I was all set to post an entry tonight, but I have quite the cold. Maybe tomorrow if my head is less stuffed with fluff.

I'm never sure what my students are going to understand. Today, for example.

Me: "Okay, we'll finish a little early."
Them: *blank stare*
Me: (I know they know finish...) "You know finish? End?"
Them: *blank stare*
Me: "Stop?"
Them: *blank stare*
Me: "ちょっと早く終わります。"
Them: Oooooooh.
Me: *facepalm*

The reason I'm facepalming is they know what finish means--I ask them if they're done with a worksheet or a dialogue in English and they can answer just fine. Maybe "early" shut their brains down.

( RP-related nerdery )

Hmmm...it's been longer than I meant to before posting this, but here we go.

--The Peace Festival was neat. I did not get there in time for the opening ceremonies, but I did get there for the survivor testimony. I was a bit wrong about it--it wasn't trasnlated, the people speaking knew English (to a greater or lesser degree). I got there 30 minutes after it started, and five people were supposed to speak, but three of them had already gone when I got there. The most memorable speech was the last one. The woman who spoke was 8 in 1945, and she mentioned how after the bombing, she ran back into the city looking for her older brother. She saw people who had been horribly burned lying on the ground, and as she came near, they said, "Water...please...I want to live." She ran and gave them some water, and they thanked her and then died. And for years, she had terrible nightmares because she was worried that she had killed them. :(

There was another display of newspaper articles and accounts from people. Pretty balanced perspectives over all except on Okinawa--something like 87% of Okinawas think the latest official textbooks which don't mention the Japanese military's roll in the deaths of Okinawan civilians (telling them that the Americans were going to rape them and eat their corpses, basically) were total bullshit, but the only perspective I saw in the display was that the Americans were horrible people because of what happened at Okinawa. Some bits had no translation of the account, either, which made me a bit suspicious. But other than that, it was quite good. One account even mentioned Nanking--a member of the Imperial Army who was downriver saw a huge black heap in the water, taking up almost the entire river. He thought it was trash, or building debris, but when it got closer he realized the entire river was choked full of bodies.

I left a message to be put in one of the candleboats on the river, but I couldn't stay long enough to see them.

-Our friends the Santas (三田, three fields) invited us to dinner at their house. They told us that they often have people over for dinner on weekends, which makes them incredibly strange by Japanese standards (many Japanese people are uncomfortable inviting other people to their house--if they want to have fun with friends, they'll meet in a neutral place like a restaurant instead). After some grilling about what kind of foods we like, they made tempura and sushi, which was pretty tasty. They also had natto for us, but this time I didn't think it--I suspect it was the sauce that they added to it, which seemed to remove the strong cheesy taste it had in the nattomaki we ate. We're having them over for dinner in a couple weeks and they'll get to try American food. I hope they like it.

-We went to the New York Bar in Hiroshima yesterday for lunch. Burgers, fries and pizza. It was interesting being in a restaurant that specifically billed itself as having "American food." It was really good, though.

-We went to a neighborhood festival last weekend--皆で手作り遊び大会, aka the "Let's Everyone Hand-Make Toys Together Gathering!" festival. They brought a bunch of bamboo and made stilts, airplanes, waterguns, etc. It was pretty fun--softlykarou and I tried to make origami frogs, but we failed hard once we got to the legs.

The other attendees asked us if there was anything similar in America (Chiyoda seems to have lots of small festivals). We said there was, though mostly either in larger cities (where you get neighborhood festivals and so on) or small towns.

-Work is going pretty well so far, though the commute is sad, as it always is. I got a present from one of my students from her trip to Fukuoka--that made me feel really happy. It wasn't anything major (just some tarako Pretz), but it was the thought that counts.

After the saga of getting my bank account (chronicled by softlykarou in this entry), I expected to have a bit more difficulty getting my cash card. But nope--it was essentially painless. I took my form in, added an extra number where I needed to, stamped it, picked a PIN number ("secureeto nunbaa") and then off I went. It should be here in 2 to 5 days, and then I can finally get paid for my job.

We went to Softbank to resolve the phone thing, and it did turn out to be a mistake. For whatever reason, Visa stopped accepting the charges from Softbank, which meant that my bill hadn't been paid in two months. So we went to the store, paid the bill, confirmed that it was fine to pay with cash from now on (which is no problem for me, since that way I can avoid being mugged by the exchange rate anyway), and then 20 minutes later it was working again. Simple. I also need to stop downloading $0.99 games on my iPhone. Some of them are okay, some of them are good, but with most of them it's obvious why they're only $0.99. What I really want is an iPhone port of Final Fantasy 1. That'd be amazing.

