And that’s what this month’s Japan Blog Matsuri is all about! The theme is
ちょっと違う (Chotto Chigau)
or…“Not Quite the Same”

In other words, things that Japan has taken from any non-Japanese culture and made their own.

So what did you guys come up with that’s just a little off about Japan? Well, all responses seemed to fall into one of four categories, so here goes:

The SCARY:

Chris Ballard discovers what kind of spooky Halloween decorations it takes to freak out his neighbors – and it’s not demons, skeletons, blood or guts!

Rene explains how O Bon in China is NOT the time for partying with your ancestors’ spirits – it’s time to beware of ghosts who might take you down with them!

The EDIBLE:

crazyGaijin reports that Japan has apparently solved the age-old question of what to do when you aren’t sure if you want a hot dog or a sandwich: nom on a dogawich!

Franzi tackles this whole “Christmas Cake” business, and identifies that the key is strawberries!

Sandra Japandra shares why getting your hands on a bagel during morning rush in Tokyo can turn into a very ethnical experience for a New Yorker.

Hmm… what could this ramen use? Ooh, ooh, Brian from Ramen Adventures knows — how about a little more ICE CREAM!!?

The NOMADIC:

If you thought the Odaiba Statue of Liberty was the only one in Japan, think again! McAlpine takes us on a trip up north to the former Momoishi, which itself is pretty chigau from the Japan most city-dwellers know.

Ashley from Surviving in Japan vents about the complex process of online hotel reservations in Japan. Cutesy websites, check boxes, and ladies plan, oh my!

Everything bizarre from jporn to laundry to ladies on trains – Locohama hashes out Japan’s chotto chigau basics in a bottom-5 list!

And last, but not least… for a chotto chigau style of Matsuri entry…

The ONE-LINERS:

• Toilets (via Kevin)
• Mexican Food (via David)

And that’s it! Hopefully you scratched your head inquisitively at least once, and these should tide you over until next month when Victory Manual takes the Japan Blog Matsuri torch! Thanks to everyone who submitted an article, to JapanSoc, and to all you adoring fans for giving the bloggers an audience!

…but I’ve discovered there’s one great and often overlooked benefit of spending time in Japan: never be at a loss for words again, especially in large groups of people you don’t know.

(Not because you should pull the Japan card whenever possible and start shoving stories full of wa down everyone’s throats… no one likes that.) Instead, it’s because of what I like to call “The Japan Paradox”.

Background
Ever heard of the Birthday Paradox? It says that once you get more than 23 people in a room together, it’s more likely than not that at least 2 people share a birthday. Just 23 people!! It’s counterintuitive, but true if you do the math.

Japan Paradox Algorithm
Now, being a computer scientist, I’m rather fond of algorithms. Earlier this summer, I started to notice that I had developed an algorithm for functioning in group social situations where I was meeting new people. In particular, that meeting new people used to be difficult for me but isn’t as bad anymore. Part of this could be attributed to maturity (ha!), but the rest is most certainly the Japan Paradox. Here’s my algorithm:

If there are more than 4 people present:
1. Find the person in the group who has lived in Japan before
2. Talk to them about Japan
3. Oh look, it’s already time to go??

“But wait!” you must be thinking, “How do you come across so many people who happen to have lived in Japan/know Japanese/have some kind of connection to Japan?” Well, that’s what makes it a paradox!

Seriously though, this has happened to me on numerous occasions, and yes, usually in groups of people I have never met before. The most recent example of this, Exhibit A, was a MeFi meetup I attended a couple of weeks ago here in Pittsburgh. I came in, sat down, and my username (mokudekiru) drew attention from a guy who had apparently lived in Japan for 3 years! Who knew. Culture shock anecdotes and jdrama recommendations flying back and forth, and now I’m doing some Japanese help via email for one of his friends trying to learn Japanese (if the people I’m talking about here are reading this…well, hi!) The meetup was around 10-12 people while I was present.

