Recently at work we have been distributing tickets to our upcoming games to business partners who were allowed a special pre-sale of premium seats. Some of them (in thoughtful, Japanese fashion) bring gifts for us as a thanks. Yesterday we received a box of donuts, and a shipment of crab from Hokkaido. The specie of crab is known as the "horsehair crab" in English, and the Japanese simply call it the"hair crab." I think it is only found in Asia around Japan and Korea. It is kind of hairy, and has really sharp spikes all around it.
Last night I took one home and cooked it. It was very good and I hope I get to take some more home because our freezer is full of it here at the office.
Wish
Please bring a pet's excrement home.
Every day on the way to work I pass a large office building with trees in front of it. Posted on the trees is the above-written statement, as well as what it really means in Japanese. The problem that the person who made this had is the same problem I had when I first came to Japan in 2002. Saying "please" in Japanese is a lot different from the way we say it. Instead of writing "Wish" they should have written "please" or "request". But, the word they were translating actually means "please", "wish", and even "request" which is one example why you cant use a dictionary to translate sentences in Japanese. When I first came to Japan I wanted to say "please" so I looked it up in my dictionary and it gave me the word "dozo". I used that for at least a month before I realized my mistake. "Dozo" is "please" as in, "Please help yourself to some cake" ETC. So what the Japanese people were hearing was me saying things like "Can I have more rice please help yourself?".
It is sad how the rest of the message posted on the trees ended up how it did. Doesn't it sound like you have a variety if pet feces to choose from that you are free to take home? The sign should simply say:
Please
Take your pet's droppings with you.
I am far from being free of mistakes in my Japanese. Just yesterday I embarrassingly messed up while talking to Masanori Murakami on the phone. He is an iconic figure here and was the first Japanese player to ever go to the USA.
He pitched for the San Francisco Giants.
Where's Waldo?
Photos like this really illustrate how I compare to the height of the average Japanese person.
These were taken in the Ueno district of the city in a busy little area of shops, restaurants, and street vendors. I bought pineapple on a stick!
Later we went to Ueno park and say a very impressive street performer doing various soccer moves. Check him out, and other sights from the park here:
A Pagoda:
February 5th through 8th was my school trip to Okinawa. I went with the 25-30 California State University students at Waseda. Overall it was a fun trip, but the weather was bad and so we didn't get much beach time in.
We all gathered at Tokyo's Haneda Airport which is designated for domestic flights only. Justin and I hopped on the subway at 5:45 AM and easily made it on time to meet up with the group.
We flew on All Nippon Airlines (ANA) and our jet was painted with Pokemon. After getting our luggage we boarded a bus waiting for us at the terminal which we rode around in for the remainder of the trip. Our guide for the trip was named Sayaka and she was really cute and fun. She would use the bus's PA system to sing us Okinawan songs and play us the traditional Okinawan guitar. She even had a celebratory taste of vodka with some of us when we first boarded the bus!
Our Pokemon Plane
Our Bus and Sayaka the tour guide
Many of the sights we saw were related to the fighting on Okinawa during World War 2. Our first stop was some sort of defense wall used by the Japanese military. It was raining on us as we toured around but we still had fun. We also stopped at a beautiful castle.
A Castle
Inside the bathroom in the castle
An old throne
The defence wall I was talking about
My friend Bora
Despite the beauty of those places, I liked this lookout point by our first hotel the most. It really made me wish the weather wasn't so rainy because I wanted to go swimming so badly!
There is meaning behind those rocks being connected but I forget what it is
Here are some pictures from our first hotel which was pretty nice.
The first night we had a buffet barbecue dinner. I liked the pork and the shrimp the most, as well as all of the delicious vegetables. Being that this is Japan, it was all you can drink as well and everybody got really cheerful and loud. Some people played with the idea of going to the beach in the rain which was about a mile walk and going for a dip. They ended up going but I just decided to go take a jacuzzi. While in there I met two girls and a guy around my age from Osaka and we chatted for around 45 minutes. One of the girls is an Olympic hopeful for the trampoline event.