I'm currently on vacation from school. Normally, Japanese school teachers have to go in year round, even when the students are gone, despite not having anything to do. However, in some respects I'm treated more like a part-time teacher, so I get the time off. It'll be a nice break, I think.

I've been playing a heavily-modded Morrowind lately. To give you an idea of what I've done to this game, the base game is maybe 1.2 gigs with both expansions installed. My installation is 4 gigs with all the extra content, files, textures, etc. I've added into it. I've probably put another ~80 hours of gameplay into it on top of what it already had. And all this without having tried Oblivion. Of course, I have a backlog of games to play, but I just beat Final Fantasy IV on the DS so I'm at least working on them slowly. Now to beat Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and start up Phantom Hourglass...

Is Oblivion worth playing? Or, I guess a better question is, how is Oblivion compared to Morrowind? I know about some things (Daggerfall-style fast travel, no levitation/teleporting, Radiant AI, bandits in full daedric), and I know about mods to fix some of the problems I'd have with it, but I'm curious about the opinion of anyone who has played it.

My parents are coming at the end of the week, then off to Kyoto (again) and Nara. That'll be fun, I hope. ^_^

Happy anniversary to us.

softlykarou and I went to a festival yesterday in Hiroshima City called Tokasan. It's pretty big, but we didn't stay for very long. The main reason its famous is that it starts the yukata-wearing season for festivals in Japan. softlykarou got a yukata a few months ago, and she's been waiting a long time to wear it (and has been dreaming to wear for since she was a child), so she was super excited. The shop where we bought it put it on for her for free, even though there was a waiting list, which was very kind of them to do so. We wandered around, ate some festival food, and went to the shrine the festival is named after that you're traditionally supposed to go to and pray (though I don't know what you're supposed to pray for). Most of the stuff was happening in the evening, which we weren't staying for, so we missed the dancing and so on. It was still a lot of fun, though. Maybe next year.

Today, Kaminaka-san invited us to Mibu no Hanadaue, a festival that has taken place in Chiyoda (formerly called Mibu, hence the name) for over 500 years. There was the usual assortment of festival food available, but we ate udon in a hundred-year-old restaurant on the other side of Chiyoda and then saw the procession of the bulls (used to smooth down the mud in the rice field) and the dancers and drummers (who perform the actual planting). Apparently, the ceremony's purpose is to alert Sanbai-san, the local mountain god who is also the god of rice planting, that its time to come down off the mountain and help ensure a good crop for the year.[1] The main festival involves a rice field which is ceremonially planted to the beat of drums by local women. It was pretty neat, and we took a bunch of pictures.

We also kept getting our picture taken by people, presumably because we're foreigners coming to Chiyoda's famous UNESCO-recognized cultural treasure (500 years old, remember?), which was kind of neat, but a little weird too. And we found a part of Chiyoda with shops and restaurants we didn't know existed. We'll have to check it out some time.

[1]: The best part of the speeches during the ceremony was when the announcer said: "Sanbai-san, ganbatte kudasai." Roughly, "Sanbai, please do your best (to make the rice a good crop)."

On Sunday, as softlykarou and I were out for a walk around the neighborhood, we passed by a house where two of the students from our children's eikaiwa lived. This time, however, the students and their parents were all outside having a barbecue, and they invited us over to eat. They were having mutton, which turns out to be quite tasty when fried over some coals and seasoned with onions. They also had grilled mushrooms, which were excellent with a little salt. The best part was talking to each other in Japanese, though. We talked about traveling, where we had been in Japan, food, linguistic bits, and so on. We got to demonstrate our Japanese and our students got to use their English a little. We're supposed to have them over for dinner some time in the next few weeks. Hopefully that goes well.

I think the main thing I'm happy about is that it happened at all. It's the kind of thing you read about happening, but don't think will actually happen because it belongs to a bygone age where people were kinder to each other and all that crap. I guess I'm being too cynical.

I had a college student tell me, "I love you" today in Suzugamine's lunch room. I'm pretty sure she was using it for two reason A) I'm a guy and she's a girl and B) It's one of 5 English phrases she remembers from her high school days, but even so, it's a little depressing to realize that the Japanese expression I seem to be using more often is 結婚している ("I'm married").

A longer post will be coming tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll just say that I've been working a lot, and that's the reason I've been so quiet.

