Hmm

I saw a young man wearing a black t-shirt which said 'SATAN AND DARKNESS'.

He was carrying a plastic Chip 'n' Dale bucket from Disneyland.

City Spotlight: Kawasaki (part 2)

Okay, so we covered the department stores in the last post. What else?

Left side

So, you're in Kawasaki station. If you head left from the ticket gates, you'll come toward Muza and LaZona.

Kawasaki Muza is Kawasaki's concert hall. Kawasaki prides itself on being a bit of a hub of entertainment, and has three movie theatres. Muza has a variety of concerts, including free shows; check their website for more info.

Muza

Near Muza is Nishi-guchi-dori, the street that runs back between Muza and LaZona. I recommend Inje, the Peruvian restaurant, and An An, a chain yakiniku restaurant with cheap drinks which is open all night, I think.

Right side

However, the other side of the station is of more interest generally. Once you go out, and across the taxi bay (you can go underground, through Azalea), you'll get to Kawasaki's restaurant and entertainment area.

Gin-ryu-gai is a partly undercover pedestrian street. It has a lot of drugstores and karaoke places (why that combination, I'm not quite sure). Off Gin-ryu-gai are lots of side streets which are full of restaurants. After dark, some of them become a bit dodgy; Kawasaki is famous for having a kind of red light district, hostess clubs, that kind of thing.

Entrance to Gin-ryu-gai

My picks in this area are... I forget the street name. On Gin-ryu-gai, take the side street where there is a First Kitchen on the corner, walk for about three minutes, and on your right will be an Indian restaurant called Tandoor, and almost next door, an Italian restaurant called Mona Lisa. They are my recommendations, though honestly, I like everything. ^_^

If you are coming from the station, go right on Gin-ryu-gai, and across the road you'll come across La Citadella, which is also near Saikaya department store. This is a small 'Italian town', which is decked out to look Italian, and hosts some quite good Italian restaurants. It's a good place to sit outside; there are a few restaurants with outdoor terraces, and a movie theatre, CineCitta. Club Citta and a few bars are also in the vicinity.

La Citadella

There's also a public fountain which goes off rather dramatically at one-hour intervals (on the weekends, there's often live music there, and I amuse myself by imagining if the scheduled fountain suddenly went off while they were playing ^_^).

Near the entrance to La Citadella are a bunch of pachinko parlours (bleagh), but in that area there is also a cat cafe. (This cat cafe has 30 or more cats you can look at and play with.) You may see the cafe staff advertising it around Citadella's entrance. I've been there about six times. ^^;;;

Oh yes, there's a library near Kawasaki station too. If you leave the station but turn left before you go into Azalea - you will see the RiverK building (pronounced, bizarrely 'ribaark') - it's a very tall and nice-looking building, with escalators that are partly outdoors. If you take the elevator to the 4th floor, you will find the library. ^_^

City Spotlight: Kawasaki (department stores)

Kawasaki is the city between Tokyo and Yokohama. The business and social heart of the city is located around JR Kawasaki station, so in this post, when I say 'Kawasaki', I mean that area. I'll start with the department stores.

JR Kawasaki station is surrounded by many department stores (Keikyuu Kawasaki station is also nearby).

LaZona Kawasaki Plaza is the biggest, coolest and most popular department store. It's connected to the station building itself. It has a big open-air courtyard and is a nice place to sit outside on a fine day. It has a movie theatre, game centre, gym (Konami), BIC Camera, big discount store (Daiso), lots of restaurants, a good supermarket, food hall and food court. It has a big Maruzen bookstore, which has a reasonable English selection.

You'll often see people lining up at a small bakery/cafe in the courtyard - they are buying dojima rolls, which are sponge roll cakes. For some reason they have attained 'fame' status and so there is usually a line of people buying them.

I don't like buying clothes here - they are mostly expensive, except at Uniqlo - but I often go to LaZona for the food, or the ambience. The food court has a few good choices, my favourite being the Thai. I also like the Diner, which is on the fourth floor, and has outdoor seating - it has the best burgers I've tried in Kawasaki.

