Classy and Jazzy

Things around here have been both uneventful and fairly busy at the same time. This is making it somewhat difficult to decide what to write about here, which usually means that I am about to writing a fairly rambling post.

In any event, it's December over here (much as I assume it is elsewhere in the world). This means it's getting close to Christmas time, the run-up to which has been accompanied by the usual over exposure to Santa imagery, evergreens, poinsettias, etc. Of course, this being a non-Christian country, everything is slightly skewed - which I find generally fantastic. We have the ubiquitous "Happy Merry Christmas" signs, Christmas trees made entirely from tinsel and/or bows, random objects decorated as presents, and on and on. I'm also continually amused at the Christmas cake and Kentucky Fried Chicken ads that surround me and let me know that Christmas is for lovers. But what I really find fascinating is the constant Christmas music, which is refreshingly free of words and fairly uniformly upbeat (imagine Silent Night is a version that sounds like Dave Brubeck filtered through the Peanuts cartoons). In addtion, lacking any connection to Christianity, the tunes that dominate are those that are free of Christian imagery. This is doubly refreshing: Christmas music without the words and without the Jesus, marvelous! But then I started to notice that one song inexplicably dominates the selections that serenade one in the malls, cafe's, etc. (seriously, I hear this song at least 4 times an hour when we are outside of house) In fact, I was fairly startled the first time I realized what the song was, and have been consistently re-startled each time I hear it, especially because it seems like such an idiosyncratic choice. I'm trying to build up some suspense here, though I'm not sure how well it's working, so I'll just post a video of the song in a version that is one of the few that I've heard here with the words intact. 

Curiously, the fact of hearing the Jackson 5 sing this song here is not in itself that surprising, given the general obsession here with MJ that doesn't show any signs of abating. 

Some of the other things that have been going on include:

North Korea - they put a rocket into space yesterday. We were just having coffee on the couch when I saw a tweet about it and turned on the TV to see every station reporting on NK's boneheaded actions. 

Earthquake - a fairly big earthquake occured on Friday close to the location of 2011's big earthquake up in Miyagi prefecture. Again, media coverage was pretty intense but the danger was over quickly and was confined to a small area with relatively small tsunamis. 

Cavaquinho - an instrument I've been borrowing from one of the samba bateria members. I've been thinking about picking up a small string instrument lately (on the order of a ukulele). After samba practice on Sunday, however, I was expressing my frustration with having played 4 hours of shaker and my desire to do more melodic and familiar things. This prompted the borrowing of said instrument, which has been an awesome experience so far (finger callouses are progressing apace...)

Nabe - that's all really. We've been eating a lot of it. It's a magical food. 

Anyway, this only touches on a little bit of what we've been doing (I'll leave Rachel to blog about the other stuff) and we have a lot of other things coming up: Belgian beer tonight (for my birthday), Kobe Luminarie (ルミナリエ), and trips to Nagoya and Tokyo. 

I'll leave you with more music. This time from the ubiquitous Celine Dion (should start at 1:18). 

Return to Kansai

おはよう皆！
As some of you know, I was back in the US for a few weeks but now I'm back in Osaka and already settling back in. It's actually been a surprisingly easy transition back and forth between here and there. It seems that I've been here long enough for it to feel like this year's home, while the US still does feel that way. In any event, the only real adjustment I've had to do is for jetlag, and even that has been fairly manageable.
Business accommodations
My first night back in Japan was actually spent up in Tokyo because my plane got in too late to catch a train down to Osaka that same night. So I ended up staying in the cheapest non-hostel option available to me: a capsule hotel. (I've heard the term coffin hotel as well, but that seems needlessly sensationalist.) I found it rather cozy and was able to get a few hours of jet-laggy sleep before leaving at 530 for the first Shinkansen of the morning.
Thanksgiving 日本スタイル
After making it back on a very crowded train (Friday was a national holiday), Rachel got us going on my second Thanksgiving dinner of the week - adapted for Japanese grocery options.

Above you can see (from left to right): balsamic glazed chicken, fried onions (to be used on top of...), "green bean casserole" (mushroom and cream base with green beans and fried onions), mashed yellow sweet potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie. 

