Friday, 5 November 2010
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Catch up
It's Tuesday and my week is over. Phew. It's a national holiday tomorrow and this weekend we have our university's festival which means lessons on Friday and Saturday are cancelled and I have no more lessons until next Tuesday. YESSSSS! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my freedom. I have friends heading off all over Japan (mostly to places I am already booked to visit later this month or in December - can't complain) but I'm not too sure what to do with myself. So far I think I'll spend a couple of days chilling in Tokyo catching up on unlearnt vocab, heading to some art galleries and mooching. On Friday, if the weather is nice, me and Jessi will head to Nikko to see the autumn leaves and then on Saturday I might as well enjoy the reason for my freedom from lessons and see what this festival is all about.
So, until then I'd better put photos I've been taking over the last few weeks that I never got around to sorting out.
About two weeks ago we went to Asakusa to a temple called Senso-ji. Very big, very impressive, very templey.
This one of the arcades of shops leading up to the temples. I'd heard it was a good place to buy souvenirs and, though it was, it probably the most touristy feeling place I've been to so far (2nd only to Tokyo Tower which basically had a shopping centre of souvenir shops at it's base).
Senso-ji is known for it's large lanterns. And large they were.
Having a little play with dof.
The temple had some beautiful grounds which this photo does nothing to sum up accurately. My camera wasn't enjoying the low light levels and I couldn't be bothered to fiddling with it to look better (it need a tripod and a wider angle lens really).
Another temple crossed off the list.
The Sunday just gone a group of us got hold of tickets for the "infamous" Waseda vs. Keio Baseball game. I was rather excited about it, I never go to sports matches (in fact I think an ice hockey match in Quebec might be the only professional sporting even I've ever been to...). But this baseball match wasn't professional, it was the universities' grudge match. According to Wikipedia a lot of players from these teams go on to become pro baseball players, so it was skilled stuff.
Whether the match was good or not, I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't know the rules of baseball to begin with, and secondly I couldn't watch it half the time because whenever we were batting our section of the crowd had to stand and do cheers and chants. They had us chanting things like gambatte (good luck) to the bowler (pitcher?) and singing fighto fighto fighto. It was good fun and a bit exhausting but I didn't come away any the wiser about baseball. Which I've been told is a good thing because according to everyone I talk to about it, I'm just told it's a boring game. We lost anyway. Hey ho.
On the other hand, the cheerleaders were fantastic. The guy in the middle there lead the cheers the whole way through the match and he never lost any energy or enthusiasm. I'll upload a video I got of the cheerleaders doing their thing, but I'm sure the photos give you a good idea.
And that was the baseball. It was fun to have gone and experience is but I don't think I'd rush back. I think I'd rather play a game of rounders.
I thought some people might be interested in the food I've been eating in Japan. My diet has been pretty terrible since arriving - nightly trips to the 100Y shop for my sugar fix of baumkuchen or chocolate are a habit I need to shake. I also have found myself pretty intimidated by the supermarket, not know what anything is or what to do with it. I'm now making a positive effort to stay off the bentos and start making my own food. More on that later.
So, the food at the baseball game was pretty funny and entirely meat based. The most popular option seemed to be KFC, but other options included...
WILD SUPER TURKEY REG - one of my favourite Engrish signs so far. If turkey reg isn't your cup of tea, instead you can have a plate of sausages:
Myra with my sausages. They were good sausages, too. As I say, this place was not vegetarian friendly, there seriously weren't any other options. And I won't say what direction the conversation turned when I went back to my seat with a plate of assorted sausages, I'm sure you can guess.
Moving on, here's a little stall we found when wandering around Shinjuku a couple of weeks ago, just beyond the dodgy part and into the Korean part of town.
He said they were called Korean pancakes. He had a big tub of doughy batter beside him which he threw on the hotplate. The guy asked us what fillings we wanted but none of us could understand him so he put one of the 3 fillings he had in each, which turned out to be cheese, red bean paste and cinnamon. When we realised red bean paste had been put in one we decided to draw lots on who got which. I ended up with cinnamon so I was pretty happy! It was quite a tasty little snack, but I wouldn't recommend the cheese or red bean paste.