Even though I've had real ramen now, I still like having instant from time to time. Maybe it's all the preservatives and crap they put in it--I'm so used to having them in my diet that I need an infusion every once in a while.

A few days ago when I went to Thanks, I was walking out with bags in my arms when I saw two guys on the other side of the door. Spikey hair, black and red clothes, chains, sullen expressions, the works. I was a little curious what they would do when they saw me, but they were coming in the door that I was going out, so I held the door open for them. When they saw me, their sullen expressions vanished and they started grinning.

They said, "Hello!" and bowed, so I said, "Hello" and bowed.

And they said, "Thank you!" and bowed, so I said, "You're welcome!" and bowed.

Then they said, "Thank you!" and bowed, so I said, "You're welcome!" and bowed.

After that they said, "Nice to meet you!" and bowed, so I said, "Likewise!" and bowed. Then they went inside and I went back to my car. Note that other that the fact that this was in English, this sort of conversation isn't really a rarity in Japan.

softlykarou and I went to 宮島 Miyajima, literally "Shrine Island," last weekend. Some people might know the famous "floating torii" of Itskushima Shrine, which is built out over the water, a legacy of the time when commoners were banned from setting foot on the sacred island and had to approach the shrine by boat. It looks somewhat less impressive in person than it does in the pictures, mainly because all the pictures carefully screen out the view of Hiroshima you can see over the bay. It's also less impressive at low tide, but it still looks quite pretty for all that. The most interesting part of the shrine to me, though, was the Japanese wedding in progress there when we went. We also found a museum dedicated to the island's history down a small side street. Most of it was in Japanese, and the few signs in English were of less than stellar syntactical quality, there was a nice series of paintings depicting a struggle between two daimyo during the 16th century.

I start my new job on Wednesday. I'm a little nervous--I haven't really done lesson planning on any major scale before. I know they aren't going to throw me into teaching the moment I get there, and it's apparently only 24 class-hours per week, but...well, we'll see, I suppose.

The owners of Funky Tonky have a blog, apparently. And they wrote about us, because we gave them a shot glass (which ashiri_chan kindly brought from Chicago when she visited) on White Day. I didn't realize the significance of it at the time, but it's not that big a deal because they gave us a present on Valentine's Day.

The funny part was, "雨の日も、風の日も、雪の日もつっかけと半袖の人です。 シカゴ出身の方らしく日本の寒さは、地元に比べればぜんぜん寒くないとの事ですがどうやら強がりだったらしく、風邪を引いていました。" Roughly (based on Babelfishing, kanji roll-over, and looking things up in a paper dictionary), it means, "Even when it's windy or rainy or snowing, the person from Chicago always wears short sleeves. He says he isn't cold because Chicago is colder than here, but we think he's bluffing because he caught a cold anyway." Burn. :-p Though they go on to mention that, "Because he's a good person, we'll overlook that" (though in much more deferential language, obviously).

Babelfish totally butchered the last part, but it seems to be hoping that Chicago and Chiyoda can become closer together. This may be symbolic for "maybe we can get to know them better," but my Japanese isn't that good.

How kind of them. ^_^

I got the job!

For dinner tonight, softlykarou and I went to the ramen stand near one of the pachinko parlors nearby. It looked empty when we got there, but the door was open, so we went in and I asked (in Japanese) if they were open. The old man said they were, and then spouted off a string of Japanese so quickly that I had no idea of anything he said. We went through a lot of confusion before we finally got it across that we didn't actually speak that much, and then we ordered our ramen, which came with a shōyu broth base and was amazing.

About halfway through our meal, he brought over a "presento"--a little knick-knack that lit up blue and red when you pressed a button (I suspect he thought softlykarou was younger than she actually is :-p ). He asked us if we had been to the pachinko parlor, and I said no. When softlykarou said no, he said something that we think was, "Of course not, women don't play pachinko." He then asked us if we had pachinko parlors in the states, and we said no, and then he asked if we had karaoke, which we said we did. He then mentioned that it was good we knew some Japanese and that he knew he talked incredibly fast, but his English was limited to ABC's.

Note that this may be incorrect. Like I said, he talked incredibly fast so we could only pick up maybe 1 word in 3, and most of those we didn't know. I knew he mentioned he talked fast, because he said 速い hayai (quickly) and brought out a manga from the bookstand to demonstrate that reading was easier because you could go over it multiple times. At least, I think so. Well, he and the other customers sitting around chewing the fat seemed happy to see us, anyway. And it was damn good ramen.

