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.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Friday, September 21, 2012
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.
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!
Sunday, September 16, 2012
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...
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...
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