The next morning we were to leave the hotel at 9AM and being jealous that I didn't get to swim in the ocean yet I woke up at seven, took a swim in the ocean in the rain, then went back the the hotel and went to its public bath and spa and got ready to go.
We all hopped aboard the bus and made a quick stop at a beach since the sun broke out. We didn't do much but take pictures and run around but it was nice.
Myself, Scott, and Justin
Bora in the water
We then went to an aquarium with a really beautiful garden of flower statues. Check them out! Justin and I got a picture with the cockroach because we live in the same building and have both dealt with those pests.
The enterance to the aquarium and garden
Octopus
Welcome to the park!
With the cockroach
Nick, Brad, Jase, and Mikie
A shark & friends
We hit the road once again and went to a place for lunch that served traditional Okinawan cuisine. It wasn't too abstract. The wildest thing was pig ear which was really chewy. I actually thought it was some sort of pickled vegetable.
Hanging out on the balcony of the place we ate at
A very cool place that we went to later was a huge WW2 memorial for troops from all over the world. There were hundreds of tourists there and the majority of them were high school kids from around the nation on their school trips. Anyway, this place was beautiful as it looked over the sea. There was a chilling silence as we walked through the memorials and read the names of the dead. Indoors there was a nice war museum with many exhibits displaying sad stories from US and Japanese perspectives.
High School students on their senior trip
Cornerstone of Peace
This fountain represents the spreading of the understanding of the brutalness of war which starts in Okinawa when visiting this site, and stays with you when you return to where you are from.
A view from above
Just before we arrived to our new, cheaper hotel in the capital city of Naha we stopped at an underground Japanese military work area. This room still had marks on it from where hopeless troops committed suicide with a grenade.
Once in the capital city of Naha we quickly dropped off our stuff and went and had dinner. We had teppanyaki with the main course being steak. It was my first time to have steak in Japan and it was really good. After dinner we went out looking for stuff to do but being that most of the tourists were high school students on field trips it got pretty dead at night.
Dinner
Small shops in Naha
High school students shopping and taking pictures
The next day we had our whale watching tour and snorkeling planned but the snorkeling was canceled because the surf was too high. The waves were so big that 5 of us on the yacht were throwing up even though we all took motion sickness pills.
It was pretty chilly and breezy but I still decided to go shirtless. I had hopes that it would get warmer but it never did. In fact, once the yacht hit full speed we were all getting soaked and it didn't feel good at all having wet jeans and socks. Before we knew it we saw a pair of very large whales. It was a little scary because they seemed really powerful. At one point I thought I saw a dolphin but the tour guide said it was actually a shark!
Ready to set sail
Where we took off from
Soaking wet 15 minutes in to the trip
Two whales
One of them
O-Mikey having a party
This kid was soaked to the bone, cold, and drunk
We returned to the city and my friends Justin and Dustin and I went to explore and buy souvenirs. Habu (a specie of snake) alcohol was very popular and since we bought from a lady's shop she let us all have a drink. It was really good and I liked it much better than Okinawa's other famous alcohol called aomori.
Check out the snakes!
Time to drink some, bottoms up!
(notice how bundled up we were, it was cold!)
We then returned to the hotel and prepared for dinner at an izakaya. That night the "all you can drink" policy didn't exactly bring out the best of everyone in the group and there were some issues. For the most part it was really fun though! On the way to dinner there was a pretty girl handing out menus to a cowboy themed restaurant and I got her to take a picture with Justin who thought she was cute.
Our last night at the hotel brought shame to our group as two people got in a discussion whether or not cigarette smoke will set off a smoke alarm. The fool who didn't think it would blew smoke on the sensor once and nothing happened, then he did it again and the alarm went off throughout the whole hotel at 2:30 AM. I was in bed but the alarm woke me up and rememded me of the time the fire alarm went off in the dorms in San Diego at 5AM on the first day of school.
The next day we just hung out in the city and didn't do much else before our flight back to Tokyo.
Justin looking for his hat in the trash after searching everywhere else
Eating Tacos with Justin and Erik before our flight back to Tokyo
According to some God is a rasta-woman smoking a joint
I have no idea what this is