The Wa-dar
The only potentially tricky step of my algorithm above is step 1. You sort of have to look for little signs that another Japan-er might be in your midst. Thanks to my coincidentally Japanese-sounding name, they usually ask me and I can say “no, I’m not, but I lived there…” and it’s on. Otherwise, making references to matcha or eating octopus might do the trick, as well as being on the lookout for little references others will make. And sometimes, you don’t know what it is about the person, but you just have a hunch. Hence, wa-dar. I’m still perfecting mine.

Demographics of the Japan Paradox
Okay okay, so it has to be related to the people I hang out with — clearly if you pick four people off the street in podunk Wyoming, there’s not a high chance you’ll find your Japan person. As a computer science student, I mostly run around in circles of well-educated engineers, undergrads, grad students, and the youngest part of the workforce.

I have definitely noticed some sort of engineering-Japan Paradox connection though. Both last summer and this summer, I’ve participated in research internships for computer oriented types (last year was CS/ECE, this year the research is in the learning sciences, so CS, Psych, and Linguistics). The two internships were on opposite sides of the country, and each consisted of ~15 undergrads. Both last year and this year, out of each group of 15 there were THREE people who had lived in Japan before. That’s 20%. Back at school, there’s an insane number of CS/ECE kids who have gone to Japan or at least are taking Japanese, and on the flip side, in J-Net, the Japan Club for our university, outside of East Asian Languages and Cultures majors, engineers are probably the next most represented (disproportionately so, given the size of the engineering school vs. the rest of the university).

It’s also a time/age thing. Even when I lived there (‘06-’07) I didn’t feel like it was such a big thing as it is now — now it’s almost to the point of absurdity where I feel like every engineer takes a summer there. Not that this is a problem — comparing Japan stories is endlessly entertaining, and with a large number of people interested, but perhaps not having gotten to the living-in-Japan stage, having Japan-related expertise is highly valued.

So, if you find yourself in a group of 18-30 year old educated engineers, my Japan Paradox Algorithm is likely to succeed. Otherwise, YMMV, and I think we’d need some real demographic info about who learns Japanese and/or visits Japan from the US, to find out whether the Japan Paradox is more generalizable. Please comment if you have a Japan Paradox story or opinion!

MMmmm, it’s time for a mid-summer matsuri!! Last month, Locohama taught you how to beat the heat or embrace the mushi-atsui with the June Japan Blog Matsuri about “Hot Fun in the Summertime”! Tough shoes to fill, but I’m proud to say that the torch has been passed this way to Mokudekiru!

And this month’s theme is… (drumroll please)…

ちょっと違う (Chotto Chigau)
or…“Not Quite the Same”

A lot of times in English language blog posts, news articles, and even the occasional Japan Blog Matsuri, we focus on what’s totally off-the-wall crazy about Japan – the things that shock and awe, and make you feel like landing in Japan is like space travel to a different planet.

Instead, this month, let’s think about the opposite: things that Japan has taken from Western, or any non-Japanese culture, and made their own. A few examples could be…
     • the time when you happened upon the statue of liberty in Odaiba
     • the time you ordered spaghetti, your comfort food, only to discover the
       mentaiko sprinkled on top
     • finding out you were missing a key part of the holidays, having never heard
       of a Christmas Cake
     • embarrassing yourself in a conversation before realizing “tension” is
       actually a good thing in the land of the rising sun…

I know tons of wacky stories are sure to come out of the woodwork – this is a pretty open-ended topic, so rock that creativity!!

It’s time to recognize that which makes you go “oh yeah, we have that in my country too!! But wait a second…”

Rules and Guidelines
• Picture!! Include at least one.
• Personal stories only – no research papers about how girls give guys chocolate on Valentines Day in Japan… you are welcome to talk about v-day/white day, but give it that personal touch – make us there, and SHOW us what was “chotto chigau” about the whole experience.
• Your story doesn’t have to be about you actually being IN Japan, but it should, of course, be a Japanese culture/language related experience
• And, as always, follow the Japan Blog Matsuri Rules and Guidelines

Submissions
The deadline is Friday, July 23rd.

