Incandescent Moon Rats

Japan is very clean.

Today, for the first time since arriving in Japan, I saw litter.

It was an open, finished can of Asahi beer. It was gently and politely placed on top of a stack of bound newspapers, completely out of sight, not at all making the subway appear dirty in any way.

I found... clean litter.

... Japan is very clean.

Don't ask what the "D" stands for

Me, Megan, and Alex went into Osaka yesterday (it's basically the equivalent of going into 'the city' for somebody who lives in NY but not in NYC). Osaka is gigantic - it's the second largest city in Japan - but the buildings weren't quite as imposing for me, a New Yorker, who has been to NYC many times. Megan and Alex were pretty awe-struck, however. What made my jaw gape was yet to come.

Walking aimlessly, we wandered into what we called a "tunnel-mall". The best way to explain this is thus: picture a subway entrance. Now picture, if you will, that once you reach the bottom of this entrance, it opens up into an underground shopping mall, where the second-third floor of the buildings in this underground road/mall reach ground level, then continue upwards into 7-8 floor buildings. Each floor of every building is another restaurant/arcade/pachinkothing/hotel/bar/spa/store. Thus, in just one block, you might pass about a hundred different stores.

We walked for about three blocks and spent about 8 hours in this one tunnel-mall. They're all over the place, too. There are some 'tunnel-malls' that span almost the entire city.

We went arcade-hopping for a little while, since Megan and Alex are as geeky as I am, and the amount of amazing things we witnessed was incredible. There are arcade games in Japan that cannot even be fathomed by Americans. You know an arcade game is going to be intense when you notice it has its own fire extinguishers. There are a whole slew of Gundam games, and if you're not familiar with the Gundam series or can tell the differences and nuisances between how each game plays, you'd think there was an entire room with only one game in it. There's Half-Life 2: Survivor, which is essentially an arcade game that brings you through every major part of the PC game Half-Life 2, except with an almost RPG-esque class-based online multiplayer deathmatch tacked on as well. The game plays with a two joysticks in order to emulate the PC-style of play, instead of a light-gun like most shooter arcade games. Speaking of light guns...

As we walked into our third arcade, me and Megan spotted, huddled in the corner, the best arcade game we've ever seen. Silent Hill: The Arcade Game. Immediately we looked at each other with glee, hugged, and ran inside, and threw 100 yen coins into the machine without restraint. The sounds, music, and locations were all taken directly from previous Silent Hill games, and coupled with really good speakers and some sort of noise cancellation device, we were able to hear almost everything that was going on in the game despite the loud arcade around us. This was the only light gun shooter to truly SCARE the living crap out of me, and we loved it. Whenever Pyramid Head showed up as a recurring boss, the three of us were screaming in terror that could be heard, likely, throughout the entire arcade: a testament to how amazing Konami's horror franchise is.

Me and Megan have become addicted to a Japanese arcade game called "Quest of D". Like a surprising amount of Japanese arcade games (some kind of new phenomenon), Quest of D utilizes collectible trading cards. There are a lot of these kinds of arcade games in Japan, where you collect cards that have creatures, items, skills, troops, whatever the game uses, and the game itself will READ these cards, either by placing them on a computerized playing table, or by placing them inside the machine itself. Every time you play the game, you get a booster pack with one or more cards inside... Making the game incredibly addicting. I imagine it'd be even better if me and Megan could converse with the Japanese people around us to trade cards, but at least we have each other to trade with for now. When we started playing, however, a very nice Japanese man (yes, man, he must have been in his twenties) who had hundreds of cards was kind enough to show us how to play, since the tutorial was in Japanese. He even GAVE us as presents (we were able to converse despite our meager language skills) holographic foil rare cards that he apparently didn't need. I soon learned there is a sort of underground arcade 'society' here that by no means exists in America. Grown men and teenagers alike spending coin after well-earned coin on a collectible-arcade-card-game doesn't happen in America (though if you take the word arcade out of that sentence, it's a different story).