Also, I have an interview. The time is yet to be determined.

So, recently, our cell phone bill has been going up by quite a lot, even though we aren't using the data-transfer on our cell phones more. It wasn't until recently that I realized the problem.

We're paying for our cell phone bill using a credit card, because apparently it's illegal for gaijin to use their legally established Japanese bank accounts to do so. That means we're paying in dollars, but the bill is in yen. And the dollar has been tanking against the yen recently (down like 20% from the rate it was when we came to Japan). Blarg.

Sadly, paying in cash each month is also not an option. I just wish I had paid for the iPhones up front now.

All right. Now that I'm no longer sick, I can actually write about our Kyōto trip!

We were going to leave last Friday after softlykarou got back from work, but when we arrived in Hiroshima bus center she noticed that her purse was missing. It turned out that she had left it back in Chiyoda, where one of the station attendants had picked it up, checked the identification, noticed it was all in English and called the school. We went back to get it, and by that point, it was too late to take the train to we waited for the next day. This later turned out to have been very good, since our original plan would have gotten us into Kyōto hours after check-in time at the youth hostel closed.

On Saturday, we woke up early, took the bus into Hiroshima and then went to the train station. Once there, we learned what all the fuss about shinkansen was about. Unlike an airport, there was no waiting in security lines, no sitting around, no weather delays, no tin-can feel, nothing. We went up to the counter, asked for tickets to Kyōto, and the agent asked us if we wanted the train that left in 10 minutes or in 20. Around 2 hours later, we were in Kyōto, right around the time to check into the youth hostel. The guy behind the counter was kind enough to not charge us full price for the first day because softlykarou had called in and told them why we were late. We didn't do much the first day...just met up with softlykarou's friends and went out to find a place to eat, mostly. The hostel was in Gion, but most of Gion is really touristy now, so finding a restaurant open late wasn't too hard. It's a bit of a disconnect to hear Indian waiters welcoming you in Japanese...but we are in Japan, after all.

Pretty much all of our sight-seeing time was taken up by going to temples. The first day, we went to Kōdai-ji, which was probably my favorite place, and Kiyomizu-dera. Kōdai-ji was still obviously a working temple--while we were there, the call to prayer bell was rung and we could hear chanting coming from somewhere. softlykarou also got a good-luck charm there blessed by a monk (which we later learned was specifically for good luck in travels). Kiyomizu-dera is one of the places that people usually go to when going to Kyōto, but it was still neat. One of the big draws of Kiyomizu-dera is the sacred spring there. It's the original reason the temple was founded, and it's supposed to grant good health to people to drink from it, though considering softlykarou and I both got sick after we got back from Kyōto it clearly didn't work for us. :-p The temple also has two rocks around 10m apart--if you can walk between them with your eyes closed, you will find your true love. softlykarou did it and got excited congratulations from some Singaporean tourists, though they were less excited when they learned she was already married. :-p We saw a maiko (an apprentice geisha) on the way back, and although she had a very worried expression when we asked to take her picture, she did stop and let us, which was nice of her.

We were going to go to the zoo after this, but it was closed for New Years, so we walked down a bit farther down the street and went to Murin-an, the old villa of a Diet member from the turn of the century. The garden was really pretty, but our guidebook mentioned that they would serve you tea for an additional fee, and we couldn't find any sign that told us where it was. After that, we split up with Rachel's friends--they were tired, so they went back to the hostel and we went on to Nanzen-ji. The party we really wanted to go to (Nanzen-in) was closed for New Year's, but we were able to see the aqueduct. It was all red-brick and neat looking. We went up top and followed it for a while, but it just led to a water treatment plant. The rest of the day was mostly window-shopping in the overpriced touristy areas of Gion and looking for food.

The second day, we went to Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji (respectively, the Gold Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion). We only went to Ginkaku-ji because we were confused, but I actually liked it better than Kinkaku-ji. Kinkaku-ji (so named because the top two floors are covered with beaten gold) was incredibly touristy. There was one path lined with ropes that people took, it was crowded, there were no monks anywhere, etc. Ginkaku-ji had no gold (or silver--they were going to put silver foil on it but never actually got around to it), but it did have a neat display of all the mosses you could find growing on the temple grounds. Dinner was at a place called Senmonten, which only makes gyoza and pickles, but they were by far the best gyoza and pickles I have ever had in my life.

