I Am Completely Serious

Several months late, I reveal to you Tokyo’s very soul!

It’s basically a grumpy cat in a chair.

I hope you’re not too disappointed.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

This afternoon I tried to go to the Fukugawa Edo Museum, but when I got there, it was closed for renovation. This is about the third time this has happened to me - apparently Japan’s economy really is based on construction work. Since I’d gone all the way out there, I looked at some maps nearby, saw that the Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Garden was just down the street, and went there instead.

I’d just taken a bunch of pictures of koi (in accordance with Japan’s Park Visitation Act, which requires that all park-goers take a minimum of 4 pictures of pine trees sculpted to trail their branches artistically over the surface of the pond, 7 pictures of moss-covered man-made structures representing the impermanance of human artifice in the face of the persistence of nature, 3 pictures of stones softly rounded by wind and water throughout the ages, and a bunch of pictures of koi), and was sitting down at a table resting, when someone behind me said loudly in English, “Living in Tokyo?”

It was an old woman in a really big hat, long sleeves, a scarf, and a poncho. It was eighty and clear today - this is the official uniform of tan-phobic old Japanese ladies. (She was also carrying an umbrella.) She said the phrase in a way that I associate with rote learning, so I answered “Yes” in Japanese.

She said excitedly in Japanese, “We should get together and talk sometime!”

I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m actually going home next week…”

“Oh! Where are you from?” She became even more excited by the news that I was American. “Where in America? Kentucky-shuu… is Kentucky near California?”

And she dug her wallet out and took out an electoral map from last year’s election, which she had clipped from a newspaper. There were a bunch of other clippings in there, and they all looked America-related. We successfully located Kentucky on her map. “I like Obama, but most Kentuckians don’t,” I said, feeling vaguely compelled to apologize for my state’s red color. I’ve found that Japanese people are often disappointed in Kentucky over this failing.

We talked for a while longer before she decided to go walk around some more. She asked me about Kentucky and how I liked Tokyo and so forth, and I asked her if she’d ever been to the US - she’d been to Hawaii and Alaska, which she felt was a funny juxtaposition. I would be more surprised by the whole encounter, except that the common advice for Japanese people who want to study English is to find an English-speaker to go have coffee with once a week. Some people accomplish this by personals ads for “language exchange,” and some just do it by ambush. I’ve only been ambushed once before that I can think of, but I know it happens. She seemed nice enough.

When my legs were no longer trying to fall off, I got up to walk around some more. I passed an old guy in a baseball cap with a big DSLR camera around his neck. He looked like a typical old vacationer guy, of the type that you always see hauling DSLrs around landscape gardens. They usually occur in twos or threes, with their wives or with other old vacationer guys, and tend to be pretty quiet unless commenting on the size of a koi or the probable age of a tree.

As I walked past him, I felt him giving me a look, which I assumed to be the What’s That Foreigner Doing Here look. Then, he burst into song.

It sounded vaguely like a Buddhist monk saying a sutra, which is just to say that it was kind of tuneless and I couldn’t make out any words in there - it could have been a Shinto thing. For all I know it could have been in Cambodian. But it definitely sounded like religious music, anyway.

What was it about me that made the old tourist man suddenly begin singing a hymn? I do not know. He kept doing it for at least five minutes after I was gone, so I’m assuming this wasn’t something he did purely to mess with the foreigner. I saw him walk by the woman from earlier, still singing - she jumped and nearly dropped her umbrella.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Koishikawa Korakuen was put together by Tokugawa Mitsukuni. I thought that name sounded familiar, and I just googled it. That’s Mito Koumon! I went to Mito Koumon’s garden. I kind of feel like I’m letting Japanese pop culture down by not having found the opportunity to perform a take-down on a corrupt government official while there.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Successfully acquired rice cooker off Craigslist for 1000 yen. (Not from the guy before, from another guy.) The rice is soaking, and shortly I shall test it.

Went to Koishikawa Kourakuen. In January, during my assault on Tokyo’s Important Landscape Gardens, I went to Rikugien, Kyu-Shiba-Rikyu, Hama-Rikyu, and Kyu-Yasuda. I thought Rikugien was the prettiest of those. But Koishikawa Kourakuen? Has magical powers. I will post pictures later - I killed my phone’s battery taking too many (which was almost a problem because I was meeting the guy with the rice-cooker after). I’m beginning to regret my failure to replace my old Canon camera. My cell camera is not up to such things.

Every single person on the train who had a DS was playing Dragon Quest IX. McDonalds here have a WiFi connection for DS use, and if you go in one, you will invariably see a bunch of middle-aged guys sitting around with a small drink and their DS out, playing Dragon Quest. Some of them will have white DSi’s they’ve put decals of the Apple logo on.

From what I understand, the game’s aim is to be WoW for the DS. I can’t be allowed to have it; the combination of short quest-based gameplay and Toriyama art would cause me to cease to be. I’ve been engaging in douch-y power-leveling in Disgaea instead. (Though I kind of feel as if I should dig out my Pokemon Pearl game and beat it already. To get into the spirit of things for the Arceus movie! You know!)

At the grocery, I saw a woman letting her daughter, who was too big for it, sit in a stroller-cart. They were both giggling madly. The mother said, “Beebi-mitai na [something] ne!” The meaning of this is roughly, “Aw, you’re just like a baby!” But this is how I know I’m not fluent in Japanese - I heard all of the sentence but the [something], and I know pretty much what it means, but I can’t figure out what the “[something]” should have been. My brain cannot extrapolate.

(The girl looked a lot like Mr. K and Princess, which made me kinda sad. Mr. K’s class should have started about fifteen minutes ago… I hope he’s being good.)

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Went to Echigo-Yuzawa and rode the skylift and ate soba and suchlike with Mo today. There may be mountain pictures later, depending on whether they look horrible when I unload the camera.

I brought Mo a box of Niigata-local-specialty-or-at-least-that’s-what-it-says-on-the-box-type cookies - this is a Japan thing - because she said she’d never been to Niigata city before. She brought me anko Peeps (about which, as I have previously mentioned, I am enthusiastic), Maisen tonkatsu (which is apparently famous and is incredibly good, and I don’t even normally like tonkatsu), and Sadaharu Aoki macarons (also insanely good and apparently both famous and expensive). I maybe feel slightly guilty?

I think the moral here is, if I mention that I can’t find pinto beans here and she asks me if I want her to bring me up a kilo, don’t say “no,” because she will come up with something even bigger.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

I now own this yukata, and have learned how to put it on. Yukata obi are easier than Nagoya obi, but I still don’t have the motor skills for them. I’m also shaped like an eggplant. Kimono are designed for more cylindrically-shaped people.

I feel kind of rude about getting the yukata at Uniqlo. The shop where we went to for the class was also selling yukata for about the same price, and I kinda brought mine in still in the Uniqlo packaging? I’m not very classy.

Apparently, at least some Japanese kids get very excited about eggplants. In the grocery store today, I saw a little girl pointing excitedly to a display of eggplants, saying, “Mom, look, it’s eggplant! Get some eggplant!” I see kids doing this about strawberries, sweet potatoes, and curry (not together), but this is the first indication I’ve seen that eggplant is also a Kid Food in Japan.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

I think Japanese grocery stores artificially scent their produce sections with whatever fruit they’re currently pushing. The Uoroku’s present strawberry scent is intense and pervasive. I keep accidentally buying strawberries.

So, uh, I understand the psychology of this - but I don’t know why this drugstore I went into yesterday smelled like myrrh. It was just a normal drugstore, not some kind of drugstore/head shop cross-breed. Is the scent of myrrh supposed to encourage spending on luxury items live expensive conditioner? Maybe someone just spilled something myrrh-scented.

lacrimawanders invited me to a kitsuke class with her last night, and loaned me a kimono to practice with - she is awesome! I wore a kimono properly for the first time! Almost all by myself the third try! (Except for the obi, which I STILL MAINTAIN is impossible to put on on one’s own.) lacrimawanders actually did do it all by herself, which awes me. This is an incredibly complex process.

(I also sat seiza-style for long periods of time, which is very painful.)

And due to lacrimawanders’s vast knowledge of stores in Niigata, I now know where to buy Dr. Bronner’s. This is incredibly exciting to me.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

but I can’t right now because I’m craving feta cheese, and in addition to making me sick, feta cheese is 1200 yen.

I also need to buy tea. Going home and drinking my Celestial Seasonings green tea has brought me to the unwelcome realization that the Japanese brand I usually drink is awful. So I’ll probably have to go to the special-special tea booth at the front of the grocery and let the Tea Lady look down at me superciliously from the block she stands on, as I squint my jet-lagged eyes at my DS stylus, fumblingly typing in tea terms. She’ll probably gesture with her apron.

It’s been a month, and I was doing fine. But the World of Warcraft withdrawal’s hitting me again. Every once in a while my fingers twitch out the keyboard shortcut sequence for Hunter’s Mark, then Serpent Sting, then Arcane Shot. At odd moments I find myself anxiously recalculating whether the blue neck attachment I’m wearing is really optimal for my DPS, trying to remember whether I still have my old green one in the bank.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

There are some little windows in the classroom so the parents can watch classes from the waiting area. Obviously, when there are other kids out there, they come over to the windows and wave and pop up and down like prairie dogs and so forth.

So the other day Mr. Yodeler was in the classroom, and Mr. Weepy was outside waiting for the teacher for his other class to show up. Mr. Weepy came over and knocked on the window. Mr. Yodeler walked over to it, looking very solemn. They both pressed their noses up to it and kissed through the glass. Then they giggled, and loudly proclaimed one another to be “baragumi.”

I know that “bara,” which means “rose,” is used as a term for gay guys - I mean, that part of the whole interaction seems pretty clear - but I’m not sure about the “gumi” part. According to my dictionary it just means “group,” but I think I’ve only ever heard it used referring to military and police units. When I google for this in romaji I get stuff about the anime Sakura Taisen, which does, in fact, use the term to describe a (deeply offensive-sounding) all-gay military unit. But I don’t think a couple of four-year-olds are likely to have seen this show, since 1) the art makes it look kind of porny, and 2) Sleep-san liked it, which probably means it’s both kind of porny and too complicated for little kids. I could be wrong? Anyway, I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to ask the manager to clarify this one for me. His sense of humor can be somewhat lacking.

(The first google result in Japanese is somebody’s Second Life store, and I am deeply unimpressed by those dresses.)

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)