Oh not much, what did you do this weekend?

Until now, Tokyo and I had been doing a lot of flirting and occasionally making out, but this weekend, we spent quite a bit of time together and took our relationship to the next level. I spent the weekend with my new city, and I can say with confidence "Upgrade!"

Here's a taste of what I got into, just wandering around seeing the sights with a soundtrack comprised mostly of Amy Winehouse, Badly Draw Boy, The Killers, Talking Heads, and Dustin Fisher's awesome new album :-)

I took a brief snooze on a round red couch with some new friends at 4:00am.

I spent some time with a frog fountain watching the city go by.


I had a beer under the tracks with some colorful characters


I saw the sun rise and the start of the commuter work day.

Then onto the colorful leaves in Ueno Park.

I had green tea at this gorgeous cafe overlooking the lily pond.

I tried my first roasted yam-potato type thing. Delicious!

I saw a swan feeding some ducks.

I was admiring the light in this section of the park when I heard....

Jewpanese music. And the ubiquitous crazy old Japanese dude.

Ah Tokyo, You are a freak. See you next weekend!

I seek the geek.

I've been meaning to get to a section of Tokyo known for being geek mecca for sometime. I've always considered myself to be part geek due to my unabashed fondness for Nintendo, Tolkien and consumer electronics, but I was straight out of my league in the famous Akihabara. I was on a mission to find some Christmas gifts for a teenage friend of the family back in the states who is into Japan's biggest export, Anime. I had a list of characters that she liked and thought it would be easy to wander into Anime central and pick up some goodies without too much confusion.

Akihabara in the rain

Two of my most patient and easily entertained friends, Glen and Steff, agreed to meet me there, as they were on a hunt for some high end speakers. They tried to convince me the speakers were to compliment the 60" Plasma they have been eyeing, but the truth is they are aiming to throw some wicked Kareoke parties in 2009. I have the pictures to prove it. Anyway we made a day (and night) of it, looking for some allusive Japanese cartoon characters in a sea of animated madness. I met them at Akihabara station and on our way to a Singaporian feast, we had some fun with oversized advertising. For the record, yes I am wearing boots, a coat, a scarf and shorts. It's a Tokyo thing.

This one had something to do with racing, but beyond that, I just don't know.

Steff and I show them how it's done.

Then Glen and I set out with with great determination to explore the depths of the geek kingdom. We were a little alarmed to encounter eight story department stores selling nothing but action figures and still nothing that matched the names on our list. I hadn't bothered to do any research before beginning the expedition and we found that we were helplessly lost, armed only with a list that read: Naruto, Fruits Basket, Daisuke, and D N Angel. Floor by floor and beer by beer we traveresed the mayhem and witnessed some of the more disturbing things I have seen in 29 and 11/12ths years. Each floor was crazier than the last, some were cute, some were scary, some were naked. In the end, our mission was a success after some embarrassing exchanges in broken Japanese with the sales clerks. I'd like to show you the loot, but sorry Ashley, you'll have to be surprised when Fed-ex arrives sometime before Christmas.

The stores in Akihabara are in stark contrast to the rest of mild-mannered Japan. There are flashing lights, 9 story escalators, people in french maid costumes handing out packets of tissues, men with bull horns, and people dressed up as their favorite characters from comics, games and movies.
In one department store we found both a $60,000 TV (worth every penny) and some floor models of Japan's newest and most embarrasingly suggestive workout machine. I don't know what it's called, but it has stirrups and it needed to be filmed. If I ever run for congress, this will be the video that the Republicans dig up. I post it here in good faith.

Sorry Mom.

Japan Reacts

I would have loved to been home yesterday. I felt the need to stand on the lawn on the Constitution Center and yell "It's all not lost!" I would have liked to celebrate with my friends and the other 83% of Philadelphians who saved Pennsylvania from the dreaded red tide of stupidity. And personally, I think that now would be a very good time to ring the Liberty Bell again, just for history's sake. If one crack made it famous, imagine what two could do.

Although my mind was consumed by all things American yesterday, I had a very busy day to contend with here in Japan. My Japanese lesson starts at 10am and I need to catch a 9:30 train to get there, so I had to leave the house just as the polls on the east coast were closing. I went straight from the lesson to a staff meeting at noon. I ran from the station, busted into the teachers' lounge ten minutes early and still catching my breath, yelled "Someone give me the count!" I noticed everyone was smiling so I relaxed a little even before they gave me the state by state percentages. At that point they had just called Pennsylvania for Obama, but Virgina, Ohio and Florida were still purple. After the meeting I caught another train home and decided to race home for 20 minutes before going to classes to check the internet. I pulled up CNN and the headline read: Barack Obama is Elected President.