Kawasaki BE is also part of the station building, on the other side from LaZona. Again, I rarely go here except for food. There is a Krispy Kreme. The basement floor has a food hall; I like the Italian store 'Plates', which has a 'fill your own tray' lunch bento deal, and I always love Beard Papa's cream puffs. ^_^

Azalea is a big underground mall. It is not very atmospheric, but it is very useful on rainy days and when navigating about, as it is rather sprawling. There is a big taxi area in front of the station which you cannot walk across, so you can use Azalea to walk from the station to Citadella, or More's, or one of the many bus stops.

Azalea has, I think, the most reasonably-priced range of clothes, if you are looking to buy clothes. I also like the tempura and soba restaurant (?a chain, I think) and Cafe La Mille, which has very overpriced drinks, but does sell scones with jam and cream, which I occasionally crave. ^_^

Kawasaki Le-Front is a little outside the station - if you go out Kawasaki BE, it's on the right. It's one of those somewhat annoyingly designed department stores, which is very tall with not that many stores on each floor, so that you are constantly going up and down escalators. (Kawasaki More's and Dice are the same style.)

Le-Front has a decent 100-yen store, and a big Yodobashi Camera, and another Konami sports gym. I sometimes go to Subway here... oh, on the second floor, there's a small Italian restaurant with outdoor seating, and some other spaces where you can sit outside. (The weather is super nice at the moment, so I am all about outdoor seating ^_^).

Saikaya, near Le-Front, is in my opinion the least interesting of all the department stores. Even the restaurant floor and food hall are not great. Saikaya does sell some luxury and brand-name goods, if that floats your boat. It doesn't float mine.

Kawasaki More's is another tall, thin department store, across the taxi bay from Kawasaki station. It's not very interesting, but it does have a decent-sized Book Off and a large, obnoxious game centre. If you go to the basement area that connects to Azalea, you can see the World's Shortest Escalator. I'm not kidding. There's even a Guinness Records certificate on the wall.

In the summer months, More's has a rooftop beer garden. You can't see much view, as the roof is heavily enclosed in thick protective fences. But it's still nice to enjoy the open air and all-you-can-drink. ^_^

Kawasaki Dice is another tall, thin department store, near Keikyuu Kawasaki station. There's an electronics store, a fairly big Aoi bookstore (they also have some English books), and, well, I haven't spent much time here...

Kikoku suru

In a little while, I will be leaving Japan. At that point, I will probably discontinue this blog (sorry to all two readers of it, ha ha ha). So in the meantime, if there is anything you would like me to blog about, or any information you would like about Yokohama/Kanagawa/Tokyo etc, please feel free to request it in the comments. ^_^

Kumon: my thoughts

I am currently studying Japanese at Kumon.

I looked into a lot of different Japanese schools around Kanagawa and Tokyo. However, all of them seemed rather expensive, or were for much longer courses than I wanted to take. Also, I'm slightly ambivalent about taking a group class, where I can't control how fast or slow I progress.

I wanted a school where I could study at my own pace, where I could miss a class without it being a big problem, and where I could study for a short time. I didn't want anything too expensive, and ideally I wanted to study kanji in a more structured way.

(I have been studying kanji with a textbook and flashcards, but it's been slow going; I haven't been remembering them terribly well, and I can write almost none of them. I don't think I am a very 'visual' person.)

So I joined Kumon. Now, Kumon is actually like a cram school for Japanese kids. The branch I go to is a very homey and functional kind of place; basic and cluttered up with lots of books and pigeonholes and blackboards, with rather dated equipment, and loads of educational posters on the walls, and classroom desks with little stools. In short, it looks like a place where real study is done. When I go there, there are young children of various ages studying maths and English and Japanese.

Kumon's style is that you pay a monthly fee; this allows you to get worksheets and a CD, and you work through the worksheets at your own pace. I go in twice a week to the school itself, where I do some worksheets by myself and sometimes practice 'ondoku' (reading aloud) to the teacher. Then I do some more worksheets at home.