It was a great meal and provided the appropriate post-thanksgiving tiredness to catch up on a little sleep before.... 

紅葉狩り(autumn leaf viewing) in Kyoto

This is the fall counterpart to the famous spring cherry blossom viewing. We went with Keiko and did some temple visits, shopping and good eating during a very long day in Kyoto. The leaves really are quite striking in their intensity of color and in the contrast between the various red and yellow hues of the deciduous trees and the bright green of the evergreens. Most of these are from Kyomizu-dera, a temple up in the hills on Kyoto's eastern side. 

 

The holiday weekend meant that the temple was packed with school groups who had come from other places in Japan for the viewing. 

This (and the one below) are from a smaller garden area at Chion temple 

After Kyoto we trained it back to Kyoto and have been home bodies for the most part (with a small excursion to Ikea yesterday). We've also been enjoying the chilly temperatures and comfort food. 

Things I'm loving recently

So, we've fallen off blogging a bit, probably in part because Richard has been gallivanting around North America for the last few weeks. While he's gone, I've been indulging in a return to singlehood-living. For me that means waking up late, eating weird things (dinner the other night was 2 clementines, saltines, and peas with sliced ham), and watching sappy movies on Youtube. I'm excited that Richard will be back soon, but I won't be giving up the peas and sliced ham (seriously, yum).

I'm also excited that Osaka has stopped dipping its toes tentatively into the pool of fall and finally cannonballed in. The temperature is now solidly around a high of 17˚ C (63˚ F) most days and the leaves are turning colors. In honor of a return one of my favorite times of the year I thought I'd post a list of some things I've been obsessing over recently.

Star Talk Radio Show

This is a radio show/podcast hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and wearer of cosmic vests. Basically, he's the Bill Nye of astronomy. The Star Talk podcast is usually co-hosted by comedian Eugene Mirman. The show is a great mix of science info, humor and general nerdiness.









Curry Udon (カリーうどん）
Curry udon is a fantastic mix of two classic Japanese comfort food dishes. Many of you have probably had udon before. It's a lovely soup with thick noodles that can have a variety of vegetables and meat/fish toppings. Japanese curry is based on Indian curry and is usually a brown curry served on rice. Although not technically a "traditional" Japanese dish the way udon is, it is hugely popular and has become so thoroughly domesticated that it really is now a "Japanese" dish.
Basically, curry sauce + udon noodles = curry udon. It's a spicy, warm, fragrant soup that is fantastic for rainy days. This is a pic of a cheap instant bowl I had the other day, restaurant versions are (unsurprisingly) superior.


These Socks

Japan does socks, stockings, and leggings really well. There are tons of great options everywhere. I only brought 3 pairs of socks with me to Japan, knowing that there would be plenty of options here. I'm loving these Little Red Riding Hood socks. There is a whole series of fairy tale socks from the Luluana brand. I think I'll be going back for Snow White (featuring the 7 dwarves). I think it's the pixelated quality of them that I like so much. It makes me wish there were an old video game where Red Riding Hood has to jump over bushes and trees, picking up bonus baked goods, fight the wolf boss, and deliver the basket to grandma.
















Quite Interesting
QI is a BBC quiz television show hosted by the great Stephen Fry. Basically you take 4 comedians, ask them really hard questions about science, literature, history, biology, etc. and listen to what they come up with. You get points for being interesting, even if you can't actually answer the question. Very funny and sometimes you learn something.

Click below for an episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDfP96bJwZE&feature=related

Taiko
I've been taking Japanese drumming lessons for almost 2 months now. The classes are fun and my teacher is really great. At the place I'm learning, they start you off on the medium sized upright drums.  (If you click on the video link they the middle line of drums. Not the small one in the front but not the massive ones in the back.) I'm at the "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" level, but I plan to keep on with the lessons for the rest my time here, so I should have nicely toned biceps by next summer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4J37vLLb_A&feature=related
This video is of the famous group Kodo. They are basically the founders of the modern taiko style and made taiko famous internationally.

New Printer
We picked up a printer a few weeks ago and it's been awesome having one again. It's a copy/scanner/printer combo and I love it.

So those are some of the things that are making me happy recently. Hope everyone is having a good fall!

