Personal Room

After a year and a half in Tokyo, it finally happened: I missed the last train.

Back home, it was never an issue. One bitched about how long one might have to wait until the next night tram, but it does come eventually (except when it doesn't, but that's a completely different story). Waiting for 22 minutes might look like an eternity when your feet hurt and you have thin soles and it's snowing, but it's not really all that long.

In Tokyo, everything stops around midnight, and it doesn't budge until five hours later. And while back home I might have chosen to walk if I didn't feel like gambling for a night tram (or, when I moved, I might just have walked home), it's not an option here: my home is nowhere near walking distance from, well, anything.

What happened was this: I went to milonga with a friend (last one [milonga, not friend], as it turns out, as she ships out to Dominican Republic in a couple of days. "See you in two years", she said, but... "then, who alive, who dead", as my people are wont to say). Milongas are rather famous for starting late and ending later still, and it holds true even in Tokyo (except for the previous one, where suddenly everyone went home at 22-23h - what's up with that?), and... well, not much to tell really, the first sentence tells it all. I got stuck in Ikebukuro at thirty past midnight.

Now, I evaluated my options, which I all knew only theoretically by now. I could take a cab. It would get me home, and cost me quite a bit. That was the usual recourse for my tango friend, but she was always all grumbly about how much money she ends up wasting on it.

Also, there are hotels all over Tokyo, in a variety of flavours. In order of decreasing price and increasing sleaziness: There's real hotels, which cost real money. There's love hotels, but I guess it's strange if you don't have company. And there's capsule hotels, where (I am told) you can hear a roomful of strangers snore.

Another option was, I could crash in a karaoke box; but I didn't really want to sing, and karaoke boxes are kind of loud. Normally you don't hear other people singing, but only because there's someone in your own box yelling his or her heart out. (Actually, most people I went with sing very very well; only some actually yell. Details.) If you're not singing, the bloody karaoke machine still insists on playing loud music by itself. (I learned that when I went to karaoke with a friend, and we were trying to have a conversation. We quickly gave up and just sang.) And if you manage to turn that down, you start hearing people yelling their hearts out in the neighbouring boxes. Not really a place I would go to spend a restful night; but it's an option. A lot of karaoke places have a night rate, where you pay a fixed amount for the six or so hours past the point of no return; it's not that cheap, but if you like karaoke, it's a nice enough option.

Then there are manga cafes, or internet cafes - most offer both, to be clear, so these are largely synonyms. You rent a cubicle, kind of like in a internet cafe most of my readers are used to, and there's a computer you can use. That's where the similarity stops, because in a western internet cafe you can't normally borrow a comic book, and they don't normally work 24/7. They also have a night rate, so you can rent your cubicle and just crash until your train starts rolling.

Anyway, as all this was going through my head, fighting for dominance in my mind's arena, I noticed a sign fortuitously just in front of me: Personal Rooms, in B1 (first floor underground). The terms of use were also posted, and... it's a kind of internet cafe. Why didn't they just say so? And they had a "night course" for ¥2000, which I thought was pretty decent for renting a room for up to twelve hours (10pm-10am). You could even borrow a DVD. Each customer even gets one "joke goods" for free. Huh. So, in I went.

The thing I should have realised was this: There were about 25 shelves crammed into a small reception room, with the composition as follows: 3 shelves of manga, 1 shelf of foreign movies, 1 shelf of domestic movies; and the rest was occupied by... another kind of cinematography. Mostly domestic, but one shelf was again reserved for countries where blonditude does not necessarily come from a bottle.
(I like blonditude, and I don't care that it's not a word. It sounds way better than blondness. Blonditude. Blonditude. Or perhaps, blondosity, for certain people.) Next to the counter window which was at the right height for two bellies to converse face-to-face (one has to love the Japanese penchant for privacy), the wall sported the menu of "joke goods", most of which were in an amusing cylindrical shape.

At the time I registered (or rather, shown my ticket bought at the automatic ticket selling machine to the belly behind the counter), I was given the choice of a reclining mat or a massage chair. Now massage chairs are supposed to be good for relaxing, but since I wanted to at least try to sleep (insomnia still going strong), I was definitely more inclined to recline, and declined a massage chair. I ordered a wake-up call, since the rates for oversleeping are draconian when compared to what I paid for the whole night (¥500 for 30 minutes).

I was then shown to my personal room. (Actually, I was shown the door to the half-metre wide corridor where the rooms were. I entered and locked the door behind me, then spent the next five minutes trying to kick back on the reclining mat (since 80% of the width of the room were taken by the mat, leaving just about a foot width of "passageway". Above one's knees there are a DVD player, a keyboard, and a huge LCD TV; and next to one's elbow there's a phone, an ashtray and two (!) boxes of wipes. In case of any sudden leakages. The room stank a bit, but luckily only of old tobacco (one of rare opportunities for me to put luck and tobacco in the same sentence).

All in all, a minor adventure was had. It's cheap, and it could have been much worse. For instance, if I was a woman, I suppose.

In closing, two words: Doomsday sucks. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have a choice between porn and Doomsday, pick porn. Seriously. Porn is way more believable and has a way better plot.

Does sento wash away bad news?

I had my presentation on sarma today. It was really boring. There was a presentation on Rockies-As-Shown-By-A-Travel-Agency, a perfectly delivered, very touching story about porcupines and personal space, and a presentation-cum-degustation of a Malaysian dish, a presentation on Fusui (or Feng-Shui, if that's more familiar), beautiful presentations on Malaysian jungles and highlands and Israeli saline depths, and a Look-How-Cute-Little-Anteaters-Are one. Of course, there was also an utterly incomprehensible piece on peonies, but even that was a detective novel compared to my Recipe-of-the-Week column in Foreigner Daily.

