Sleeping Jellyfish

I apologize for my tardiness but we had a round of quizzes and tests these last two weeks and then our phenomenal AIU Festival this past weekend, which I will discuss later, but for now, I am going to try to get in a few short posts over the weekend to catch up for some lost time. I feel that maybe if I keep the posts shorter people will be more inclined to check regularly and maybe to leave comments too. I like to be efficient and economical when it makes sense to. So, for today I will briefly show you how to make coffee in my room.

Step 1) Fill kettle with water.

This is my kettle. It is extremely useful for most types of cooking. Boiling water for coffee or tea, making noodles right inside of it, boiling an egg or two, anything really. Our Heatec hot plate uses IH style heating, which is more energy efficient (and seems to heat up faster) than conventional stove tops, but the drawback is you must use the specific IH pots, pans, and kettles. No ceramic or glass either.

Step 2) Heat water.

As you can see the directions are of course in Japanese and the temperature in Celsius but no problem with the help of our two best friends: a good dictionary and trial and error. The button I’m pressing turns it on, then the pink framed button just a bit to the left turns the actual heating mechanism on. Adjust temperature as needed, again mostly guessing. C= 9/6 + 32F, right?

Step 3-5) Get dripper from shelf, put on top of preferred mug, take filter from shelf and insert into dripper.

I hope this photo set accurately portrays the next few steps. The dripper I got for a dollar from The Daiso, its kind of like the Dollar Tree or something of that sort. They have ceramic ones too at tea shops and other stores which I might invest in because I’m always concerned about hot water leeching chemicals from plastics. But in all other manners, I think this is pretty creative. I’ve made drip coffee with some pretty creative tools while camping but this system works so well, I don’t know if I can go back to the machine. Speaking of I did look at, but I didn’t feel right dropping 40-50$ US on a coffee maker I would use for a year, and yeah I could probably sell after the year, but whatever. This cost me a few dollars and it works great.

Step 6-8) Grab coffee from shelf and deposit into filter, amount depending on preferred taste. Pour hot water from kettle into filter, and enjoy the beautiful sound of the luscious liquid chocolate drip drip dripping into the cup. Usually repeat steps 7 and 8 for a full cup.

Theres this import store in the mall where you can get cheese, salsa, Spam, European wine, Cambell’s soups, and various teas and coffee. Me and Michal also found this great tea shop/ coffee shop the last time we were in Akita City, where the owners sat and talked to us and had us sample some of their favorite teas. Just wonderful cheery people who were very happy that we were interested in learning about their language and culture and were of course very curious about us as well. My friend Dan who spent most of the summer in India complained about the lack of dark coffee, and I will agree, in most restaurants, bars, and teashops, its a bit uncommon. There are quite a few Tully’s and Starbucks in the bigger cities but we all know that is not real coffee. I feel bad for Dan and am very thankful to stumble upon fresh ground coffee in a few shops like the one I described.

Step 9) ENJOY!

I try to stick to only one or two cups a day, and I think now that it is getting pretty cold, I should buy some cocoa to help subside the urge to just make another cup of delicious hot coffee. I also have some tea put haven’t gotten any bags or a pot, just the herbs, so soon I will investigate some of those nifty tea pots they have at the tea shop.

Hope this finds everyone well and ready for the beautiful Autumn! I’d love to hear any great coffee stories or what your preferred method of coffee making is! French press? Italian? Instant? Let me know!

The are many fantastic perks to being an International Student at AIU. One of these is that the school offers many field trips and culture trips to see the local sights and take in the local flavor. Last week we had a trip into Akita City where we made 4 stops. First, we went to Senshu Park, a beautiful walking park that escalates up a series of gardens and stairways, up to Kubota Castle, the family compound of the Satake Family. The Castle was set high atop a hill with several gates along the way as to not need a normal wall close to the Castle to protect it. The park was beautiful with a lot of crafty waterways and sculptures.

This is the front gate to Kubota Castle, the castle that once stood in Akita. If I was an invading army, even if I had well strategized battle plans, I could easily get lost in the labyrinth that leads up to the castle.

A waterfall, a great example of the once natural waterworks that were on display. Lots of peaceful alcoves and pools where the streams would congregate…

…such as this. Some of the areas had recent embellishments such as the small fountain in the center of this picture. There always seems to be tension between the old and new in Japan, between preserving the old culture and embracing the last 150 years of modernization.