Tokyo, Kawasaki (Karaoke incl.) and Yokohama

This weekend we achieved exit velocity from Kansai and made our way to Tokyo for three days. Part of the purpose was a Fulbright meeting, so while Rachel socialized with other ambassador-scholars, I attempted to explore some of the neighborhoods I had missed when we were there in August. My first stop was Roppongi, which is known for rich people, shopping and nightlife. As I am wont to do, I largely missed out on all three. In fact, unless you end up exiting the subway into the Roppongi Hills shopping center, you come out on a busy street that is dirty and crowded and looks remarkably like any other dirty, crowded street in Tokyo. Walking down one of the many downhill streets (there are indeed hills in Roppongi), I eventually found myself in what appeared to be a fairly posh area with many severe black suits, of the sort intended to be worn anywhere but a workplace, and several large stone edifices. It was a pleasant enough walk, but after allowing myself to slow down at a bookstore, I decided I had experienced enough Roppongi for the day hopped back on the train.
From Roppongi I went to Ebisu. I wasn't drawn there by anything in particular except for the fact that it wasn't Shibuya, and therefore was likely to be far less crowded at 3pm on a Friday. We had a rather early morning getting to our train and trying to stay awake, so when disembarked I set my sights on the nearest Choco Cro and, after an awkward ordering experience, carved out a small space in which to drink some more coffee and try to do a little writing. Later on there was more socializing with the Fulbrighters at an expat bar of a generically UK feel, followed by deliciousness in yakitori form down in Kawasaki with Keiko.
Saturday we were up bright and early again to enjoy the dulcet tones of Kawasaki middle school students as they performed a series of choral arrangements of mostly pop ballads - followed by drama skits, k-pop style dancing and wind band. It was also a sort of open house at the middle school, so as we wound our way through the various classroom exhibits we play our parts as native English speakers, giving the kids some real life practice in light conversation (mainly introductions).
Later on we ended up hanging out with the middle school faculty for some old-fashioned karaoke time. By old-fashioned, I of course mean a random assortment of songs performed with equal parts abandon, gusto and nerves. My bravest moment came when I decided to belt out some 90s J-pop. Luckily it was well-received...
Sunday was fairly low key in terms of activities, most of which revolved around Yokohama Chinatown, which ranked well above mediocre as far as Chinatowns are concerned. In fact, I would probably say it was the most enjoyable Chinatown (or any other themed "town", ethnic or otherwise) I've ever seen because it was only 40% tourist traps and mostly seemed to be filled with good food and other assorted shops. As I said, it was relatively uneventful, which was good because we were faced with the prospect of a very late night indeed.
To return to Osaka we opted for the night bus from Yokohama, which left at 10pm Sunday and arrived here at 7am the following morning. While sleeping was not impossible, it was not an experience to be welcomed without trepidation. In any event, despite attempts to stay up and resume a normal sleep schedule, the need for a proper nap overrode the contents of my combini coffee can.
So that was the Tokyo/Kawasaki/Yokohama weekend.

Chilly Friday night

I've been kinda remiss lately about updating, but I just downloaded a bunch of photos to my computer and figured I should share them with the world. So here is a bunch of catching up:

Kobe:
As Rachel is affiliated with Kobe University during her research, we have had a couple of opportunities to train it around the bay to do school-related things plus some sightseeing. It's only about half an hour from the main Osaka station to downtown Kobe, even on the local trains, so it's a pretty painless trip (even shorter than some trips within Osaka) and there appears to be a lot to see. The city itself is fairly narrow, being sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, which makes for some awesome views, both from the city and from above it (from the University, which is up in the hills, you can get a great view of both Kobe and Osaka). Unfortunately, I've neglected to get any pictures of these views, but I do have a gigantic fish....

Fish (giant) - do not worry, it's not real

We found this fish down in Meriken Park, which is a plaza down by the port of Kobe. Meriken Park is also the site of one of the memorials for the Kobe earthquake of 1995, complete with videos, photo plaques and preserved portion of the original pier showing the damage as it was on the morning of the quake. It was actually quite informative, especially since I don't have strong memories from the time of the quake back when it happened. The fish (to return to a lighter note) was located outside of the Café Fish, which was surprisingly good, especially since we were just really hungry and were willing to put up with tourist trap food. 