Various and sundry replies for Linda: The baito is actually a sweet gig. I'm programming odds and ends for my lab. So I don't go anyplace I'm not already going to, and not doing anything I wouldn't already be doing. The only downside is, I'm not meeting anyone I wouldn't already be meeting. But shou ga nai.

As you might have guessed, I did go research local sarma. I went with my gourmet Canadian friend, and I was a bit nervous ("What will he say about our peasant cuisine?") but in the end he really enjoyed himself. Me, I was nitpicking all the time how nothing is really what I'm used to, even though everything was very good. My complaints were mostly based on the fact that it is a haute cuisine restaurant catering to japanese palates, and I'm used to plain old home cooking.

As you might or might not know, sarma is very sour and salty. As (some other of) you might or might not know, Japanese don't like strong flavours. Result is, I felt it was bland. Still delicious, but not the dish I know and love. Also, you only get a midget of one sarma roll for the price I don't want to put on the blog. It is not cheap.

Chabapuchicchi had a similar problem: not enough spices. White codfish (bakalar na bijelo) was the most authentic, from what we had. Shutorukuri (and congratulations for the first one who manages to decipher what that is) surprised me with paprika added to the cream sauce. I know paprika and dairy go well together, and are often mixed in Croatian cuisine, but I haven't yet experienced it on that particular dish.

However, I'm not sorry I went, even considering the hefty bill. I might go back soon, for lunch, if I have time - they have a set lunch for ¥1000, which is more than affordable, considering - but I doubt I will splurge for a dinner there any time soon.

I am continuing my weekly visits to the cute nurses in the dentist clinic. They say there's nothing better than having a pretty girl in your mouth, I don't think this is exactly what they mean. But it's good for health. I'm still in the root-canal-cleaning phase. Dunno why, but I can't but be reminded of Alien 3. One visit is not that expensive, but it accumulates. And that's just two teeth. Sigh. At least that's a regular expense, not a surprise to my wallet.

Unlike the scholarship money cuts. Yup, we got wind of the rumour that our monthly deposits will get cut by about ¥15000 a month or three hence. Plus, the JASSO policy of refunding 1/3 of whatever medical costs after the national insurance is getting axed next month (which is why I'm hurrying with my oral chimney-sweeping efforts).

More bad news: With regrets, I've decided to stop my attempts to start Aikido again. Every week my knees feel worse - last time I had trouble walking for the next couple of days. Not fun. I don't know what I'm going to do, maybe ask about using the Uni sports hall, and starting to swim. Swimming is boring, but it's exercise, and I guess much better for me than destroying my legs in the name of health. I just hope the water is tolerable. (And that for once I do what I tell myself to do.)

Speaking of water - I still haven't gone to a sento, so...

Excuse me for interrupting myself, but I'm really annoyed. I don't know whether it's myself, or English, or Japanese, or... Whatever it is, I hate mixing writing styles. Namely, whether to write the long O as "ou"/"oo" or simply "o". It just seems so bloody inconsistent! But the fact is, if I'm writing something in Japanese and don't want to use a native script, I'll probably go with the accurate kana transcription: "ou" most times, "oo" where applicable. But if they're just words that got into English, I feel silly writing "sentou" when whoever knows the word will probably recognise "sento" sooner. Besides, I'd feel like a pompous prick. So I resolve to remain consistently inconsistent, and peeved at my peevishness.

Ahem. Okay. I still haven't gone to sento, and I think I might like to try to go today. I think I might enjoy it after working on the presentation for so long. On the 'Net I found one near Omotesando station, which is on my free route, and I'm thinking to go and try to find it. I don't have any tattoos and I've read up on sento etiquette, so I hope I'll be fine. Before that, a quick stop at the cafeteria, to see if there's still anything edible.

Till next time!

Pizza

Saturday was a cool day. We had an all-day gaming event, and after that people said there was this cool little Burmese restaurant. So we went. I hardly even knew there was such a thing as "Burmese cuisine", but apparently even people from Burma do eat, so there we went. It was a couple of minutes away from Takadanobaba station, and apparently it is a Burmese restaurant heaven, as there is at least 3-4 more in the vicinity. It was a first time I've been to that station, but seeing how there's over a hundred stations in Tokyo and I don't get out all that much, it's nothing to be surprised about.

The restaurant was small, but kind of cozy. Dalmatian feel, almost. We ordered a bunch of different things and split it between the six of us, so we had a lot of variety in our dinner. But I was particularly impressed by two things. One was a drink, and was listed on the menu as "Grass Jelly". (I actually wrote "Glass Jelly" first, then corrected it, and it's not even the first time I did it; I have no idea why. I guess I'm becoming more Japanese by the minute.) Anyway, Grass Jelly (and again I had to actively control my fingers to keep them away from the L key) looks like water with bits of black jelly suspended in it. It tastes very sweet, and the closest thing to compare with would be the Icelandic lichen syrup. But without the whole coughing crap.

The other thing was tea leaf salad. Yummy! Don't ask me to describe how it tasted like, I just can't. There was a lot of things in it: peanuts, sesame seeds, rice vinegar, probably oil, and several varieties of green. I totally enjoyed it.

