It was April 2007. I had been studying abroad in Japan for 8 months now. I had lived with several host families, but unfortunately, this fourth and final family was a little bit full of crazy. Host mom had her own physical and mental issues, and in general just had a stick up her ass about, well, everything. She was hyper-obsessed with a fear of me doing something wrong and getting her (or worse, her daughter, who wasn’t even in the country at the time) in trouble. So I would get reprimanded for many horrible things I did, such as using Kansai-ben (the dialect of the area I had lived in for the past 8 months) instead of standard Japanese (not offensive language, mind you, just the dialect, typical conversation, the same way she and everyone else in a 50 mile radius spoke).

Adding onto whatever fundamental issues my host mom and I had with each other, the house did not have internet that I could reliably use, which became a point of contention. For quick things I would borrow their computer, but as my laptop would not connect, I would often go to downtown Kobe (Sannomiya) and sit in a cafe with wifi to blog, contact my family, etc.

I always sensed my host mom had issues with this activity, mostly because a) she would say strange things when I left the house, such as “it’s springtime, so all the perverts are coming out this time of year!” (I guess they hibernate like bears?) and b) I found out she was notifying my school administration I was doing this horrible thing. (It wasn’t even an internet cafe… it was a cafe with wireless!)

Springtime, the season for perverts in Japan

If you’re wondering why the high school would even care… let’s just say it was a pretty ritzy private all girls’ school with its own extensive set of rules including:
• No going out in your uniform to any store after school (to prevent you from misbehaving and giving the school a bad rap)
• No going to karaoke EVER (one of the most common pastimes for middle schoolers and high schoolers in Japan, and clearly the cause of a lot of social disruption in Japan)
• No net-cafes either, apparently
• A slew of things that have to do with hair accessories (No wearing hair accessories that were not black hairties) that aren’t really relevant here
• No printing things at school (never really figured this one out. Not a single page, ever.)

Some of these rules are typical for Japan, some of these rules are excessive, even for Japan. I knew something was up when I confronted host mom about reporting my wifi-related-activities to the school and she got defensive and accused me of engaging in enjo kousai (often translated as “compensated dating” or “schoolgirl prostitution”) since that’s the main thing that apparently goes on at net-cafes.

The infamous cafe where most of my illicit behavior occurred

So things were a little fishy, but generally going fine.

Until April 17th, when I awoke to find an email from my Japanese teacher in America stating that there were apparently some issues with my host family and they were very angry at me for breaking the rules AND for what I had written on my blog.

What?? Angry? No one ever told me… and what about my blog now?

It turns out that a couple of posts I had written doing some mild complaining about things like the lack of internet had gotten around, particularly back to America, where host family’s older daughter was studying. Some of her friends decided to tell my host family about it, and intentionally skew it to sound worse than it actually was.

So now I was left with no choice but to confront the issue, or risk being thrown out of Japan a month early.

What ensued was a lengthy crying-session by my host mom about how much I had hurt her with my activities and my blog, and the allegation that all this stress I had put them under forced her not to eat for a week (she never ate–how was I supposed to know this time was my fault?) I really had to ask, what words were exactly that hurtful?

Completely seriously, she says, “You use some really bad language on there. I heard it says the word ‘pissed’… now, I don’t speak English, so I don’t know what that word means, but I hear it’s a vulgar term for PEE!!”

This was the moment when I realized all was lost. This miscommunication was never ever to be solved, no matter how many times I told her that pissed=annoyed/angry. Instead, I apologized profusely, and put a password on my blog.

Things simmer down for a couple of awkward weeks with the host fam. Until one day at school, where I get pulled out of class, taken to the library, and the teachers in charge of exchange students sit me down at a computer and tell me to delete my blog. Now.

??!?!

Apparently, having a password on it makes it LOOK like I have something to hide, and people will be curious about it, because that’s human nature. Thus, the blog must be deleted. The school also made up a new rule about blogs and how students can’t make any that talk about people or have pictures that are “too big” or “too clear”.

After that blew over (moving my blog to a slightly different address seemed to do the trick), my host family decided to notify me they wouldn’t be hosting me after the next week. I had 3 weeks left in Japan. Host mom seemed to get a kick out of telling me I would probably be homeless for the last two weeks of my exchange. To her dismay, I emailed a previous host mom, and in under 5 minutes, I had a futon waiting for me. So much for me being the scum exchange student of the universe.

Sometimes I felt rebellious enough to take my indoor school shoes out on the town

So I’m not sure what the take-home message is here… probably the following:
1) Living with host families sucks sometimes.
2) It’s better to have either your host family or your school on your side. When they both gang up on you, you’d better comply or your days are numbered. Also, pay attention to the subtlest clues that something strange is afoot, since neither party may mention that you’re in trouble.
3) Perverts come out in the spring, cafes are for prostitution, and pissed always means pee.

This post was a submission for the April 2010 Japan Blog Matsuriall about ‘Secret Japan’ hosted at Gakuranman.

Noriko & Mo

Met up with Noriko’s friend Sayuri and her family. Good to see them for the first time in several years too.

Sayuri’s family, seijin-girls, and ojiichan, obaachan, and host mom on the right

Next stop: photography in the conveniently-placed Japanese garden right behind the hotel. It was not very cold, but you can tell it’s winter because there would probably be more leaves on the trees otherwise…?

And here’s the photo that makes me feel like a tall-ass gaijin:

It probably doesn’t show in these photos, but we were all feeling extremely rushed and stressed out (except for ojiichan, who insisted on taking hundreds of photos from all different angles, and then later remarked to Noriko that she’s kinda running late!)

But the actual seijin-shiki event was going to start soon…

So Noriko and I packed our giant obi-enhanced selves into the car with host mom, ojiichan, and obaachan, headed for Kobe’s Home’s Stadium, where the ceremony was held. Met up with Kana and another friend from high school, Nijika:

Nijika, Kana, Noriko

As we approached the stadium, we were surrounded by every single other 20-year old in Kobe. That’s a freaking lot of people.

