Planes, Trains, & Automobiles...

Sunday starts a busy travel week for me. I am taking a business trip to Singapore and China and by my estimates I will be in: 1 train, 3 planes, 2 hired cars, 1 bullet train, and countless taxis. I will also be in 5 airports and have to clear Immigration & Customs 4 times!!

Here's another geography lesson. (You can click on the map to make it larger.) Singapore is in the tropics close to the equator, and I am looking forward to temps in the 80's! Next, I move on to Hong Kong and then to Guangzhou, China. Weather in those areas should be high 50's or low 60's.

Now your next question, I'm sure, is: Isn't Hong Kong part of China?! I've gotten quite the education this week, and the answer is: technically Yes, but for all practical purposes No.

Check out the map below; the yellow line indicates a "border" crossing. Hong Kong is actually a S.A.R. of China, which stands for Special Administrative Region. They have their own currency, passports, parliament, and legal systems. Americans are allowed in Hong Kong without a visa for up to 24 hours, but as soon as I get to the yellow border, I will need to show my visa documentation to enter China.

Silly Signs

I see plenty of goofy things every day. Since I can't read the Japanese billboards, some times I make up my own slogans for them! Now that I am learning to read Hiragana, I better post them before I realize how wrong I am!!

First is a sign from the bathroom in India. Apparently you should "rub" your hands for hygiene and only wash them when visibly soiled. WOW!! That's wrong on so many levels, and they wonder why their water is unsafe for human consumption?!

Here's a sweet Hindi billboard from India. I call it "Shake What Yo Mama Gave Ya!". (Imagine it with an Indian accent, too!!)

This Shell gas station near my apartment is more interesting than silly. At 126 yen per liter, I figure a gallon of fuel would be about $5.27. Feel free to check my math!

Here is an example of a Pachinko & Slot club that you can find sprinkled around Japan. I'm not really sure how they work since gambling is illegal (outside of horse racing), but I've heard that you can slip money through a small hole in the wall and receive chips to gamble with. I haven't quite figured how you "cash out" when you're done. There is some loophole they can get away with since the betting doesn't actually occur with cash, but the whole operation sounds pretty shady. (P.S. "Pachinko" reminds me of Covington.)

This hotel is down near the port in Nagoya. I love that the Hotel Watergate has an elephant as a mascot. Coincidence? I think not!!

I keep thinking that an "Egg-citing statement should go here"!

This feisty lady says "I will kick some Powder Puff girl BEE-hind! Hi-ya!"

These cute little Posties work for the Japan mail system so "Yay!! Let's mail some packages!"

Hahaha! Reminds me of Nintendo's Raving Rabbids in camouflage and with extremely large teeth!!

No mystery for this sign... Clearly dogs should scoop their own poop in Japan!

Food again

In my world the topic of food never gets old. I still enjoy trying new things in Japan, and I recently had the joy of sharing American food with my new co-workers.

After the New Year, I came back to work and found people giving me Japanese treats to try left and right.

For example, one co-worker from Tokyo brought me (and only me) a "Tokyo Banana" raisin cookie when he visited from Tokyo one day. If you can imagine, this is a sandwich cookie with the biscuits in the shape of a banana, and then it had banana filling with raisins! Some of you may recall that I don't really like bananas, and I don't like raisins in things (only by themselves), but I ate it just the same. After I sent him a thank you email the next day, I found out that "Tokyo Banana" cookies are very popular, and the raisin version was a limited edition, so he thought I should really try it!

Another example occurred when my trainer (Kawakami) and I were in a meeting together. When we got back to our desks, I had 4 treats waiting for me (2 chocolate-covered hazelnuts and 2 blueberry cheesecake KitKats), and Kawakami only had one!! He immediately called me out on it, and jokingly asked why the American gets all of the yummy treats!