Submit by either leaving a comment on this very blog post, or by using the Blog Carnival Widget.

Check out the Japan Blog Matsuri FAQ if you have any general questions about this whole Matsuri thing, or, for specific questions shoot me an email at my gmail account (mokudekiru).

I am SO looking forward to all your submissions about those subtle differences that make you unexpectedly go “huh…” (or 「変・・・」 as the case may be.)

Jya!

It’s Christmas Cake, DUH.

So why the Pittsburgh stuff anyway... this summer, I'm doing research at the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, which means I'll be an expert on Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh by the end of July, as well as learning a thing or two about learning science, misconceptions about decimal arithmetic, and specifically how examples with errors in them might help you learn.

Carnegie Mellon

Kinda looks like this:

The campus is really nice, pretty small, and you can see the Learning Cathedral from, well, everywhere (the tall thing in the background):

The best part of the engineering buildings is that they’re all connected by bridges. The downside is that you never know what floor is ground level – it can be anywhere from floor 1 to 4 depending on what building you’re in, and the bridges aren’t on the same floors either. After 3 weeks though, I’m confident that I could survive without actually going outside in the winter.

The Gates building is the wackiest looking, but it does have a bunch of nice couches and a balcony that I work on sometimes, when my lab’s lack of sunlight is getting to me (get it, there’s a lot of windows in the gates building… ha…)

The bridge to the Gates building is cool…

…especially at night.

(we had a mini photo shoot there last night):

But the CMU campus is not all fun and games. In fact, there is one horrible, horrible thing going on here… a giant, slanted pole in the middle of the main quad area, with people walking up it:

This thing actually creeps me out significantly. Why are these people walking up into the sky?

Any why must these creepy fake people watch them from the ground? Sometimes there’s real people staring up at the pole too, but I assume they’re fake… as was happening when I took this picture… spot the real boy!

ITS2010

So I started work on June 7. My second week of work, however, was effectively lost, because I ended up volunteering for ITS2010, a conference going on at CMU this year about Intelligent Tutoring Systems, which is pretty relevant to the research I’m doing. Also I was interested in participating in a non-reflections|projections conference and seeing how they do things. There’s a bunch of pics from the conference here. The conference basically involved:
- lots of cool talks about intelligent tutors (computerized educational software that is ‘intelligent’ in some way, usually adjusting to the student somehow)
- lots of free cheese & wine, and a constant supply of coffee
- meeting lots of new people from all over the world who research the interesting stuff mentioned above (yeah, my Japanese knowledge DID come in handy!)
- A kickass banquet, with more of the above-mentioned free foods, plus, pretty plants with little aliens in them! (Banquet was at the Phipps Conservatory)

And Jack Mostow singing…

…and us singing with Jack Mostow:

Pittsburgh Wisdom

Here’s what I’ve figured out and noticed so far…

- Public Transportation: The bus system leaves a lot to be desired. There’s not really enough buses to begin with, but the service makes the experience even more unpleasant. Buses don’t stop for you unless you practically jump into the middle of the street and wave at them (and even then, they stop like 30 feet in front of the bus stop), they love to yell at you about you paying at the wrong time (going one direction you pay before the ride, going the other direction, it’s after, god forbid you don’t know which to do). While the occasional bus driver will be extra friendly and help you find your way, asking simple questions to most drivers incites severe rage, such as when we asked about Highland Ave., and the bus driver snapped back at us, “What about it!?” Come on, lady, we’re on a bus, what do you THINK we want to know about it…? or the other day when we got on a bus that had opened its doors, only to be yelled at because apparently it stops and waits before we can get on the bus… let’s just say, I avoid the bus whenever possible, because it just makes me depressed.