In front of Home’s Stadium

Quite a crowd in front of the convenience store. Traffic: disrupted

On seijin day, girls wear furisode and guys typically wear suits. Some guys, however, choose to wear something more traditional and go with the male version of a hakama, like what I’m wearing. However, as Noriko pointed out, those are usually the kinda guys who are really 調子乗る, or think they’re bad-boys and can pull anything off. As a result, nice-boys specifically avoid being seen in hakama on this day because they don’t want people to think they’re trying to look badass.

And as it turned out, most of the guys who showed up in hakama did have that “I wanna be baaaad” edge.

Girls in warm fluffy white shawls

I didn’t have a fluffy white shawl – this was almost worse than not having a kimono ;)

Above-mentioned boys in hakama. Or at least suits and white sneakers.

This hakama guy doesn’t look so bad… wonder what gives

Noriko and Kana in their fuzzy-white-shawls

White hakama boy is kinda awesome

The rare blonde hair and sunglasses look.

I’m not sure where he falls on the spectrum of hakama vs. classy suited boys.

ossans and photographers watch from the bridge.

The main thing going on was just to stand around in this giant crowd of kimono and suit wearing 20-year-olds. The event is held town-by-town, so my friends kept running into people they knew from elementary school, since most people go to nearby schools when they are little, and then farther away for middle/high school.

More photography going on.

Nijika kept finding old classmates

Dude amidst many ladies in kimono and those white furry things.

Eventually, the massive crowd began to make its way slowly into the stadium…

The crowd moves in…

View from the front of the line!

You have to show your invitation to the ceremony at the door (proof you’re a new seijin, I guess).

Eventually found a place to sit

About half the stadium was full

This is the part where this whole ceremony is a bit of a mystery to me. Some dude welcomed us, there were people standing at the bottom of the stadium, but nothing of interest was going on. There was about a 5 minute dance performance, aaaand that was about it. We decided we were bored after about half an hour and left.

On the way out

Finally, across the street from that massive crowd.

Noriko’s mom came to pick the four of us up, and we headed to their apartment in Sannomiya to chill out for a few hours before the high school reunion. I went shopping for a last-minute gift (this was the day before I left Japan). However, in Sannomiya, unlike by the stadium in Kobe, most people were NOT dressed up in kimonos, so I stuck out like no other. The stares were the normal amount of staring (due to my foreign-ness) multiplied by a factor of 1000. I even got verbal response (this is extremely rare). Some kids complimented me (they were about 13), and later I came upon a middle-aged dude who saw me and completely stopped in his tracks. Speechless.

I stared back, and eventually he realized he’d been staring long and intensely enough that some kind of verbal interaction was required. He stammered 似合う (looks good on you) and got out of there.

I came back to the apartment in time to snack, attempt to go to the bathroom in my hakama (not an easy task), get Noriko to put her custom-made nails on me:

And take the most fabulous picture I’ve ever been a part of:

Sad as it was to break up this powwow, it was HIGH SCHOOL REUNION TIME. So once again, we piled into the car and headed for Hotel Okura.

To be continued…

Girls dress up in full kimonos, get their hair and makeup done, take professional photographs, and go to the ceremony itself – held locally, and packed full of fresh new adults only.

The amount of money, energy, and general stress devoted to this day is astounding.

But it seems roughly equivalent to prom.

I never thought I’d attend my own seijin-shiki. But when emailing my host mom about my Japan trip plans, she mentioned that if I stayed until the 11th I would be able to participate in seijin-shiki, and go to the first high school reunion my class in Japan would have. As an exchange student, I was put in a class with students about a year younger than me. So although I am actually 21 and thus missed my own Coming of Age Day by a year, my Japan trip happened to line up exactly with the seijin-shiki of every single person I know in Japan. Pretty lucky, huh?

But what the hell was I going to wear?!

Girls wear furisode, a kind of kimono with really long sleeves, that their mom or some other relative happens to have lying around – not really an option for me. The popular alternative for kimono-less families is to rent one. This costs upwards of ￥30,000, or $350+. Also, since all the upcoming 20-year-olds know this day is on its way, people reserve their kimonos up to a year in advance. 2 weeks ahead of time is really pushing it for a kimono rental, and even if we found one it would probably cost an arm and a leg.

Hmm.

However, when I showed up to Yuka’s house on my first day in Japan, we started talking about the festival and what I would wear. It turns out Yuka’s mom purchased a hakama she found on sale a while back, for her two daughters’ future college graduation ceremonies (hakama are worn at graduation, apparently). She said I could borrow it, if I was cool with showing up in a hakama instead of a kimono.

Score!

We discussed briefly whether the hakama would be too weird and that I’d stick out, but guess what — I’m already a gaijin, so I already stick out. Plus, I’m not actually the correct age for seijin-shiki (since I’m no longer 20), so effectively I am more like a graduate of this whole seijin business anyway. Also, the hakama was purple. Totally fabulous!

So I took the hakama with me when I moved from Yuka’s house to my previous host family.

Now the only problem is, who’s gonna dress me up in said hakama on January 11?

Most girls go to a salon to get their hair and makeup done and kimono put on. This, like the kimono rental itself, gets pricey. Noriko, my host sister, was getting hers done at the hotel where the high school reunion would be held, and she was getting her professional pictures taken there too. But again, most salons were totally booked at this point, and asking a week beforehand whether a salon had an opening at 10 am on seijin day was laughable.

My host mom, however, used her host mom superpowers and called up a bunch of local places. A little old shop by the name of Midori-san had an opening! And they would do my hair, makeup, and dress me up for the reasonable price of ￥10,000 (just over $100). And I’m not kidding, this is a good deal. Also, Midori-san was not fazed by the idea of putting on a hakama instead of a kimono.

The day before seijin-shiki, right after I got my haircut, host mom took me to Midori-san to do a sort of pre-seijin-shiki consultation. We brought the hakama and all the relevant hair accessories. The lady at Midori-san who would be dressing me checked to make sure we had all the necessary pieces, and talk about when I would come by tomorrow. She did the obligatory “oh it’s so cool you know Japanese and are here and can go to seijin-shiki” conversation with me, and remarked about how nice the hakama was with host mom. At some point, Midori-san kinda looked at me and was like “your eyebrows. We need to fix them.”

“Um okay then, go for it,” I said.