Okay so back to me sharing my American food... After my visit to the States, I brought back an entire suitcase full of non-perishable goodies from Michigan. At first I was reluctant to share (because I bought my favorites!), but the Japanese have been so nice to me, it's literally the least I could do for them!! So I brought in a tin of Reese's PB cups, mini Butterfingers, and mini Hershey's holiday mint chocolates and passed them out to the 40+ members of my division. Everyone was so thrilled to get to pick out a piece of American chocolate it still cracks me up!! American chocolate is very rich compared to Japanese chocolate, so a mini sized candy bar was probably just enough for them. (Some times I wonder if they forgot to add sugar to the Japanese sweets I try!?)

The next day I was passing around my American candy tin to my department of 6 people again, and Kawakami asked "Which one did Higashi try?" I told him I had no idea and asked him why. Kawakami said that this guy Higashi was raving about the candy to him, saying it was delicious and the best he'd ever had!! So we had to ask Higashi (and give him another piece, of course); it was the Hershey's white chocolate with mint for your reference!

I should also mention that as a thank you gift from one person I got a 2010 calendar. When I got home and opened it up, I realized it's a sumo wrestling calendar!! Just what I want 12 close-up pictures of... a bunch of jumbo nearly naked men... hahaha!!!

Here's a few more examples of weird & wonderful foods in Japan:

Interesting soda that I saw in the market and decided to give it a try: Pepsi Azuki. I thought it was pretty good, and I bought it again for lunch one day. My co-workers had never had it before, but were surprised I liked it because guess what?! Azuki is... red beans!! (You know the stuff they put in a lot of desserts around here that I don't find too yummy!) Sometimes it's better not knowing. Every sip I take now all I taste is beans...

How about these goofy brown & white speckled eggs I saw in the market recently? I put them next to regular brown eggs so you can see how small they are. What do you think they are from (pigeons?!), and who would eat them?

There are very few Burger Kings in Japan. (Like one in Tokyo, and that's it.) But apparently if I ever get a craving for fries & ketchup, I should try these chips!! LOL. It was a small bag with about a $4 price tag, and I'm curious what they taste like but maybe not THAT curious... Lastly, I found a new foreign food store today. They pretty much all carry the same things, and you have to remember that foreign means every where outside of Japan, so it's not just dedicated to American food. But I did find one food item that made me super excited: Johnsonville brats!! I didn't buy them today since I was on my way to work and had no way to keep them cold, but they will be purchased and enjoyed very soon :)

Coming of Age Day

Many of you know that I just finished enjoying my first 3-day weekend of the new year. Japan has many national holidays, and there is generally at least one 3-day weekend a month. Monday, January 11th was "Coming of Age" Day, and I had no idea what it meant until today!

Coming of Age Day is celebrated on the second Monday in January, and it marks the transition between childhood and becoming a responsible adult. So this week's celebration was in honor of people celebrating their 20th birthday between April 2009 and March 2010. The age of 20 is when Japanese can smoke, drink, vote, etc. and are thought to now be "self reliant members of society".

Neighborhoods host ceremonies for their residents turning 20. Females generally wear a special type of kimono for unmarried women with extra-long sleeves and elaborate designs. A full set of formal clothing is expensive, so it is often borrowed from a relative or rented rather than being bought. Males some times wear traditional kimonos too, but most wear formal Western clothes, such as a suit and tie.

Some days living in Japan is like putting together a puzzle. When my lunch ladies were telling me about this tradition today, a light bulb went off in my head! On Monday I was out walking around and saw many young women wearing kimonos outside nice hotels and other swanky establishments. I knew it was a strange sight (since kimonos are so fancy), but I never connected the dots as to why the women were all the same age, and that it had something to do with the national holiday!! I'm sure this won't be my last "aha!" moment while living abroad!

Language class

Friday marked my first day of Japanese language class at the local YWCA. Previously, I have been using Rosetta Stone and an e-learning course offered by Mitsui, but I am excited to get some classroom training. The homework and grade at the end will keep me on task and accountable for my progress. If I do well, I can continue with an intermediate session.