Speaking of restaurants, I have to make a presentation for my Japanese class, and I'm doing one on sarma. Like a real scientist, I have to cover my bases, and so I think I'll be going tomorrow (or some time soon if I don't get a table) to a Croatian restaurant. Err, make that "the" Croatian restaurant - since there's just the one in Japan. Sarma should be a bit pricey, but I miss it, and it's not that different from some other restaurants I've been to (like, oh, I don't know, Burmese). Good thing is, I actually managed to save some little money, and also I'll be getting my part-time job salary from next month, so it should be all good. I don't even spend that much on the dentist as I thought I would.

The dentists scare me, in couple of different ways. First, I was scared of the prices - I am going to a hi-tech private dentist, and they said there's a lot of work to be done in my mouth, so I was afraid I'm going to leave a lot of money there. But it turns out that I was wrong about that - the dentist turned out to be not only quite skilled, but also very cheap in comparison to back home. So now I'm scared about getting a nerve pulled, which is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous about that. I hope I don't lose my nerve, and get a nervous breakdown. Waiting for something like that is quite a nerve-wrenching experience, you know?

Okay, enough of that. While on the topic of money and work in mouth - last week I was at a gaming till rather late, and then decided to walk back home from Shibuya rather than brave the overcrowded last trains. It's just two stations, which translates to about... oh, maybe 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, I never measured. Anyway, I was passing the Love Hotel Hill (actually, the Japanese name is Hill where the Road Starts, or something like that, but it's universally called LHH by the gaijin population, I believe), and I got offered マッサージとブロージョッブ by a party previously unknown to me. That's a first. Wasn't even very expensive, I think. If I understood her correctly, it was actually about the same price as StarCraft: the Boardgame: Brood War expansion. But I had a book to go home to, so I did not partake of the services.

But was I tempted? Hell, it's like finding a piece of American pizza lying on the ground just inside Disneyland.

I mean, it's pizza!

But, on the other hand, it's full of fat, probably with germs on it, and you have to pay the considerable entrance fee to get to it.

And then you start thinking about Prosciutto Speciale back home... :(

December

Yet another belated blog post. Way, way belated. No excuses, I'm plain lazy.

There were several memorable events in December. First, our Japanese group held a bonenkai. But without much drinking. Which is not really a bonenkai, but whatever. Only one guy got pissed. He was red and talkative, and normally he is neither, so you just knew something was off. It was fun - only pity that one of the girls got sick that very day, so the group wasn't complete.

We went to an izakaya, where the Canadian got us a good price for a rather large dinner set. "Good price" doesn't mean it was cheap, just that it was cheaper than it would have been otherwise. But it was quite nice. I especially liked the zosui after nabe... That was just delicious. And mushroom tenpura was also very good.

Several days later, the missing girl, the other Malaysian, the Chinese girl and me went to see Sea Paradise in Yokohama. (Hmm, I could have just written "me and the class girls". Oh well.) It's a big Disneylandish place, the centerpiece of which is a huge aquarium located in a pyramid. No, not making it up. Pyramid. It's made from glass, though, not stone. And there's all kinds of marine critters swimming around in its five storeys. And on top, there's a huge pool where dolphins and seals and a walrus and a penguin and an announcer of indeterminate species perform in a show.

There's also several amusementparkish rides, and a rollercoaster. We bought a day pass to the whole island, so if we wanted to go take the rollercoaster five times, we could, with no extra charge. Since the rollercoaster was anything but cheap, we thought we had a good deal going. However, as we came to the gate, six seconds before we would have boarded for the first time, the attendant shut down the ride. The wind was picking up, and they were closing down the rollercoaster for safety reasons. So we didn't get to ride it at all. Not even once, since the wind stayed strong the rest of the day. So that part really blows.

Otherwise, it was really cool. One of the best things was the lunch. When we became hungry, the first thing we spotted was a yakiniku place. I hadn't had yakiniku yet, and thought it would be nice to try it, but we saw the price and it was... rather more than I usually paid my meals. Like, quadruple. However, as we walked around, we saw that pretty much everything was more expensive than usual - the tourist complex effect. Then we decided it's better to eat the expensive stuff in expensive places than to eat cheap food in expensive places, and went for yakiniku anyway.

This proved to be an excellent, and in the end really inexpensive, decision. We got a tabehodai. Which means, eat as much as you can in 90 minutes. Well, we did. Thoroughly. If you haven't googled it yet, when you go for nikuyaki, you get raw meat, already flavoured with spices and sauces, and you grill it yourself on the little griddle built into every table. There's vegetables too, but the main point is meat. The four of us ate maybe 10-15 plates of various species of meat. Stuffed ourselves silly. And that's not all! For the soup is included as well, as is rice, salad bar, and - desert! And by "desert", I mean a really really tasty treat: almond tofu. Or almond jelly, if you prefer. Yum-m-my! All for 2000 yen. It might be four times the price of my regular cafeteria lunch, but it's also the most meat I've eaten since coming to Japan.

Last notable event was the New Year. There was about 15 of us foreign students, and we went to hatsu mode - or first prayer of the year. It's the traditional way to spend New Year's Eve in Japan. We went to Zojoji, the main temple of Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, where we just missed the opportunity to stand in a 3000-person line to recive the paper on which we would have inscribed our wishes, attached to a balloon and sent into the sky at the stroke of midnight. Instead, we visited the Eiff... err, Tokyo Tower, which is just next to the temple. It was very crowded, so I decided, with another guy, not to go up at that time, and go grab some food instead, since both of us missed our dinner.