At this point, host mom was alarmed that I was so quick to entrust the shape of my eyebrows to this lady I’d met less than 10 minutes before, and I think she didn’t quite know whether I understood what was going on. But actually, I was fully aware of what was going on, and told host mom it was cool. She had to go pick up obaachan from badminton practice, and she left me alone with the lady who was after my eyebrows.

I was expecting some waxing or plucking or something… instead, she whipped out a razor and started scraping away at the tops and bottoms of my eyebrows. It was mildly terrifying, but I said nothing, rolled with it, and 10 minutes later came out with eyebrows that were for once, a reasonable thickness.

Host mom showed up with obaachan and seemed a little too shocked that my eyebrows turned out okay. Obaachan approved too, and we went on our way.

The next day, I showed up at 10 am to get dressed up and dolled up for the big day. Noriko was off at the hotel getting dressed, and host mom managed to schedule this day so that everyone’s appointments lined up perfectly.

I brought hairstyle photos I’d copied from a kimono-hairstyle magazine I’d seen at Noriko’s pre-seijin-shiki consultation (does this thing have a name??) the week before. Make-up, then hair, then sticking a bunch of hair ornaments in hair plus an unhealthy amount of hairspray, then hakama time. The result of an hour’s worth of beautifying work (photo taken in Midori-san’s shop).

Here’s the obasan responsible for my hair, hakama, and eyebrows

The girl who did my makeup

And detailed hair shots (taken later, at the reunion):

From the back

Right side – about 3 hair ornaments are visible

Left side – the other 2 ornaments visible

Alright, now I was dressed and ready for action. The day had only begun. Festivals and reunions to attend, and I had to meet up with Noriko. I handed Midori-san a crispy ￥10,000 bill, said my arigatous, and jumped into the car (very gracefully and ladylike, of course) with host mom, ojiichan and obaachan, and headed towards the hotel in Kobe to meet Noriko, who was just about to emerge from her similar (but more extensive) beautification process, a beautiful, breathing-and-walking-impaired-by-kimono, butterfly.

To be continued…

Makes me feel pretty guilty for sometimes skipping class when it’s a 5 minute walk away from my apartment.

Luckily, she’ll move to Kyoto in the spring so all this commuting can stop and she doesn’t have to leave parties at 8 pm in order to make the last train home.

Anyway, I got to go with her to school on Friday, and since she only had one class, I would sit in on it, eat lunch with her and her friends, and then spend the day with Noriko in Kyoto. Woo!

We left the house around 8 am. Bus to the train station, a long train ride involving one changing-of-trains (so you can’t sleep the whole way), and an easy walk up a hill at the very end. We made it to class with 10 minutes to spare and I met Noriko’s friend Aya, who was in the same class, some Greek/Roman Mythology lecture. Eventually class started and I recognized a lot of katakana-ized names like Romulus & Remus and Agamemnon. But I didn’t really have the patience or interest in the subject matter to pay attention, so instead I looked around the room, and wrote notes on what blog posts I needed to write still (I kid you not!)

I noticed that this lecture was about 95% girls — exactly the opposite demographic of CS classes I am used to (woo humanities!)

I also spent a lot of the class period being tired and wishing that the hot cafe-au-lait-in-a-can I had bought from the vending machine 10 minutes earlier was much bigger. Sleep deprivation + already being exhausted from the journey to school left me sleepy. And really really thankful for my utter lack of commute to school.

At last the class ended, and Noriko, Aya and I met up with their other friends in the cafeteria/store where everyone bought random lunch items like instant cup noodle soup or an-pan, etc. I bought some soup and also ate this satsuma-imo (sweet potato) Noriko’s mom had given me that morning. I do love imo, but I felt a little overly rustic eating a whole potato in the middle of this very rural school on the outskirts of Kyoto.

Once we had bought our items, we went to this other building that had a sort of stadium seating area with no tables, and an upstairs, where Noriko’s friends were all sitting on the floor. I’m not sure what the intended purpose of the room was, because it wasn’t quite an auditorium, but it didn’t seem like it was to be used for eating either.

This is where i discovered that Noriko’s friends are awesome. I was actually able to follow most of the 1000-miles-a-minute-dirty-talking-Kansai-ben conversations (hooray!) Of course, dudes acting stupid yet hilarious really needs no translation anyway.

Acchan and Chi-kun showing off their socks

Acchan 近い！！

Aya and Acchan

manlove

Nao-chan & more friends

Afterwards, Noriko and I left for Kyoto shopping! On the way we looked through a guidebook to figure out what temple/famous traditional Kyoto thing we wanted to go see. I decided on Byoudouin, which is apparently the place on the back of the 10-yen coin, and also a place I haven’t been yet (kinkakuji: check, Kiyomi: check… needed something new) First we shopped for a few things I needed from Kyoto (a great place to buy tsugegushi, or boxwood combs, in case you were wondering. Also tons of traditional Japanese-looking stuff is sold for decent prices). Then we headed to Uji to see Byoudouin, which took a while because it’s pretty far away from the part of Kyoto we were in.

Scenery leaving school

Big staircase in the inaka

When we arrived, I wanted to have the all-too-necessary matcha parfait (Kyoto is pretty well known for these, and they’re DELICIOUS). We went to one store and they were closing. CLOSING!? It was barely 4:30 pm. Then we looked in the guidebook and found out that Byoudouin also closes at 4:30 pm during the winter. FAIL.

So now we were effectively in the middle of podunk Kyoto with nothing to do and all the parfait places closing. We found one that had JUST closed but conveniently turns into a bar at night, so we begged a bit and they decided to make parfaits for us. HOORAY! We were also the only customers.

Parfait of yumminess

Lotsa pretty sake bottles at the bar

Still feeling rather stupid, we went back to Kyoto station, shopped a bit, bought some pickles and Yatsuhashi (Japanese sweets local to Kyoto), and had some okonomiyaki and takoyaki before starting the 2.5 hour journey home.

Still, note to self: don’t go sightseeing in Kyoto in the winter late in the afternoon. Or better yet, check the hours of the place you are going! I wasn’t too torn up about it because I still had a fun day and got to meet her friends and eat my long-awaited parfait, but Noriko promised me that next time I come visit we’ll go and we’ll do it RIGHT this time. She calls this “Kyoto revenge.”