Even games that DON'T utilize cards have some kind of ID card associated with it, that you can purchase for a cheap price, and it takes a record of all of your stats, ranking, etc. The Virtua Fighter 5 consoles here are ripe with these ID cards - the more wins you accumulate, the more you can customize your characters by bringing this ID card to a little terminal and spending a sort of 'VF credit'. This sort of thing just doesn't EXIST in America.

We also, in the height of geekdom, visited a shop that had rows and rows of Manga, Doujinshi (amateur manga, basically), video games, and DVDs. The inside of this shop seemed to be modeled after the inside of a Dragon's mouth (as the entrance), the walls being made of a plastic-like material that looked sort of like a cave at first glance.

In Japan, while it is not incredibly common to see, there are no laws against showing bare breasts in advertisements for pornography, such as posters seen outside of 18+ DVD stores. Interesting tidbit.

We ate dinner and headed back on the train towards Hirakata, feeling quite fulfilled. Maybe my next post will be less geeky. This one sort of HAD to happen.

The Komatsu Plant

There's a Komatsu plant in between where I live and the main campus of Kansai Gaidai. I pass it on my way to and from the school every day, as well as on my way to the main road (route 30 I believe) leading to Hirakatashi station. So I see it about 3-5 times a day, on average.

Komatsu, I think, is the company that owns the plant. What exactly happens inside the plant is a mystery to me. Do they make something inside? Is it a construction plant? Is it for some other purpose? I may never know. Japanese men in business suits are constantly walking in during the morning hours, though I never really see one leaving in the afternoon or night. There are a ton of what appear to be unmarked trucks inside, coming in and out of the main gate, which is very close to Kansai Gaidai's east gate. There's a lot of warehouses inside, which are marked with Kanji that I can't read, adding to the mystery.

There's also a lot of men on small vehicles that look a bit like bulldozers, except they're not dozing anything, nor are they bull-like. Actually, they look a bit like tractors, except, with nothing on the back. Why the hell are those there? It doesn't even look productive. And sometimes - I am not making this up - I hear a certain song coming from inside the plant as I pass by. Doesn't matter what time of day or what seems to be going on. About 25% of the time, when I pass by, I hear the Mickey Mouse theme song. No joke.

This leads me to three possible conclusions, neither of which help at all.

1) The workers of the plant, grown Japanese men, enjoy listening to the Mickey Mouse theme while they work.

2) The workers of the plant are subjected to listening to the Mickey Mouse theme by their bosses, who for some reason take enjoyment in forcing this song on thier workers.

3) There are children inside the Komatsu plant.

The first thought is disturbing, because, well, even if Japan IS a little different taste-wise than America, no grown man should enjoy working to this song. The second is just as disturbing, and makes me feel like liberating the nihonjin from their oppressive bosses. But it's the third that makes me feel the most disturbed. What are children doing in a Komatsu plant? Why is their music so loud? Why aren't they at home? What are children doing in a Komatsu plant? Are they the worker's children? Are they the bosses's children? Are they anybody's children? Are they the workers?

... I wonder what they make in this Komatsu plant...

Jerkasaurus Rex has Hyper Beam

A trip to Kyoto was scheduled during the orientation week period, with many purposes in mind - firstly, to get the ryugakusei to interact more with the nihonjin gakusei (Japanese students), and secondly, to see some of the sights of Japan that are famous and tourist-y. The entire class was divided into groups of five to ten, and then delegated to a group of Japanese students who would show us around Kyoto at their pace and liking. The group I was in consisted of Megan, Kim, Amanda, and a few others I hadn't met yet, Seth, Robert, Tom, and James Craven, otherwise known as JC (or simply Craven). When I asked if he was related to Wes, he said he was.

The group of nihonjin we were with was a group of five girls, who for the most part stuck to themselves. Most of them knew very little English, with the exception of Mana-san, who was an English major. Me and her spent the walk to Goten-Yama train station talking back and forth, her in English and me in Japanese. The train fare from Goten-Yama to Shijo station in Kyoto was 340 yen, or, a little less than three dollars. Once we reached Kyoto we took a bus from Shijo station to reach our destination: Kiyomizudera, the largest temple in Kyoto.