And, just as common as finding red bean paste in your pancakes is finding matcha green tea in just about anything else. Matcha chocolate, ice cream, and caffe lattes are all popular here.
Another strange meal I ate yesterday is this thing:
No, I don't know what it is either. We saw a stand with a queue in front of it, so we joined it and this is what we got. It appeared to be some sort of a batter mixture with bits and bobs in it which is cooked in a half-spherical mould on a hotplate. They turn it as it's cooking so it comes out spherical and then you chose what sauce you want on top. I went for teriyaki and, inevitably, it came with mayonnaise and chopped up kelp. It was really difficult to eat with chopsticks (even worse when everyone stares at you to see how good you are with chopsticks). Inside the batter I found sweetcorn, a bit of a frankfurter sausage, some tentacles, something white and stringy and a small boiled egg (quail's?). It was quite a food adventure.
Now to some nice food...
How good does that look?! After a hard day's university and a bit of shopping in Shinjuku, Jessi and me stopped by a department store to pick up a bento for our evening's meal. And wow, the food court would rival Harrod's, it was huge! In the end I went for this fish bento (can it be called sushi when they're not in those bitesize pieces?) and, in the background you can see a basil and potato salad. Both were absolutely gorgeous and rather healthy :)
So, as I said, I have to stop eating pre-made meals (even though they're far and away better than your curry in a box from Sainsbury's). So here's what I made today:
Udon with chicken, leek, and mushrooms. Okay, it doesn't look fantastic. And it tasted okay. But I was just chuffed with myself to have been able to work out what any of the ingredients were in the supermarket (no oxo cubes here). And, look ma - mushrooms! I've only started to eat and enjoy them this week and now I'm cooking with them.
Phew. That's it for now. HOPEFULLY next post will be full of gorgeous autumnal foliage from Nikko - hope I don't miss it at it's best!
So, until then I'd better put photos I've been taking over the last few weeks that I never got around to sorting out.
About two weeks ago we went to Asakusa to a temple called Senso-ji. Very big, very impressive, very templey.
This one of the arcades of shops leading up to the temples. I'd heard it was a good place to buy souvenirs and, though it was, it probably the most touristy feeling place I've been to so far (2nd only to Tokyo Tower which basically had a shopping centre of souvenir shops at it's base).
Senso-ji is known for it's large lanterns. And large they were.
Having a little play with dof.
The temple had some beautiful grounds which this photo does nothing to sum up accurately. My camera wasn't enjoying the low light levels and I couldn't be bothered to fiddling with it to look better (it need a tripod and a wider angle lens really).
Another temple crossed off the list.
The Sunday just gone a group of us got hold of tickets for the "infamous" Waseda vs. Keio Baseball game. I was rather excited about it, I never go to sports matches (in fact I think an ice hockey match in Quebec might be the only professional sporting even I've ever been to...). But this baseball match wasn't professional, it was the universities' grudge match. According to Wikipedia a lot of players from these teams go on to become pro baseball players, so it was skilled stuff.
Whether the match was good or not, I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't know the rules of baseball to begin with, and secondly I couldn't watch it half the time because whenever we were batting our section of the crowd had to stand and do cheers and chants. They had us chanting things like gambatte (good luck) to the bowler (pitcher?) and singing fighto fighto fighto. It was good fun and a bit exhausting but I didn't come away any the wiser about baseball. Which I've been told is a good thing because according to everyone I talk to about it, I'm just told it's a boring game. We lost anyway. Hey ho.
On the other hand, the cheerleaders were fantastic. The guy in the middle there lead the cheers the whole way through the match and he never lost any energy or enthusiasm. I'll upload a video I got of the cheerleaders doing their thing, but I'm sure the photos give you a good idea.