Here is the front gate, but on the way out. You can see a cross section of a tree on the left. Akita is famous for their Cedar trees and on warm days you can smell it. It very interesting.

This is Kubota Castle’s Osumiyagura Turret which served as both a lookout and weapons depot. It was very difficult to capture the whole Turret in one picture, but I hope this angle give a good perspective into how tall it was. And this wasn’t even the actual castle! Again, it was originally built without nails, using the Buddhist architecture brought over through Korea from China and India. Just alternating slats of wood with proper support. My Norwegian friend Magnus tells me its very similar to ancient Scandinavian building methods. Hmmm….

Here is a sculpture of Satake Yoshitaka, whose family ruled Akita for many generations. The family name, Satake, appears on street signs, monuments and many of the museum names.

Here is the Akita City skyline as seen from one of the lookouts in the Senshu Park. Notice the 711 off to the right. Again, 711 is the most convenient convenience store ever. EVER.

Next, we took a short walk to the Hirano Masakichi Museum of Fine Art. It was a smaller building but it housed many excellent works. It showcased many masterpieces including painter Tsugouharu Foujita’s “Events of Akita” which is one of the world’s largest oil canvas paintings in the world. We were not allowed to take pictures but I hope to go back there to see the exhibit again, as we only had a limited amount of time to spend there. There was a great series of etchings by Goya, and also a few minor paintings by Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh.

After the Museum we got back on the bus and headed to the Akita Market. It’s like an indoor farmer’s market kind of like the ones in the Northeast and Northwestern US. I’ve been to Pike’s Place Market in Seattle though not on the busiest days, so I didn’t really get to see the flying fish, but I think we were at the Akita Market on a pretty slow day too, a Tuesday. But, anyways, lots of vendors selling anything you can imagine. Radishes the size of your arm, apples the size of softballs, grapes the size of golf balls, and some of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet. The always give you a sample before you buy it, like when I asked for two apples, she gave me a slice and then gave all my friends slices, maybe its just good salesmanship, but I took it as kindness.

Fish! They have a restaurant in the vicinity where you can take what you just bought and they will cook it for you. If it is still alive they will fix that and then prepare it however you order it. We didn’t have time, but it sounds really cool.

More Fish! I tried to get a couple guys to go in on a whole fish with me, but we had no way to keep it cold till after the basketball game.

Melons, potatoes, kiwis, squash, almost anything that grows in the ground or above it, you can find it here. The apple I had was soooooooooo good.

Friends become guides and translators when they join us on our outings. The Akita accent is very deep and a bit hard for us to understand, even the native Japanese from the South think its kind of cute or funny. I’ve picked up a few of the local dialect colloquialisms though, and its kind of cool.

After the Market we finished off our day with a Japanese Basketball League game. Definitely not the NBA, it was still fun to watch, and especially to see how excited the fans got. The Japanese are in general pretty quiet and reserved, so it was neat to see them get rowdy. As gaijin we would just pick one of the teams and cheer for them. There was the visiting Sendai Tigers vs. the local Niigata Albirex. Did you know that an Albirex is a kind of bird? I didn’t until I went to the basketball game.

The game started off with a pregame performance. There was a drummer and flute player and they played some wild traditional music with a modern flair to it.

A bit blurry, but this is how the game was. We had pretty good seats, just behind one of the baskets. The teams were mostly Japanese with some Americans on each team.

This is for my sister, Kailee. During halftime they had a small dance troupe of little girls dancing with the older cheerleaders. There was also this weird tree mascot which I still don’t really understand. Maybe its the Akita Cedar?

And what Japanese Culture Excursion would be complete without some Engrish. For those of you who are unfamiliar with “Engrish” it is the term used to describe English being used poorly or translated improperly onto T-shirts, billboards, signs, etc. This usually comes up in Asia quite often. And it is called Engrish because it is difficult for many Asians to pronounce ‘L’ sounds especially when they are first learning. Japanese doesn’t have an ‘L’ consonant, so when transcribing it is often pronounced as an ‘R’, thus giving us Engrish. Visit here for more details.

So the sign says “We’re Always” and thats it. There’s not another one next to it. Just “We’re Always”. “We’re Always What?” you might ask. Nobody knows. People think that Asian cultures are so wise because they speak in metaphors and riddles but sometimes I think its just poor grammar or translation.