I am totally looking forward to getting revenge on Kyoto. *shakes fist*

Of course, now that I had moved to the Uetani household, Osaka was a good two hours away. So we made plans to meet at noon, which meant I left the house at 10. Really only an hour and a half is really necessary, but it depends on how the trains line up etc. and since Takashi lost his cell phone, if he didn’t show I would have no way of contacting him. This meant that me being late would be kinda problematic.

I also wanted to arrive early because while in Japan, I reverted back to super-on-time-all-the-time Japan mode. Those of you who know me in America probably know I regularly show up minutes or hours late to things I intend on going to (meetings, classes, movies, parties, etc.) But here, being even two minutes late is still considered a HUGE DEAL and I’d actually rather just be early than deal with the two-minutes-late consequences. Heads roll.

So I stood there at our designated meeting spot in the train station, listening to This American Life for a while (I have had so much bonding time with Ira Glass on this trip) until Takashi showed up and we went and grabbed some Ramen at a nearby restaurant. Then we hopped on a train since I said I wanted to go shopping in Shinsaibashi (since I had been there once before and had great shopping success). I found a skirt. and some warm (and fuzzy) items at uni-qlo.

We walked aimlessly for a bit, and found Namba, where we consumed some delicious takoyaki and took a picture with that famous clown dude…

Then Takashi wanted to go to Nihon-bashi to look at cameras (Nihon-bashi is the Akihabara of Osaka) so we walked over.

I had forgotten how close everything is in Osaka.

Yes, iPhones really do cost 0 yen in Japan.

After camera inspection was done in Nihon-bashi, we were mid-conversation about maid cafes (which are rather plentiful in Nihon-bashi, as in Akiba). I said I’d never actually been inside one. Takashi was far too surprised at this fact (who the hell was I going to go with?? If I’d been to one before, he would have been there!!) So we toyed with the idea of going to one until I somewhat insisted that we did, and that I’d buy him his coffee or whatever (maid cafes are expensive).

With a random maid cafe worker

Maids & yellow submarine

We picked a maid cafe that was somewhat visible from the street, which may have been part of our problem — this maid cafe was NOT hardcore at all. Yeah, the waitresses were dressed up in maid outfits and there were little bells on the table and lace everywhere, but they didn’t do anything special (Takashi spoke of song & dance routines, and much more lavish vocabulary when the waitresses take your order in a Tokyo one he went to with his friends). In fact, most of the clientele were rather normal at all. The lonely おっさん (creepy old men) demographic was a little high I guess, but there were also high schoolers, and other relatively normal people. I was a bit underwhelmed.

I was surprised to see how clean the whole cafe was. Duh, maid cafes are totally clean, said Takashi.

He had cheesecake, I had ice coffee (at which point I surprised HIM by pointing out that we don’t really have iced coffee in America, which he had not noticed). We paid the ridiculous prices for our food, and then left.

This was the first of many adventures that day in Osaka that were firsts, despite the fact that a lot of time was spent in places where I have been one or more times before. I shall label them with 初, the Japanese word for “first.” And that was:

初 Maid Cafe!

At this point we realized that we hadn’t yet been to Ame-mura today! So we walked over there and first stopped by the Apple store at the corner leading into Ame-mura.

I’d never been in that Apple store, but as many Apple stores are, it was a happy magical wonderland. I found an iPod and cranked up the MGMT as I watched the slightly-hipster Japanese Apple dudes talk to customers. I had a long-ish conversation with one of the dudes at the genius bar (or whatever it’s called) about macbook airline chargers. I did not buy one, as it cost even more there than in America (jeez). On the one hand, I don’t think it’s really worth the $50 unless I make this America/Japan commute a regular thing, especially since I am not convinced charging is possible on enough different airlines. On the other hand, I spent more than that amount on socks alone on this trip to Japan. (But socks are important.)

After leaving the Apple store we finally arrived at the other, more magical playground: Ame-Mura. We shopped for some hip dude-clothing (which covers about 80% of stores in Ame-mura) and then Takashi insisted we stop for an ice hot dog. Three years ago, I was somewhat disgusted by this idea and stood there skeptically while he consumed this seemingly-bogus snack. This time though, I decided to give it a shot, and we entered the tiny, cramped shop that was roughly the size of a college apartment living room, and just as dirty. The walls were lined with hundreds of photos of celebrities who stopped here to eat ice-dogs — I guess this is the only place in Japan that does this, so it’s quite a delicacy when you’re in Osaka (???) Despite the grungy American-city-replica vibe of Ame-mura, our ice dogs were served on adorable little trays you would expect to receive green tea and some mochi-like snack on and a little toothpick/mini-knife which with to eat it.

But instead, it was my…

初 Ice Dog!

And it was AMAZING.

The ice cream is just your classic vanilla soft-serve. But the secret is the bun. It’s fluffy and extremely sweet, not too soft or chewy but not at all crunchy, and warm. The contrast with the cold/sweet ice cream is perfect and whoever thought this up is a GENIUS.

I wanted to go to a particular store I’d been to 3 years ago where I bought a ton of socks (and everything costs 300 yen or less). However, we went to the same spot and it appeared to be closing down, or a different store that was also closing down. All old crappy things, and no socks.

At this point we had to decide whether to stay in Osaka or to go to this awesome spot Takashi knew of that had good views, etc. of the Kansai area. However, that required a car, and to go drive and come back to Sannomiya before 10:30 when the last bus I could take home was. It was gonna be tight, so we just stayed in Umeda instead.

Let’s go to HEP! We said (although I’d been there just days before… HEP is still fun). We walked over to HEP. And we saw… it was CLOSED!!

初 HEP being closed!

How the hell can HEP be closed??? I guess since they had sales going on all through new years (the normal days off) that they were taking a day off now. But it was so sad.

Earlier we had passed by a pachinko place and it was revealed that I had never done pachinko. Again, like with maid cafes, Takashi was in shock and awe. Find then, let’s go.

初 Pachinko!

We found a pachinko place (really not a difficult task if you’re in…Japan). I spent 1000 yen to see little metal balls fall down and that’s about it. Wow, I really don’t get what the fun part of pachinko is. Plus, the whole incredibly noisy atmosphere of pachiko places makes it completely impossible to whine at my friend that I don’t get why this would be fun. Whatever, pachinko.