And that was the baseball. It was fun to have gone and experience is but I don't think I'd rush back. I think I'd rather play a game of rounders.
I thought some people might be interested in the food I've been eating in Japan. My diet has been pretty terrible since arriving - nightly trips to the 100Y shop for my sugar fix of baumkuchen or chocolate are a habit I need to shake. I also have found myself pretty intimidated by the supermarket, not know what anything is or what to do with it. I'm now making a positive effort to stay off the bentos and start making my own food. More on that later.
So, the food at the baseball game was pretty funny and entirely meat based. The most popular option seemed to be KFC, but other options included...
WILD SUPER TURKEY REG - one of my favourite Engrish signs so far. If turkey reg isn't your cup of tea, instead you can have a plate of sausages:
Myra with my sausages. They were good sausages, too. As I say, this place was not vegetarian friendly, there seriously weren't any other options. And I won't say what direction the conversation turned when I went back to my seat with a plate of assorted sausages, I'm sure you can guess.
Moving on, here's a little stall we found when wandering around Shinjuku a couple of weeks ago, just beyond the dodgy part and into the Korean part of town.
He said they were called Korean pancakes. He had a big tub of doughy batter beside him which he threw on the hotplate. The guy asked us what fillings we wanted but none of us could understand him so he put one of the 3 fillings he had in each, which turned out to be cheese, red bean paste and cinnamon. When we realised red bean paste had been put in one we decided to draw lots on who got which. I ended up with cinnamon so I was pretty happy! It was quite a tasty little snack, but I wouldn't recommend the cheese or red bean paste.
And, just as common as finding red bean paste in your pancakes is finding matcha green tea in just about anything else. Matcha chocolate, ice cream, and caffe lattes are all popular here.
Another strange meal I ate yesterday is this thing:
No, I don't know what it is either. We saw a stand with a queue in front of it, so we joined it and this is what we got. It appeared to be some sort of a batter mixture with bits and bobs in it which is cooked in a half-spherical mould on a hotplate. They turn it as it's cooking so it comes out spherical and then you chose what sauce you want on top. I went for teriyaki and, inevitably, it came with mayonnaise and chopped up kelp. It was really difficult to eat with chopsticks (even worse when everyone stares at you to see how good you are with chopsticks). Inside the batter I found sweetcorn, a bit of a frankfurter sausage, some tentacles, something white and stringy and a small boiled egg (quail's?). It was quite a food adventure.
Now to some nice food...
How good does that look?! After a hard day's university and a bit of shopping in Shinjuku, Jessi and me stopped by a department store to pick up a bento for our evening's meal. And wow, the food court would rival Harrod's, it was huge! In the end I went for this fish bento (can it be called sushi when they're not in those bitesize pieces?) and, in the background you can see a basil and potato salad. Both were absolutely gorgeous and rather healthy :)So, as I said, I have to stop eating pre-made meals (even though they're far and away better than your curry in a box from Sainsbury's). So here's what I made today:
Udon with chicken, leek, and mushrooms. Okay, it doesn't look fantastic. And it tasted okay. But I was just chuffed with myself to have been able to work out what any of the ingredients were in the supermarket (no oxo cubes here). And, look ma - mushrooms! I've only started to eat and enjoy them this week and now I'm cooking with them.
Phew. That's it for now. HOPEFULLY next post will be full of gorgeous autumnal foliage from Nikko - hope I don't miss it at it's best!
Sunday, 31 October 2010
dubyuh
Waseda-Keio Baseball game tomorrow! I hope it doesn't get typhooned off. Incidentally, I'm quite liking what a typhoon does to my hair; the wind and rain combo really gives it some volume. Finally an excuse to stop showering.
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Nihongo Frustration
The problem I am finding with learning Japanese is that so much of it has to be learnt by rote. For every lesson we have a vocabulary list we have to drill into our head and then we are tested at the start of every lesson is a short 5 minute test. Sounds easy enough, and in theory it should be. But more and more it's evident to me that my brain just doesn't like being force fed these abstract noises which are, most of the time, completely disconnected from their English meaning.