Going back in time, I also have several pictures from our day at the Osaka aquarium. I could go on for ages about how awesome it was, but I'll try to restrain myself. One of the first things I noticed, and appreciated, was that the aquarium begins on the 8th floor and spirals down. This helped keep the traffic flowing well and also allowed the visitors to see the same tanks from different perspectives. This included the land animals that live in conjunction with water environments on the top levels. Anyway, it was a great time, and here are some highlights in picture form.

Tiny crab on a rock wall, they were seriously tiny. 

Huge fish - like seriously huge. The ones on the bottom are at least 4-5 feet long. 

Capybara. Also a very large mammal.

Rachel contemplating the penguins in their curiously green light. 

Pacific whitesided dolphin. There were a bunch of these and there were being quite show-off-y.

Whale Shark. 

Again, hard to tell through the thick glass and with a lack of non-fish referents, but he was easily 15-20 feet long. According to wikipedia that is barely over half as large as the average whale shark. 

Rays. 

Weird large fish in the large tank with the whale shark. 

Elvis fish. 

Sea turtle. 

CREEPY crabs in dark tank. 

super tiny jellyfish. 

Finally, we have found a Japanese craft brewery. It looks kinda corporate, but so is everything else here. The important part is that the beers are really good. The company's website is here: http://www.yonasato.com/  

Apartment Part I

We're been promising apartment photos for a while and since as of this week we have lived here for a month, I present the opening chapter of our apartment tour! (At some point, I want to put up some pics of our neighborhood. It might take another month. ; ) 

Like most Japanese apartments/houses, we have a small genkan (玄関）or entryway. It is great to have a place to leave shoes, umbrellas, etc. We are planning on printing out pics of our travels, family, etc. and put them up on the walls here. The idea is to keep adding throughout the year, then when we leave I can just put them in an album. Of course, we've yet to print out a single photo...maybe this weekend.

As you enter the hallway, on the left you see the bath/toilet room area. We have a sink and changing area, the door with the towel on it leads you to a tiny room with a toilet in it.

To the left of the sink is our bathing room. I love having the bath and toilet separated. Plus, the big bathtub will be great when the weather gets colder.

Continue past the bathroom area, through a door and you come to our kitchen. Against the window is a big sink, cupboards, and a two burner gas stove.

This is the view from our kitchen window. Behind the white wall with green stripe is a highway exit, the green bridge is a pedestrian walkway, and at the very top is the highway itself. Our apartment has great windows, so highway noise isn't really a problem. It's not the most picturesque view, but the passing cars are less of an annoyance than you would think.

Here is the big wall in the kitchen and the first of our adventures in washi tape decoration. We wanted to do a geometric design on the wall. It turned out a little more squat than we had originally planned (one version looked a lot like Optimus Prime, if you squint you might be able to see it still...), but we still like it. We're playing around with the idea of adding little shapes to the left, you can see I added one to test it out. Washi tape comes off the wall easily and is very cheap, so we will probably change it the design around. (There are more washi tape adventures in the living room, featured in Apartment Part II!) I want to find a bright table cloth, since beige is the default color for the floors, walls, appliances, curtains, and furniture. Any suggestions for our washi wall?

Here is another view of the kitchen. The open door to the far left goes into the living room and the door on the left in the hallway goes to the living room. This apartment is not lacking for doors. Each room can be sealed off individually, which is great when the air conditioner or heater is on, but makes moving from one room to another a bit like moving through a maze.

Next time we'll do the living room, bedroom and balcony. Stay tuned!

Random Things

We survived our first typhoon of the season. It wasn't so bad here in Osaka, just some rain and wind. We hunkered down at home on Sunday, since the main effect of the typhoon here was delayed trains. Not far from the city and farther south, however, were many places badly hit by floods and winds. We were celebrating the drop in temperature to a lovely 25 degrees Celsius (that's 77 Fahrenheit for those playing at home, sorry I've been listening to a lot of "Wait, wait don't tell me" podcasts). I got to wear both pants and a long sleeve shirt when I went outside! Bliss...