When the time came to enter the temple, it was... indescribable. In a feeble attempt, I'll only say that the crowd was in a fifteen-meter wide and hundreds of meters long "queue", and when we finally went in, there was a war inside. Half of the people were fighting to approach to throw in their coins and make their prayers, the other half, having finished what they came to do, were fighting to escape to the door. It was a war, I tell you. War!

Afterwards, I went home. Most of the people went on to Meiji shrine, and then to see the first sunrise of 2009. But I was cold and my feet hurt, so I passed.

The last of the notable events, I had dental surgery today. Huzzah!

Brief Notes

I'm sleepy. Mostly because I can't sleep at night. And even less by day.

I've been to a Chinese restaurant where the serving obasan was so surprised I could say a sentence in Chinese that I got a free jasmine tea, free rice - and free iced oolong tea for the whole table of four. I was embarassed, especially the way my Japanese companions kept semi-enviously teasing me.

I've gone to another monthly boardgaming meeting. It was fun. I managed to explain Red November in (something similar to) Japanese. Much hilarity ensued, even if I couldn't explain about "gnomes" and why everything was going to hell in a handbasket.

I've seen the first season of True Blood. Props to Paquin, but Sookie is way better in the book. But Vampire Bill rocks on screen.

I need to find time to go to Akiba by day. I decided my back is worth ~¥6000.

Talking about Teeth

Long time no blog. Nothing special happened though. The most exciting thing is that my tooth filling fell off, and it made me famous among all the Japanese lesson teachers - for some reason, they apparently thought it was hilarious.

We were doing another conversation challenge, and we were supposed to go to the staff room (where our conversation teacher and camera were waiting for us), and ask for information on any subject of our choice. I had completely forgotten about the assignment, just like most of my classmates, and it was dubiously fortuitous that my filling fell out a day or two before, so I went with that: "[required long preamble omitted] Do you know a good dentist?"

Well, apparently, this time my countenance was too serious for this kind of request. I'm still at a loss as to why a serious face would not be appropriate where there's talk of doctors (excepting plastic surgeons, people actually willingly go there). And other professors saw it, and now everyone is asking me about my tooth - with a giggly accompaniment. Of course, none of it is malicious, and I don't hold any of it against them, but I'm quite perplexed by the whole situation.

They even dug out a phone number for an apparently very nice and friendly clinic, but it's closed on Thursdays.

Other than that, we went to izakaya after Wednesday gaming this week, and it was nice. Ethnic and pictoresque, to quote the tourist.

Gingko

I have a bit of time, so I thought I'd just mention something that has been bugging me for a while, and I never remembered to put it in. The official plant of U-Tokyo is gingko.

I hate gingko.

And so does everyone else I've talked to.

Why? Because the campus is full of them. And their fruit, as it is in an institution of higher learning and not in an orchard, falls to the ground, unpicked. And then it starts to smell... "real bad", as the Americans would say it. And since they're in almost every street, you can't help but walk through the Stinking Cloud.

There is even a biohazard team who cleans up the mess. Okay, so they're just poor cleaning crew, but I pity da foos!

Basically, gingko trees are like cluster-bombs, filled with mean bomblets of yuck.

A numberless footnote: Actually, gingko fruit is edible, and some people even come to the campus to pick some. Not enough, in my opinion. For my sanity's sake, folks, come to Todai and get yourselves some fruit! Please!

Umbrella games

I've met the gamers!

Admittedly, so far, it seems our Japanese counterparts mostly go for the lighter gaming fare, but a game is a game, and I'm not complaining.

To begin from the start: After several misses, I was finally going to have the time to go to the Yellow Submarine - and knew which Yellow Submarine to go for. So immediately after my classes, I went off to Akiba to search for the store, guided by the red marker dot the helpful store attendant in the last week's Yellow Submarine miss helpfully painted onto my map. However, it seems the treasure was moved in the meantime - the store was nowhere to be found. The ex did not mark the spot.

I knew it had to be somewhere in Akihabara, and I did not yet want to admit defeat (even though it was quite probable I (was) already lost); so I started wandering around aimlessly (well, aimfully, though I had no clue where the bloody target was); but my staunch spirit paid off, as I looked up and spotted my Holy Grail!

So, where there's a banner, there's a store, so up I went - but when I came to the store, it was way too small to hold any gaming. At first, the attendant had a blank look on his face, and then he got it - "kaado geemu?" "hai, kaado geemu ya boodo geemu nado!" Then he pulls out a real Akihabara map - not the photocopied flyer they had at the other store - and showed me where, exactly and finally, I can find a game.

During all that time, it was raining. Not too fun. But I finally arrived, and was welcomed, and accepted into Carcassonne: the New World, that no-one really knew rules to, except this one guy who was just leaving. I won. I later found out we had some rules wrong; I still would have won. Lucky game :)

I met the founder of this event, who rode the train for one hour in each direction each Wednesday with a suitcase-sized sampling of his 300-odd collection; I met the tall BGG liaison guy improbably called Joe; and I met two Germans who studied in Kiwiland together, of which one was visiting the other for a week, and the other is working in German Embassy for half a year. Had a long chat about nontrivial games with the latter, while the former charmed a female gamer, and received an email address, despite the fact that the only language they could communicate in was his very rusty French.

I got invited to the special Heroscape day the following evening, so I came back and played a bit of that. Funnish, certainly beautiful, but not that much involved. "Age 8+" summarises my impression rather succinctly.

Change of topic.