There are 12 students in the class (max capacity), and I am the only American and the only English speaker. Home countries of the other students include: 3 from China, 2 from Korea, 1 from Thailand, 1 from Brazil, 1 from Germany, 2 from Turkey, and 1 from another country that I couldn't understand and is not in our textbook! Since we are such a diverse class, only Japanese will be spoken; all other languages are prohibited!!

We meet two mornings per week for 3 hours each day, and oddly enough, our teacher is different depending on the day of the week!

My first class went well. Some students are more advanced than me, and others are less advanced than me! I do need to quickly learn my Japanese characters, though. Everyone else seemed to have them memorized!! There are 3 different alphabets (characters) used in Japan, but this class will focus on mainly Hiragana. I have included a picture of most of the alphabet below. I will also need to learn G, Z, D, B, and P, but they share some of the characters.

Here is part of my first completed homework assignment. I made pink boxes around the answers that I wrote. My characters look so fancy already! Now I just have to turn it in and find out how I did on it!

Here's the flashcards I made to help learn the Hiragana characters this weekend. (Luckily it's a 3-day weekend!) Yes, they are on lion notecards that I bought from the 100 yen store!!

Japanese Sweets

One of my new Japanese friends has been dying to take me to try "Japanese sweets" since the first time she met me... today was finally the day! Now when I think "sweets", I think desserts like cake or pie or a sundae, but once again things are little different in Japan!

Before we get to the food, here is a pic of a huge flower arrangement for the New Year inside the mall on the way to the sweets shop. Sadly, most New Year decorations and flower arrangements were removed yesterday or today because they only celebrate the New Year until January 7th.

First sweet was this glass of goodies. From the bottom: red beans, green tea paste, ice cream, peach, and some blocks of chewy green tea paste.

This isn't a sweet, but I took a pic any way. One lady didn't want sweets, but instead ordered shrimp with soy sauce wrapped in seaweed. The kicker for me was that these were so small, like 2 inches long and 1 inch wide!

Next is cold green tea mixed with red beans and topped with a scoop of ice cream. Seeing a theme? They really think red beans are sweet and are a dessert. I tried them and am not a fan, certainly not as a dessert. A few people got to try some Japanese snacks I brought home at Christmas. One was green marshmallows with brown paste inside (yuck!). As it turns out, I was feeding people green tea flavored marshmallows with (you guessed it) red bean paste!!

Next sweet choice is mostly fruits: strawberry, kiwi, peach, apple, lemon, and orange on a bed of what looks like clear Jell-O cubes served with a scoop of ice cream. As it turns out, the Jell-O cubes really have no taste (kind of like pure gelatin), but are actually very healthy and made from seaweed of all things!! You are supposed to eat a bite of that with something else to provide the flavor.

Finally, my "sweet" choice. Very similar to the fruit & gelatin bowl above, but I also have a scoop of ice cream surrounded by 3 globs of chestnut paste and a chestnut. The chestnut paste was a little over the top for me. It was quite rich, and I didn't need 3 helpings of it. I thought the chestnut was just garnish, but no. At the end of the meal, they asked me to eat it, so I did!

So to everyone who has ever tried to serve me fruit as dessert in the States (while I give them a dirty look and run to the freezer for a popsicle or ice cream bar), you would really love it in Japan!!!

Meanwhile, I will continue my hunt for the the rumored "cake buffets" over here... my goal is to find one to take Mom to when she visits me in April :)

Happy New Year!!

After an excellent 10 days in the USA, I am back in Japan and ready to start to 2010. Right now the Japanese are crazy for anything tiger-related since 2010 is the Year of the Tiger!! Here is the hand-painted figurine I have on my desk at work. That's right ~ Peace, Baby!! My first day back to work in Japan was actually a half day. We got the afternoon off to celebrate the New Year. My General Manager decided we should all take our free afternoon and go visit the most famous shrine in Nagoya to say our New Year prayers.

The approach to the Atsusa Shrine. It was a mob scene lined with special little stands selling Japanese festival foods, tiger trinkets, and other good luck charms.

