“The” with a long e.

Tomorrow I’ll get my 外国人登録証明書 (gaikokujin tourokushoumeisho) or Certificate of Alien Registration.  It’s an ID card with my photo that I’ll always have with me.  Don’t leave the house without it!

What has me most excited is that I’ll finally be able to get a bank account and cell phone.  I’ve been all over the au website (English) trying to decide which model to get.  This shiny new phone caught my eye:

Oooo, red.  Well, pinky red.  The new phones are expensive though, even after signing up with a two-year contract.  So I’m looking at slightly older models, like this guy:

…except that my color choices are gold, pink, and purple.  Ew, ew, ew.  Here’s one more:

There’s also a “mist blue” in this style I’d like to see in person.

Needless to say these phones are tricked out with everything.  They have GPS and can give you on the fly directions to any address.  They can measure how long your morning jog was and how many calories you burned.  You can watch television on them.  It’s wonderful and insane at the same time.

So here’s what my day looks like tomorrow:

• Get up, eat aloe yogurt for breakfast, gather documents for day’s adventures.
• Go to ward office, pick up ID card and sign up for health insurance.
• Come home, sign up for bank account at the post office across the street.
• Go back out, walk past ward office on the way to Kawasaki proper.
• Find au shop near one of the many shopping centers, sign up for cell phone.
• Head back to the best shopping center for takoyaki.
• Pick up a book on “the fundamentals of bento lunch boxes” at the book store.
• Take the train back home.

At least I’ll have a new phone to play with while waiting for the train.  ^_^

One of the many great things about being in Japan is that there is a ton of authentic reading material in front of me every day–advertisements flashing by on the tv, signs in the supermarket, fliers in my mailbox.  I’ve been flipping through magazines at the bookstore, trying to find something at my level that will hold my attention.  I’m not into manga any more so that’s out.  I love politics and economics but don’t have all the jargon down yet.  What’s left?  Josei Seven.

If it looks kinda trashy… it is.  Think of it as a Japanese People, but a little more tabloid-y.  There’s the latest celebrity gossip, a couple of recipes, and lots of ads for beauty products.

While it’s kind of embarrassing to have out on the coffee table (Ken keeps turning the gaudy cover over to show an innocuous Panasonic ad) it’s great to study from.  It’s a mindless read for Japanese people, therefore an accessible read for me.  The text is a little bigger than usual to be easy on middle-aged eyes.  I’m becoming familiar with the current stars and their… escapades.  Tons of common, everyday vocab is repeated again and again.  To top it all off the magazine is printed on cheap matte paper that stands up well to my relentless underlining and notes.

An ad for Sony televisions disguised as an article taught me a great new word–ブラウン管, or “Braun tube”.  It turns out Karl Ferdinand Braun is the guy that invented the cathode-ray tube, paving the way for television.  So to this day analog tvs are called “Braun tubes”.  Neat!

Needless to say, this is how I spent my weekend.

Another thing I never thought I’d see… and I kind of wish I hadn’t.

Whale meat at my local supermarket.  It costs 498 yen for 100 grams, or roughly $5 for 3.5 ounces.

We didn’t buy any.

~

For the interested:  the meat is from a Minke whale.

This week I’m training for my new job–Assistant Language Teacher or ALT.  It can vary greatly from grade to grade and school to school, but basically I’ll be teaching English with the help of a native Japanese teacher.  I’m slated to work in elementary schools but don’t know any particulars beyond that yet.

Training is a little bit of everything, from paperwork to “cultural sensitivity”.  We get chances to give parts of lessons in front of everyone which is good.  The days feel long and I get home exhausted but I’m learning a lot.

Odd thing–in our group of about 50 there’s a girl that grew up maybe 15 minutes away from me.  The odds of that happening must be really slim, especially when we’re from little ol’ Upstate NY.  I told her my hometown and she asked, “Do you know Dennis?”.  Just like that, no last name or anything.  And you know what?

I did.

Scary.

In Kawasaki I found the one thing I thought I was safe from.  The one thing I was sure, dead sure, wouldn’t follow me to Japan.

How wrong I was.  Look, they even have the line.

The amazing thing–they bring you a free doughnut to eat while you wait.

The line is a clever tactic.  Have you ever heard “if there’s a line it must be good”?  That notion seems to be ingrained into Japanese brains.  The very fact that there is a line makes them want to stand in it, it seems.  Krispy Kreme has taken advantage of that here–notice they only roped off enough room to make a single file.  It looks longer than a line where people have room to clump.  It also moves faster, keeping people from getting demoralized once they are standing there.  And then the free doughnut.  Once you receive something like that it can make you feel more obligated to buy something.  Fewer people will give up if the wait is long and who knows, maybe they buy more once they get up to the counter.

Just goes to show you that everyone in retail is out to mess with your brain.  Mmmm brainz.

The other day Ken and I made a trip to Kawasaki Station in Kawasaki ward, Kawasaki city (I wish I were making that up).  It’s about a 40 minute walk from here though we used the train (10 minutes) to get back.  We weren’t sure what were going to find.  The station turns out to be surrounded by shopping centers.

We counted five but I think we missed some.  Here’s one.  There were these stores on the outside, more stores on the inside…

Real estate is really expensive here so malls tend to be small and tall.  I think this mall was four stories above ground, one story underground, and had three stories of outdoor shopping.  The basement floor was the best because it had all of the everyday stuff–lots of food, cheaper clothing stores, a nice supermarket.  It also had what may have been the biggest bookstore I have seen in my life.