Basically, you will be responsible for yourself; it's not interactive. You will share your teacher with lots of other students; the teacher does not really 'teach' you, but is there to correct your sheets, point out your mistakes, and hear your reading.

The style is quite repetitious; each series of worksheets have a lot of the same sentences and words you will read and write over and over again. The worksheets come in batches of 10, each one taking about 30-40 minutes (for me, at the moment), which I think is a good thing; I like having a set, clearly defined piece of work to tackle. Having my teacher check off my progress booklet by booklet is more motivating for me than just having a textbook to slowly work through.

The level I am doing is rather low for me in terms of grammar, but my main intention is to practice reading and writing, to gain some new vocabulary, and to reinforce and strengthen my basic grammar. As a result, the worksheets are currently not difficult for me in terms of content, but they take a while to plug through. To be honest, I'm not sure if I could totally 'get' the grammar if it were introduced at a level I didn't already understand. My mind doesn't work well in terms of subjects and topics and predicates and whatnot.

In addition, I'm not sure if I would want to continue this style of study for a long time; I might get bored with it after a while. And I am supplementing the Kumon lessons with language exchange and private lessons, so I can get more advanced grammar and conversation practice.

I'm finding this study is a very good thing for me right now. The problem with my previous kanji study was that I wasn't reading or writing enough of it to properly remember them. Also, my reading and writing has been a lot slower than it should be; I can already feel myself improving as I concentrate on it. I can write a number of kanji now.

Lately I've been proud of myself for being able to go to karaoke and read the Japanese lyrics fast enough to sing the songs. Before, if I wanted to sing a Japanese song, I would have to memorise the whole song before going in. Now, if the song is not fast, I can sing it. Hopefully after a little more Kumon training, I will be able to sing the fast ones too. ^_-

[Edit, after finishing at Kumon: Okay, so I completed my month. How was it?

The first three weeks were good and I finished a lot of worksheets. I found that as I got closer to the end - and therefore knew I wouldn't be continuing it - my motivation dropped off a lot and I just couldn't make myself do those booklets. I think I enjoyed them a lot at first, because I had a lot of free time and I really wanted to progress as much as possible. But after a while, the repetitious style got a bit wearisome.

I think if I had continued doing them, it would have been ideal kanji practice. I'd continue reading and writing the same kanji again and again throughout my studies, thus securing them more and more firmly in my own mind. And several months later, I can still remember how to write some kanji that I couldn't write before Kumon. I can imagine that if I'd studied Kumon for several months*, I would have quite a solid foundation of a decent number of kanji.

*(Mind you, if I were studying over several months, it would probably be much more part-time and less concentrated. And if I was only doing, say, one or two worksheets a week, it would be harder to remember words and kanji between times, I think.)

Autumn

It's autumn.

Seasons here have their associated images, foods and activities. I mentioned summer's symbols in this post.

Some autumnal paraphernalia include:

• grapes - many varieties
• mushrooms - yum yum yum ^_^
• moon-viewing (though I don't actually know anybody who does this, McDonald's has brought out their 'Tsukimi burger' - 'tsukimi' meaning 'moon viewing' - which has a big round fried egg on it)
• chestnuts (often called 'marron' - the French name - in Japan - coffee shops will bring out a few 'marron'-related products)
• maple leaves
• obviously, autumn foliage (the changing leaves are called 'kouyou' in Japan; in late autumn it's common to go to nice parks or countryside places to see the kouyou)

A number of shops are now decorated with autumn leaves; others are already busting out the Hallowe'en decor. (Hallowe'en is not widely celebrated, but it is widely used in decorating.)

It's interesting how as soon as we hit August 31, the weather suddenly changed. It was just a calendar date, but suddenly, bang, it didn't *feel* like summer any more. All through July and August, I went about without a jacket, neither day nor night. But now you never know when a cool spell will hit, or when it will suddenly start raining, or when the night will come in with a slight chill in the air.