You had to wait patiently (or fight the crowd, depending on your perspective) to get to the front of the shrine to toss your yen, bow twice, clap twice, pray silently for the New Year, and bow once more before you retreat. You choose the yen coin you believe is most appropriate for your wish. For example, if you throw 1 yen (1 cent) then your wish isn't very important, and you don't care about it too much. So I opted for the 10 yen (11 cents), but I did see a couple bills tossed onto the shrine, and the smallest bill is 1000 yen ($11)!!! I guess they really need their wish this year!

People everywhere you look. One guy I was with said the only place that had worse lines was Disney World in Orlando, Florida!! By the way, I found out that there are over 80,000 shrines in all of Japan!! Considering I've been to 10 or 12 already, I thought I was nearly done with them. I'm pretty sure that's not the case! (In fact, today I was invited to take a weekend trip to visit some shrines with a girl from work, but unfortunately I will be on a business trip during that time period.)

One friend I was with elected to buy a "fortune slip" for 200 yen.

If you like your fortune, you take the slip home with you, keep it for 2010, and hope it comes true. If the fortune is not good for you, it gets tied to some twine at the shrine, as my friend is doing.

You can see the shrine workers are replacing the twine because it is so full of discarded fortunes. That's a lot of crap fortunes for 200 yen a piece!!

Just down the road was (not surprisingly) another shrine. This one (Akiba Shrine) was considerably less busy.

By the way, every shrine that people tell me about (or I visit) is described as the "most important" or "most venerable" or "oldest" or "most popular", etc. It's funny how each shrine has some claim to fame!!

Lastly, I leave you with a new pic of the Meitetsu Girl. Remember from my Christmas blog when she was dressed in pink Christmas bulbs?! Now she is advertising the bi-annual Japan sales, which occur on January 2nd and July 1st. I am told there are some great deals to be found right now, but I just got plenty of new stuff when I was in the States, so I can't think of anything I should be shopping for!!

Merry Christmas!!

By the time most people read this update I will be on a plane to Michigan!! I'm so excited to see my family, visit with friends, and be reunited with Clifford (my Big Red Car)! From Dec 23rd to Jan 2nd, you can reach me (call or text!) on my old work cell phone (859-757-8683) or at my parents house.

Even though Nagoya has pretty mild weather, I still manged to get into the holiday spirit. They have great light displays every where you look and stores were always playing American Christmas tunes. Here's a few of my favorite sights that I've been saving up for a special Christmas blog:

She's called the "Meitetsu Girl" and was the first thing I took a picture of when I arrived in Nagoya on Nov 6th! She's in front of the Meitetsu Department Store and Train Line that I will be taking to the airport. Her outfits get changed for each season and/or holiday. I can't wait to see her new ensemble in January :)

Japan loves cartoon characters so much that many places have their own cartoon mascots, even the city of Nagoya!! Here's Mr. & Mrs. Nagoya wishing you a Merry X'mas! Cute Asian girl driving Santa's sleigh can be found on every street corner!

Light display with special "icicle" lights that actually move to look like they are dripping!

Remember my post about the lighting of Nagoya Station? Here's the area directly underneath the giant wall of lights. It's a walkway of lights.

And, of course, you can get your picture taken with your favorite lighted cartoon character.

All Japanese characters that I'm unfamiliar with, but nonetheless entertaining!

Awesome holiday trees.

One mall (Esca) had a "Rudolph" theme!

Christmas tree at a department store... all of the ornaments are little sweaters!

This one is just plain creepy! I have no idea why that deer in the background looks so real and the cartoon reindeer has a face like a person and a dot in the middle of his forehead...

Common Japanese pork chain restaurant. They also dressed up their mascot!

Saving the best for last... There is a cool skyscraper in Nagoya that makes neat designs from their office lights. It was really tough for me to catch because in the evenings people would still be working and the wrong lights would often be on. But at 10pm or later you could get the full effect. Here's one side...

... and the other side!! It's like a work of art!! I love how they even have different colors.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

I will see many of you very soon, and everyone gets a break from the blog for about 10 days :)

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!!