So on Sunday we were hunkered down at home, listening to the rain outside and watching wind and rain-torn images on TV, when our door bell went off. Apparently, the Japan Post office not only delivers on Sunday, but also during typhoons. We were excited to receive a care package from my parents in Wisconsin! Here's a pic of our loot:

King size sheets (our two futons together make a bizarre sheet size that we can't find here, even at IKEA), ground coffee, black beans, pop-tarts

Today the rain has stopped but the cool temps are hanging around a bit. Tonight we head out to our first taiko class with our friend Yumi. Taiko literally means "drums," but generally refers to a group of drummers performing particular styles of drumming. I've wanted to learn how to play for a long time (having a taiko DS Nintendo game doesn't really count) and both Richard and I are feeling the lack of music-making in our daily activities. 

Taiko group

Last weekend Richard and I boarded the train for my old hometown of Nagoya. We were there for the Dia do Brasil, which, contrary to the name, was actually two days of music, dancing, food and fun in the central park in Nagoya. It was a great couple of days of research, although I definitely need to work on my Portuguese!

Finally, here are two of the bands we heard that weekend:

JOÃO BELLINI - NEM AÍ PRA SOLIDÃO

Planta & Raiz - com certeza

Hope you enjoyed these random things!

Speed Demons

That's what we are. Speed demons on our new bikes. We can reach 16kph in under 3 minutes...
What's that? I don't understand the term "speed demon"? Hm.
In any event, we have been riding around a bit lately, and it's pretty awesome. It's cheaper than the trains, pretty easy in this relatively flat terrain, and definitely a good counterbalance for the fairly sedentary lives of academics. We do have to contend with speed demons when we bike though. Even though biking on the sidewalk is illegal, it seems that 90% of bike riding in big cities happens there. We have been following suit partly because it seems to work out, partly because they do have bike lanes on some of the sidewalks, but also because riding in the street would be pretty damn dangerous here. But from time to time I wonder if we might be safer sharing space with speeding taxis and freight trucks when some of the other bikers speed by us through the narrowest of spaces. It's almost as if there is some sort of unending race with no set course, no clear winners and everyone is a contestant. It actually didn't feel this scary as a pedestrian, but now I'm playing chicken on my bike every two blocks and it's starting to get a little tense... but it's still awesome, so I'm not really complaining too much. Besides, I'll probably be just as bad in a few weeks.

Speaking of tense (I have no shame in my use of bad segues), tonight we saw Biohazard/Resident Evil 5. We had seen the theme park attraction/event for the movie at Universal Studios Japan a couple weeks ago when a couple of friends came into town. The theme park stuff was at least medium level awesome, which is pretty good for hokey stuff like that. The movie itself did not hold any great surprises and was no better or worse than the other Resident Evil movies, but like the others it was quite effective in giving you cheap thrills through exquisitely timed jump cuts and monster appearances. On a side note I think that despite all of the shock value, Rachel and I found ourselves laughing much more often than anyone around us.

Sauntering (experience and defense of)

We've been doing quite a bit of sauntering since we arrived in Japan. A large part of it has been waiting for trains, or check-in times, as we find ourselves with nothing to do, but little desire to spend money (there are only so many pastries one can eat in a given day...). The rest, however, has been purposeful sauntering (if we wanted to stretch things I would say that it sometimes borders on flaneuring) and we've managed to find some interesting areas along the way. Really that's one of my favorite activities in new places - to simply walk without a goal, or without the physical goal not necessarily dictating your path. Tonight we were walking around the Umeda area after checking on bus times for a weekend trip to Nagoya. Umeda is a big train hub - for JR, the subways and all of the "private" lines - and so we end up transferring through here a lot. Because it is so big, however, it's been hard to actually figure out what there is to do there. We've had some curious excursions there in the past couple of weeks (involving staircases with hidden entrances and absurdly long tunnels) and were beginning to think that there was nothing much going on besides trains and salarymen. This past weekend, however, we ended up forcing ourselves to explore further in search of a gig at an Irish pub, which took us into a fairly large pedestrian mall area that we would not have known about without making our way over there.
Anyway, this is where we ended up again tonight. As has happened many times before, we were searching for a café to rest in with a snack and some tea/coffee and, as has happened with equal frequency, we were stymied. Rachel's experience was our salvation in this case, as she led us into an underground mall, where we were treated to no end of small café's and restaurants. In fact, it is a curious facet of Japanese urban planning that so much real estate is devoted to malls. Department stores are often nothing but malls - and even when they are proper department stores, the usually have malls connected to them, sometimes as entire floors of the department store itself. Then in between the mall buildings, you have pedestrian malls, often in the form of covered arcades. Then below most of these you can find at least one (emphasis on the at least) underground mall. In any event, in this part of Umeda, the above ground arcades were full of bars, pachinko parlors and numerous variations on those themes - hence our consternation. And the underground mall was devoted to food - being billed as a "gourmet mall". My point, as you may be asking at this point, is that sometimes sauntering gets in the way of efficiency (i.e., had we simply used the phone to search for a café, we would have eaten much sooner), but I'm finding that it more often leads to worthwhile experiences - as long as one does not saunter off into the middle of an urban wasteland of whatever sort...

