safety first

Since moving to Tokyo, I’ve been really nonchalant about safety and security. After living in NYC, I feel almost invincible in Tokyo. Until of course I was rushed back to reality through the internet when my email was hacked. ( I’m very sorry if you’re getting weird emails from me!)  It doesn’t really matter where you are, an inconsiderate hacker can find you anywhere.

But maybe this was important because it did remind me that I do need to be careful in every realm, and that I should really be glad that the building I’m moving into next week is going to have auto-lock!

Auto-lock is a neat feature for apartment buildings. Its basically an extra door/entrance you have to get through with a key card/password. You do see it a lot in apartment buildings in the US (remember entrance to the Taft apartments or StuyTown?), but somehow, they just seem cooler in Japan. A lot of places are just more high tech with special keys you see in futuristic movies like Minority Report, and key cards like we had in college, except they’re small and seem very robotic and I think I’ll feel really cool using it. Or maybe I’ll feel nothing at all when I actually use it.

People are also obsessed with having auto-lock. A friend kept insisting to me and telling me that I was crazy when I said I don’t care if I have auto-lock but I told her she was crazy to think Tokyo is dangerous. But then she made a good point that I might not get robbed and stabbed, but there are lots of strange people here that often sexually harass girls and those instances hardly get reported, so its a nice perk that I found a place that has auto-lock. I’ll be tucked into my new safe apartment pretty soon.

you’re driving up my dry cleaning bill

I have a high dry cleaning bill in theory. I haven’t actually gotten my clothes dry cleaned because it is expensive but i would like to send my clothes to the cleaners every day. I’ll tell you why.

BECAUSE EVERY PERSON SMOKES IN EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY IN THIS  COUNTRY. and it drives me up the wall because you can’t escape the smell and it sinks into my clothes, it sinks into my pores and i can’t get the stink out!!!!

Anytime I pass a subway entrance, I pass a group of smokers lingering around the smoking square. Every restaurant, cafe is divided up into the non-smoking and smoking areas, but really, isn’t the whole restaurant a smoking area when its one small space that has an invisible tape drawn across the middle?

Of course, when you sell a pack (or is it a box?) of cigarettes in vending machines for 300Yen (that’s about $3!!!) , people are bound to smoke.

I end up airing out my jacket, my bag, my sweaters out on my balcony every night. Well, I don’t remember most nights to do this so in theory, I would like to do this every night.

bouncing back

I haven’t blogged in a few weeks so I’m sorry! I’ve been having a hard time the last couple weeks getting into a schedule so blogging fell out of my priority list. My bf came and we went to Kyoto and Osaka, and hung out in Tokyo with his many friends. I swear, he knows more people here than I do. It’s very sad.

Also, I started working last week and I just needed adjusting time. I’m supposed to speak lots of Japanese, its exhausting. To be honest though, I’m not actually using too much Japanese right now. I think I’m just exhausted from thinking about how much Japanese I have to use and fretting over the inevitable situation where I will not know how to explain something in Japanese.

Anyway, I’m ready to bounce back and entertain you with my thoughts.

will be back

sorry for the lack of posts recently, but i have a pseudo good reason – my bf is here so we went down to kyoto and osaka and have been too busy to post anything. i’ll be back therefore in a few days.

 

 

save your bottle for later

I went to an izakaya with a friend who frequently goes to this particular izakaya he took me to. We got there and he asked me if some sort of shochu was alright, and whatever, I didn’t really care, I’m not a connoisseur of Japanese rice liquor so I said yea, sounds good.

He pulled out a card and gave it to the waiter who came back holding an opened bottle of shochu with a little doggy tag on it. I asked my friend what that was and he said, instead of buying by the glass because that is expensive,  you can buy by the bottle and have it stored at the izakaya for the next time you return. How cool is that?! I’ve never seen that in NYC, does that exist? Apparently this is very common so you could potentially have lots of bottles stored all over town. (This place also charged for ice…)

An aside: I found a funny tidbit about shochu on wiki.

“As far as can be determined from Japanese historical record, shōchū appears to have been made since at least as far back as the 16th century. For example, when the missionary Francis Xavier visited Kagoshima Prefecture in 1549, he recorded that “the Japanese drink arak made from rice [...] but I have not seen a single drunkard. That is because once inebriated they immediately lie down and go to sleep.”