I was ready for something that I knew would be fun: purikura. Yes I had taken it like 6 other times so far on this trip, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to do purikura. We wandered for a while, looking for a purikura place, but found none. NO PURIKURA!? Could this be possible?! Normally when hanging out with people you can’t AVOID the purikura places left and right. This was:

初 difficulty finding purikura!

It was incredibly disappointing. We went to Yodobashi camera so Takashi could look at yet more cameras. I whipped out my rental cell phone and did some internet research on purikura places in Umeda. I found a place that someone claimed to have taken purikura as recently as 12/19/09, so I figured this place still existed. Takashi knew vaguely where that would be, so we headed over and saw several arcades that had signs out saying specifically there WAS NO PURIKURA.

Could this be the END OF PURIKURA?!

Finally we found a place, but it barely had 3 machines, and no scissors. Ummm… fail? I’m not claiming to be an expert on purikura economics, but as far as I can tell the only cost involved would be the purchasing cost of the machine, and then power to leave the damn thing on, while you collect 400 yen a pop from groups of girls all day and all night long. What gives, Osaka?

With 2 hours or so to kill before I needed to go home, Takashi was yet again disappointed in my lack of experience in potential places-to-spend-money in Japan; not only had I never gone to Maid Cafes or Pachinko before today, but I’d never been to an izakaya (a Japanese bar). OH MY GOD!! This doesn’t seem that surprising… as I don’t think most nanjo girls were going bar-hopping in high school (since we weren’t even allowed to take purikura in our uniforms or go to KARAOKE, period). Actually, scratch that — I’m sure some girls were, but I was not friends with those kids. The orchestra kids are not really the rowdy type.

初 Izakaya!

The izakaya we stopped in was near the purikura place. We ordered a few random foods including the ever-chewy cheese-mochi, and some squid thing. The best thing about this place was the drink menu:

When I pointed this out, Takashi insisted that we needed to tell the izakaya that it’s wrong. In fact, that’s the usual response to Engrish, that *someone needs to tell them*. But I’m not sure it’s worth it even for them to change their menus, since I am really the only demographic who would notice. Takashi’s english is on the better end of people in Osaka, and I doubt the 4 other foreigners who may potentially ever visit that bar will care either.

Also, Engrish is funny.

Had my 初 yogurt-drink (which was quite good), then said goodbye to Takashi and headed west, where I bought my 初 coffee-pan (like an-pan but coffee-related sweet things are inside… delicious) and hopped on the fastest train back to Kobe I could find. Arrived home like 2 hours later.

Some final impressions on Osaka: it’s changing. The lack of purikura was kind of astounding, and even some of the shoutengai (shopping streets) were kinda lonely. On the other hand, there’s tons of construction going on around Umeda station, with several new (large) buildings and hotels. Osaka is just kinda different from how I remember in a way Kobe is not.

But at least the ice dog business seems to be relatively stable! It’s a snack I plan to count on for years to come.

This time I didn’t really know what I wanted, other than something different, and generally to have less hair. We found a few pictures in hair magazines that I liked, and I told him to leave enough hair to put up (like I will do tomorrow). For “before” pictures, see previous post. In the end I came out looking something like this:

Also got a shot with the barber and his wife, just like I did last time I got a haircut from them. Same people, same pose, same place, 3 years apart:

2007

2010

Later in the afternoon was kakizome, or the first brush-writing of the year, with Miyamoto-sensei. There were way more people this year than in 2007, and a wider variety of ages and genders. Basically the brush writing works like this:

1) Show up, decide what character you want to write.
2) Look your character(s) up in a series of brush-writing kind of encyclopedias, where different writing styles are all shown. Pick one you like.
3) Practice writing it on a small piece of paper with a brush-like pen.
4) Practice with a real brush but on a relatively small piece of paper (8.5″x11″ for example).
5) Move to the floor, bigger paper, and a much bigger brush. Be nervous. Write about 4 times, sometimes with different ink or brushes.
6) Sit back, reflect, and pick the one you like best to be mounted on some thicker paper or a scroll.

All the while, getting input from Miyamoto-sensei on how to improve your brush writing for the next attempt.

3 years ago, I wrote the word 「恐竜」(dinosaur), oblivious to the fact that the character you write is supposed to have some kind of relevance to the kind of year you have. So people write things that are more clear-cut like “love” or “new” or “effort” or something. However, Miyamoto-sensei told my host mom she was very excited about what I might possibly write this year. “We’ve all been waiting in suspense to find out what comes after ‘dinosaur’” I was told. PRESSURE IS ON.

So I waited for inspiration to strike. And it did. My word of the year, folks, is 「逆光」(gyakkou). It means “reverse lighting,” or when you’re taking a photo and the cameraman is facing the light, so all you get are silhouettes.

The main reason I chose this is because I learned it the other day (while someone was taking a picture) and it was one of those “I’ve never heard this word before but I immediately understand” moments. Additionally, I realized that there isn’t really a single word for 逆光 in English (unless I just don’t know what it is, which would be kinda embarrassing), and I found that difference interesting.

Also, I’ve always thought 「逆」is a cute kanji.

I wrote the word several times, and obaachan (host grandma) helped out a lot too, telling me how to write the characters better. In the end, I came up with something like this:

There was also a little boy there who was about 6, and incredibly adorable. He was completely entertained with brush writing for HOURS with his parents not around. He also apparently has an English class at school so all the women there were saying “Go say ‘hello’ to Mo!!” and he is like “okay!” and he walks up to me and says “bonjour!”

In general, Miyamoto-sensei et. al. weren’t as shocked by my presence as I expected (which is fine, being chill about me being here is an unexplored alternative to ‘OH MY GOD, YOU’RE BACK!!!’) At one point, Miyamoto-sensei was saying I looked more mature, and that she liked my haircut and that I’m overall cuter than before. At this point, obaachan interjected and says “yeah, of course she looks good — she went out and paid money today for people to make her look good!!” Oh obaachan…

Okaasan, Obaachan, Mo

Mo and Miyamoto-sensei

Adorable New Years decorations in the entryway

It seems that 「逆光」did in fact live up to everyone’s post-dinousar expectations. Phew.

