jess had a tattoo so she had to keep hiding it with her towel.

When you get into the hot spring part, first there's a room full of lockers, where people take off their yukata and underwear and get a towel. When you come out, there are hairdryers and so on in this area too. You get given a big towel, which you leave at the lockers, and a handtowel, which you can wet with cold water and rest on your head, to keep yourself from overheating.

When you leave the room you go into the big hot spring area. Before you can go in the baths you have to wash yourself; there are lots of little stalls where you can sit on a stool, apply soap etc, and pour water over yourself to get clean before you get in the bath.

There were various baths of varying heats and mineral compositions, and it was oh-so-relaxing. It was a bit hot for us (it was, after all, a very hot and humid day today, actually; summer only just finished) so we did a lot of changing pools, and tried the saunas, but it was all good.

After, we felt really relaxed, and we had booked a sand treatment. Hahah... this is where you basically go into a room and they wrap you up and cover you up to your neck with hot sand. It gets very hot and you can't move, they make you drink water before you go in because you sweat a lot. Afterwards you come out pouring sand. I'm not sure what the benefit of this is, but it was an interesting experience. ^_^

So I'm glad, I finally got to experience an onsen, and hopefully more in the future. ^_^

Doing stuff

Nothing much of interest to say, but I'm still enjoying myself. Ever since Pete came I've been doing more stuff socially, we often grab a bite after work, and also, I'm more comfortable asking students to do things when it's with both of us than with just me, especially inviting guys.

This week we had yakiniku after work with the nicest couple. They're maybe about 30, the girl has been at our school for a while, the husband is more of a beginner student. But they're both so nice. The guy turned out to be a good Japanese teacher. Most people, if they address me in Japanese, don't seem to make much effort to speak slowly/clearly/simply, but just fire off a quick, mumbled sentence and then look at me expectantly. But I could understand most of what he said.

I haven't really talked much about food in this blog, except for the strange things I didn't like, but yakiniku is awesome. Actually, though, it's not Japanese food... it's Korean barbecue. You have a small grill on the table and you cook small pieces of meat, dip them in various sauces, it's really good.

Friday night we and three other teacher friends who work near-ish, went to this Indian restaurant. This is my favourite restaurant in Kawasaki. It's not too expensive, the curry is probably the best curry I've had anywhere, and the Indian people who work there are really friendly. One of our party is an Indian/American guy who's a language nut, and he chatted to the owner for a couple of minutes 'in bad Hindi', and to our surprise when we got to the counter he gave us a huge discount on our meals. I've referred quite a few people here now, hahaha.

Last night we and a bunch of students went to an izakaya. I've said this before but we have such, such nice students. There are so many great people. I feel really lucky to be living here. I could just talk to them for hours. In fact, I wanted to stay much longer, but I couldn't. Haha... it was the usual 'last train' dilemma.

We had 'ramen salad' (sounds strange but it was delicious), fried squid, hoke (a ?baked fish, you pull bits of it out with chopsticks), and sashimi (which I still don't like).

For the first time we went to a karaoke bar. This is different to a karaoke room - more expensive. It was like a small bar, really quite cool-looking, and we (a dozen of us) were the only guests, all sitting around the bar, a couple of staff on hand to serve us drinks at a moment's notice. I was one of the first to leave; somehow most of the others seemed to live really nearby and didn't need trains.

I've complained about the last trains a lot before, but they do annoy me, especially because the last train of the night is invariably full of people, so that you always think 'they could really justify running a few more'. I know they need a few hours off for maintenance, but I don't enjoy the dilemma of 'okay, at this point I need to decide - am I going to go home earlier than I want to, or am I going to stay out all night? And does anyone else want to stay out all night? Because I don't want to be left by myself'.

That's the downside of not having a car. But the bright side is you don't need to worry about drink-driving. I'm moderate in my drinking, but in Australia I would still have to be worrying about blood alcohol limits and so on.

On the bright side, though, I finally figured out that the second-nearest train station to me is a mere 20 minutes walk from my house. (It took longer before I inadvertently found the most direct route). A 20 minute walk on a warm autumn night is no hardship, even at 1am it feels perfectly safe. And this last train leaves a full hour and ten minutes after my 'real' last train. So instead of having to leave at 11:45, I can leave at 12:55. Still, there are times I'd love to stay out until 2 or 3...

I've practiced a lot of Japanese this week. At work I don't use it, except occasionally with co-workers, but outside work is a good opportunity for me. ^_^

My Japanese has improved enormously in the last three or four months. So it should; I've been studying really hard. Demo, mada mada desu... (But it's still not good enough yet...) I'm taking the JLPT 3-kyuu and I still have 21 chapters worth of grammar, at least 500 new vocabulary words, and around 150 kanji, to master in the next three months. Hahaha... good luck, me. After the test, I intend to reward myself by a) buying the Tokimeki Memorial 'Girl's Story' game, which is all in Japanese, and b) only doing review and practicing communication for a little while in my Japanese lessons.