Fun with foreigner visitors

After a hard day's work in Tokyo, where do you take foreign visitors during the rainy season?

The answer we came up with was a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome!!

By some odd chance the Yomiuri Giants (a.k.a. Tokyo Giants) were playing the Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya's team).  I was happy to cheer on my hometown team, and check out the Tokyo stadium. 

The Yomiuri Giants are based off of the NY Giants of the 1930's (now San Francisco Giants).  They even have the same uniforms and team colors.  The Yomiuri Giants are the oldest and most popular team in Japan, and they have won the most pennants and Japan series titles. 

Take me out the the ballgame... buy me some beer and ... Pocky?!  It was a special Pocky promotion day.  Each free box featured a Giants player.  (Pocky is tiny chocolate-covered sticks.)

I was very happy because the food in Tokyo was a little more Westernized than Nagoya.  I had my first hot dog in 8 months!  It was delicious!

Here's one of the beer girls.  They carry small kegs around on their backs, so you can have draft beer in the stands.  Also notice that no ladies actually wear their baseball caps.  They fold it in half and pin it to their hair. 

Matt (from North America) and Fred (from Europe) in town for some training.  Fred hasn't been to a baseball game since he was a child living in New York in the 1970's!

When the Giants hit a home run, the crowd goes wild waving their orange towels.  Who knows, they might do a similar thing in Nagoya, but I've never seen them score a run, much less a home run!

Fan section with all of the orange towels.

Out came this giant Giants banner during the 7th inning stretch.  It truly felt like a college football game!

There was no "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" song at any point throughout the game. I was really disappointed because I was ready for the cartoon Wii voice this time!

Here is the Giant's mascot.  She's half "YG" logo and half rabbit.  Therefore, her name is "Giabbitt".

The Dragons played better today, but not good enough to beat the Giants.  Since the home team won, they had a MVP ceremony and interview after the game.  Notice the MVP on the jumbotron is holding a big "Giabbitt" stuffed animal!!  LOL.

Kerri is fist-bumping with a Giants player!!

Next stop on our Tokyo evening of fun is ... Karaoke!

It took a little convincing to even get Matt and Fred to agree to karaoke, but it's a true Japanese tradition! 

I thought they were going to pee their pants from laughing so hard when Tag asked me if I had my karaoke club members card with me!  I like karaoke, but unfortunately I'm not part of the "club".

Kerri and the giant wall of Zima bottles when we enter karaoke.  Who even drinks Zima anymore?

Apparently, we do!

Tag ordered us all Zima because we could get 10% off of our total bill, but I'm pretty the cost of 4 Zimas was more than 10% of our bill... 

Tag sings the Japanese national anthem.

We all had an awesome time singing the night away. 

Even though the foreigners were hesitant to karaoke at first, by the end we were all rushing to get our choice of songs in.  We even extended our time after the first 90 minutes because we simply weren't ready to leave!

Eel Dinner & Philippino Bar

This week one of the men in my department retired from Mitsui. Every time someone comes or goes, it requires a big work party!! This time we went to an unagi (eel) restaurant, which Nagoya is famous for.
Here's my plate of appetizers: seaweed, green onions, pressed rice with peas, gummy rice on a stick, and a shell full of seafood sauce and some kind of mussel. Surprisingly, the mystery shell had the best flavor. Also, the green plate at the top left is my raw eel waiting to be cooked in my pot. Several of the men mistakenly ate their eel without cooking it!! Even with my limited Japanese, I understood the waitress when she said we would cook the eel later!! I think there may be something inherently wrong with your food if you can't tell if it should be cooked or not before you eat it!!
My half-eaten sashimi (raw fish). I tried one of each and then gave the rest to Jazzy Dani.

We are finally cooking the 2 pieces of eel. It's boiling in water with seaweed and some mystery floating object. Oddly, I was the first one to start eating the mystery object, and people were asking me what it was... like I had any clue!! It was kind of like thin, soggy bread.