Here’s the drill:

1) Get up in the morning, eat food, get dressed up real cute and do your hair and makeup.
2) Head to Sannomiya. Meet your friends at some designated place, especially in front of the nikuman (dumpling) stand inside the station.
3) Food, Karaoke, Shopping, Purikura, and optionally more food, in any order you please (but Purikura cannot be first)
4) Lather, rinse, and repeat with different friends all week!

Since I’m back in Kobe for just over 2 weeks, I was part of pretty much non-stop Sannomiya hangouts with girls from high school. Here’s a few pictures of the three non-spontaneous (aka planned) hangouts I arranged in Sannomiya:

12/30/09: Nanjo Karaoke

Yuka and I wanted to go karaoke-ing with someone, so we contacted Misaki, a friend from high school and a fellow Porno Graffiti fan who I went to Karaoke with at the very last weekend or so of my year abroad. She said she was already going karaoke-ing with Machiko (another close friend of mine) and that we could just join in. A number of other girls from our class at Nanjo but who I’d never really talked to before were also coming. Oh well, better late than never…goes for making new friends from high school?

Tera-chan, Yuki, Misaki

Mari, Machiko, Yoko

We met up, and proceeded to karaoke for 5 hours. FIVE HOURS. This was the third day I was in Japan, and probably the most fun AND soul-crushing event I have experienced so far on this trip. Fun because it’s karaoke, and karaoke is, well, fun… the soul-crushing part was when I realized that I don’t know a single Japanese song that came out after May 2007 well enough to sing it. I keep up with new Mr. Children albums, but I don’t listen to them fanatically enough to sing, and I am completely obvlivious to the mainstream Japanese music. When you live here, keeping up means simply watching tv sometimes, which happens completely naturally in every household I have lived in here. But to suddenly be thrown into a 5-hour karaoke session with a knowledge of pop music from 2007, it’s almost like knowing nothing all over again. I worked 10 months to absorb as much j-pop as I could, and all for nothing!?

Eventually I realized that I could still fall back on all the songs I used to know, even if they elicited a 「懐かしい」every time I sang them. Karaoke SUCCESS. Except for one thing: Yuka couldn’t come. She had an errand to run at the beginning, and apparently you can’t have people come in once you’ve started free-time karaoke (when you don’t decide on a length of time beforehand). So that was kind of :( because it meant I never got to karaoke with Yuka during this trip.

Machiko & Mo

Karaoke was followed by purikura (and running into Furo/Aika like I mentioned in a previous post):

Then we moved onto a restaurant called アジアジア (AsiAsia in English… I guess?) where we partook in tabe-nomi-houdai (all you can eat & drink) for a fixed price. Many delicious things were ordered, many conversations were had about several people’s non-boyfriend-but-person-with-whom-we-can’t-totally-say-nothing-is-going-on. The restaurant was loud and boisterous. I had a hard time following the quiet secretive conversations going on. I learned here that Japanese drinks are really small and taste sweet. But I had a good time and certainly more than replenished all the calories lost during marathon karaoke and induced karaoke stress. On the way home I talked to Mari and Machiko in a much more audible setting (inside the train) and had a fab time.

Waiting in a really narrow stairwell to get into the restaurant

1/04/10: Hatsumode

Martha, the exchange student that went to my former high school in America last year, saw via my facebook status that I was in Japan. Hmmm… wait a minute, SHE also lives here, I realized (once she commented on my status). Though she’s more friends with my little brother’s crowd, we’ve met a few times back home and she invited me on a little Sannomiya hangout of her own on the 4th. I was busy during the early afternoon moving from Yuka’s house to Noriko’s house, so I did that while she and her friends saw a movie, and afterwards I joined them for 2010 初詣 (hatsumode) at Ikuta Shrine, but not before running into my friend Ryo for the second time in Sannomiya this trip.

I instructed them to meet me by the butt statue (and just like all other Kobe natives, they seemed slightly unsure of what I was talking about here). Martha & friends were a bit late and so I stood and watched this kid play guitar for a few minutes. He was good! However, in the picture below, note the girl in the pink hat’s outfit. Almost everyone wears shorts, boots, and tights in winter here, or shorts, boots, and over-the-knee-socks. This girl’s socks aren’t even knee-high!

Off to Ikuta Shrine! Even though you’re supposed to go on New Years Day ideally, it was still this crowded on January 4th! Waited in line for about 15 minutes!

We also got our fortunes. Mine was pretty decent. It had little things about each part of our life — apparently I am going to lose all my money on a vacation… pretty much is coming true!

Martha and friends! We then proceeded to eat random festival-like things around the shrine (taiyaki included!), take purikura (which I do not have on my computer), and go eat monjya-yaki (sort of like a less awesome, more Tokyo-y version of Okonomiyaki).

Afterwards, I had to return home to the Uetani household, for the first time in 3 years. We briefly spoke about how I should take a bus back instead of a train. Martha’s friends said “we’ll walk you to your bus!” because they’re nice, but it was a little embarrassing because I had to be like “well I’m not sure where my bus is, but I vaguely feel like it’s in that direction” and as I approached it “no, this isn’t right, I think we have to go down that staircase” etc. etc. It was like trying to follow instructions you remember from a dream, where you’re continually comparing what you see in front of you to an image in your mind and trying to resolve the difference into some logical course of action. Anyway, I managed to find the right bus as I knew I would, but not without worrying my friends with my hazy memory of what I was doing. I made it home, fyi.

1/06/10: Sweets Paradise

Or, alternatively, the reunion of Knitting Club. Machiko and Mari from orchestra club are two of the friends I keep up with the most (letters & packages & emails & the occasional mixi message). The first week I was in Japan, Mari happened to be in San Francisco with her family. Machiko came to karaoke as mentioned above, but since the three of us spent endless hours knitting things in random fast food restaurants, classrooms, and shopping centers in high school, it seemed fitting for the three of us to meet up again. Mika, a girl from my art class the first quarter or so I was here, also joined us (which was good because otherwise I wouldn’t have had time to see her) and Mari arranged most of it. Originally I suggested we go to Sweets Harbor in Harborland, which I went to once long ago with my first sister. But apparently it’s closed for good now, and instead we went to Sweets Paradise, effectively a sweets buffet located in Sannomiya.