I am amazed sometimes at the practicality here - when it rains, every store (yes, every store, including the hardcore software ones) have cheap umbrellas for sale. Wherever you are, you can avoid getting rained. (Bad English, works in Japanese, so meh.)

Also, the first time I saw another Japanese umbrella-related surprise was in my cafeteria. Don't know yet if they do that elsewhere; I'm sure they must, but I haven't been to any other very public place while it rained. They put umbrella condoms at the entrances, along with a big disposal bin. You come inside, you put the tight baggie over the dripping part so there are no accidents while you're inside, and you take it off when you're done and drop it into the provided bin. Quite convenient.

Otherwise, many other places, for instance most of the buildings in my Uni I've been to, have umbrella lockers. You put your umbrella inside and lock it, and take the key. There may or may not be a deposit required. Ever gone somewhere and had no clue what to do with your big wet stick? Well, not in Tokyo.

Except in subways. But then, we have these great signs telling us how to behave.

Change of topic.

Things really work differently here. When we gaijin were leaving the Wednesday gaming, we heard someone calling after us. It was a policeman running after us. He was holding a piece of paper, and when he caught up with us, he said we dropped it. It was the email address mentioned five, or seven, paragraphs earlier, depending on how you count them.

The next day, I was getting off in Nezu (from the train!), and I noticed that the escalator that was out of order and under repairs the week before was back in function. I probably would have noticed anyway, but what really drew my attention to it was not a what, but a who. There was a construction worker, or a train line officer, or whoever it was wearing a helmet and a uniform, standing rather motionlessly next to the bottom end of the escalator, extending his white-gloved hand in its direction, inviting people to use it. I would not be surprised if that was all he did that day.

That said, I see a lot of people with a strange job description, at least according to my worldview so far: standing in front of their stores and holding up a sign advertising something in the shop, or the shop itself. They are not yelling anything (that's apparently another job), just standing around holding a sign, which probably could just as well stand on its own, with a bit of proper propping. They did get my attention though, so I guess it works.

Change of topic.

So I finally bought the One-Seg tuner for my PSP. So now I can watch TV. Or rather, what passes for TV in Japan, which is mainly strange game shows I don't understand yet, strange talk shows I don't understand yet, and strange food shows I don't understand yet. Hopefully, one day, with the help of the intensive lessons I'm taking, that will change. My understanding, not the programme. Did I mention over three hours of classes every day, plus homework? We even have listening homework. The teachers upload mp3-s to the web server, which we download and listen at home. Fun! but a bit tiring.

So now I have to also write the handouts because the book circle was moved to Monday this week, and tomorrow I've signed up to go see some Tea Ceremony so I have to get up early, and there's so little time...

At least I'm well stocked in grapefruits. Thanks, 99!

Parent-Thetical

Long time no wright, so to say, and I forget what was when. I really should do this more often again.

Anyway, there was a classification exam for the intensive language classes. I'm in group 3 of 5 (no Borg references!), or "intermediate"; yesterday was orientation, and from today we start for real. Nine classes per week, each class 1:40, and then there's homework. Yay! (Might be a bit tiring though.)

There were representatives from home. Err, make that HOME. It's a group for international student support. Basically, there's japanese volonteers, and there's us. They're here to talk with us, introduce us to some cultural events, and generally ease us into life in Japan, when there's noone we know yet. So, one of the volonteers, let's call him "H" (or maybe "Ha"? - Japanese initials, funny things) organised a nice get-together, where we'd all cook in a big kitchen. I have no clue what the room is normally used for - it's in a very nice and very, very expensive-looking building next to H's building, it looks like a community hall back home, but it has a kitchen in the room. So after a flurry of food preparation (and hungry tummies), there was actually so much food the three dozen or so of us couldn't eat it all. Even if half the eaters were Japanese - of which some were in college, yet some were quite young (as they say on rather different class of web pages, "barely eighteen"). Fun was had by all.

What else. Yeah, I finally managed to get money from my Mum. Thanks, Mum! It seems there's just one place in Tokyo that handles Western Union (or even knows what it is), and I was an idiot for not looking it up on the 'Net sooner. And just in time, too, since their contract expires with the current year. (Silly anthropomorphic yoga-related scenes are now running through my head. Yours?) (This "managed to get money from my Mum" sounded really bad. It's not like I begged and begged and she's a cheap old hag, but that she sent it readily to her favourite but soon to be broke son, who was an idiot enough not to be able to figure out how to receive it.)

Speaking of, Mum has grown tired of waiting for the ISP people, and is Skyping me via mobile connection, costs be damned. The said connection is pretty bad, but better than nothing. Skype is fun, even if I'm in a rather bad timezone, Croatia-wise. When I come home, everyone's at work; when I get up, everyone's asleep. Thank gods for self-employed family.

In the meantime, my PSP has arrived. (It's only a small part of the reason for my ex-soon-to-be-broke state.) It's so cool. (The PSP, not the abovementioned state.) Too bad its crippled to anything not authorised by Sony, but c'est la vie. (Or at least, vie artificielle.) The things that it does do, it does very nicely. (Pata-pata-pata-pon and don-dondon-dondon echo inside my cranium all day.)

I found out why hyakuen (100 yen) shops are popular. It's because some things are twice as cheap in a hyakuen shop than anywhere else, and up to five times cheaper than in konbini. Shame the closest one is so far from my dorm. Still, looking forward to the grapefruit I'm gonna slurp up for my midnight snack.