Next is salad time. Usually I find the salad to be one of my favorite (safe) courses. This one had way too much slimy seaweed for my taste, though. It's garnished with fish flakes and bamboo.

This was one thing that I tried but refused to finish. Uhh, it was a clue when they said the name was "rotten seaweed". Basically it's liquefied seaweed and vinegar and some unknown white floaters. Women eat it with a spoon, so I gave it a try. Yup, it tastes like vinegar and seaweed!! Men drink it like a shot!

Unidentified object, but one of the tastiest of the night. It had vegetables buried inside this thing. No one had any idea what it was! I told them that it's strange to me that no one can identify what they are eating! But they said Japanese are raised to clean their plates. It doesn't really matter what they are eating--they're still going to eat it.

Another eel dish with rice. Each pot is shared by 2 people.

Here are the instructions for preparing and eating the eel dish. Again, should food really require an explanation of how to eat it?! We were all cracking up about these 4 options listed below!!

Notice anything missing? Yup, no dessert... I was even chanting betsu bara, which means "separate stomach" (for dessert even when you're full from dinner) hoping the waitress would get the hint!! No luck :(

Whole department at dinner!

Kerri & Miyamura on his last day. He is the one who said I looked like Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid at the Christmas party, and he brought it up again tonight. He's a firm believer in my Ariel qualities!! Also, he researched my last name online and likes to randomly announce to people that my ancestors are from England based on the origins of "Green".

Finally, Miyamura said the night would not be complete without a visit to the Philippino bar, so we set off in taxis to find the mystical Philippino bar...

In true Japanese spirit, one guy went back to work to finish some things up, but said he would join us there shortly.
So this Philippino bar doesn't have a name or a sign. You just wander around a specific area of town and some guy will come up to you and ask if you are looking for the Philippino bar. Of course, this happened for us rather quickly, and then Miyamura and the guy were "negotiating" for a few minutes. Finally, they whisked us away to a building and put us in a tiny elevator that took us to the Philippino bar. Can you say "shady"?!

I quickly realized that the bar was some kind of gentleman's club because they were no other ladies there, except for the Philippino ones getting paid!! And while there was nothing overtly scandalous going on in plain view, the whole vibe was sleazy!

My highlight of this bar... they have a liquor called "Green"!! My co-workers told the ladies that I needed to take home the bottle since it was the same as my name. We even had to call "Mama" (leader of the ladies) over to discuss it. Mama said I could only take the bottle home if we finished it all. At this point, I got a little belligerent and said something like "Really?! Like you don't have any empty bottles just sitting around in the back?!" Next thing you know... an empty bottle appears in front of me as a souvenir! Either they like mouthy Americans, or they just wanted to shut me up!

There was also karaoke at this establishment, and Philippino-style in obviously like American-style were you sing in front of the whole bar!

I decided to lead the bar in a Beatles classic: Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da. Notice one of our Philippino ladies sitting on my right. They would just make themselves comfortable were ever this was a sliver of a seat and then order themselves drinks on our tab!

The whole group joins in the singing with me. Another Philippino lady sits at the right of this picture. I think she may be wearing a white trash bag for a dress. It was puffy and horrible.

Oh yeah, and the guy who went back to work to finish a few things did show up shortly after us, and he brought all of the other guys with him who were still in the office at 10pm!!

As we were leaving, Miyamura said I will probably come back here again because all of the Philippino ladies speak English! Umm... it was nice to order my own drinks and very rudely demand my own liquor bottle, but it's still not likely that I will return to this place ever again!!

Year End Party

On Monday my department at work had their Year-End Party!! (I know this is the month of parties, and it's awesome!!) We went to a traditional Okinawa-style restaurant and then karaoke! Time for another geography lesson... Okinawa is the southern islands of Japan. Generally known as the poorest part of the country (due to lack of industry), but it has tropical temps all year round and some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Oddly, few Japanese people have even been there. They prefer to vacation in Hawaii since it is so much cheaper!! Also, the American resorts are much nicer than the Japanese hotels. At dinner we took a survey, and no one had been to Okinawa but everyone (except me & Jacky) has been to Hawaii at least once!