By way of a further defense of sauntering, I would like to end by cautiously announcing the arrival of fall. I realize that in this act I am throwing caution to the wind and have risked attracting the unwanted attention of the gods on Olympus. But I don't care - it's magnificent weather right now! And, as we have been taking advantage of it and choosing more leisurely routes back home, I have been noticing that this fall weather is very much like the California fall weather I grew up with. It's the type of thing that you don't notice that you've been missing until you experience it again. Especially the smells of the vegetation and the dirt - neither of which have suffered the cruel deaths that the midwestern winters foist upon the landscape. I imagine that in this instance the leisurely walking that we have chosen over directness has not only made for a nice change of pace and allowed us to explore the neighborhood, but has really made my experience of the season that much richer.

And now I will leave off of my verbal sauntering and think about packing for our night in Nagoya.

A Few August Photos

Here are a few more photos from August. Soon we'll post about our apartment in Osaka, including some exciting decorating escapades. (Hint: Washi tape is featured.)

Amazing tamagoyaki (rolled omelet) from Tsukiji market.

Wasabi is a diligent student. Soon he'll have mastered his first 15 kanji!

We took a boat up river from Asakusa, headed towards Tokyo Bay. Just by chance, we got on in time for a great sunset.

Karaoke on GB and LC's last night in town.

Wasabi trying to pick between "Don't Fence Me In" and "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy." He never could decide...

Cosmic.

Is that a Hanshin tiger's wristband? OMG, I love the Hanshin Tigers!

The cutest logo for a doughnut shop ever.

Combini dinner the night we moved into our apartment. 

Actually cooking dinner later that week. It's been great having a kitchen again!

Settling In

It's the middle of September and we are here in Osaka. It's been quite a full couple of weeks since we got here, with a lot of blogging to catch up on, both from here in Osaka and from the last part of our August travels. It's been basically a great experience moving into our new place here, with one exception. As most of you reading this know, my mom had been ill for several months, and then a little less than two weeks ago I found out that she had passed away. It's been rough going from time to time, especially as it happened just after we moved in here, but I've just been trying to keep busy and continue on this grand Japanese adventure.
In that spirit then, I'll tell you all about an adventure we had last night. It's a story of a late night, good music, and connect four. As part of Rachel's first forays into this year of fieldwork, we headed out to a club in the Namba shopping district for a gig that featured a Peruvian-Japanese group. The gig started at 10, with the first band going on at midnight. In the US this would not have been remarkable, but here the need to catch the last train home means that most music events are finished by the time this one started, even though the bars themselves are open far later. This made for a surreal atmosphere as we made our way from the train station to the club, with all the shops shut down and most people heading home in the opposite direction and pretty uniformly drunk.
The bar itself was small and in the basement - and there were not many people in there. But we were undeterred and ordered our drinks and stood watching the DJ as we waited for the first act. Everyone was pretty chilled out inside, and what might have been a very awkward situation in a US bar (if only 6 people are there for a gig at 1130, it's usually a bad sign...) shifted into a good time with a heavy dose of surrealism. This began with several games of connect four between us and the bartender, who won every time, though Rachel actually gave him some good competition.
The first act came on at midnight as advertised and augmented both the relaxed and bizarre components of the evening. We had actually seen him standing around when we first got there and he looked very serious in a black on black outfit. All of a sudden he appeared on stage wearing sunglasses and conveying a dedicated mix of kakkoi (=ultra cool) and comic as he serenaded us with J-pop lounge song stylings, including an impromptu ode to tequila. Later on we ended up getting flyers from him and taking some kakkoi pictures with him.
His set, however, was only 20 minutes, and a quick glance over at the AV guy's schedule showed that all the bands were only slotted for 20 minutes, with large swathes of DJ-ing in between. This was the reason for the late start: the club has a regular late night DJ event, that only this time had the extra bands.
In any event, the DJ-ing was actually pretty awesome, with lots of California rap mixed in. After the first act though, we were trying really hard to steel ourselves for staying up for several more hours as we waited for the Peruvian band. But time went by fairly fast and before we knew it they were up and putting on an awesome laid-back Reggaeton performance, complete with group dancing. Unfortunately, their 20 minutes consisted of only three songs.
After that we slowly made our way out of the club and into a cab, who got us home swiftly and fairly cheaply after successfully negotiating the narrow streets of Namba (which is no mean feat).
We're heading out again tonight to see some more music, but this time at an earlier, train-friendly time.