Mari and Mika

Mo and Machiko

However, with all-you-can-eat cake and pie and ice cream and more, there is significant danger that one might uhh… overeat. Indeed, after Sweets Paradise I was completely un-hungry for the next eight hours or so. Whoops.

Festive and delicious

After gorging ourselves on sugar and whipped cream, we proceeded onto the purikura. We managed to get them all sent to Machiko’s phone, and she sent them on to the rest of us. We shopped for a while and then Machiko had to go home. More shopping ensued until Mika had to go too. Mari though, is living by herself (rare for Japanese college students, who mostly live at home) and she had nothing else going on that day –> freedom! And by freedom, I of course mean KARAOKE! Time to break out the Mr. Children, Porno Graffitti, and random Johnny’s songs I can sing with gusto (a vast majority of which are Arashi songs), of course. There was some occasional Seishun Amigo and Sakuranbo going on as well.

Followed by more shopping. Did my homage to Toyku Hands (a store with a level of awesomeness second only to Loft), and to the bookstore where I spent a long time in the celebrity photo book section (there were a disproportionate amount of Mizushima Hiro books, fyi). Eventually we decided we could stand to eat again, and headed over to ポムの樹 (pomu no ki) the omu-rice chain that I fell in love with 3 years ago. Omu-rice was hence checked off the to-eat-in-Japan list. Mari and I had a good heart-to-heart and I took one of the last buses home around 10, when all the stores in Sannomiya are closing anyway.

All in all, a good day’s asobi, and the purikura to prove it:

The second awesome thing that happens during bargain season is 福袋 (fukubukuro) or a grab bag basically, where a bunch of unknown contents from a particular store are put into a bag, and sealed so you can’t see them or know what you’re buying, and then sold for a price that’s way lower than the total of the individual items. Of course, there may be stuff you don’t want, but hey that’s where the luck comes in (direct translation of fukubukuro = luck bag).

So this year, I decided to do my first bargain shopping in Osaka upon returning from Tokyo. Since January 1st and 2nd are holidays, the post offices are closed, and that’s the only place where I can withdraw cash, I made the wise decision to not really shop in Tokyo (also I didn’t really have a lot of time). Unfortunately at the end of my Tokyo trip I was left with 2000 yen (about $20), and was extremely concerned about my ability to shop in Umeda like I had planned with Yuka (I was also concerned about whether I had enough cash to get back to Yuka’s house). Luckily, at the last minute wandering around Tokyo station, I found a post office where just the ATM part was open. Woohoo!

The bullet train arrived in Shin-Osaka and I changed trains headed for Umeda, and arrived with about an hour to spare before I was supposed to meet Yuka. So I searched around a long time for a coin locker to throw all my stuff in from Tokyo. Then I ate takoyaki at this place by the station where you have to stand and eat, and OH MY GOD IT WAS DELICIOUS:

Then I walked around looking for HEP (a 7 or so story high mall, basically, filled with happiness and delight and WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE), which I actually failed to find for a while. I did find a good place to buy tights though, and did that. Then Yuka showed up, and we spent about 30 minutes trying to find each other inside the station. Tip for Umeda: find a good place to meet people!! This should have gone for Asakusa on January 1st as well — I spent half an hour trying to find Ben doing the whole “well now I’m near a building that looks like this… and uhh… yeah I’m gonna walk that direction now” thing. Not effective.

(I am also extremely nervous because tomorrow I’m meeting a friend in Umeda again. Except this friend does not have a cell phone. Praying to the 待ち合わせ gods now.)

I finally found Yuka and we began to scour every floor and every shop in all of HEP. I came back with a variety of good loot.

Most notably, I now have all the clothes necessary to complete the incredibly popular ensemble that looks totally normal here but would make me look like a freak back home: suspender shorts, black tights, and knee-high high-heeled boots. Hopefully I can incorporate all of these items into some outfits that are America-appropriate once I go home :/ suggestions welcome.

So after a long and fruitful day of shopping, Yuka and I went home for a delicious dinner of nabe and warm yumminess. Yuka’s cousin was also visiting that evening. It turns out that since Yuka’s mom heard that I like Japanese clothes (true story), she bought me a fukubukuro!! from this store in Sannomiya I’d been to a few days before with Yuka. Upon opening it up… the contents are revealed to be:

1) A bright purple shiny furry coat. WIN. (Just like the one purple jacket boy had)
2) A grey scarf. Also excellent.
3) A long-sleeved argyle grey shirt. The same color I would have picked out myself.
4) A brown knit dress. Already wore this, so another success.
5) Cargo pants. Way too small. FAIL. I do not plan on losing enough weight to wear them.

My fukubukuro:

Overall, there was quite a bit of luck in this luck bag. I love you, fukubukuro!

I also partook in an edible fukubukuro from Bagel & Bagel: a bunch of random bagel flavors in a bag. LUCKY for me, there was a matcha flavored one. WIN!!!

In conclusion, fukubukuros are awesome!

December 31: Yuka had stayed up until 6 am working on her nengajou (new years greeting cards). Her mom had woken up at 5 am to start making osechi ryouri (traditional new years food), and around 5:30 they crossed paths. I woke up around 10 and knew I had some time before Yuka would wake up, so I went into Kobe and did some shopping and internetting. I stopped by Ikuta Jinja, the temple in Sannomiya. They were in the middle of setting up all the booths for food, since all temples become a swarm of festivity on new years day as everyone files in to go do their 初詣 (hatsumode, first shrine visit of the new year). However, as it was December 31st, I went to the shrine, and did hatsumode for 2009, pretty much at the last possible minute. But since I haven’t been to Japan in 2.5 years and I’m pretty sure I didn’t go to any shinto shrines in America during 2009, I think it’s safe to say that this visit was successful hatsumode.

I haven’t done hatsumode for 2010 yet, but I have a little while before I leave this country. It will happen.