It was a great trip, had tons of fun, got to meet some great locals, and eat the largest apple I’ve ever seen in my life. Dad asked me to put up a few pictures of my accommodations and I’ve been meaning to for the last two weeks but just haven’t gotten around to it. I just took a series of photos of how I make coffee here because it is so amazing, I have to share. So. It should be up soon. Midterms are coming up, so I’m glad I got the coffee making down to a science now, before the textbooks hit the fan. Cheers!

So of course I would leave my camera in my room when we went out on Saturday for our friend Katrina’s birthday. I remember walking to the bus when it pulled up and thinking, “crap, I think I left my camera in my room”, but there were plenty of other people with point-and-shoots so I will just steal some of their pictures in an attempt to capture the evening.

I think the place that we went was maybe a bit atypical of many of the other Karaoke places in Japan. From talking to other people, it seems like the Karaoke clubs are a bar and/or restaurant with rooms that you can rent by the hour to sing to your hearts content, with the Karaoke being the focus of the establishment. The place we ended up was in what I think was the Red Light district of Akita, where there seemed to be 3 types of shops: Ramen/Udon/Soba Noodle Shops, “Hostess” Bars, and regular bars. Now when you take a group of over 20 gaijin and try to fit them all into a tiny Japanese bar it doesn’t really work out all the time, so we walked around for quite a while until we found an empty place that we could all have a few drinks at. Luckily, it also had a Karaoke room. The Japanese system for many drinking establishments is that you pay a flat rate for as much as you care to drink for a few hours, and at this particular place it was 3,000￥ or about 30$US. Many of us didn’t want to pay that much and because A) we had already been drinking on the train and on the way to Karaoke and B) we just wanted to sing and have a few drinks, so we were able to compromise and settle on a pay-per-drink system like whats normal elsewhere.

Here we are just having gotten off the train at Akita Station. You can see the determination in our faces. We intend to sing our lungs out to the best that Akita’s Karaoke scene has to offer. Actually it looks more like someone just told a good joke. Anyways, we were all really excited to celebrate Katrina’s birthday with a more recent Japanese tradition, Karaoke.

I think this is a pretty good portrayal of how the evening went. In this picture we are a motley crew of American, South Korean, Czech, Norwegian, and Mongolian. Canadians, an Australian, and a Russian girl are around somewhere. We had a few Japanese friends with us, a God-send when our Japanese skills deteriorated over the course of the night. Great friends, good drinks, and as many top 40 hits as you can sing. We tried a few Japanese songs as well but they weren’t as accessible to everyone as the American pop hits that everyone knows.

If you notice the time, it is just past 6am. One thing about Japan is that you can not depend on anything to be open 24hrs. Except 711. Most ATMs close about 6pm, the last train home is about midnight, so it is important to plan things out as much as possible. Now in our case, we planned on staying till the morning train, and many people who go into the cities from outside do, because of the “last train” factor. Many Karaoke bars (and bars in general) are cheaper past midnight, so we did not leave AIU until about 10:30 in the evening. The place we went stayed open until about 4am and then we were let loose on the streets until the morning train.

And that was our first Karaoke excursion. Well, the first for most of us, some of the people had gone before, but obviously its fun enough to warrant a second round. As for my second sampling, I will remember to bring my own camera, and hopefully nab a few more good photos.

Any questions, comments, complaints, please leave a message!

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited by my Japanese friend Riyo to go up to Kokunodate to see a festival. Riyo’s Kiwi boyfriend Dylan talked the festival up a lot and I am happy to say, it far exceeded my expectations. He described these big siege-engine type carts that people pull around the streets and then they face off and ram into each other. And then there’s tons of food and dancing and all the other cool things you would expect from a Japanese festival. Bear with me as I continue to figure out this blogging tool a bit better and try to space and organize things better so it is easier on the eyes. OK, ready, set, pictures!

Here we have the paper maché Samurai on top the of the carts. Some of them were pretty scary looking, others were seeming in better spirits, but they were all amazing in the detail that was put into them and the float-carts in general.

Here is the map in the middle of town where they conduct their “negotiations”. I asked Riyo what they negotiate, and she wasn’t really sure. Regardless, you can see the little arrow chips representing each neighborhood’s cart, and they are moved around the board in accordance to where the cart is in real time! You can’t really see, but the Kanji for each neighborhood is written on the chips to differentiate them.