A Day in: Kawasaki

Today I go to Kawasaki. This is the city between Tokyo and Yokohama. Though if you were travelling by road, you probably wouldn't have any perception of one city 'ending' and the next 'beginning'.

I start on Nishi-guchi-dori, and to a Peruvian restaurant for lunch. The staff are Peruvian. I always think it's kind of cool when I can communicate with Peruvian, or Chinese, or Korean people, in a shared second language.

I get a lunch set - meat dish, soup, and iced coffee - for a cool 700 yen. I'm beginning to really like Japanese iced coffee.

(See, in Japan, the 'standard' drinks are iced coffee, hot coffee, iced tea and hot tea. If you get a set meal anywhere, these are your most common, basic choices. All four are served black. So for example, in Australia, 'iced coffee' is a rather sickly sweet, very milky drink. 'Iced tea' is usually a flavoured, slightly fruity drink. But in Japan it's as though you simply took regular black coffee or black tea and served it cold, with ice.

To your iced tea or coffee you can then add milk and sugar. These are also different to Australian milk and sugar; the milk comes in tiny, super-concentrated little cups, and the sugar comes as 'gum syrup', which is liquid sugar. This is better for dissolving into a cold drink.)

The restaurant is almost empty when I enter, but soon starts to fill up. Groups of businessmen come in, and soon there is a mass of white shirts. I am the only woman in the shop.

After lunch, I walk behind LaZona. I'm going to try to walk towards Kamata, and the Tama River. The sun is bright and hot overhead. I'm a little hot in my t-shirt and 3/4 pants. All the other women I see are wearing long pants, and mostly, long shirts. The lady in front of me is carrying an umbrella. I wish I'd had the foresight to put on sunscreen.

I come upon a recycled goods shop - not a common occurrence, in my experience. I go in and think 'eh, the 100 yen store is better'. There is an electric ear cleaner which looks like a hair dryer. I remember a recent conversation I had with three Japanese friends.

'I clean my ears once a week,' said the first.

'Ehhhh,' said the second, shocked. 'I'm three days in a week. How about you?'

The third said, 'I clean mine every day'.

They were very surprised to learn that I don't even own a mimikaki (ear-cleaning brush).

I finally circumnavigate LaZona. It comprises a big area. Around the building is grass. It's not every day I see grass, so I feel happy. Unfortunately, all the grass has been fenced off with ugly green traffic cones and tape. Keep off the grass.

I start to pass buildings I have never seen before. One building has a large flower display inside, with a water feature. At first I think I am seeing the reflection of the park outside, but no, it's inside. It seems a very elegant building. There is a McDonald's in it. It seems out of place.

I think it will be straightforward walking to the Tama, but I have a sad reputation for getting lost. When I see the Keihin-Tohoku line flying past, it reassures me that I'm going the right way.

I reach the Tama River. This is the river that is the border of two cities. On my side is Kawasaki; on the opposite banks it is Tokyo. There is a kind of homeless people's shanty town set up along the banks.

The Tama River is not a beautiful river. But it's such a perfect, sunny day today that it can't help but look nice. I sit for a while and study some Japanese. People are fishing in the river. A bunch of very noisy children play in an apartment block behind me.

Eventually I get up. I'd like to find a bathroom. There's nothing. I decide to just keep walking, and I walk and walk, and find myself on Daishi dori, so I decide to walk to Kawasaki Daishi park. It's a bit of a trek. I pass two shrines, two train stations, and Kawasaki Keiba racing track.

I would be enjoying the walk more, but it is rather warm, and my route is unrelieved by a single modicum of shade. I am going to be burnt. I am going to be very burnt.

When I finally get to Daishi park, 45 minutes later, I am relieved to get to a bathroom. I am less relieved to see it's in the middle of being cleaned. This seems to happen a lot. I am too hot and lazy to walk to the next one, so I sit down and wait. It's being cleaned with more zeal than finesse - the elderly cleaner is literally hosing the stalls down and blasting water all over the ground.