The next day we basically just woke up and went home, but we also learned the bad side of shinkansen travel. On the way there, we had gotten reserved seats, which were a bit more expensive but meant we had a number, assigned seat, etc. On the way back, we got unreserved seats. What this meant is that the car was packed (standing room only, the aisle was full so we stood in the entryway) and that the conductor pushed people in with a pole to back us all in before the train left. That was quite a bit more uncomfortable, but at least now we know to request reserved seats in the future!

Happy New Year, everyone.

One of softlykarou's students came up to her and said "your husband." softlykarou told her my name, at which point the student nodded and then said, "Want." She later tried to grab softlykarou's boobs.

I have no idea what kind of statement she was trying to make.

So, last weekend softlykarou and I went with the AJET trip down to Fukuoka for the Nihon Sumō Kyōkai taking place there. We got up at 6 a.m., took the bus into Hiroshima City, and then went over to the train station and boarded the bus to Fukuoka, which took around 5 hours to get there. I slept most of the way after discovering that our PSP had failed to charge. :-p

The actual sumō competition, when we got there, was quite interesting. The individual bouts were quite short--around half were less than 5 seconds, and most lasted no more than 15. The point, for those who don't know, is for each rikishi to attempt to either A) force the other one out of the ring or B) force the other one to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of their feet. Sometimes, a rikishi would get turned around on the initial charge, which meant that it was a simple matter for his opponent to force him out. Usually there would be a brief struggle before one rikishi got the upper hand. Sometimes, they would rest--just pause in whatever position they were in, take a few breaths, and then continue. A few matches went on for a long time. The longest was over a minute, and went on long enough that a rest was called for, though the rikishi didn't change positions--they just hung on each other and caught their breath until the referee had them continue.

I had a hard time figuring out what meant the match was ready to start. The referee didn't make any signal, and the pre-match preperations by the rikishi were almost always longer than the match itself. They would stomp the ground, stare at each other, throw salt into the ring (to prevent evil spirits from entering), and so on. I finally thought that it was when both rikishi had both their hands touching the start lines, but in the higher-ranked matches (where the preparation period was longer), they would sometimes do that and then go through the stomping, staring, salt-throwing cycle again. There was also the occasional false start, when only one rikishi would rush the other. When that happened, they'd start again.

It was interesting to watch, though it went a bit long for my taste. The 's match wasn't actually that exciting, and he lost anyway (as a note, check out that picture--the belt the guy is wearing is the same as the white rope used to mark out Shinto shrines). There was one rikishi who weighed over 250 kilograms--when he squatted after entering the ring, he was spherical. His sumō name was, amusingly, Yamamoto Yama, which means something like "Essence of the mountain."

After the match, we didn't have anything planned for the rest of the day, so softlykarou and I, along with some other people who had come, went out to try to find a restaurant. The first place we went was full (though I'm not sure whether it was full, or "crap, a bunch of gaijin, tell them we're full" full, since it certainly looked like they had plenty of room), but the second place we went to had us go in and sit at the sushi bar. I ordered omakase (literally, "I entrust it"--it means that the chef decides what I eat). They told me that it was expensive, but I said it was okay--it was only 3,100円, which is less than I'd pay for a similar meal at any of the sushi bars we went to back home. And as it turned out, it was amazing. I talked a bit with the chef, too, using my limited Japanese. I was able to tell him where we were from, which dishes I liked, ask what a couple of the things he was serving me were (and watch him act out a duck, which was awesome). I'm getting better, though more slowly than I'd like.

After that, we went to a bar with crappy (from my perspective, most of the other people loved it) music, but they had a "Philadelphia Steak Sandwich" on the menu. I had to try it, so even though I wasn't super hungry I ordered one. It was pretty good, but it was no cheesesteak--it lacked cheese, for one thing, and it had some sort of spicy sauce on it that made it taste more like Italian Beef. Considering I'm in Japan, though, I thought they made a good effort.

The next day, we went to Space World in northern Kyūshū, which is a bit like Six Flags except with a space theme. Sadly, it was a drizzly day, so most of the rides were closed, and we stayed far too long for my liking. After we were done there, we went home.

A good trip.

Apparently throat-punching is legal in sumo. Who knew?

More when I'm not posting from an iPhone.

Change you can believe in. :)

And someone on RPG.net had a good summary of the Republicans losing:



Too bad bigotry is now the law of the land in Florida. I haven't heard results from California, though, but things are looking grim.

Though most of my entry won't be about this, I do have to mention--yes, Japanese schoolgirls really do tend to wear their uniforms everywhere they go (on schooldays at least), and yes, they hike their skirts up an extra 6-8 inches once they leave school, leading to the ridiculously short lengths you tend to see portrayed in shoujo anime. Anyway...