I'm reminded of bitter memories of Primary School where my parents, siblings and a succession of teachers tried to drill times tables and spellings into my head. I can now vividly remember how I felt then because it's how I feel now; stupid. In our Japanese lessons we started right back at the very beginning, literally having to relearn how to read and write. I knew this would be the case but what I hadn't realised was how frustrating it would be.
For instance the difficulty in learning things such as when counting abstract numbers like one, two, three, four, five it goes ichi, ni, san, yon, go but when counting things it goes hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu, itsutsu, and it's different again for counting machines, or flat objects, or small animals, or shoes and socks, or persons ad infinitum.
Even worse is when I dutifully revise the vocabulary and the grammar expected of me, I get up and go to my 9am Saturday lesson and I can just about keep up and understand what is happening. Then sensei turns to me, and the one question she directs at me I don't understand one of the words, my mind empties and I just look and feel stupid. This is after I've consciously stepped up my effort to work before lessons. So it's not my effort or lesson preparation, I'm just bad at languages or, perhaps, just stupid.
I'm reminded of bitter memories of Primary School where my parents, siblings and a succession of teachers tried to drill times tables and spellings into my head. I can now vividly remember how I felt then because it's how I feel now; stupid. In our Japanese lessons we started right back at the very beginning, literally having to relearn how to read and write. I knew this would be the case but what I hadn't realised was how frustrating it would be.
For instance the difficulty in learning things such as when counting abstract numbers like one, two, three, four, five it goes ichi, ni, san, yon, go but when counting things it goes hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu, itsutsu, and it's different again for counting machines, or flat objects, or small animals, or shoes and socks, or persons ad infinitum.
Even worse is when I dutifully revise the vocabulary and the grammar expected of me, I get up and go to my 9am Saturday lesson and I can just about keep up and understand what is happening. Then sensei turns to me, and the one question she directs at me I don't understand one of the words, my mind empties and I just look and feel stupid. This is after I've consciously stepped up my effort to work before lessons. So it's not my effort or lesson preparation, I'm just bad at languages or, perhaps, just stupid.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Bread
I miss good bread. The shops around me just doesn't seem to offer much beyond packets of white sliced bread. I don't think I've seen any brown, wholegrain or seeded since arriving. Even worse - you can't seem to buy a whole loaf of sliced bread; they come in packets of 6 or 8 slices without the ends.
Why oh why Japan? What are you doing with the ends of loaves? Why can't a girl get a decent seeded batch around here? I can't quite bring myself to fork out 350Y (£2.70) for half length French stick. I miss nutty bread with mustard seeds that pop when you toast it. I weep for Warburton's!
Why oh why Japan? What are you doing with the ends of loaves? Why can't a girl get a decent seeded batch around here? I can't quite bring myself to fork out 350Y (£2.70) for half length French stick. I miss nutty bread with mustard seeds that pop when you toast it. I weep for Warburton's!
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Kawagoe Matsuri
Yesterday we went to Kawagoe, located in Saitama, for the famous large matsuri (festival). It was about 30 minutes on the train from Ikebukuro, we set off after my last lesson on Saturday and arrived when it was starting to get dark - about 5.30pm (so early!). The place was packed full of people and had such a fun, lively atmosphere. On all the side streets and some running parallel there were food stalls and game stalls for children, and on the main road there was the impressive parade itself.
Apparently Kawagoe is famous for this festival and it was easy to see why. There were elaborate and beautifully decorated floats on large wooden wheels being dragged up and down the streets by large teams of men, women and small children. When the floats came to stop in front of either a stage with performers on or another float, they would stop it, spin the platform to face the opponent and have a music battle with drums, wooden flutes and metal percussion type instruments.
It's sort of hard to describe and, frankly, I'm not at all sure what any of the background story about the floats, masks or whole event are. So, instead, I have photos of several of the floats, battles, and lots of the food and game stalls so you can be a bit stumped by it all too.