I wish I had a picture to more accurately describe the impressiveness of the Japanese commitment to alcohol. After they would pull the cart down the street or around the corner, everyone would just sit down in a circle and drink. Each neighborhood had their own booze cart they would bring with them. Truly astonishing. Old and young, men and women. The funniest people to watch were definitely the old men, drunk off their bums, ordering the younger people around with such youthful vigor. But, anyways, here we have what I think is the best job. Not only are you constantly served drinks and food, but you just get carted around in a siege engine and get to play music. Its my dream job!

This is the good part. When two carts square off, everyone gathers on the side of it and pushes on of the beams or pulls a rope to ram the other team’s cart. Then then put a wooden beam underneath the front to stabilize it, seeing as there are still the musicians and the team leaders on top. The leaders where a special band and use the lanterns and whistles to coordinate pulls and pushes to try to push the other teams cart out of the way. Every now and then they stop for a little song and dance and then get back to it. Its all every entertaining.

Here you can see the mess of people all pulling on the carts with these huge ropes, while the guys on top coordinate the “attack”. They also used these wedge things behind the back wheels probably both for support but also as a sneaky way to inch the cart forward. You can also see a couple guys on the black team and further in the middle a few girls on the maroon team.

Kids being kids. What is their to say? They were adorable, doing the same motions and whistle blowing that their dads were doing. Grandpa is in the back, and half of grandma on the side. Mom, Dad, I should have asked for a ninja outfit for Christmas when I was 5.

And that was our trip to Kokunodate! My four traveling companions were Rachel and Holly from Australia, which are the two in their kimonos. Well, Rachel’s I think was a pretty legitimate kimono, Holly’s was just a bathrobe. And just ahead of them are Dylan from New Zealand in the hat, and to his right Riyo, friend first and possessor of a Japanese driver’s license and car second. We had a great time and towards the end met a bunch of English teachers from the area who came out for the festival. Its kind of a strange but really neat community that they have, among the international students and the English teachers, but it was great to meet some nice people in neighboring towns. I also had some food, the pinnacle being Sakura (cherry blossom) Ice Cream. Amazing. Wisconsin should be taking notes.

Right now, it is 10pm in the Midwest on Sunday the 14th. That means it is my little sister’s birthday, and so I’m going to try to call her on Skype. Happy Birthday Kailee!

My first week of classes at AIU just wrapped up. As far as reading load goes I think they will be easy, for example I only had to buy two text books, one for the Modern History of China and the Other for International Organizations and Law. In two classes the sensei (professors) just handed out a reading packet, and I brought my Japanese texts with me as I thought that they would be useful to study while I was traveling.

On the other hand, I think most of the sensei expect more of us because we are native English speakers and thus should be able to read and pick up the lectures easier than the Japanese or other international students. I guess we will see when the first round of tests come out. The sensei are awesome though. Just extremely top notch on all fronts, from qualifications, education, working experience, and personality. I’m very excited for this fall term.

I’m gonna try to post up a lot of pictures here and describe them a bit, so get ready. This first one is a shot of the Sun Mall which I cruised around for awhile in Sendai when I was there. I ate at an awesome curry restaurant which seem to function a lot like greasy spoon dinners in the States. You can sit at a booth or the counter, and it tends to be a lot of working class guys, a few suits, and then students and other twenty-somethings. The Sun Mall is a labyrinth of buildings that contain a variety of restaurants, clothing shops, and pachinko parlors. Pachinko is like Japanese slot machines but they are EVERYWHERE. Bright colors, anime characters, sexy advertisements. They tend to bring in a lot of older people and salarymen.

So, yeah, this is a picture of the outside of a pachinko parlor. I have not been in one yet, I hear they are kind of depressing places where people act like robots just dropping yen into the slots. But i think at some you can win money, at others you can win other prizes. I did go into an arcade though and of course got trounced in a couple games of Tekken. I heard that the arcades get rowdy at night because most of them are open all hours of the day so people who are out carousing will stop in for the drunken Street Fighter and such. Some the games are absolutely amazing, just the technology and such, but they also have a lot of old school games like Galaga and Centipede.

They have this fishing guy with a straw hat on everything in Akita, it must be their town mascot or something. Its really kind of strange but its kind of cute too. Akita is very rural by Japanese standards, though I think that it is pretty urban. So I guess its pretty neat that they take such pride in their city, and where they come from. Maybe that should seem more obvious that they have strong pride in their roots with all of the cultural festivals and just the emphasis in general that they place on culture in general.

Here is again with the fish but this time on a bus seat. So yeah, its kind of neat.

At the hostels and the ryokan I stayed at they give you these summer cotton kimonos. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose is but I think they operate the same way as a bathrobe, because they have public baths in most places. Only one hostel had an actual shower in the room. The rest told you where to go for the public bath and gave you the robe.

The picture on the right I think is a pretty accurate depiction of what our evenings consist of. We usually all meet up in the Global Village, where I live, meet any new comers, talk about home, have ‘cultural exchanges’, play music either out of an ipod or make our own, get good and drunk, sing songs, go for a last minute run to the beer vending machine, and usually somewhere between 2AM and 6AM everyone finally rolls into bed. Its a lot of great fun and probably the best way to meet new people. Only good times are had, and it always makes for great stories in the morning. The three guys on the right side of that picture are some of my best friends here. From right to left, Michal Kolmas from the Czech Republic, Peter “Sandy” Edwards, my roommate and fellow American, though he’s from New Mexico, and finally Yong-Tae from Seoul S. Korea. I didn’t know what real laughter was until I cam here, I think, because some nights I am genuinely scared I’m going to die from laughing too much. Its always a great time hanging out at the GV, though almost every night the front desk guy, who can’t speak English, comes out and tells us to quite down, so then we go hang out across the street at the Konbi (convenience store) and then go back the GV, or go walk around. There are a few of the desk guys, and two of them are really nice but there is one that is really mean and we call him “Dame-san”, because when he comes out he keeps telling us “dame, dame” which means “bad”. Anyways, its always a great time and I’ve made some excellent friends in the short time I’ve been here.

The other picture is of the Kanto festival performance that took place after dinner one night. There is a Kanto festival club on campus too. The giant lantern contraption is pretty heavy, and while people rotate in and out on the drums, a few other people rotate carrying the lanterns. They carry it around and place it on different parts of their body, like their hip, or forehead, or chin. Its really exciting to watch and sometimes they get carried away with the momentum and have to run a bit to keep it under control. The other guys in the picture from ,left to right, are Tonatiuh, from Mexico, whose name is Aztec and whose parents and family support help out with the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico. Next is one of the performers, and then on the other side of me the Yong-Hyung and Yong-Tae from South Korea.

I will continue with the pictures and stories as I collect them. I have a lot more pictures and I plan to put them up on a flickr account soon so you can browse them at your own leisure.

The technology in Japan is very interesting. Their phones and cameras are better than ours in the states but other things like Televisions and computers are comparable. The difference is really in the small things and the details. I think I discussed the problem with internet here, how in The States there is wireless everywhere, at cafes it is nearly mandatory. If you serve coffee, you better not be caught without Wi-Fi. Even most bars in Winona have wireless. Strange. But here you can’t find a signal to save your life. Not even at Starbucks. That is because people use the internet on the their phones, or go to an internet cafe and pay a dollar for ten minutes. The phones here can also pick up television broadcasts, act as MP3 players, record video and audio, and play it back. It seems kind of silly but I guess it would be nice to not lug around a 10 lb laptop all day.

Today I would like to mention a few other small differences particularly in the bathroom amenities. The toilets are from the future. Seriously, they are straight out of a sci-fi movie from the ’80s. Think Blade Runner toilets, or maybe 5th Element. So, when you first mount up and drop the drawers, you should take the time to relax. And with this amazing feat in sanitation engineering it is very easy. The button farthest to the left is a seat warmer. That is right. A toilet seat warmer, and the two buttons below are temperature settings. I fell asleep once because it was so comfortable. The next few buttons I think you can maybe guess what they are. I believe called a “douche” or a “bidet” in many countries, you have the pleasant option of not only wiping your own bottom, but giving it a thorough cleaning. You can control the spread of the water and velocity. The last button I believe is intended for the ladies according to the picture, since it seems to be a long haired person. You can also do a big flush or little flush depending on the size of your payload, and when you flush water comes out of the sink so you can promptly was your hands. Also there is soap that is injected directly into the water that replenishes after the flush so it acts as a self-cleaning mechanism. No scrubbing required for any long standing sinkers.

It is curiosities like these that make me think Japan is ahead of the curve as far as consumer based technologies. Is there anything on par like this in the states? I just for the first time used one of the new Airblade style hand dryers, where you put your hands in a knife motion downwards through streams of air. Fast and it feels nice too. The Iphone is pretty neat too but expensive and limited service choices. I wonder how much one of these toilets cost? And where can I get one?