So in the meantime I've actually gone to the classes, and it was really fun. The teachers (at least the ones we saw today) are so nice, and fun... The conversation teacher had us ask for a day off from classes, recorded it by video-camera, and then analysed (or at least started to; two thirds of the class, including me, are to star on the silver screen next week) the behaviour, distance, content, politeness, congruence, body language, expressions... Did I say fun? I'll see what she says next week :) We got some grammar homework, but it's not much for now, and we did it all during the class anyway.

Death Note is fun so far, but I'm hardly at home, and I'm sooo slow anyway. I haven't even read the first part yet.

I still haven't gone to see the gamers (not successfully, at least). Maybe tomorrow. Who knows.

So yeah.

B(l)ogged down

So people are asking me, where's the blag? I want the next text!

The thing is, there are two reasons for that.

The first reason is that nothing particularly noteworthy is happening. I always hated writing a journal, and this is exactly why: as soon as you settle in some kind of routine, every page starts to look the same. I got up, went to work, ate some lunch, got back, ate dinner, messed around with my computer, shut down for the night. Not fun, people. Not fun.

So, I'm slowly getting into a routine, a large part of which is going to the Uni. It usually takes me an hour to get there, and an hour to get back. While home, I tend to take long showers. It also takes time to delete all the bacn (Gmail solves spam quite well, so that's fine). I might grab fifteen minutes to (try to) read Death Note, with clarifications courtesy of One Manga. Starting from next week, my most likely daily language classes will probably be held every day. I've also grown quite attached to eating at least twice a day, and at least one of those is usually in cafeteria, which is, usually, nothing to write home about. (There will be a photo or three now and then, though.) And finally, what goes in needs to go out as well. (And I bet you knew most of that, so writing this out was not really necessary.)

This brings me to my second reason for not writing more often: I don't have the time or energy to write a blog post. Today I've already reconciled with the fact that I will be late to the lab, even though I don't think anyone's watching (or if they are, they're keeping their complaints politely to themselves, in a typically Japanese fashion), so that's how come you're reading this. I really should learn to write shorter posts.

Now on to other concerns.

My current top two worries: spending all my money too fast, and not finding time to wash my clothes.

The latter is kind of related to my scheduling problem described above (although, writing a blog post fits rather well into the 40 or so minutes the clothes are being washed and the 20 more that they spend in a spin-drier). As for the former, partly it's my own fault (okay, let's say mostly, and be done with it): there is a lot of really cool stuff here that is much cheaper than at home. This mostly concerns consumer electronics. So, having come to Japan without a single circuit on me (umm, okay, there was a clunky old MP3 player), I started outfitting myself with various cyberbits and technopieces, and BicCamera (and, in one already described instance, Yodobashi) were gracious enough to help me. Partly, it's that everything else (except soy sauce) is so much more expensive here.

I would really love to hear an explanation from the Japanese people who used to tell me Japan was cheaper than Croatia. Restaurants are, maybe, but that has less to do with Japanese restaurants being cheap than with Croatian restaurants being inordinately expensive. But other things...

Yesterday the lab held its own welcome party. And in contrast to other welcome parties I've seen here (which is, admittedly, one), this one looked like a typical Japanese post-work outing. (And notice that, this not yet being a part of my routine, gets blog space.)

For starters, we went to a restaurant. It was a rather nice Chinese restaurant somewhere past Ueno (was it Okachimachi? I can't remember). There was so many of us that we pretty much filled that floor. It is a Chinese restaurant, but it's in Japan, and is thus spaced accordingly. The fact that there was about thirty of us did not help matters. The restaurant people kept bringing us food; they would typically bring one smallish plate per about eight people, but I'll be damned if there weren't at least ten different courses, so we ate our fill. I must admit (and I'm sorry if the lab people, or the Chinese read this), I wasn't too impressed with some of them; but there was a couple I could have wolfed down all by myself, they were that Yummy. The drinks kept flowing (more or less; I'll leave the explanation for another time), some people stumbled on their self-introduction, but it was all in good fun.

Until it came time for the bill. I was really happy and grateful that they decided that only the senior members pay, because it came to about ¥5000 per person. It might not look much, but it adds up. Shopping and public transport aside, I usually don't spend more than ¥2000 a day. So that was a "gulp" moment there.

After that, about half the people decided to go for nijikai (Second Party, or as one online dictionary puts it, "first after-party party"), which is quite a common thing in Japan. We stood around in front of the restaurant for about ten minutes while the group self-organised into a decision to go for karaoke. Then it took fifteen more minutes to cross the fifty metres from the restaurant to the big karaoke bar nearby.

We booked a largish room, so that all fifteen or so of us could fit in. I've never been in a karaoke bar, either a western or a Japanese one, but I should point out a very significant difference: in Japan, every group has their own room. It's like a little hotel, with very sound-proof walls (unlike most other places in Japan - for instance, my dorm, which featured rhythmic thumping performance when I got back; your guess is as good as mine, and mine is pretty good). You get a huge (huge!) book with the menu of available songs (oh, more about "menus" later). It looks like a phone book. Hefty is a good word. We actually had two, one was for gaijin, featuring stuff from Sinatra and Carpenters to Pink and Slipkot, with a lot of "who-the-hell-is-he"s thrown in. There is a huge (huge!) remote control (hefty!) which you can use to select a song ("70919"), and it must have plenty of other uses as well, but I saw only one of them utilised: a girl raised the song by a note or two so it's easier to sing. Some people could really sing, some people really couldn't, but everyone earned a democratic and warm-hearted applause.