25 minutes later, and he still, unbelievably, hasn't finished. He goes to his bicycle and takes a roll of toilet paper. I lose patience and go to Daishi shrine instead.

I sit by Turtle Pond. I don't know its real name. But there are willows, and lilies, and gentle fountains. It is a very serene place. I try to count the turtles. I try twice, and each time, I get confused around the 80 mark. I listen to Porno Graffitti's 'Heart' and feel very relaxed.

Lights

In Australia, if you are at a pedestrian crossing, and the little green 'walk' picture changes to a flashing sign, it usually means that, even if you only just started crossing, you should have ample time to finish.

In Japan, if the little green 'walk' picture starts flashing, it means: RUN! RUN!!

Contacts

Every day, to get to work, I pass a gauntlet of people handing out various ads, packs of tissues, leaflets, etc. Mostly I ignore them as they kind of glumly, half-heartedly try to thrust things in my face.

Today I was walking and I heard a chirpy male voice: 'HOW aBOUT some CONtacts?" I paused, slightly bemused, and the guy did a twirl and handed me a flier, with a flourish.

I took it and he said "thank you! I love you!"

I kept walking and glanced back and he grinned and waved at me.

As it happens, I don't need contact lenses, but at least he had some panache. ^_^

(Note: My execrable Mac is having serious problems, so it's possible I will not be updating for a little while...)

Celebrity

Last night I went to LaZona Kawasaki and the place was packed with people. Kuraki Mai was there doing an appearance and singing some songs. It's pretty cool that they have famous singers give free performances, but I can't say I thought a lot of her voice. She's not bad, but no better than all the amateur musicians encamped around the station.

After all this time in Japan, I am passably familiar with Japanese musicians and bands, but still know virtually no comedians, actors or other 'talent'. This is because I rather like Japanese music, but have a great abhorrence of Japanese TV.

You know you're not in Australia any more...

"Why is there Jack Daniels in the electronics store?!"

Video game: The World Ends With You

My thoughts on a DS game.

I wasn't all that struck by 'The World Ends With You'. The coolest thing about it was that it was set in Shibuya - and I started playing it one night after being in the real Shibuya! But the gameplay irritated me for two main reasons.

First, it felt too restrictive. I always felt like there was always a very specific thing I had to do for every task. It would give you the illusion of giving you the freedom to run around and explore and solve puzzles, but actually you'd be restricted to a few screens with few real options to try out.

The second was the battle mode. I know it's innovative, having two characters fighting on separate screens of the DS at the same time. But it's distracting! The battles move too fast to really get 'used' to the controls and become more skillful. By the time I realise 'control' has passed to Shiki, the key combinations have flown past and it's back to Neku, who's probably getting beaten up since I took my eye off him for one second.

I like the dual-combat idea in theory, but in practice I just can't get the hang of it. And battles usually seem to be a random thrashing of the DS screen, requiring more luck than skill. And I don't like having to control Neku's movements AND attacks with the DS stylus. I'd like to control his movements with the keypad, and his attacks with the stylus. Anyway, just my gripes. That's why I gave up on this game quite quickly.

I would probably be more forgiving of the controls if the game's story had gripped me just a little more. Actually it's made by the same people who did Final Fantasy, and it kind of shows. The main character is that typical closed-off 'I don't need friends', loner 'cool' guy. But even despite my small experience with RPGs, he is too stereotypical to be interesting. When he says 'I don't need anyone,' despite having just seen otherwise, I just feel irritated, rather than intrigued. Like 'oh yeah, you're so original...'

The other thing I don't like about the storytelling is the lack of filling in details. I noticed this with Final Fantasy 8, the only other Square Enix game I played. Extremely strange or puzzling events would happen, yet none of the characters would properly discuss or question them. Here, I kept wanting Neku to say: 'okay, so, Shiki, could you tell me all about this 'Game', tell me everything you know about it. How did we get involved? Who are these 'Reapers'? How did all of this start?' But he never does, and it's irritating.

