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!