Saturday was the 秋祭り Aki Matsuri , or Fall Festival. It might have had another name, but if so, no one ever actually told us what it was. Anyway, Kaminaka-san from our eikaiwa had invited us over to his house for dinner[1], so we went over and got there a bit early. His house is huge, and a bit intimidating from the outside (all dark wood), but inside it was neat. An old-style Japanese house, with a small shrine in the entranceway. Kaminaka-san (hereafter referred to as "Michiya" because there were four Kaminakas there :p) had invited his wife's brother and his wife as well, who were all already there, so we began eating as soon as we got there. They had a huge amount of food--tomato and cucumber salad, fried chicken and shrimp, sashimi of various kinds, stewed vegetables in dashi, homemade nigiri, etc...and all this was the appetizers. They brought out sukiyaki for the actual meal.

When we started, I reached for a piece of sashimi using the other end of my chopsticks, as is proper etiquette, though as I did they stopped me and told me it was okay to use the eating end and that tonight was friendly. Table conversation was neat--I spoke in broken Japanese, Michiya's wife Itsuko and her brother spoke in broken English, her brother's wife (I didn't get either of their names ^^;;) spoke in Japanese, and Michiya spoke English to us and Japanese to his family. Despite the linguistic difficulties, we were able to talk about our family, about whether we like Japan, food, tell the story about how the first thing that softlykarou and I found that we had in common was liking unagi (the brother and his wife pronounced us "married by unagi" when they heard this ^^;;), where everyone came from, how when the brother and his neighbor (both from Osaka) talked in Kansai-ben, his wife had no clue what they were saying[2], the brother's wife's favorite maki (california roll, amusingly), etc. After the incredibly delicious dinner, we walked over to the nearby middle school for a kagura performance.

For those who haven't seen any kagura, it's a type of theater. The plot is minimal, though--it usually consists of a demon of some sort and the agents of Heaven sent to stop it. There are few plot twists, either. The only one we saw was one performance which had a princess seeking shelter from an evil kitsune, except it turned out the princess was the kitsune! Shock! The primary draw of kagura is the dancing and the incredibly intricate costumes. Michiya also took us back to see the performers area, where softlykarou and I got to try on the (ridiculously heavy) clothes and put on the masks, which performers hold onto their faces with their teeth.

It was really fun. ^_^ We missed a halloween party to go to the festival, but it was definitely worth going to. I just wonder what else happened for the festival, and if we missed anything in the town. There were ropes with white ribbons on them hung out all along the Old Road, but we didn't get that far.

[1]: This is apparently somewhat rare in Japan, according to what softlykarou told me. If so, that's even nicer.
[2]: Japanese has a ton of dialects, with far more variation than is present between American ones. Some Japanese-language movies need to include Japanese subtitles when characters are speaking in dialects that are particularly different from standard Japanese.

So, I just got back from a trip over to Saijō to go to the Sake Matsuri. Some people went both Saturday and Sunday, but we decided to just go Sunday, which meant we missed some of the neat stuff (parades, musical performances, etc.). We did get a brief tour of a sake brewery and went to the sake tasting tent--1500円 to go inside. They give you a cup, and you go around to taste different brands of sake from all around Japan. We managed to get in early, which was good since a few hours before it closed they ran out of all the other sake and ended up giving out Saijō sake. It's not like it tasted bad...but it wasn't what we came for.

We did manage to get some excellent falafel from an Egyptian couple running a food stand, though, which made my day. And I do feel a little bad that we didn't at least check out the food stand that put in the extra effect to do their barking at us in English.

We later ended up going to a kaitenzushi place where they went a little heavy on the wasabi for my taste but it was otherwise good. Somewhat surprisingly, it was essentially the same as an American kaitenzushi place would be--lots of weird rolls, things with mayonnaise, fruit, etc. I'm glad they had pineapple, but there wasn't as much of the standard nigiri as I might have liked.

After that, we tried to find a bar somewhere (and accidentally ended up wandering into Saijō's red light district...oops), but all the ones we did find had a minimum 40 minute wait for 8 people, so we just went back to a house and chatted for a bit. Those of us who had to catch the last train did so, and softlykarou and I crashed a a friend's place in Fuchu, just inside Hiroshima's city limits.

Then we came back here. :) I'm sad I missed all the neat stuff, but next year (if we're still in Japan), we'll know to go on Saturday.