Food Spotlight: Alcohol

This is not a comprehensive description of all types of alcohol available in Japan. Rather, I just wanted to mention shochu. Shochu is a liquor; it can be distilled from starchy things like sweet potatoes or barley. There are many varieties of shochu and some like to drink shochu straight, on the rocks, etc.

Shochu is also used as a base for flavoured, fruity soda drinks called 'sawas'; much as we have Vodka Cruisers (vodka) and Bacardi Breezers (bacardi) in Australia. You can get many different flavours of sawa, depending on where you are. As I don't like to drink too much wine or beer, the lemon, grapefruit and ume sawas are my standard orders when I go out.

Sometimes when you order a lemon or grapefruit sawa, they will come *with* the lemon or grapefruit and a juice squeezer so you can squeeze your own drink. Ume (sour plum) sawas often come with an actual umeboshi (pickled plum) floating in them.

A DIY grapefruit sawa (with shabu-shabu in the background ^_^)

If you want a stronger variant, I recommend umeshu. This is liqueur made from sour plums. The taste is both sour and sweet, but doesn't taste too strongly of alcohol (compared with the taste of, say, wine). Umeshu is often made with shochu. I recommend it on the rocks. Right now I am lucky to have a big bottle of well-matured umeshu that one of my friends made herself. ^_^

(Incidentally, there is currently an 'ume soda' flavoured Kit Kat on sale. I love ume, so I bought one but alas, it was inedible, and into the bin it went.)

A Day At: the Hakone Open-Air Museum

Recently I went to Hakone and went to the Hakone Open-Air Museum. I enjoyed it very much. 

The Open-Air Museum has a lot of sculptures and artworks, well, in the open air. There's also a Picasso gallery, and several other indoor exhibits. The mountainous scenery around is quite beautiful - so green! - and if the weather is nice, it's a grand place to stroll about. I spent a very leisurely four hours there.

So immediately after going in, it was straight to the cafe for a cappuccino. This is always the first order of every outing I have. ^_^ From the cafe I could see lots of green mountain scenery, and some seats that looked like fried eggs.

Cake followed the cappuccino, and then I went out. The weather was perfect - a hot summer's day, but as I was in the mountains, it was a little cooler. I pottered around past lots of different sculptures; a giant crying head, a series of coloured squares making a rainbow that kids were playing on; an underground tunnel. The whole area had the kind of whimsical, 'wander where you will' feel that I got from the Ghibli museum in Mitaka. There was a koi pond where you could feed the fish. 

My favourite part was a children's play area, the 'forest of net'. This was a child's heaven - a massive contraption of nets and hanging bouncy swings and soft spongy ground. The area was full of children's laughter. I sat and watched for a while. Those kids were having the time of their lives.

The whole 'museum' was very child-friendly, with lots of things for kids to play on, and many small children were running around excitedly.

I continued walking down and saw the Picasso exhibits. I went to the gift shop and bought some souvenirs. I was just thinking I should find a nice place to sit down - I'd been walking for a while, and was getting footsore - when I came upon a hot spring foot bath. The very thing! I sat in it for almost half an hour. Bizarrely, the bath had lemons and oranges floating in it. Like, whole lemons and oranges. It gave the bath a faint citrus flavour, and the kids something to kick...

After this, I went up a stained glass tower - so beautiful! - and enjoyed the panorama from the top.

I meandered my way back up toward the entrance - looking at other sculptures, including this massive series of interconnecting tunnels and tubes that was, of course, full of children playing - and looked at the exhibits near the entrance. I had lunch and walked around the park some more.

One room near the entrance was full of people making decorative plates out of clay. I mean, each person had lots of different colours of clay, and were shaping pictures onto plates. If I'd had more time I would have loved to try it. I was impressed by how good everyone was - even quite young children were making really good pictures.

I'd really recommend this place if the weather is nice.

To go there, take the Hakone Tozan line from Hakone Yumoto up to Gora. Just before Gora, get off at the stop 'Chokoku no mori'. You can't miss it, as you will see the sculptures from the train as you pull into the station.