Yup, sounds right, it still happens, but now its also pretty commonplace to see the drunk throwing up on the streets.

mj – this is it

Going to the movie theater is expensive here. Tickets are roughly 1,800 Yen (~$19) and some places are even more expensive. But for some reason, the first of the month, tickets are 1,000 Yen! What a great way to get everybody into the theater, at least it got all the couples in. I went in during the day to buy 2 tickets for later and felt like a loser because everybody was paired off and on a date. I did see the movie with a guy friend so I suppose I could have pretended I was on a date too, but that would have been weird.

I saw Michael Jackson’s This Is It. And it was PHENOMENAL. Amazing, exhilarating, energetic, inspiring, and so so fun!!!!! Basically the movie gives you his show with rehearsal anecdotes and I’m so sorry that I was never able to see him live because if he’s able to exude that much enthusiasm and musicality at a rehearsal, the energy that he would have gotten from the screaming fans must be over the top.

Its weird to think that he had all these health issues because yes, he doesn’t look like the beacon of health but you can’t tell when he’s performing and rehearsing. He legitimately dances with his dancers pretty much all throughout the show and he’s better than all of them! And he’s singing at the same time, and coordinating with the band, his backup singers, the stage crew, MJ the entertainer was crazy good. The show goes through all his mega hits so basically you end up sitting for two hours bopping your head and singing along. Okay, I did, but none of the other Japanese people surrounding me did. They all seemed entranced but still.

I heard the movie isn’t doing too well with American audiences, but seriously, please go see it at a movie theater because it amplifies the special effects and the dancing and the singing and the music that you won’t get from a TV screen.

you can see the trailer here:

http://www.thisisit-movie.com/

a survey of hamburgers

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

I was saving this topic for Halloween just because I wanted to tie in a silly picture. Here you go:

Munch munch munch, pumpkin is eating my fries!!

I know cheesy, and it is totally posed. I was taking pictures and started using the pumpkin wrapper as my model. lame, but that’s what happens when I get bored.

Anyway, since I’ve gotten here, I haven’t really been eating that well. I’m usually very healthy and eat pretty well but the allure of the Japanese fast food chains has been a little too strong for me to resist.

First one – Freshness Burger

So this first picture above is from Freshness Burger. Look at my setup while I waited for them to cook my stuff!!

 

I have a real glass cup!

 

So cute!! And this is a fast food chain?? So then my food gets here and of course the pumpkin wrapper for my burger made me happy.

 

can't decide if this looks gross or appetizing

 

That sludgy looking thing was kind of overwhelming to see at first, but you know what? I was just really impressed with that really thick slice of tomato. Its as thick as the bun! I’m not quite sure what was in that slop but as a whole it tasted pretty good. The bun was really good! It was yellow, so I don’t know what its made out of, but mmm buttered or greased or whatever toasted bun. It was my favorite part. The fries – potato wedges that were hit or miss, meh.

I’ve been back a couple times since, and I’ve since moved onto one called the Negimiso Burger. It also looks slop-y like the first burger but its amazing. Negi is long scallions and miso is, miso. mmm so good.

Second one – MOS Burger

 

Presentation - not very appealing.

 

Yea, I think Freshness wins with their mini vase of carnations and that glass cup. So here is my burger, the MOS burger.

 

this weird slop of a texture keeps coming up

 

It was pretty good, the bolognesey sauce was sweet, it was cheesy, the bread was a good consistency for the burger. But I didn’t like it that much. Their fries are better than Freshness though – more crispy, at least the ones that I had.

Third one – Lotteria

that burger looks huge but it was tiny

The fries were like Burger King! Like the classic stringy french fries. They were salty and crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. (Can you tell I’m a secret fast food fan?) The burger was actually like a regular hamburger, but it had this white sauce on it that I think may have been Tzatziki sauce. Whatever it was, it was tangy and really good.

The Conclusion

What you can’t tell from these pictures is how tiny and cute these burgers are. They’re basically the size of a kids cheeseburger at McDonalds. But taller. They’re actually the perfect size for me but if you’re a hungry guy, you’ll probably eat about 3 and still feel sort of hungry. Maybe my stomach has shrunk from eating odd meals.