Anyway, I came home, hung out with Yuka, and then it was time to eat soba for dinner, as toshi-koshi-soba, in addition to being a really great word, is the traditional New Year’s Even dinner. Something about soba noodles being long and that bringing longevity and luck into the new year. Then we turned on the TV to watch some Kouhaku, the red-vs-white Japanese pop music showdown. The ratio of good wholesome j-pop to enka (think “Japanese old people music”) was rather low, so we ended up watching more Gaki no Tsukai than anything else. Whoops. I took a bath and came into the living room again about 15 minutes before midnight, just in time for the Johnny’s Countdown.

The Johnny’s Countdown is AMAZING.

Every boy band in Japan for the last 25 years or so is present, dolled up and ready to perform (and yes, even after decades, Japanese boy bands never die. They just get older and involved in more nudity scandals… yes SMAP, I mean you.) They each sing a song, but you don’t even have to sit through the whole song, just about 30 seconds to 1 minute of the chorus or well-known part of the song. This is likely because (1) there are a LOT of boy bands and fitting them all in the given half-hour timeslot is probably a bit of a crunch and (2) the whole point is to 盛り上がる (get you hyped up) for midnight… and since traditionally the chorus/famous bit of the song is the most exciting, seeing cute boys dancing and energizing you with j-pop goodness in rapid fire with the best parts of the songs (which also happen to be the parts you can certainly sing along to) makes you READY FOR THE NEW YEAR.

Some of these Johnny’s bands are significantly younger than me, some are just old enough to be my parents. But all are dressed in outfits that put most women to shame because I just don’t own anything that SPARKLY, or that PINK. The award for the gayest looking Johnny’s band during countdown-to-2010 goes to: V6, a surprising winner, with the bright pink suits and black sparkly vests. Ohhhh Japanese entertainment.

Also SMAP sucks SO MUCH at singing. Like, I think I’ve seen people sing SMAP songs at karaoke WAY BETTER than SMAP sing themselves.

The Johnny’s Countdown is already on Youtube…

As the clock strikes midnight, we all say yay, and suddenly no one can receive or send any email from their phones because EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON IN JAPAN IS DOING THE SAME THING. I knew this would happen, so I waited until after midnight to even start composing my “happy new year!” email. Around 12:30 the first email hits my phone inbox. Yay, I’m not completely unloved! I eventually manage to send out my email to the 10 friends or so who are in my phone. I gotta say, much easier than trying to time it with sending emails at 9 am on December 31st from the midwest (which I fucked up last year and felt really lame about). And yes, it is that important to send them exactly when it becomes the new year. This is Japan, people, you’d better damn well be ON TIME.

Yuka’s family decided that since I was there, they’d go for the Japanese tradition of watching the sunrise on New Years Day. We left the house around 6:45 to drive up this mountain in Rokko where you could see the entire Kobe area, and the ocean in the morning twilight. It was beautiful.

(pictures to come once Yuka sends me hers)

However, since it was 6 am, it was actually kinda cold. REALLY COLD for Japan. Which is somewhere around freezing. Nothing too difficult to handle. The high for that day was 9°C(50°F). The high back home was -9°C(16°F). Yup. So this was not really a problem for me and my gaijin ways, but all the Japanese people around (and there were a LOT of them who came out to see the sun rise) were jumping up and down shouting samui! the entire time. The horizon was kind of cloudy, so we had to wait much longer than we should have until the sun actually rose high enough to break through the clouds.

In the meantime, more people showed up, including two gaijin dudes who were around my age. They were in shorts and tshirts, and one of them had some underarmour and maybe a hat. They had clearly just been working out (probably running) and stopped by to see the sunrise on the way. There was a group of Japanese college students to the right of us, who kept having amusing conversations. At one point one of the girls looked over at the two gaijin dudes, and she blurted out,

「外人、平気過ぎ！！！」 (The gaijin are way too NOT COLD!! (why do they not appear to be suffering???))

And it was true, the two guys were way comfier in their shorts and tshirts than all the other bundled-up jumping-up-and-down locals.

Since the clouds were so strangely thick it was hard to know when the sun was going to peek out of them. It was getting brighter and brighter, and soon there was this oval-shaped orb of light between two sets of clouds – some kind of reflection going on. People started wondering whether maybe that was actually the sun and it was just being obstructed. College students next to us were like “I’m fucking cold, can we just count that as the sun and go home??” and “I guess the sun is oval-shaped today… that’s fine with me”

It was a little weird to be in a group of people were we all were not entirely sure whether or not that was THE SUN. Kinda basic stuff.

Finally, a giant shining beam of light that was unmistakably the ACTUAL sun came out from the clouds, like BAM!! Oh god, it’s SO BRIGHT. The hundred people around all kept being like “oh hey, this is it!! There it is!!” and whipping out their cell phones to take pictures. Wooo! After 45 minutes of waiting, SUCCESS. We left before we were all actually blinded by the light.

I packed my things for my two-day excursion to Tokyo that would commence around 10 am. Before that, we ate the osechi ryori that Yuka’s mom had prepared. I remember not being crazy about some of the new-years food last time I was here, but most of this was pretty good! I ate way too much, drank sake, and life was good. I then hopped on the bullet train headed for Tokyo, the land of way too many people, trains, and banana flavored snack items.

1) Don’t EVER. And I mean EVER. Attempt to go to Asakusa on New Years. That might have been the largest crowd I have ever seen.
2) Bring your passport when checking into hotels in Tokyo, aka don’t leave it in Kobe. Whoops.
3) The hot drinks that come out of vending machines on the street and convenience stores are hot enough to hurt your hands. Mostly because they are in metal cans.
4) Kinki Kids has at least 100,000 fans, and I met all of them. About half are girls under 17. About half are women over 45.

Five Strange things seen on 1/1/10:

Unenthusiastic Daikon, Asakusa

Star Wars Pachinko, Tokyo Dome City

Unko-san characters (yes, it is what it looks like, “unko” means “poop”), Tokyo Dome City

Cold Cre Hot Creape, Tokyo Dome City

Apparently not only can you cross crepes and creeps to get creapes, you also can stop halfway in the middle of their name to decide whether they are hot or cold. FYI it was delicious. When I am fat I’m blaming you, Japan, and your non-Japanese yet delicious snack food.

School of Lock (for those who were rejected from School of Rock?), Tokyo Dome City