The downsides: drinks start from around ¥500, I don't drink, and the bill is split equally. This usually means that, if I care to repeat the experience, I'm screwed. It might be that we were in an expensive place, I don't know, but the bill came out to about ¥30000, so they even reconsidered and had us newbies pay ¥2000 each. I totally don't blame them. Anyway, good fun was had by all (except by this one guy who slept through any decibels we managed to throw his way), but I probably won't want to repeat it that soon.

After we got out, the three of us who lived basically in the same place (another guy who lives in my dorm, and my tutor, whose not-quite-next-door-dorm I've already written about) had about three minutes to catch the last train. We managed it, then things got a bit anxious again when there was a sick person on the train and we ran a couple of minutes late, but apparently the last Inokashira train actually waits for the last Yamanote train, so we managed the connection as well, and came back home safe and sound.

I'm 3L!

I overslept. I thought I'd be at the lab in the morning - I wasn't. It wasn't even near morning any more - noon has already passed. I woke up too late, then met up some old residents (they've been here since April! April!!!) and asked them about various things they knew and I didn't, like where to get briefs in my size (go ahead, laugh, but it's a problem! and not just mine - the guys are stick thin, but are a head taller than average Japanese, so they sent me to a big people clothes shop they knew, whose street sign has a rather large jolly old gentleman wearing a suit), and what's the best solution for a TV (namely, get a PSP, then go to Akiba to buy a One-Seg USB trinket for peanuts, and if this didn't mean anything to you, it's fine, you haven't missed anything important).

So when I finally got my 3L ass to the lab, I found out a bit more about a book circle. I have no clue any more if I said anything about it yet, so, at the risk of repeating myself, I'll describe it, possibly again. I was told it would be good to join a reading group, and that a rather basic one has just formed couple of weeks ago, and I could go with them. Basically, if I understood correctly, they meet twice a week, and the guy whose turn it is explains two chapters that he has read to the other two guys, who haven't. Now that I'm joining, they're very happy, because English was not their strong point - at least not for the two people I talked to. Not sure who the third member is yet. But anyway, they asked me if I could read English, and were quite impressed when I replied in the affirmative. Fun times.

So I copied my book (even with a hi-tek copier, it took more than an hour, I think), and then dozed and read, in alternation, trying to read at least as much as I dozed, because it was hot and stuffy and some of you probably know what happens to me without proper cooling. If you don't, it's the same thing that happens to a CPU in similar conditions - I overheat, start glitching, and finally shut down.

I'm wondering if anything is seriously wrong with me, because I sweat like a pig here. (I don't really know how much pigs sweat, and you will probably understand better than if I wrote "like a chocolate", for who ever leaves chocolate alone long enough to notice? Also, my girth makes the comparison applicable.) Every day when I come home I'm completely soaked. And it's supposed to be autumn, most comfortable season in Tokyo.

Yeah, pretty much it for today. Came home, read the book. The reading party has gone six levels... sorry, wrong game: six chapters, which means I have about 200 pages to catch up to till tomorrow. I've read some already, and I'll read some tomorrow, and it's mostly stuff I know, so far, so it shouldn't really be a herculean task (can you even use "herculean" for reading?). However, I won't upload this till tomorrow, because the lounge is crowded with people waiting for one of the three surviving cables (one has bit the bullet; kicked the bucket; gone to cable heaven), and I don't feel like budging from my room again.

I got some more pics of drinks I tried. "Kanjiru Mango" instructed me to feel this full-bodied drink, while Welch's Grapefruit 100 said it was a healthy squeeze.

Rainy Day

A short day. I did go to Shinjuku and Harajuku, after all, but only at 5 o'clock. I overslept.

So, after connecting briefly in the common room to download some stuff (I bought Keyword Manager! And OpenOffice.org 3 is installed as well), then I went out. Not really having planned my outing out, I just went to Harajuku (hint: "I wonder if anyone wrote anything about this Harajuku...") and Takeshita Doori was just in front of me. I didn't even know it was Takeshita Doori - I just figured, well, if everyone else is going that way, it's good enough for me.

Of course, not being a camera freak like almost all my friends, I did not take it out until it was already too late (read: the two gosurori entered a purikura, where I did not really want to go). And also afterwards, I was not really feeling comfortable shooting innocents, so there are rather few pictures from there. I think... maybe... about... two. In one, I was trying to capture a cute outfit being sold in one of the shops, then all of the sudden two people jumped right in front of me. Luckily, me being a giant, the costume is still visible. The second one, I was actually trying to record a movie, but I had the camera setting wrong. After that, I did record a couple of movies. They sucked (the camera was pointed too high, and there were too many lights), and the most interesting things always happen either just before I start filming or just after I stop, so you're not getting them.

After that I thought I'd take a walk to Shinjuku, it's close...

Well, it's close on the map of Tokyo, which, given that Tokyo is bloody huge, is not really saying much. After a longish walk, I managed to get to Yoyogi station and then I took a train home.

Or at least, that's what I thought. I remembered from the map I got about my dorm that, besides the Komaba Todaimae, there are couple of other train stations nearby. One of them, to my recollection, was Higashi-Kitazawa. So I thought, why not get a bit more flexibility - if I want to go to Shibuya, I already know where to go. But if Shinjuku is my goal, then maybe going directly might be better than taking the train from Komaba Todaimae to Shibuya, and then switch to one for Shinjuku.

Just as I boarded my Higashi-Kitazawa train, it started to rain.