- Taxis: The lovely bus system ceases to function after around midnight, which means you’re stuck trying to find a taxi. Yeah, good luck with that. The first weekend here, I was stranded with my friend in Southside, the main go-to for nightlife. At 2AM when everything was closing down, we tried to flag down a cab, but there were very few, and the ones that did drive by were full. Upon calling a cab company, they claimed they wouldn’t send me a cab, because I was in a busy area where you’re supposed to “just flag them down.” We had to specifically find a more remote location to wait in order to call a cab, and even so it took 45 minutes for said cab to show up. I have a feeling this is not the last time I will be stranded somewhere in Pittsburgh.

- Food: Don’t expect too much. Pittsburgh seems to be really good at bar food, especially half-off late-night food (Fuel & Fuddle is excellent, though getting a table for 14 people at 11 PM does prove to be challenging), but if you’re looking for ethnic food (and I am) you’re pretty much out of luck. There’s a thai restaurant in shadyside that’s good but far too expensive, but that’s kind of the only asian restaurant for almost miles… other than the CMU trucks, which are actually pretty decent. More on them another day.

- Weather: Just carry an umbrella with you, all the time. It will be totally sunny, then start pouring for half an hour (right when you need to walk outside, too)…so be warned.

- Bubble tea: A major issue for any new place I live in… and Pittsburgh has by far the worst bubble tea situation out of any place I have ever lived. I have tried four places now and only one has been good enough that I might go back.
Stay away from:
- The kiosk in front of the learning cathedral… not enough boba, flavor was eh.
- Lulu’s: possibly the worst bubble tea I’ve ever tasted. Threw it out halfway through.
- Oriental Express: Probably the best option in walking distance of CMU, but still pretty eh. I liked the Taro, but have heard bad things about fruit flavors (which I never get).
The only good option so far is the Rose Tea Cafe in Squirrel Hill. It had your standard bubble tea that one might expect from every bubble tea establishment… not enough flavors, but I’ll take what I can get.

- Paper towel dispensers: I have never been to a city that has such a hard time with dispensing paper towels in bathrooms. Across the city (including my own dorm, and places at CMU), the dispensers just don’t work, the paper gets stuck inside, or whoever is restocking the paper just completely gives up and there’s just a roll of paper sitting on a countertop, outside of the dispenser. WHY IS THIS SO HARD, PITTSBURGH!?

- Mt. Washington/The Incline: Is definitely worth going to after dark for an awesome view of the city.

Lots more Pittsburgh insights later, DC next week, and more. Peace out.

But what if you’ve never seen a jdrama before? What is all this jdrama nonsense, and where do you even begin? Well, my friends, you’re in luck. The Ganbatte Times has given me a column all about jdrama! I’m starting with the very basics: the “what,” “why,” and “how” of jdrama, and then I’ll work my way into reviews of shows and recommendations on what you should and could be watching, for any and all levels of Japanese knowledge.

I started out in April with an Intro to Jdrama, which covered:
• What jdrama is and who watches it
• How jdramas are different from western TV shows
• Why jdrama addiction is for everyone

My second article came out this week, and it covered How to Watch Jdrama which covered all the technical details of how to get your hands on jdramas, even if:
• You don’t live in Japan
• You don’t know Japanese
• You don’t like computers
Or, of course, if you DO any of those things.

The Ganbatte Times is a Kyoto-based webzine aimed at (and mostly by) the JET community, so there’s lots of other cool articles about non-jdrama stuff too, if jdrama isn’t your cup of tea. The reviews here aren’t going anywhere, and I’ll always mention here when I have a new article or review up. I might not be quite ready to quit my day job, but I’m totally thrilled about getting this writing gig, so a big thank you to Laurel and all the people at the Ganbatte Times!

Our general trajectory was:
Chicago → Philly → NYC → Boston → Philly

Noam’s job is in Philly, so we made that our home base. We departed last Tuesday, stayed with friends at UChicago for a night, before heading to Philly to drop our stuff off, and catching a bus to NYC. We didn’t have a car, so all transportation must be public. Things we booked ahead of time:

• The flight from ORD → PHL, obviously
• All bus rides, which was 5 total, because there’s no direct Boston → Philly bus, you have to get off at Penn Station in NYC and switch buses. We used megabus for the first three buses and BoltBus on the way back from Boston to Philly. BoltBus had nice leather seats, and we took earlier buses than we had reserved because we were scared we wouldn’t make the connecting bus, so we were standbys and they always had a spot for us. Megabus was nice because there were two levels and we got a good view of the cities we drove through. Both bus companies had crappy, horrible, yet existing, internet. Both were much cheaper than the Amtrak option.
• Hotel in New York. We stayed at the Wellington which we of course cross-checked with the Bedbug Registry, as bedbugs weren’t really on our list of things to experience in NYC. This hotel was good, though a bit noisy (thin walls, hear people opening/closing doors, etc.) but had a great location, literally one of its doors opens to a subway entrance. Super convenient.
• Tickets to a comedy show for our first night in NYC, at the UCB Theatre which we had heard was good on the internets. It was.

Alright, now onto the stories and the photos!

Wednesday: The Three-City Whirlwind Tour
We woke up in Chicago, and took a 7:15 cab to O’Hare. It took an hour and a half (it would take about half an hour with no traffic). We were very stressed about missing our 9:35 flight, and without a seriously skilled cab driver who was willing to do things like get off the highway and get back on, we would have missed our flight. An evil lady at security who forced Noam to squeeze her rolling-suitcase into the carry-on size limit box didn’t help either, as we had to spend 15 minutes emptying it enough to fit, while everyone else walked by with much larger suitcases. We made our flight with 10 minutes to spare before takeoff.

A very short flight later, we landed in Philly, got no information out of anyone at the airport about transportation to the UPenn campus (the lady kept saying “call them yourself” and I didn’t really feel like getting her to explain who “them” was when she refused to say anything other than that one sentence). So we took a cab to Noam’s apartment, dumped our stuff, and ogled her 22nd story view of Philly:

We then walked down the street for some delicious Indian food and took one of the best pictures I have ever seen:

Got to sit at the front of the top level of the megabus, and saw lots of Philly as we left.

The bus took an extremely long time as we ran into evening rush hour traffic. Got to NYC around 6 PM, dumped our stuff at the hotel, grabbed a snack, and took the subway to our show which started at 8.

UCB Theatre was a pretty small venue, around 100 people in the audience. We had reserved tickets online for two comedy shows in a row, both of which were 5 bucks and very funny. The host of the first show did an icebreaker based around this incredible ad from ediets.com, shown below. From 0:18-0:35 is really the significant part of the video. Then he had the audience recreate the jingle, with a third of the audience singing each of the three lines of “ediets.com / now you got it going on / now you got it going o-on”

The funniest guy was John Mulaney, who writes for SNL, and told us about many things, including how Justin Bieber terrorized him in the hallway once while being the musical guest for SNL, and how he was both ashamed and touched to have the world’s busiest and richest teenager and his crew laugh at him.

At UCB Theatre Noam and I ran into two different friends from high school. Our high school is 800+ miles away from NYC. It also has 300 total students, so counting above and below our grades for the years we were there, we know roughly 540 people who graduated from our high school. Total. This venue had 100 people there, tops. And four of them were from our high school. Insanely small odds. Unfortunately, we hadn’t worked “running into random friends from high school” into the NYC plan, so we didn’t get a chance to hang out with them later, though we received invitations, they would be for when we were back in Philly. Alas.

Thursday: Epic NYC Exploration

So… one day in NYC to fill, unplanned, what do you do?

Step 1: Bagels and Coffee. We wandered northwest-ish from our hotel and found Bagel Stix for generous amounts of cream cheese and lox on bagels, and iced cappuccinos.

Step 2: Central Park Proposal. Brought the bagels with us to have a bagel picnic. On the way to our picnic spot, we passed by a couple, walking on a little dirt path near the street. Right as Noam and I passed by the guy, the guy was down on his knee, and proposed! I was sort of confused as his choice of proposal spot (random dirt path? Not near the road but not away from it either?) or why he didn’t wait until we were more than 1.5 feet away (there was no one else coming after us), but we just rolled with it and watched them hug and kiss and be happy because they’re getting married. Noam’s camera has paparazzi level zoom, so here’s the happy couple:

Step 3: Finish bagels and wander Central Park until you get to the Met. You know, like Gossip Girl. I don’t really understand how Serena and whatever the friend’s name is have tender BFF moments on the steps of the Met, because there were so many friggin’ people. Oh well.

Step 4: Strawberry Fields. Takes you back south through the park.

Step 5: Buy shoes. We passed by an Aldo, my favorite shoe place in the world (actually, we passed by like 6 that day) and both got new shoes at relatively inexpensive prices (for Aldo). When I was trying on my new gladiator sandals (how ever did I go so long without them?!) a girl sat down next to me trying on some other shoes, and complimented the shoes I was trying on (which is odd, it’s not like they were even mine yet… I guess she’s complimenting my taste in shoes? I also felt slightly bad because they were the last pair of that style). Then she decided to kind of sadly complain about how she lost her job two weeks ago and is getting nicer shoes for all the job interviews she was going to. I think if I’d stayed a few more minutes I would have heard her whole life story. So…that was a depressing conversation.

Step 6: LOVE. You just gotta. It’s all you need.

Step 7: Times Square. It’s famous. There weren’t that many people there though. Not really busy, kinda a letdown.

Step 8: The Village, Soho. Went there for walking around, shopping, etc. Had coffee at Think Coffee near NYU. It was getting chilly out and I hadn’t brought a jacket, so we shopped at a few stores in Soho until I found a shirt at UNIQLO! So glad they’re in NYC, and I also bought clothes to stay warm from UNIQLO in Osaka. Good times at UNIQLO, though I think I actually liked the clothes at the NYC one better than the ones in Japan.

Step 9: Rain and Chinatown. It started pouring, so we went to Chinatown and entered the first restaurant we saw, and consumed fish soup and eggplants and were happy. We purchased bread at a bakery that claimed to have read bean in it. The next day we found, tragically, there was no red bean. We were so ripped off.

Step 10: Empire State Building. We thought we may as well see it on our way home, so we got off the subway at the appropriate place, and realized that since we were standing right under the building we couldn’t actually SEE it (you know, skyscrapers are tall). Instead, we did find K-Town, which was friggin’ awesome. And very nice at night (probably 11 PM ish?)

Step 11: Froyo at Pinkberry, and KARAOKE. You just gotta. Thank you, K-Town, for having karaoke. So much Lady Gaga and Katy Perry were sung. Also the karaoke room was friggin’ enormous.

Step 12: Subway back to hotel! And sleep! Job well done!

Friday: NYC → Boston

First, we got breakfast at Radiance Tea where we experienced matcha lattes and mochi. BEST BREAKFAST EVER, and like a 1 minute walk from the hotel.

Then we got on the bus at Penn Station to Boston and suffered a long bus ride. Batia (who we were visiting in Boston) met us, took us to Boston Chinatown while we waited for the bus to Waltham. Bubble tea. Good times. When we arrived, Batia, MPitt and friends were holding a vegetarian BBQ in their backyard. Delicious!

Saturday: Epic Boston Exploration

Walked 13 miles! Saw 3 colleges!
Here is the map of our route

Here’s what we saw:

Newberry Street for shopping, where they had an Espresso!

Noam’s Gnomies, also on Newberry:

Boston Commons & Gardens:

Took the Freedom Trail through downtown to see some famous old stuff:

Batia’s favorite, graveyards!

Went to the water:

Crossed the river to cambridge, visited MIT’s Stata Center since I am really into seeing cool CS buildings around the world.

Went to Harvard Square, where it started to rain, and we ate at a Vietnamese place. Afterwards we explored Harvard and found where Noam used to go to daycare!

