GT in Tokyo

hisasshiburi!

2006-10-22T22:22:00.000+09:00

aka, 'long time no see!'

I basically didn't post any blog entries for like 3 months. So I basically suck. My excuse is that I lost my link to the blog when I reformatted my PC, and was too busy to bother actually typing blogspot.com to go post something. If that isn't the weakest excuse ever, then I don't know what is. It is, however, pretty much the best excuse I can come up with.

So, I did a lot of stuff over the last few months. I went on a trip to Hokkaido, the northern-most island in Japan, it was lovely. While there, I drove a car! This isn't a big deal in America, but Japan is like England, where you drive on the wrong side of the road. Plus all the signs were all in Japanese, so it made it a bit of a challenge. Fortunately for me, that island is very rural, so the roads were long and had very few complicated intersections.

I also made a trip to Los Angeles, I tried to catch up with everybody while I was there, but I did miss a few people. If I missed seeing you, sorry about that.

School has started up again and I basically have zero free time, what with 6 hours of japanese study per day (3hr class, 2hr homework, 1hr quiz/test study), about 40 new kanji (chinese characters), and about 100 new vocab words per week. Not to mention the grammar tests at least once per week. It isn't called Intensive Japanese for nothing.

Oh, and I am still working half-time, which means I really do have zero time during the week.

The weekends are similarly busy, with study catch-up/study ahead time, errands, household chores, shopping, going to the gym and all the other stuff I don't have time to do during the week. I do have some fun though, usually going out Friday and/or Saturday nights to something fun, ideally someplace where I can practice my Japanese, so I can count it as Study Time. ;-)

Now for picture time! I went to a Jazz Festival in Kamakura with all of the Tokyo/Yokohama area Lindy Hoppers. A really good New Orleans Style jazz band played so we danced it up! Good times.

Here's some photographic evidence that I still exist and didn't end up a Human Accident on the Chuo Line.

Human Accidents

2006-06-08T23:37:00.000+09:00

There are a surprising number of train accidents in Tokyo. Certain lines will have several accidents a week.

Why have you never heard about these accidents? Is it a massive government cover-up? A conspiracy?!

No, not really. It's just that most of the accidents are what they call 'human accidents' (rough translation). The commuter express trains go at a rather speedy 70km/hr. When you wake up to find yourself in Tokyo, facing another horrible grind at work, and say, it's Monday or raining, or ... both. Sometimes it seems a much better option to just jump in front of a commuter train and be done with it.

So that's what they do.

I was surprised by the candid nature that my professors all talk about the near-daily suicide delays on the Chuo line (likely the most popular suicide-lines). They always 'say' accident, but everyone knows what accident translates to.

late student: Sorry I'm late.
teacher: train accident?
student: [nods]
teacher: which line?
student: Chuo.
teacher: so many accidents.

Often times the teacher will take a moment at this point to remind all of the students not to jump in front of the train, or perhaps just comment on the rainy weather.

Today in class, we were learning negative form for verbs. So the teacher was going over a list of example commands (that a teacher might tell their students):

teacher: please don't smoke in class
teacher: please don't drink alcohol in class
teacher: please don't do sloppy (home) work
teacher: please don't come late to class
teacher: please don't die

at this point the students were all a little confused. 'to die' was a new vocabulary word, so we were all not quite sure if we just heard her give us a command not to die or if we misheard some other verb.

Without any explicit question about it, she clarified the confusion/silence from the class:

teacher: [in english] don't commit suicide [pause] on the trains.

The bell rings, class is over.

New apartment photo tour!

2006-06-03T22:02:00.000+09:00

Ok, here's a photo-tour of my apartment. It's like living in Japan, only not!

(All pictures taken on cleaning-day so...yeah, a bit messy.)

[update: the thumbnail pictures that blogspot generated have some ugly visual artifacts. I think it is because I exported the images as GIFs rather than JPEGs. To properly fix it, I'd have to remaster all of the files, and I don't feel like doing that. The regular size ones are ok, as ok as Camera-Phone pictures get, at least]

Place-holder furniture

Ahh, there we go.

Well, I guess I should tidy up a bit before taking pictures... next time.

The machine!

No Tokyo-dwelling male is complete without his manpurse

Closet (left) and 'dresser' (right)

Washing machine.

A Japanese clothes dryer.
(utility prices are too high to run an American-style dryer, unless you're rich.
I'm not rich)

I hear that summer in Tokyo is really humid.
But I wouldn't know, it's not summer -- yet.