Also, I think the Japanese have a very different concept of burger from Americans. Because they all looked like squashed sausage (breakfast) patties. When I think of burgers I think rare inside, crusty charred on the outside, juicy with the ground up swirls visible, or in crumbles as you bite into the burger. These were just squashed. Still good, but squashed.

My favorite burgers so far are the Negimiso from Freshness and the burger from Lotteria, and I like the Lotteria fries.

I would go back but I think I need to start eating real food again.

this is for kim jong irrrrr

And for micherre.

Would you like some Orive Oil spaghetti??

I had to take a picture since it immediately reminded me of micherre.

Japanese computers do have spell check for English so really, USE SPELL CHECK.

Or maybe, I hadn’t thought of this till now, but maybe Microsoft has a secret joke where they programmed Asian versions of Microsoft Office to leave the “r”s because its funny. I like this explanation better.

shake shake shake

I forgot all about it until just now, but a couple days ago I was sitting at my desk working on something, and I was getting annoyed at one of my guestmates who was blasting music.  I was getting really annoyed because the bass was so strong that my desk was starting to wobble. And then my desk started quivering more and more, and the bass just kept booming, and I was about to get up to get the person to quit the music, when duuuh, silly me, it wasn’t the bass, it was an earthquake!

So then I started freaking out inside, although how funny that I didn’t start freaking out until I realized it was an earthquake, and sat frozen in my chair because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do.

What are you supposed to do when things start shaking? I figured I should grip my desk, which is super flimsy and not really going to help if things actually got bad. Also, I remembered that someone got saved in the Indonesian tsunami aftermath a few weeks ago because he had a cell phone, so I grabbed onto that too.

As I was waiting for all my trinkets in my room to stop rattling I realized, wtf, if this house did splinter and collapse, and I did survive and had my phone and could call someone, I wouldn’t know how to call the police, or the ambulance, or the fire department because I was pretty sure the number wasn’t 911.

I very quickly hoped/wished/prayed?? to someone that the earthquake would finish soon so that I could look up the emergency numbers. I now know so now I’m all prepared for an earthquake.

Police: 110

Fire Department/Ambulance: 119

 

wish i didn’t need a cell phone

Ten days ago, I realized I couldn’t hold out any longer on buying a cell phone. I’m a super popular girl over here with lots of boys and girls to meet up with… so yea.

I was looking for the cheapest phone, to use with pre-paid service, since I didn’t (still don’t) know how long I’ll be here for.

I first went to Softbank, one of the major carriers here. Softbank bought Vodafone Japan 3 years ago. At the store, a Softbanker, while holding one of Softbank’s info packet which he gave me, told me that I won’t find what I’m looking for in Japan. We don’t sell it, no one else sells it, so you won’t find it. really? Yea, and we definitely don’t sell it. And then he basically kicked me out the store! So after I left, I got all huffy and upset but went to another provider called Docomo, the giant of Japan’s cellular market.

At Docomo, I was there for an hour because one of the salesman was trying to help me find the best solution in the event that I’m only here for 3 months. They didn’t have a pre-paid service either, so he was telling me I can sign up for a 2 year plan, cancel, only get charged x amount. etc. Expensive and inconvenient. Told him I would think about it, then called my mom and asked her to help me research it.

My mom calls me a few hours later and basically um, Softbank, you lie. I go and actually look at the info packet and there’s a whole section on pre-paid service!! (Ok, my fault for not reading it.) Not to mention, its a well-known (to the Japanese) tidbit that Softbank is one of two carriers to have it. Apparently a few years ago the gov’t passed a law here that made it harder and probably less profitable to sell pre-paid service in an attempt to curb illegal activities. And also made it really hard for foreigners to get a pre-paid SIM card. Not an issue for me since I’m so Japanese.

Regardless, I got my phone from Softbank, but I’m still displeased with them. Not to mention, this pre-paid service charges 9 Yen/6 seconds = ~ $1/min!

Silver lining though – I have a great excuse to not call people I’m not interested in, “You’re too expensive.”