Kiyomizudera is a buddhist temple, and one of the most famous ones in all of Japan. It has turned into somewhat of a tourist attraction over the last hundred years or so, but still has a lot of history and interesting things to see. First we went (uphill) up a winding street filled with souvenir shops and restaurants, then another large set of looming staircases, before reaching the temple grounds. If we turned around, we saw the entire city of Kyoto sprawled before us, as we were on one of the tallest points in the city. Entering the temple cost about 400 yen, which is a small price to pay when compared with some of the tourist traps of America.

There are a million things to take pictures of. There's a large bell used during New Years, and next to it, an area where requests are made (of the buddhas, presumably). Requests are either placed on a narrow piece of paper and tied around a long pole, or placed on a small wooden plaque and hung with hundreds of others. There is also, inside the actual temple area, a place where people throw in small amounts of money (5 yen, 10 yen, 100 yen, etc) and pray for some kind of wish, usually something that the temple has to do with. Each temple has a specific purpose (academics, love, health, etc). Kiyomizudera, I'm not sure about, but I throw in a coin and make a wish anyway.

There's a pool of water with a bunch of cups with extremely large handles nearby. Mana-san tells us it's not for drinking, and you cannot put your hands in the water, but you can use the long-handled cups to get water from the pool and rinse your hands that way, and that it's for purification. I wonder if it's alright to, after rinsing my hands off, splash the water onto Craven, who's next to me. I think for a second and decide not to. Extra purity might be a good thing but it might also be taboo to splash buddhist-purity-water-stuff on other people.

We continue down a trail on the mountainside. To the left is a gorgeous-looking forest. We pass a ledge where there are about thirty people taking pictures of the scenery. The ledge has the best view of the city of Kyoto in all of... Well... Kyoto. It's absolutely amazing, especially at the time of day when I saw it, with the sun just setting below the mountains on the horizon. As we reach the bottom of the trail, there is another large pool of water, but this one is much larger, and there's a fairly long line winding nearby. Above the pool, three small fountain-like rivers of water are streaming downstairs from up the mountain. I've heard about this before. Each fountain represents something like love, life, and happiness, or something along those lines, and if you drink from all three, it's good for you. We all hop on line. Craven's in front of me. There's a bunch of long-handled cups in a device labeled UV Cleaning, with a purple-hued light inside. When Craven takes a cup out of the container, it makes a horrible screeching noise that causes half of Kyoto to cover their ears and mutter in Japanese, "what the hell was that?" Craven laughs. Ooops. We go to each fountain and drink. The water is quite refreshing considering how much we've walked in this heat. Craven drinks his from a completely full cup, gulping it down like he's a fish who hasn't been in water for days. Nihonjin and ryugakusei alike are staring at him. "What? I'm thirsty."

We finally leave the temple after a bit more sightseeing. I'm starting to get the hang of sentences like "Let's do this," or, "Shall we do that?" a bit better, since it's most of what the girls say in Japanese, and most of how we respond. We head down the same street we came from and stop a few places to buy souvenirs or get ice cream (which is REALLY good). Taking the same bus back to the train station and the same train, though this time, to Hirakatashi station, which is actually a bit closer to where we live, we decide to stop and get dinner at the station.

Hirakatashi is the main part of Hirakata, the part where buildings are more than two stories tall and it's taken advantage of everywhere. No building in Hirakatashi that is more than one story tall is owned by only one company. As a matter of fact, a building with four stories will often have upwards of eight different things inside - a restaurant, a bookstore, and arcade, a cafe, etc, etc, etc. We head into a building and up an elevator to the third floor where the girls tell us there is an amazing restaurant. Seeing as they live here, we take their word for it, and it's a good thing we do.

The atmosphere isn't any different from a normal western restaurant but the food is incredible. Everything to eat in Japan is just plain better than in America. I haven't yet had a meal where I thought "ew, this tastes terrible", or felt really fat for eating such an unhealthy meal. That night, in addition to some peach tea, I had pork stuffed with cheese on a skewer. So good. We exchanged jokes and stand-up comedy (What did the bear say to the rabbit? Nothing, they're animals, they can't talk.) until it got late, and then headed off, just arriving in the nick of time before the dormitory closed its gates.