A float battles with performers on stage.
The parade was rather stop-start but the performers on the floats never stopped, they were so energetic all evening.
Cute kids in traditional costume were everywhere.
A battle between two floats. During the battle a crowd of people with lanterns would run between them cheering and making noise. At about this point me and Jessi got crushed - I've been in plenty of squashed crowds and stuff at festivals and gigs but never one like this consisting of mainly old people and people with babies.
Apart from the parade to watch, there were loads of food and game stalls, as I mentioned. Most of the games and some of the food was intended for the kids but, being gaijin, we were allowed to play some of the kids games and had some of the rules broken.
These were Hello Kitty and Doraemon (the blue cat thing pictured) shaped sweets. He had a tub of batter he poured into the moulds, then it would cook (somehow), after which he'd open it up and pop them out. They were really tasty!
Bananas dipped in chocolate and covered in hundreds and thousands. Not my cup of tea.
Okonomiyaki being made
Fish on a stick being cooked. I quite wanted to try this but I wasn't really sure how you'd eat it so I gave it a miss.
I love the concentration this kid was giving to the bouncy balls swirling around in this game. I don't really know the aim (apart from to collect bouncy balls with the sieve he was holding) and we didn't stick around long enough to find out.
Face masks.
There were lots of these goldfish stalls. The kids were given paper spatulas - they had to scoop some or any goldfish they could into their bowl before the paper disintegrated. Any they caught, they kept.
Bizarrely and, a little shockingly, tortoises were an alternative to catching goldfish.
Jessi tried out this game, she was given a hook made from paper and had to try and hook out a balloon by a rubber band attached to them. Yep; the guy had to help her and she only managed to get one!
This stall was selling shells and dried puffer fish. I love the googly eyes.
Although I was absolutely shattered by the end of the day (a combination of an early morning to get to lessons and all the walking we did that day) I'm so glad I went. It was fun to get outside of Tokyo where being gaijin was a bit more of a novelty. At one point Jessi and I sat at the side of the street because my feet were hurting and we'd lost everyone else. Sitting there for 20 minutes was some of the most fun people watching I've done. As we sat there, people walking past were completely unashamedly turning their heads to stare at us; middle aged guys were smiling and waving at us as they stared, guys were being hit by their girlfriends for looking over at us and little kids were gawping. When we decided to leave and were heading to the train station, I felt a tap on my shoulder - it was some drunk old salaryman saying (in Japanese), 'do you wanna drink with us?', which we politely declined.
Apparently Kawagoe is famous for this festival and it was easy to see why. There were elaborate and beautifully decorated floats on large wooden wheels being dragged up and down the streets by large teams of men, women and small children. When the floats came to stop in front of either a stage with performers on or another float, they would stop it, spin the platform to face the opponent and have a music battle with drums, wooden flutes and metal percussion type instruments.
It's sort of hard to describe and, frankly, I'm not at all sure what any of the background story about the floats, masks or whole event are. So, instead, I have photos of several of the floats, battles, and lots of the food and game stalls so you can be a bit stumped by it all too.
Apart from the parade to watch, there were loads of food and game stalls, as I mentioned. Most of the games and some of the food was intended for the kids but, being gaijin, we were allowed to play some of the kids games and had some of the rules broken.
Although I was absolutely shattered by the end of the day (a combination of an early morning to get to lessons and all the walking we did that day) I'm so glad I went. It was fun to get outside of Tokyo where being gaijin was a bit more of a novelty. At one point Jessi and I sat at the side of the street because my feet were hurting and we'd lost everyone else. Sitting there for 20 minutes was some of the most fun people watching I've done. As we sat there, people walking past were completely unashamedly turning their heads to stare at us; middle aged guys were smiling and waving at us as they stared, guys were being hit by their girlfriends for looking over at us and little kids were gawping. When we decided to leave and were heading to the train station, I felt a tap on my shoulder - it was some drunk old salaryman saying (in Japanese), 'do you wanna drink with us?', which we politely declined.
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