As a side note, it's interesting how little we cared about wandering around dimly lit dark alleys in the city. Japan is safe, but it still has a crime rate. I guess it's because we're the ones who are supposed to be committing all the crimes. At least, I assume that's why when, on our way to the train station, the four taxis we hailed just blew past us without even slowing down. It's possible that they were full (even though we didn't see anyone in them) or that they weren't in service (even though the lights were on), but...well, it's also possible that we're gaijin.

One of the people at the party who knows conversational Japanese was mentioning how most people he talks to are fine, but he sometimes runs into someone who has massive cognitive dissonance with a foreigner speaking understandable Japanese and just...shuts down. Pretends not to understand even if he speaks slowly, etc. Has anyone seen something similar in America? I'm sure it happens, but I'm curious if anyone's ever seen it.

Crap, the voice mail menu on my phone is all in Japanese.

At least I figured out how to get voicemails. Now to figure out how to delete them...

Uninstalling and reinstalling seemed to have fixed the problem...however, it now tells me I'm out of activations and I need to call them to reactivate. I'm roughly 14 hours ahead of them and it'd cost a fortune to call from a cell phone. Otherwise, I'd need to call from a payphone and drag my laptop out there.

So I'm asking if there's a way to activate by internet. Otherwise, maybe I'll return their software and hit up the Pirate Bay.

Oh, and despite their statement in the e-mail of " A Rosetta Stone Support Agent will respond to your question as quickly as possible," no one has even looked at my request yet. It's been three days. Some customer service.

So, remember how I explained about moeru gomi and moenai gomi? Well, it turns out those are just the tip of the iceberg.

A very nice man from the PTA came to our door about a month ago and gave us a helpful chart showing all the different categories of trash in Chiyoda. Now, since this is Japan, what he meant by this was, "UR DOIN' IT WRONG!" Chiyoda is apparently pretty relaxed about garbage pick up, so they took it anyway, but every bag we did incorrectly had to be sorted by garbagepeople after being picked up. Ugh!

So, courtesy of the Chiyoda PTA, I now explain how to sort trash in Chiyoda!

Old Papers: Includes envelopes (with plastic window removed, if applicable), books, newspapers, wrapping paper, paper bags, etc. They should be bundled up with string.
Pakku: Cardboard and cartons, like milk or juice cartons. They need to be cut up so they can lay flat.
Pura: Plastic--anything with the プラ symbol on it that doesn't fall into another category. Egg cartons, packaging, detergent bottles, plastic bags, etc. Needs to be washed off, if dirty.
PET Bottles: PET stands for Polyethylene terephthalate. Wash them out, remove the cap and label (both of which go in moeru gomi).
Cans: Aluminum cans, spray cans, etc. Wash them out.
bin: I have no idea why it's named that (in hiragana too--びん), but it includes glass bottles.
Moeru gomi: Things that burn--old clothing, napkins, video cassettes (it's on the chart), CDs, pencils, gloves, daipers, food, etc.
Moenai gomi: Stuff that doesn't burn and doesn't fit into another category. Toys, pots and pans, razors, and so on.
Glass: aka ガラス. Glass that's not bottles, like cookingware, wine glasses, etc. Broken glass should be wrapped in brown paper.
Some kanji I can't read ^^;;: Batteries, light bulbs, termometers, etc.
sodai gomi: "Large trash." Old furnature, futons, bicycles, etc.

And if you think this is confusing, other places have even more categories. And Chiyoda still takes our trash if we do it wrong. We got off lucky, comparatively speaking.

Rosetta Stone stopped working after I installed their "highly recommended update."

That's real value for my money there. -_-

Apparently, there's a disaster contact phone tree set up for Chiyoda. I know this because the guy in charge of collecting names just stopped by to get our information. At first, we had no idea what he was talking about, but when he said "pandemic" in English, and then when we got our dictionary and picked up a few words---roku juu roku nin no kazoku ("66 families") and saigai ("disaster"), we figured out what he wanted. So, we're now part of the official phone tree and will be notified if there's a disaster. Since the notification will be in Japanese, I don't know how much good it'll be...but it'll happen.

We went into Hiroshima-shi yesterday. Everyone else cancelled at the last minute, so we didn't stay very long, but softlykarou did get a new hat and some bath stuff. We also ate at an Irish pub called Molly Malone's (run by actual Irishmen) and stuffed ourselves on fish 'n' chips. Also, a lot of the shop clerks asked us if we spoke Japanese as their first question...I'm getting better, but I still can't hold a conversation. :(

You must watch this video.