This picture does no justice.  These are shelves F1 through F8.  There are many more shelves on all sides of me, all piled high with books on every imaginable subject.  Here, let me show you a map:

(click to embiggen)

Okay, so that picture was roughly one square of the F section.  Look at all the sections that are left.  Insane.  And as you can see they don’t only sell books–they have stationary and fountain pens and eyeglasses and what all.  I was overwhelmed.  Afterwards Ken and I recovered with some nikuman (pork buns).

I try not to eat them too often but they have a comic pull.  If only they made them with chicken…

Cuteness is culturally accepted in Japan way more than back in the States.  A 30-something woman can have a cartoon character on her bento (i.e. lunch) box and no one thinks anything of it.  I mean, just look at this bag I got from Mister Donut:

Awww.  Many things cute are sweetened even more with English.  Usually it’s unnatural, like all the examples you see at engrish.com.  Mister Donut really outdid themselves, though.  This tape closes the bag:

Ahh, you had me at hello.

When there’s a particularly large intersection there’s two main ways Japanese urban planners deal with it.  One is to create a scramble or “all cross” intersection, where traffic is stopped and pedestrians have free rein for a certain amount of time.  In Shibuya there’s a famous scramble intersection:

The other way overcome a tough crossing is to, well, go over it.

There are many pedestrian overpasses like this in Japan, and at first blush it’s a neat idea.  Traffic gets to flow smoothly, those on foot don’t have to wait for a long light.  It’s okay for us able-bodied folks.

But what about the elderly, the young, and those in wheelchairs?  Getting across this intersection is akin to walking up and then down a three story building.  There is no way to make the crossing at grade due to the guardrails.  I heard that barriers like this hurt Japan whenever they bid for an Olympics.

Later, on the same road, I saw this sign:

And hanging off of a pedestrian overpass, no less.  Ah, Japan.

I love Japan but it irks me sometimes.  Allow me to vent, starting with this story:

Near the end of last year I was diagnosed with borderline high cholesterol.  This was a shock for me–yes, it runs in my family, but I eat decently and walk a bunch.  Time to walk and exercise some more, the doctor said, and avoid saturated fats.  I managed to get my total cholesterol down to 196 right before I left San Francisco, mostly by cutting out a bunch of red meat and reading food labels like mad.  I love the USDA for spelling everything out for me so clearly.

Look at that thing of beauty.  All of the things I care about–saturated fat, trans fat (usually), cholesterol–all broken down.  I even see the good stuff for me.  80% of my vitamin A for the day, awesome!

Now let’s look at a Japanese food label.  Ken had some instant soup in the pantry.

Some kind of potato something or other.  In “Happy Size”!  I’m sure it has a lot of salt but what else is in there?

I see fat… but what kind?  And how about cholesterol?  No?  Is there anything in here that’s good for me?  It’s a mystery.

At least the serving size is easy–one packet.  Usually it requires major math.  Example:  a bag of eighteen rice crackers weighs in at 135 grams.  The serving size is listed as “per 100 grams”.  You practically need calculus to figure that per cracker!

Back to the soup.  The actual nutrition label ended up a wash, so let’s see what the ingredient list has to tell us.

There’s a lot here so let’s stick to the basics.  The character I circled in red means “milk”.  Milk has cholesterol.  Two of the red characters are preceded by blue circled ones which mean “non-fat”, but still.  There’s an awful lot of them.  Then add the cheese.  And the beef extract.  Not looking so great.

It feels like everything becomes a guessing game.  In the US I did okay by categorically avoiding certain things–mayo, eggs, whole fat dairy, shrimp, red meat.  (By the way, did you know that pork is actually red meat?)  That’s much harder to do here.  Rice ball fillings often have mayo or shrimp.  Sandwiches are “enhanced” with mayo or egg.  Pork is much more common than chicken.  I have only found one kind of low/non-fat yogurt and it was all watery and gross.

Ken has helped by pointing out and buying better alternatives for the house–mayo that says it’s lower in cholesterol, a special healthy cooking oil.  I’m sure it’s a little better, but how much?  The label doesn’t tell me.

What worries me is a lemon drink I saw stateside, in Japantown.  It had “Vitamin C!” emblazoned across the front.  A Japanese label doesn’t list vitamins but an American import label does–Vitamin C – 0%.  Ouch.

Time to rework my diet.

On my third day here I found a mook (a cross between a magazine and a book) filled with basic Japanese recipes that you can do in one pan.  It has great pictures and simple versions of recipes everyone should know.  I decided to start with one of the most basic:

Fried rice.  This is what I was shooting for.  So I got all my my stuff together…

…and had at.  Kinda off topic, but isn’t the little wisk cute?  Perfect for scrambling up eggs.

The recipe calls for one egg but the ones in my fridge were small so I ended up using two.  Silly me.  A Japanese recipe calls for small Japanese eggs, not big Karla/American eggs.  So while the final result came out fine it was a bit… eggy.

I made it again last night and you know what, it’s not bad.  The recipe is super simple so I feel like I’m missing a secret ingredient or something, but it’s definitely good enough to feed others.  Add one recipe to my (small) list of culinary triumphs.

One more thing before I go–I was talking with my mom and she didn’t believe that there were several hundred bicycles parked in front of the supermarket.  She wanted proof.  Here it is: