Happy Birthday, Mr. Fool.

My classes started this week, and I'm so dead.

Yes, it's all in Japanese. And at the end of every lesson we have to submit comments, so that they know we paid attention. And paying attention to five hours of lesson-grade Japanese... gets kind of expensive. Especially with my sleeping habits, or rather lack thereof. So I'm kind of pooched last couple of days. Add a measure of not-so-common cold, and... I was none too shiny, let me tell you.

Also, last week was my birthday. I thought I would have a small party in an izakaya. It turned out a "small party" became an overstatement, and three of us ended up eating nabe and cake and watching Sasuke. I got some very nice presents (thanks everyone, really!), but I was pretty much blown away by one in particular, consisting only of words. Best birthday present ever, especially considering it had no substance whatsoever. Thank you, you know who you are. Everyone else, you most likely don't, and won't.

As for the obligatory Japan weirdness: pre-printed envelopes. Sometimes you get those: for instance, a company might send you an envelope addressed to themselves, so you can give them a reply easily. Nothing weird yet, eh? I'm sure things work like that everywhere. Everywhere that mail and printing exist, that is. However, because of Japan's politeness rules, things take a sharp turn towards weird: after the company name, there is a character 行 that means "for", but it is kind of self-effacing (when said by them), or rude (when said by you). Basically, but not quite, "for the humble Acme". All Japanese cross that character out, and write two other ones: 御中, so that the address says "for the honoured Acme". However, even stranger is you get an envelope that needs to be self-addressed, for example for the university to notify me of my having passed (or not) the entrance exam. There's a blank for your name, and "for honoured Mr/Mrs" character 様 there (different from the ones above, because you're not a company). You need to fill in your name, cross off the polite 様 "for", and put in the humble 行 "for". When they send it back to you, they will cross off the (now rude) "for" that you wrote in, and re-correct again to 様, so that the envelope you finally receive would read something like

MATH Amadan 様 行 様.

So Japanese.

Chocolate Sparkling

I just got another drink-related surprise. The co-op store at my campus just got a new addition to its shelves: "Chocolate Sparkling", "new combination of soda & chocolate flavor", "Soda & Chocolate W チョコレートフレーバー" ("Soda & Chocolate Double Chocolate Flavour"... Excuse me? Double what?!?). With pieces of chocolate drawn floating about the bottle, and a disclaimer that it does not use chocolate (the ingredients are, predictably, sugar, soda water and flavouring - I almost kind of miss the "1% fruit content" thing). The drink colour is amazingly non-evocative of chocolate pale yellow. I wonder what it does remind me of...

In the meantime, my lil brother has gone back home. I know I didn't tell you that he even came here, but... some deductive reasoning, please? Anyway, he's been here for a month. When he came here, he was all happy about being able to wander around Japan for a whole month. Already starting with the following day, the tune changed: now he was moaning how he only had a month! It's fantastic how you can present the same fact with two completely opposite meanings, right? Anyway, it got worse with his departure date growing close. Apparently he's been four times to Odaiba, because he really liked some overpass or something.

My mother got addicted to kuzu powder and matcha. I started typing how people will get hooked on weirdest things, then remembered I have difficulties walking past a シュークリーム without getting one. To each his own, I guess.

The Soft Drink Incident

After a long time of life more-or-less as usual, another culture shock. A bad one. I'm still traumatised as I'm writing this.

Yesterday, I was in Akihabara Donki, and I found Ramune in their fridge.

Ramune is a soft drink well known to many anime otaku, so being at least somewhat related to them, of course I've been wanting to try it. But so far I've only found it in two restaurants so far, never in a shop - so I immediately decided to buy it. However, it was just next to the cash register, and I was next in the line, so I just grabbed the nearest bottle - the red one.

When I came back home, and realised I was thirsty, I remembered the Ramune I bought, and started to open it. Now the Ramune bottle is a bit strange, and there are numerous Youtube clips demonstrating the proper way to open it. Basically, it has a marble inside, and you have to push it in with a provided instrument; then you turn it so that the marble gets stuck between two "reefs" in the bottle before tilting the bottle to drink or pour (otherwise the marble gets in the way again and stoppers the bottle from the inside). What I forgot was that Ramune has a tendency to spray when opened. It of course did, and I did the only thing I could think of - I popped the top into my mouth, in order to avoid spraying Ramune all over my room (or at least mitigate it, since I was not quite quick enough).

Bad mistake.

My reading is still quite slow - in Croatian or English, I can't not read something if I see it, reading is automatic and subconscious. Not so with Japanese - I have to invest effort and time, even if it is just a couple of words it will not be automatically processed. So only then I finally paid attention to the label, and what I saw horrified me, almost as much as the one gulp I got.

キムチ風ラムネ

or, Kimchi-style Ramune. Who does not know what Kimchi is, look it up on Wikipedia or something.

Next to that, a picture of garlic and chili - and yes, you can taste them both, and very strongly.

Anyway, it's the most godawful drink I've ever had the misfortune to have in my mouth. It's positively vile. I've even done some research on the net, and most people agree that even people who like kimchi (I'm not one of them) think it's vomitworthy. Some people probably remember the dream tea that Oz brought back from America. This is worse. If I had to choose between a glass of dream tea every day for a month or a glass of Kimchi Ramune once, I'm going with the tea. So you people who remember that can kind of get the intensity of my feelings on this subject.

Now I'm quite pissed off, because, a) how can anyone produce something like this? and b) since it's being sold, some SOB is actually buying it!

That's not the end of the story though. Today I related the story to one of my lab friends, who is kind of an experienced Japan-dweller, Nihon-sensei kind of person. When I came to the middle of my story, he started smirking and saying he thought he knew what happened, but fortunately it wasn't it.

There is a trend in Japan of hiding things that could be embarassing. For example, a third of the people you see on the Metro are spending their time reading a book, and half of those have the said book in an opaque paper book cover. The book cover does not serve to protect the book - it serves to prevent other people from seeing what you're reading. Of course, it does not really work - if it's really a book, fine, but in many cases it's manga, and if there's nekkid girls inside, people do not need to see the title page to realise what kind of book it is. Still, the book covers are widely used. Also, you can find sex toys that look just like deodorant bottles - you would not look at them twice in the shop. In the same vein, apparently, some companies have started packaging lubricants in bottles with the same imagery as popular soft drinks and teas - including Ramune. The name differs a bit, but the shape and colours are quite similar. I also heard someone tried the matcha lubricant, and that it even tasted of matcha. But it was not matcha.

So in the end, I count myself lucky, I guess.

How to be polite

Japanese signs are fun. Especially the "manners" campaigns. Check these out:

http://www.conbinibento.com/2004/07/16/lets-minding-our-manners/
http://www.tokyometro.jp/anshin/kaiteki/poster/index.html

Don't be scared, the Tokyo Metro site is in Japanese, but posters are easy to understand.

Hair

There's a hairdresser across the street from my Uni. I didn't notice it until today. Since it's getting way past time I should have had a haircut, I'm starting to look at my options, so I stopped and read the menu. [Yep, in Japan, hairdressers have menus too.]

You already know about "Cut & Blow". But today I saw something new: Head Scalp. For just ¥3500. But that's okay, it's just weird Janglish. But how about Nose Scalp (¥2000)? Any idea what that is?

Apparently, it comprises of the removal of fine hairs that apparently grow on the nose. Not nose hair, mind you - facial hair growing on the nose. By way of waxing, or something similar.

Nose scalp FTW.

And then, not two minutes later, I encounter the weirdest hairdo I saw since I came here. A half-meter spike. Of grey hair. The gentleman must have been 50 or 60.

Way to go, man! Major props! Chutzpah bonus!

On Whistle-Blowers

A quick observation.

Workers working on tracks of Inokashira line are a common sight at my station. They thump the stones, bonk the tracks, pull the tubes, and generally behave in a normal workerish manner. And since they're working on the train tracks, they have frequent breaks.

Whenever the train comes, the foreman signals the crew with a loud whistle sound. It is a bit uncanny, since the foreman knows when the train is coming before the announcement is made. When they hear the signal, all the workers line up against the wall, hold their arm up as if greeting the train, but more often than not they drop it before the train comes. I suspect that is one of the little work safety rituals common here in Japan, like the station attendants pointing both ways to make sure the platform is secure.

However, one would think that a loud whistling sound would come from a whistle. The thing that sparked this observational post is that today was the first time I actually saw a whistle. A sub-foreman (is that even a word?) had one, and signaled the crewmen along with the foreman.

So if the foreman doesn't use a whistle to produce a whistling sound, what does he use?

The answer is, a special megaphone-like device, which emits a very cunning imitation of blowing a whistle when you press its trigger.

The thing is, the Amazing Whistling Bullhorn is not any louder than a real whistle (as I found out today), it doesn't sound much different, and it's definitely Bigger Than A Cat (okay, a kitten). [Those who don't know, Bigger Than A Cat is a reference unit of size for some of my friends and me, ever since childhood. It's no weirder than, say, "gallon", or "foot".] And it presumably needs batteries. So, why not use a whistle? Is a lo-tek whistle too lowly an instrument for a foreman? Or is it work conditions issue, protecting the poor foremen from employing their lungs too much? Or an union thing, seeing how whistle-blowing would be the only physical labour they would be doing - as apparently their job description is just observing how other people toil, and not toiling themselves?

Note to readers: I have no problem with the foremen, despite the slightly satirical tone of the post. Knowing a bit about how the Japanese system work, they have earned their apparently toilless office. Still, the whistle thing confounds me. Opinions?

Energy Saving

So, in my Japanese class, prompted by the text we'd just read or grammar point we just learned or whatever, the teacher asked us to describe things we can do to save energy.

- One could use the low-consumption light bulbs.

- We can turn off computers when we don't use them.

- Turn off the lights while taking a shower.

- We can... wait, what?

Apparently, in Argentina (and also Australia, according to our Argentine source), they turn off the lights while they're taking a shower.

- You mean, all the lights outside the bathroom?

- Yes, and also in the bathroom too.

A collective "Huh?!?".

- At night too?!?

- Yes, of course, at night too. We often sing in the shower, so the government made a campaign to switch off the lights during the shower to save energy.