Now I'm somewhere I've never been, I'm all wet, I have no clue where I am because it all looks different from what I recollected of my imaginings from when I was looking at the map, and there was almost noone on the streets. All I know is, I have to turn right somewhere, but everyone just said "you'll see it on the right". Well, I didn't - I turned twice at a wrong place, before a kind gentleman finally managed more precise instructions (and even then I was not 100% sure, for "more precise" and "precise" are not quite interchangeable terms).

So I'm home now, hoping I won't catch a cold (I did get soaked, but it's still rather on the warm side outside). I thought I'd take some photos of the travel brochure I found ("Croatia", which details how nice Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and "Bosna i Hercegovina" (sic!) are), but it got wet too (not so much from the rain as much as from the leaking bento with which it shared a plastic bag). Maybe some other time.

At least I'm getting plenty of walking exercise.

As far as my home supplies are concerned, I've bought two bento. I've also decided to risk buying Fruit Punch, after being reassured by the salesman there was no sake in it, and seeing as how it might be turned into a can for Cedevita (I have a kg package, and was kind of scared to use it directly from the huge bag); however, it has chunks of Real Fruit, it's not expensive, and it proved Yummy. I also bought 2 kg of rice, in hope someone will explain suihanki to me soon.

In other news, my Pocari Sweat is almost gone, and I've switched to Vitamin Water.

Japan: the Beginning

I stink.

This little fact comes first just because it's been on my mind all day.

Let me rewind for just a bit, and make a proper intro. This is my travel blog, where I blog about different places I travel to. And I meant different - if I wanted to say "various", I would have done so. The first episode was Syria, some years ago. Nothing interesting happened in the meantime. This time, I'm in Japan. I got a scholarship to come here and stay for a spell, and I accepted. Today is still the same day that I landed on Narita Airport, one of two airports that service Tokyo. But don't be misled into thinking that it's a Tokyo airport - it takes about an hour with a fast train to get to the city. And you pass a lot of cities on the way.

The flight, including the transfer time, took from 9 am to 8 am, which comes down to about 16 hours. Then there's an hour of monkeying about the airport, waiting for your luggage (actually, waiting for a friend's luggage - I spotted mine the moment I walked up to the baggage snail, err, train), waiting in lines, doing paperwork...

Doing paperwork is extremely important in Japan, as I will discover... Make that "As I have discovered, and you are about to.". (I'm a programmer, I'm allowed to have two periods. (Don't quote this out of context.)) But the highlight of the airport experience was a guy whose job was, when a lot of people came to the immigration queue at the same time, to hold up a paper saying "The End of the Line" at the end of the line.

Having reached Tokyo, I followed instructions, and got a cab to my school. There I met my tutor, who took care of me for the better part of the day (which was mostly spent doing district office paperwork, post office paperwork, dormitory paperwork, insurance paperwork, and probably couple of other paperworks I forgot about). He was great and I'd never have managed without him. He speaks English.

In the process, we passed Shibuya couple of times. The intersection is really as amazing in real life as people tell you it is. And the Tokyo transport system is even more confusing than I imagined. I think I will have to take courses.

Speaking of which, I will have orientation courses. And I was told last year there was actually a course in how to get to the campus. Held on the campus. One month after the classes have started. My guide said that kind of thing is rather normal.

We also went to BicCamera, but I was too indecisive about my keitai. Their mobile phones are bloody huge, the smallest among them would be about the size of the biggest brick back home. I kid you not. You know, back where I used to live, people put their earpiece to their ears, and stretched their mouthpiece toward their mouths, and there would still be another unspannable two inches? Well, there's a two-inch gap here as well - but in the other direction. Anyway, I didn't yet get it, but I think I'll get a cheap one, that kind of reminds me of the Apple design. And it doesn't flip, pop, snap, or make any other hip-hoppy action. It's huge. But at least it's slender.

Unlike me. If you know me, you know I have a couple of grams extra (with "couple" being a metasyntactic variable, here meaning "four thousands or so). I'm a giant here :) But not as big I thought I would be. Not all Japanese are tiny, contrary to what you might have heard.

Anyway. In the afternoon, I crashed in my room. My room is some 13 spartan square meters large, and I guess I'm not getting an iMac as I thought, simply because it will not fit. I will elaborate graphically, once my camera is up and running.

It was a real dilemma: crash or shower. In the end, crashing won, by virtue of there being no soap or shampoo or towel to be found. (My luggage is still in transit, I hope it will arrive by the time I'm back from Manga Kissa...) But not by a large margin, as there was no bedding either. So, one short doze on a 2.5-inch mattress, I decided to check a) what time it was (8pm), b) what's up with my suitcase (nothing much), and c) if I can buy some basic toiletries, maybe even breakfast. So I went out, and then decided I want to get a camera ASAP (even while not quite knowing which computer I'm going to get), then I went to find a net cafe. Which is where you find me now, my devoted readers (I know it's only the first installment, but it's gotten a bit large, kind of to the point I recognise true dedication in those who managed not to quit by now).

So, I did buy a camera. In the end, I decided against Sony, but it took multiple arguments to sway me (no Mac support, no English translation, no standards...), and even that with difficulty. So I'm now a proud owner of Olympus 1060. Or I hope I am. I.e. I would love to still be a proud owner once I understand what it is precisely that I have bought. But it looked nice on the shelf.

Anyway, I'm off. I need to catch a konbini in the next 36 minutes, or my shower will wait another smelly day.