As someone on RPG.net said, it's basically "Star Wars Episodes 1-3, but told in 4 minutes and with better storytelling." :-p

So, playing Spore, with its enormous number of interstellar civilizations, had me thinking lately about the so-called "Great Filter" (also known as the Fermi Paradox).

For those who don't want to read, the basic summary is this--there are billions of stars in the galaxy. Even if less than 1% of 1% of those are capable of supporting sentient life, that's still thousands of intelligent civilizations. Assuming they achieve relativistic travel, a single civilization could expand to colonize and terraform every planet in the galaxy in only a few million years--and much, much faster than that if FTL travel is possible. The only thing that could stop them, after they got large enough, would be another civilization of similar expanse. So why haven't we found any hard evidence of aliens yet, either in their visiting Earth or in hearing communications? The basic possibilities come down to this:

A) Because there aren't any. Intelligent life is far rarer than we expect...or something destroys nascent civilizations before they expand too far. This (well, and the Borg) seems to be the inspiration for Spore's Grox.
B) Intelligent life destroys itself before advancing. Whether in ecological catastrophy, planetary war, or a similar armageddon. The problem here is that once a civilization expands beyond a handful of planets it would take an enormous catastrophy to destroy it.
C) Technical problems in discovery or communication. SETI mostly listens for radio signals, and human civilization now is slowly moving past wide-spread use of radio signals. Less than a century of easily-detectable transmissions make it extremely hard for any civilization to discover another one. There's also the aliens among us hypothesis, which is that they're already here but keeping themselves hidden, or the posthuman hypothesis, which is that alien civilizations would go through a technological singularity and become essentially impossible for humans to meaningfully communicate with, even if we could find them.
D) The universe is expensive to colonize. Another possibility is alien races who do not have the urge to expand, though this becomes less tenable when projected over extremely long time scales. This also gets into things like cosmological constants being different in different places and other things we have little or no evidence for.

So, what do you think? Are they out there, and if so, where are they?

So, today was Chiyoda High's Sports Day, where all the students get together to do different games (not really sports in the American sense) and the classes compete against each other. I had been invited to go a couple weeks ago, so I woke up early with softlykarou and headed down to the school. I sat around with her the teacher's room for a bit, while the teachers held their morning meeting and said a bunch of stuff I didn't understand, and then at 9:30 we went out to the field for the Sports Day.

Sports Day was all kinds of fun, and filled with the sort of activities that would cause a massive lawsuit in America. For example, one of the events involved the boys forming a human bridge that another boy climbed on top of. As he walked on his classmates' backs, the people at the end ran around to the front to extend the bridge. One kid even did fall off and crack something pretty hard such that they had to stop the event, but no one freaked out or threatened to sue anyone--kind of a welcome change. Another one, called Caterpillar, had people climb into a roll of taped-together cardboard boxes and move across the field.

softlykarou and I, as well as a bunch of parents from the audience, got to participate in one event--tennis ball bouncing. Against the ground on the way out to the cone, then up and down on the racquet on the way back. I did okay--it's a bit hard to tell how people think you're doing when you could stumble around like a drunken elephant and they'd still yell "[name]-san ganbare!" and "Fighto!"

Then afterwards, I got invited to an enkai (school-sponsored party for teachers). That was a lot of fun--I'm just sad that our ride dropped us off at home while our car is still at the bus station (3 or so miles away), but they did have our best interests at heart. Japanese drunk driving laws basically come down to, "If you have a BAC above 0 when the cops pull you over, you're fucked and so is everyone who let you drive."

So, tonight we went to Funky Tonky again. softlykarou ordered the shrimp spaghetti again, and I, after looking at the food display, I ordered the アメリカンハンブガ ("American hamburger"). It looked like it had onion rings, but I figured I'd either find out I liked them, since my tastes have been changing and I don't hate onions anymore, or I'd give them to softlykarou. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they were squid rings. I felt a lot better, since I love squid--I was just a bit surprised, since squid rings aren't exactly American. :-p

When I went up to the counter, the woman there (either owner or co-owner) asked me if it was okay, and when I said it was delicious, she said how worried she was that I wouldn't like it, since I'd probably be expecting onion rings. I told her it was fine and that I loved squid. I didn't get every word she said, but I got the context and was able to tell her it was fine. :)

Also, I just downloaded 5 megs in less than a second. Whatever else I have to say about Japan, I can't complain about network speed, even in the countryside. ^_^