Our backyard. Yay! One of the (few) benefits of living on the first floor.
The other benefit is, naturally, cochroaches.

Moving on to the kitchen.

Our magic microwave/oven/thing. It can do all sorts of things,
but currently, we're afraid to turn it on, seeing as we can't read the manual.

It is clearly an artifact of great power, it must be studied and its secrets unravelled.

Kitchen essentials

The kitchen's dirty secrets, exposed!

My toilet can kick your toilet's ass.
Or at the very minimum, it will provide a significantly more squeaky-clean ass.

The move-in trash.
This country is very particular about how you throw things away.
And yet, everything comes with an inordinate amount of packaging.
It is a paradox that I have yet to unravel.

While not technically in my apartment, this sign is a staple of my daily walks to and from the train station. My one true wish is to grow up to be this cool.

Don't call it a comeback!

2006-06-03T21:52:00.000+09:00

So um, no updates in a while... a long while. Why?

1. No internet access at the new apartment until last weekend.
2. Midterms this week at school.

So, now that I have both those problems cleared, I will be posting again.

Next up, an exciting image bonanza, new apartment photo hour.

And then there was school

2006-04-30T23:39:00.000+09:00

So, um, updates have been pretty sparse from me lately, sorry about that. School kinda started and I am still getting used to my new schedule, so emails (& by association blogging) got seriously backlogged.

School is going well though, I so-far have either the top-grade in the class or darn close to it. Most of the competition is 6-month duration exchange students who are apparently only here to get drunk and party in Tokyo for a few months...so it's not a tough crowd to beat.

Oh! We found a new apartment! It's pretty sweet, only about 3km from Shinjuku. Kinda on the pricier side, but we were happy to get it. We lost four (count 'em, four) apartments due to the discrimination against foreigners by property owners. Apparently, Americans party with loud music, and skip town without paying their rent. Thanks to all those who tread the path before me, you have left a wonderful legacy.

So yeah, apartment hunting has been a long process and we're happy to found a place that is nice and still willing to rent to foreigners. It's only 3min walk from a train station too ;-). That's good times.

I'm going to fully document the awesomeness of our Gaijin House (temp housing) experience with photos and then take some photos of our new place & 'hood too. The difference is substantial!

Sakura dance party!

2006-04-11T00:01:00.000+09:00

A few weekends ago, I went to a sakura-themed dance party. We all had to wear something pink and the event was decked out with real sakura flowers. My pink shirt lasted through dinner, but once the dancing started was quickly cycled out for a few other (less pink) shirts. Dancing in long-sleeves for me is a bit of an impossibility.

"hayai!"

Hanami (cherry blossom viewing)

2006-04-10T23:47:00.000+09:00

I went to my first Hanami a week ago!

For those new to Japanese (like me) the word hanami comes from hana (flower) + mi (root of the verb 'miru', to see, watch, view). It's usually translated as a cherry blossom viewing or a sakura party (sakura being 'cherry blossom', the pink flower of the cherry trees in japan). The Sakura flowers only last about two weeks, and we were lucky to have good weather on Saturday.

The park we went to for hanami was literally full of people, thousands of people. Big groups of friends, families, couples, everyone came out to enjoy the sun and the beauty of nature. Festival food vendors were about, the kids were playing all manner of games and chasing eachother all around. It's really hard to do it any justice in words, I hope the pictures can convey a bit more.

It was a very fun picnic/party/thing and the flowers were truly lovely. Skip through the gallery to some of the later pages, where there are some really wonderful vistas (I'll try and reorder the pictures some to put some of the nicer shots up front).

Hanami pictures

2006-04-10T23:33:00.000+09:00

Here's the pictures for our Hanami a week ago. Cheers to Mike for hosting them!

http://gallery.tarix.net/main.php?g2_itemId=1866

さくらの花

2006-03-27T15:24:00.000+09:00

Tokyo Motorcycle Racing Circuit

2006-03-26T17:41:00.000+09:00

...otherwise known as "my neighborhood".

One of the questions I got a lot before I moved here was "How did you find an apartment?", referring to the difficult prospect of finding an apartment in Tokyo from Los Angeles.

Well, I'm sure that's possible, but not what we did. We are staying in a "Gaijin House", which is basically a minimally furnished temporary apartment for those who are only intending to stay for one to six months or so. Theoretically, you could stay here permanently, but most people wouldn't really want to.