We had 11 dishes of food... let's kick it off. Here is Shiraishi (Jazzy Dani) and me with some kind of fluffy purple rice chips and dried spicy cucumbers. Both were super yummy. I should also note that Okinawa has the healthiest food in all of Japan. In fact, Okinawa people tend to live 5 years longer on the average just due to their diet. (I think it might also because they are living in a beach paradise, but who knows?!)

3 types of mystery vegetables.

Caesar salad with a runny egg on top. They let me take my portion before they mixed up the egg with the lettuce.

Green onions with some fish hiding underneath.

Today was Jacky's last day for good. He goes back to Transfreight China. Pictured here with our General Manager, Kataoka, and my On the Job Trainer, Yosuke Kawakami.

Sashimi--raw fish. I didn't eat any this time.

Spicy roll made of egg with fish eggs inside. Actually, the spicy flavor made it pretty tasty. Drown out the fish egg taste!

My farewell gift to Jacky: a Transfreight "Engineering Lean Supply Chains" pen. He was super excited because apparently he saw me using this same one in India and was super jealous!! Jacky said it was a VERY NICE pen, and it has a different tagline from China, so everyone will be impressed. TFCL is still using "Explore the Opportunities".

I was told this was a chicken meatball...

...but in fact it was filled with 2 boiled egg yolks. Talk about an old bait & switch!! Thankfully the chicken drown out most of the egg taste!

Yosuke compared this dish to American "breakfast" because there is eggs, meat, and vegetables in it. Kind of like an omelet, I suppose. Also some fish flakes on top.

Japanese pizza. Basically a giant pancake filled with veggies. Also a little like okonomiyaki I had with Mika on my 2nd day here, but much better this time around!

As the night wore on and we order more & more beer, I forgot to take pictures of things when they first came out... Here's the Okinawa version of ramen noodles and some fried rice.

I learned many things as the beers were going down easy:

1. My Japanese language skills actually increased (or at least I was brave enough to speak a lot more!). I was ordering rounds for the entire table, and they were teaching me new words that I can actually remember today!!

2. My coordination goes downhill fast, and that includes chopsticks skills. I couldn't feel too bad though because I saw several other people drop food too, and then pick it up directly from the table and eat it!!

3. Japanese karaoke is just about the coolest thing ever!!!

The gang's all here, and we're ready to move to the bar to sing our hearts out!

We walked by the office on the way from the restaurant to karaoke, and 2 guys went back in to finish up some work for 30 minutes!! I can only imagine what my emails would have been like after 3 hours of drinking!! LOL.

I had a fab time singing a whole bunch of crazy American songs. No one seemed to notice that I'm pretty much tone-deaf...

Jacky & Miyamura sing a slow Chinese song together!!

Kerri & Shiraishi do a duet to Aerosmith's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing!!

A rousing rendition of We Are the World!

Kerri & her GM Kataoka close out with night with Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.

Japanese karaoke (as you can see from the pics) is in a small private room which you rent by the hour (or 3 like us!). They all love it, so you just have to grab the song books and start entering song codes to line them up!! People might also queue up a song for you to sing without your knowing!!

I had a great time. Some of the song I sang were: Pat Benatar's Hit Me with Your Shot, Miley Cyrus's Party in the USA, Madonna's Material Girl (so good I got high 5's all around!), Beatles' Hello Goodbye, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and the list could go on... My favorite group song was the Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. I was still singing it in the shower this morning!!

Oh yeah, this Monday night party didn't end until just before 1am!! We all took taxis home. As I was getting loaded into my taxi, Shiraishi was giving me tips about how to prevent a hangover. He was still making motions about drinking a jug of water even as the door was closed, and I was pulling away!! Apparently, he doesn't know that this Central Michigan University girl has had some practice with battling hangovers ;)

A cute video of Ema singing a Japanese love song. You can really get a feel for the tiny room.

Jacky is serenading Miyamura in Chinese, and then they start arguing in Japanese... priceless!!