Gotta do something with signs.

And then we waited through several buses to get back to Waltham. Creepy middle aged dude on the bus kept asking us what our ‘party plans’ were there. We didn’t answer him, but agreed that we had party plans, they were just exclusive (mainly, excluding him.)

Then, we experienced the awesome that is Eurovision. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a singing-contest among all the countries in Europe, each who send a representative to sing some ridiculous pop song, and then all the countries vote on each other and a winner is selected. Batia says the insanity of Eurovision makes her proud to be an American (we don’t participate). I gotta say, this was one of the more patriotic moments of my life.

The winner, as we found out after like four hours of pure awesome, was Lena from Germany:

Anyway, that was Boston, and the next day we went back from Boston → NYC → Philly and finished unpacking into Noam’s place, and I snagged an empty room from one of her future roommates who hadn’t moved in.

Philly Adventures

The sightseeing Noam and I did in Philly involved checking out Philly history near Independence Hall, etc. We even got these sweet badges from folding our map correctly at the Independence Center. However, this meant we got a ton of extra attention throughout the day as all the tour guides and such would question why we got junior ranger badges (did we deserve them?) and whether we even counted as “junior” as we are clearly not children. We didn’t see any kids with the badges, which probably means we’re just really good at map-folding (well, Noam is… I watched.)

They’re pretty into the Liberty Bell there. Not as much as Ben Franklin though. Apparently he was the man. Noam is also pro-liberty:

The rest of this week, Noam went to work while I became an expert on cafes in the UPenn area. If you need a cafe, I have some pretty strong opinions on: Capogiro Gelato (good!), Lovers & Madmen, and Green Line Cafe (meh!). I wrote yelp reviews for all of them so you can read about my horrible and good experiences if you care.

The reason I had to become such an expert at cafes was that I needed to be at them ALL day while Noam was at work. The security measures at her apartment were kind of insane, and they wouldn’t give a guest card to me, so we had to spend 5 minutes signing me in every time. Bleh. That meant I couldn’t be there during the day, and her roommates’ (once they showed up) 9 PM bedtime and their demands for library-like silence meant that I shouldn’t really be there at night, either. We stayed away from the apartment and galavanted around Philly with a bunch of new and old friends, including eating with Noam’s new REU buddies and such.

After a week of repeat visits to UPenn cafes, Ben Franklin statues, Chinatown, and Lorenzo’s Pizza, I am off to Pittsburgh for a while. Summer is officially rung in.

Oh, and all the other pictures are here as always.

So knock yourself out. Get inside my teenage mind as I adjusted to life as a Japanese schoolgirl, complete with loads of culture shock.

Visit the blog at: http://mojellyfish.blogspot.com/

Highlights include…

Jumping off cliffs in Kyoto:

Asking Oguri Shun to marry me on my 18th birthday:

Pulling a danjiri through mountains to welcome fall in:

The overly crowded and beautiful Kobe Luminarie:

My complete and total obsession with ikanago, the west Kobe delicacy:

Throwing surprise parties for Noriko, culture festivals, and TONS of purikura:

Sakura, Takashi, Osaka, and my first encounter with an ice dog:

The ever-popular purple-jacket boy:

And of course, rapping about tea ceremony:

Enjoy!

It was April 2007. I had been studying abroad in Japan for 8 months now. I had lived with several host families, but unfortunately, this fourth and final family was a little bit full of crazy. Host mom had her own physical and mental issues, and in general just had a stick up her ass about, well, everything. She was hyper-obsessed with a fear of me doing something wrong and getting her (or worse, her daughter, who wasn’t even in the country at the time) in trouble. So I would get reprimanded for many horrible things I did, such as using Kansai-ben (the dialect of the area I had lived in for the past 8 months) instead of standard Japanese (not offensive language, mind you, just the dialect, typical conversation, the same way she and everyone else in a 50 mile radius spoke).