We passed a place on the way back called "Game Dino". I'll have to check that out.

Jugglers, Bears, Scientists, Rice.

That night, me and Eliza planned to eat dinner, and before leaving, I invited Ruth and Kim. Of course, as with all good plans, they exploded, and before we knew it there were eight of us, including some new acquaintences: Jen, Nikki, and a boy whose name I forgot - and an old one, Amanda. We made plans to meet in the park by the dormitories at 7 o'clock, which would make us fairly hungry. When I made it to the park, Nikki was there, speaking to two nihonjin, an old lady and a young man who was juggling not three, not four, five, or six, but SEVEN balls at a time. Granted, he could only do so for a few seconds, but it was impressive nonetheless. Everybody else was late, so me and Nikki spoke to Juggler-san for a while. He was very amicable, asking us questions about where we came from and why we were in Japan. It was the first time I'd ever held a conversation with a native Japanese speaker, knew exactly what he was saying at all times, and was able to respond immediately. Before long everybody else arrived, and we headed out, passing on our way an insanely large dog being walked by its owner. This dog was gigantic. I mean, it wasn't really a dog, so much as it was a POLAR BEAR. That's how big this dog was. It was incredibly friendly (and thankfully, so was the owner), allowing all eight of us to pet it at the same time.

We explored for a long time, passing many good restaurants, before we finally settled on one. However, it didn't have room for eight - many of these restaurants were walk-in, sit down at a booth-type thing, and eat while they cook right in front of you. Many were also very, very small. We decided to split up into two groups, with the people who spoke Japanese decently split among those groups. Me, Ruth, Nikki, and Eliza went as one group, while the other four went into the restaurant we'd found. We wandered for a little while before stumbling across another booth-like restaurant where we saw a group of four nihonjin teenagers hanging out and drinking. We didn't recognize anything on the menu, but we chose to go inside anyway, sort of hoping the menu inside would have items we knew. The cook and another young man bowed as we entered and we sat down at the closest seats. Next to us was one of the four teenagers I'd seen on the way in. He was wearing a shirt that said in English, "I Are A Scientist". Whether or not the shirt was grammatically correct on purpose I'd never know. Maybe it was supposed to say "I Am A Scientist", or maybe it was supposed to make fun of the fact that a scientist was wearing a grammatically incorrect shirt. Who knows. It's Japan. The man taking orders handed us hot towels (sometimes we get hot towels, sometimes cold towels, and sometimes a choice between one or the other - what the big difference is, I don't know) and we told him in Japanese that we'd like some water, and that it might take a while for us to decide on something.

Looking at the menu, we soon realized there was nothing on it we recognized. Everything was either Kanji or Katakana that didn't make any sense. Sometimes the Katakana entries are obvious (like Hamu Chiizu Tousuto, which is Ham & Cheese Toast) and other times it makes no sense at all, just a compilation of whatever syllables happen to be on the cook's mind. Before I had the chance to say anything, Ruth decided to order something at random, simply because it had the kanji for rice in it, so we knew it had rice. She ordered it for everybody.

My skepticism died away when we received our plates. It looked like normal fried rice, except it was a lot of it, and there were chunks of smaller vegetables inside, and a bit of what looked like shredded seaweed on top. This would be the first of many meals that made me more full than I thought was physically possible. It is considered rude to not finish a meal given to you, especially if it is home-cooked or in a family-owned restaurant. Every grain of rice had to go. As delicious as it was, about three-fourths through the meal, I began to think it wasn't possible. There was so much. Ruth was done before everybody else, having collected and eaten every minuscule piece of rice and vegetable on her plate. We all eventually finished completely, not wanting to be out-Japanese'd by the others. Me and Eliza were last.

Me and Ruth shared a very small bottle of sake that was fairly cheap, and then the four of us headed out, learning a bit more Japanese on the way out (betsu betsu means separate and isshou means together, as in, how you are paying the bill). We walked slowly back to our separate dorms, thankfully not getting lost on the way back.

The next night, very similar plans were made...