America is back.

I had little time to call a few people and twirl in the living room before I had to head to work. I felt like celebrating loudly in the streets and causing a real scene, but the Japanese aren't big fans of the outburst, so I ran back to the train station quietly, but with a huge smile on my face. I contained my excitement until 10 minutes later on the platform when three other teachers came up the escalator. We disregarded the social norms and immediately formed a four-person, jumping, Obama-chanting, group hug. We broke it up when the train arrived and as I looked around the crowded station, I was not surprised to see that everyone was looking at us. I was, however, surprised to see a lot of big smiles, some high school boys pumping their fists in the air, and quite a few thumbs up from the crowd. When I boarded the train, two old women across the aisle smiled warmly at me. One of them leaned forward and said "Obama. Happy."

Yes, that sums it up nicely.

My first class of the day was an adult intermediate class. The class has three students: two retired men in their 70's, Mitsuru and Toshio, and a housewife in her 40's, Tomie. Mitsuru arrived wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket and was eager to point it out to me. Before we had even entered the classroom, he said "Obama is White Sox fan, I am Obama fan, so I wear." I was interested to hear about their impressions of the candidates before I gave them mine, and my job is to get them talking, so I started the class by first explaining the word impression, and then asking them about each candidate.

I wrote down what they said because I had a feeling it was going to be good.

Tomie: I like Obama because he is young and energy and very different from Bush. I think he will repair America and will be good and kind for Japan. I think today is a good day and I am happy. (notice the word repair. She looked it up in her electronic dictionary. I think it was a good choice in this case)

Toshio: I think Obama has a good mood. I mean, I think he is always calm and thinking and not angry. He will think about things more before he decide. President of United States have to think about many things and be intelligent, not be angry.

Mitsuru: I watch McCain and I think he is saying "America is number 1" but Obama is saying "America is country in world, and world is big." He is good for world too, not only America. And world will be change thinking about America and we can be friends again and be kind to each other. Also, he says war in Iraq should be stopping now. Me too. I think so.

Last week, in this same class, we were practicing "Have you ever....?" "Yes, I have/No I haven't" and now they were giving political commentary far superior to the pundits I've seen on CNN. That either speaks very highly of my intermediate class, or reflects very poorly on CNN. I was impressed with their answers, both succinct and profound.

They struggled to transform their thoughts into English and asked amazing questions. In the hour that followed, we never got to the text book. They put me to the test asking questions about the American political system and I managed to explain (with many drawings and dictionary references) the following concepts:
Red states and blue states, the religious right, proposition 8, media bias, the electoral college, popular vote, nationalized health care, Roe vs Wade, welfare, trickle down economics, tax cuts, fear-mongering, polarization, and irony (in that our country's name begins with the word 'United' and yet on the board I have drawn a map divided into territories by blue and red marker shading).
They were more than interested in the election and what it represents, they were passionate about it, which I have seen much more of in the 24 hours since.

One area of Japan is particularly thrilled today, but for a silly reason. There is a town in Western Japan called Obama, and they have become the unlikely celebrities of news broadcasts on every channel as they celebrate their namesake's victory.

Some pictures of the revelry from the Japan Times:

Click to look closely. Must have these.

Yum, an Obama 'Fisheries Burg'. This is one way I will not be celebrating.

This is how I spend my time.

This week marked a major milestone in my Japanese speaking ability. I have been studying my ass off for months now, and just in the last few days, some amazing things have happened. The most surprising has been that suddenly, I have become the designated speaker when out with my friends. Whenever we encounter a hurdle that requires a dialogue in Japanese, I find myself being pushed to the front of the group while being cued "Gail, ask this guy about......" or "Find out how...." This is a new development that makes me proud, but also a little scared. It's a lot of pressure.

Then, last Wednesday I went out with four of my students to an izakaya (bar) after class. Yuri, Miku, Misa and Asami are all friends in their twenties who decided to chip in on a weekly private English lesson together. The are beginner level students, but not afraid to make mistakes, which makes them very easy to teach. They will just throw every word they know at you until they have made their point. The opposite is true with many adult students who refuse to utter a word until they have double checked the correctness in their electronic dictionary. I like these girls because they are enthusiastic, up for anything, and damn good note takers. They are more interested in being able to communicate that being right, and I share their philosophy.

I've gone out with students before, but I usually have either Justine (fellow teacher who is near fluent) or Mio (Bi-lingual receptionist) to translate when times get rough. This night, I was on my own and had to really stretch my brain. I spoke in BUSTED Japanese for about two hours. I mixed my tenses, screwed up my word order and acted out several words, but in the end we were communicating and having fun. I confused them a few times with sentences like:
"Last weekend, I will go on a date."
"It was having fun."
"We maybe go again soon or later."

They seemed to get the gist despite my tense butchering and asked questions in broken English to find out more:
"How many years does he have?"
"How good is his face?"
"He is tall or short next to you?"

By far the highlight of the evening was when I realized the last train was leaving soon and asked the waiter for our check (Okanjo kudasai). He looked at me blankly, but then when Miku said exactly the same thing he hurried off to grab the bill. I said in Japanese "I said that! He didn't understand me!" Then Yuri said in English without hesitating "I know, he's crazy." I just taught them the word crazy earlier that evening; it nearly brought a tear to my eye.

At the end of the evening I had a splitting headache and was mentally exhausted. I don't think I have ever been mentally exhausted before. Physically and emotionally, yes, but this was probably the hardest I have ever thought for an extended period of time. When I got home I could barely get the key in the door. I took two tylenol and laid on the couch with a pillow over my head. The girls are coming over for dinner on Friday so the brain's going to have to run another marathon.

My study schedule isn't so slack on any other day for that matter. I am taking the Japanese Level Proficiency Test (level 4) in 5 weeks and still have a lot of ground to cover. I took a practice test with my tutor two weeks ago and BOMBED it, but at least I know where the gaps are now. I think I may have registered for the test prematurely before understanding the extent of the curriculum, but my goal is to at least fail it respectably.

A few days ago I bought My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS and I think it just may be the tool to get me there. My weekly study regimen is this:
50 Kanji (able to recognize, know the meaning and write in the correct stroke order)
2 chapters in my text book Japanese for Busy People (about 10 pages)
3 audio lessons in Pimsleur Japanese II (30 minutes each, I listen to them twice)
At least 5 hours of drilling and practice using the DS program

This week I noticed I can write at almost normal speed using the kana (hiragana and katakana). A page in my text book now takes about 20 minutes. It used to take over an hour. I've been told my handwriting is great, but I've also been told that I speak Japanese very well and that I look just like Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ so I take it with a grain of salt.

An exercise from my text book Japanese for Busy People,
I'm only moderately busy so it's only moderately effective.

I feel pretty good about the Hiragana and the Katakana at this point. I arrived already knowing Romanji (roman letters) so that makes three out of four alphabets done. Unfortunately, it's the fourth one that has more than 8,000 characters and prevents me from reading most things. I have been paying attention to the kanji around me, looking for the ones that I already know and to try to notice a pattern in ones I don't and gather their meaning that way. The best way I've found to recognize them is to associate them with a familiar picture. Then, the kanji will pop out at you wherever you go and you can start to guess what it might mean depending on where you see it.

Joe and Liz and I played this game in Shikoku when we had maps noted only in Kanji. The following nonsense was uttered pretty much verbatim in the car "OK, we're looking for a sign with three characters. The first one looks like a chest of drawers with a crooked vase on top. The second one looks like a diving board over a whirlpool and the third one looks like a tall man speaking into a short microphone."

It's kind of like looking for animal shapes in the clouds, but instead of lying on your back in a field relaxing, you are lost in a city of 27 million and are surrounded my a few thousand different clouds at any given moment. The sign below is a train station name. The four large characters at the top are kanji. The six smaller characters below are hiragana (these I can read!). They both say "Kita Narashino" which is the name of a town close by where some of my friends live.
Take a look at the Kanji and let's see if your imagination is as twisted as mine.
Don't forget: Click to zoom.

Can you see what I see?

Character 1: Nazi soldier marching away from an overgrown coat hanger
Character 2: A close up of a female robot wearing fake eyelashes
Character 3: Viking war ship
Character 4: A man selling a large waffle iron

First the Kanji in red at the top:
1. Small ikea bookshelf
2. 2 toothbrushes making a quick exit out a window (notice the movement lines)
3. A barbershop pole sliding down a mountain
4. Tiki monster pinata

Now for the first three characters in green (the rest in green are kana)
1. The Pringles man screaming
2. An old TV with rabbit ears broadcasting an image of the Union Jack
3. A woman adjusting the cushions on a folding chair

And if you think that's funny, check out what I found in my basic English adult text book the other day. I think Dr. Dre might be co-authoring to make ends meet. First, in chapter one, this is the illustration used to demonstrate first and last names. Look at the depiction of the fans in line. Awesome, and fairly accurate.


Then check out the topic for unit 4! Keep in mind, the first three units started with a question too. They were: How are you today? What's the weather like? How much is it?
And now, behold Unit 4:

WTF?!?!?