A gaijin house is much cheaper than a hotel, but more expensive than a similarly equipped apartment for regular rental. And, if ours is any example (and from what I've heard from other sources, it is) they tend to be pretty ghetto living. Our apartment is very clearly a post-WWII reconstruction apartment, right above an Italian restaurant. It's old, pretty run-down, weirdly designed, and small. The bathroom sink is in the shower, it doesn't have a hot-water tap, only cold. The only mirrors are in our bedrooms. The list goes on. Basically, it's not a place I will miss when we move into a proper apartment.

But the point of this whole segue is, the windows are very thin. Good old-fashioned single-pane windows, they keep most of the cold out, but about 1% of the noise. And we're on a pretty busy little street given its only two lanes.

Every night is a non-stop symphony of loud-ass motorcycles, delivery trucks and the clogging of girls' boots as they walk home from the subway station.

Today's Kanji is 京 as in 東京 (Tokyo), pronounced kyo- with a long o sound. This kanji means 'capital', thus making Tokyo the 'eastern capital'. it was renamed from Edo to Tokyo when the capital was moved there from Kyoto. Hey wait! Does Kyoto also use the same Kanji? Why yes it does...

Spring Festival

2006-03-26T17:23:00.000+09:00

Walking to get some MOS burger lunch today, Mike & I ran into a local (and quite small) festival of sorts. A few people had some flea market sales going on, there was a few festival food stands and some guys cutting up a very large tuna.

Yum.

Oh yeah... welcome

2006-03-19T22:17:00.000+09:00

So I just posted about my pre-trip baggage experience, but I never even posted a welcome message. So here it is! 歓迎!

Hi, this is my blog. I decided to move to Tokyo, and I'm here now, trying to figure out the ins and outs of Tokyo gaijin living.

There are some funny blogs and comics about foreigners living in Japan, I can't garauntee this will be one of them. I will generally just be posting odds and ends that come to mind or stories that I find interesting enough to type. If you're expecting consistent entertainment, it's probably best to move along citizen.

Ok, enough for today. Bedtime!

Today's Kanji is 東 as in 東京(Tokyo). 東 means 'east' and is pronounced with a long 'o' sound in Tokyo (To-kyo-). Next time we find out what the 京 is. Can you guess?

Life Compression is Lossy

2006-03-19T21:22:00.001+09:00

Ok. So, somewhere along the way I decided it was a good idea to move to Tokyo. That was my first mistake.

Well, not really. It just sounds cooler if I say it that way.

Anyway, my friends back home suggested I start up a blog so that they can keep track of my misadventures among the citizens of Tokyo. So, here I am on Day 4 trying my hand at the hot new thing from a few years ago, blogging.

What about the title of this post, then? Life Compression. That's my term for what I've been up to for the last six months since I made the decision to come here. You see, moving from L.A. to San Francisco is a pretty simple operation of renting a moving truck (or hiring one), loading all your stuff and driving it to the new digs. Moving across the ocean is a quite different matter altogether.

Shipping rates, even ocean freight were astronomical, and quite impractical. Plus Japanese apartments aren't known for their spaciousness, and Tokyo apartments even more-not-so. So I looked over everything I owned and chose its fate: Sell, Store, Simplify, Ship. Or as I like to call it, Life Compression.

For the stuff I decided to ship, I ultimately decided to pack it all onto the plane as luggage.

GT: "So the extra bag fee is $85? and the max weight per bag is 70lb?"
airline rep: "Yes."
GT: "and I get two bags free, what's the maximum I can bring?"
airline rep: "five bags, a single carry-on and a camera/laptop/purse."
GT: "and each bag can be 70lb?"
airline rep: "that's correct"
GT: "w00t."

So, I brought with me to the airport: four suitcases, each weighing in between 50 and 70lb, one large box at a hefty 72lb (ding! overweight fee!), a duffle bag, a laptop and a camera bag. And 6 bungee cords strap my bags onto a single luggage cart ^_^.

Each bag was inspected, or should I say 'molested', by the TSA. I'm sure my PS2 and boxer briefs were a clear threat to national security, time to lay on some Inspection Action. Thank you Mister President for securing our freedom by keeping it in storage indefinitely until the War on Terrorism is won! (just like the War on Drugs, War against Communism, and War against Crime before it, no doubt).

Only you can stop luggage abuse.

Anyway, I did manage to get all my stuff to Tokyo, and then sent it on its way via the magic of the Baggage Delivery Service. If you ever move to Tokyo, and bring four suitcases, a large box, a duffle and camera bag, I highly recommend it.