That's it for now, but I will try to keep uploading pictures and their accompanying stories as the week progresses. Hopefully the disrupted timeline will not be too confusing... 

Catching up...

I didn't realize how remiss I've been with updating the blog until I logged in just now. It's been quite the week since then with a lot of stuff to catch everybody up on. (NB, the sketchy internet here means I will just wait to upload pictures, rather than tear my hair out with this weird connection.)
Kyoto was pretty cool, although we didn't do too much sightseeing when we were there. Partly because it was really hot a humid (big surprise, I know) and also because we had to spend a lot of our one full day there back in Osaka to look at a couple more apartments. The travel time wasn't so bad though and in the end it was totally worth it because we ended up putting a deposit down on one of them the next day. Oddly I think this apartment is going to be the nicest and most "adult" apartment either Rachel or I have ever had. It's what referred to here as a 2LDK, which references (here in reverse order) a kitchen with a dining space inside of it and then a living room, which counts as one of the "2", and the bedroom. Anyway, it should be awesome, it's not in the most happening neighborhood but I think we both prefer that, and it's right next to both the local subway lines and the JR lines, which will be good for getting around the city for both of us and to neighboring towns in the Kansai region (Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto) for Rachel's research.
Since Kyoto we've been back in Tokyo at our "Funky Flat" that we've rented with G&L for 10 days. It's honestly slightly more strange of an apartment than we thought it would be based on the online profile, mostly because the shower never gets hot (even though the gas water heater is in the shower room, which is a whole headache by itself) and there isn't a good communal hang out area. Also the internet is a little spotty, which is one of the reasons I've been bad about updating.
The other reason, however, is that we've actually been pretty active during our time here, getting around to lots of different areas within Tokyo and out to some outlying areas. At this point I am tempted to rattle off all of our various adventures for all of our loyal readers, but I fear that would tax one's patience unduly.
One of the more important parts of coming back to Tokyo was that I finally got to meet Rachel's host sister Keiko. We meet for yakitori and beers on Thursday and then the following day went to a cookout with the teachers from her school at a very strange park near the water. The food was awesome, and the pace was actually quite nice, having made a shift from shopping/sightseeing to hanging out.
Our biggest day so far, though, was Saturday. We spent a lot of time on trains going back and forth throughout Tokyo and also a lot of time with music, which had been surprisingly spare up to this point in the trip. In the afternoon we descended to Asakusa for the 2012 Asakusa Samba Festival (which was my first bonafide samba experience). Apparently this has been going on for decades and had about 20 groups performing in the parade. Mostly they were local samba schools, with baterias of varying quality. The costumes and dancing were all pretty awesome - even if just for the sheer absurdity of it all. We didn't stay for the whole thing though, mostly because it was damn hot and the throngs of people lining the sidewalk were unrelenting in their need to get as close to the action as possible. (This included more than a few middle-aged photography enthusiasts snapping pictures of the revealing outfits with telephoto lenses...)
After escaping the hordes in Asakusa, we began our epic train ride down to the coastal town of Kamakura, where Garreth was performing in an awesome little bar with a musician he knew from his tour here 9 years ago and another local performer, bracketed by two other local Jazz bands. I'll spare the details here, but the music was fantastic (from all three bands), with good snacks and a very simple pricing scheme for the drinks (¥500 for everything). It was also my first view of the pacific rim from this side of the world...
The last couple of days have been more chilled out, punctuated by more good food (Okonomiyaki in Ginza and Sushi in the Tsukiji fish market area) and an ill-fated trip to the Park Hyatt hotel bar of Lost in Translation fame.
At the moment we are all lounging around the apartment resting up for the next big outing ----
Japanese Pro Baseball!!!
It's the Yakult Swallows vs. the Hiroshima Carp. We expect to purchase any or all of the following: wristbands, towels, tiny umbrellas and stadium food. Apparently this will also be Rachel's first professional baseball game in any league, which we all decided was appropriate.

High Quality Pork Fat

Tonight we are in Kyoto, one of the many former capital cities of Japan. We haven't seen much of the famously intact pre-Meiji architecture with the exception of a small walk through the Gion area.
We arrived in mid-afternoon and managed to make a fairly smooth transition from the JR lines to the local subway tracks. Armed with internet research on the best way to get to our hotel, we thought we were on the right track. In what has become a theme of our trip so far, however, we ended up schlepping our bags probably three times as far as we assumed we would. It wasn't as bad as it could have been though and we were rewarded with an upgrade when we checked in to our hotel - which is awesome. It's bigger than what we reserved and it has a massage chair, which I may or may not be using as I write this.
Anyway, we thought we would head out for a nicer dinner at a one of the many Kawayuka restaurants near our hotel - these are places with ample seating over top of the waterway that have great views of the river and the mountains. Unfortunately, lots of these places were kinda pricey and almost all, including the reasonably priced places had a table charge of 1000 yen per person before you even ordered anything. Needless to say, we decided that a $30 charge just to get a seat was not worth the fancy view, and we ended up going to a ramen joint.
It was probably the best choice we could have made though, and it inspired the title of this post. Each of our ramen bowls came with large helpings of fatty pork slices. I somehow got fattier pieces than Rachel, but it was so worth it. I'm not sure I can ever eat the 99¢ ramen from my college days again.
We fought against the possible sleep inducing effects of these bowls of fatty deliciousness by a walk through some shops and down into the historic Gion area. Gion is where all of the traditional Geisha houses are but we did not see any Geisha themselves. Which is not really surprising on a Monday night. I'm not too heartbroken about it though.

Miyajima and Osaka Castle

A few more photos here from our trip to Miyajima the other day and then our outing to Osaka Castle today.

View from the ferry to the island - to the right is the mainland, left is Miyajima. 

The little things in the water are oyster farms. 

For some reason deer roam through the town almost unimpeded. They like human food.

And they like it when the kids pet them (i.e., this usually leads them to more food)

This is the "floating" torii outside of the shrine. 

It doesn't actually float, but isn't very firmly anchored in the ground. 

A closer look reveals the twisty logs that serve as the main pillars. 

Us in front (me=kakui, Rachel=genki)

As we were leaving on the ferry we noticed that the tide had gone out and people can walk on the beach around the formerly floating torii - this picture doesn't quite do justice to the swarm. 

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Osaka castle was amazing - I've been fairly obsessed with the epic types of samurai movies, so it was kinda awesome to actually go to one of these places. Osaka castle was one of the power center of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who tried to unite Japan in the late 16th century and whose efforts led to the later Tokugawa shogunate. 

Two pictures of the outer moats surrounding the castle complex - this is part of the newest building. It's probably hard to see but these walls are pretty steep and relatively smooth. 

One of the first gates on the outside - the black-lacquered wood is awesome. 

One part of the inner moat, now flooded with vegetation instead of water. 

After 10 minutes of walking we made it to the center of the castle complex. Here is genki Rachel posing in front of it. 

Entrance to castle.

View from the top

Afterwards we met up with Yumi and had pudding - my cup had flan on top of a bed of cream, cake, cream and pears. 

Then we had a dinner of omu-rice: rice wrapped up in a thin, fluffy omelette.

Finally, view of river in the namba area before heading back to the hotel.