Adding onto whatever fundamental issues my host mom and I had with each other, the house did not have internet that I could reliably use, which became a point of contention. For quick things I would borrow their computer, but as my laptop would not connect, I would often go to downtown Kobe (Sannomiya) and sit in a cafe with wifi to blog, contact my family, etc.

I always sensed my host mom had issues with this activity, mostly because a) she would say strange things when I left the house, such as “it’s springtime, so all the perverts are coming out this time of year!” (I guess they hibernate like bears?) and b) I found out she was notifying my school administration I was doing this horrible thing. (It wasn’t even an internet cafe… it was a cafe with wireless!)

Springtime, the season for perverts in Japan

If you’re wondering why the high school would even care… let’s just say it was a pretty ritzy private all girls’ school with its own extensive set of rules including:
• No going out in your uniform to any store after school (to prevent you from misbehaving and giving the school a bad rap)
• No going to karaoke EVER (one of the most common pastimes for middle schoolers and high schoolers in Japan, and clearly the cause of a lot of social disruption in Japan)
• No net-cafes either, apparently
• A slew of things that have to do with hair accessories (No wearing hair accessories that were not black hairties) that aren’t really relevant here
• No printing things at school (never really figured this one out. Not a single page, ever.)

Some of these rules are typical for Japan, some of these rules are excessive, even for Japan. I knew something was up when I confronted host mom about reporting my wifi-related-activities to the school and she got defensive and accused me of engaging in enjo kousai (often translated as “compensated dating” or “schoolgirl prostitution”) since that’s the main thing that apparently goes on at net-cafes.

The infamous cafe where most of my illicit behavior occurred

So things were a little fishy, but generally going fine.

Until April 17th, when I awoke to find an email from my Japanese teacher in America stating that there were apparently some issues with my host family and they were very angry at me for breaking the rules AND for what I had written on my blog.

What?? Angry? No one ever told me… and what about my blog now?

It turns out that a couple of posts I had written doing some mild complaining about things like the lack of internet had gotten around, particularly back to America, where host family’s older daughter was studying. Some of her friends decided to tell my host family about it, and intentionally skew it to sound worse than it actually was.

So now I was left with no choice but to confront the issue, or risk being thrown out of Japan a month early.

What ensued was a lengthy crying-session by my host mom about how much I had hurt her with my activities and my blog, and the allegation that all this stress I had put them under forced her not to eat for a week (she never ate–how was I supposed to know this time was my fault?) I really had to ask, what words were exactly that hurtful?

Completely seriously, she says, “You use some really bad language on there. I heard it says the word ‘pissed’… now, I don’t speak English, so I don’t know what that word means, but I hear it’s a vulgar term for PEE!!”

This was the moment when I realized all was lost. This miscommunication was never ever to be solved, no matter how many times I told her that pissed=annoyed/angry. Instead, I apologized profusely, and put a password on my blog.

Things simmer down for a couple of awkward weeks with the host fam. Until one day at school, where I get pulled out of class, taken to the library, and the teachers in charge of exchange students sit me down at a computer and tell me to delete my blog. Now.

??!?!

Apparently, having a password on it makes it LOOK like I have something to hide, and people will be curious about it, because that’s human nature. Thus, the blog must be deleted. The school also made up a new rule about blogs and how students can’t make any that talk about people or have pictures that are “too big” or “too clear”.

After that blew over (moving my blog to a slightly different address seemed to do the trick), my host family decided to notify me they wouldn’t be hosting me after the next week. I had 3 weeks left in Japan. Host mom seemed to get a kick out of telling me I would probably be homeless for the last two weeks of my exchange. To her dismay, I emailed a previous host mom, and in under 5 minutes, I had a futon waiting for me. So much for me being the scum exchange student of the universe.

Sometimes I felt rebellious enough to take my indoor school shoes out on the town

So I’m not sure what the take-home message is here… probably the following:
1) Living with host families sucks sometimes.
2) It’s better to have either your host family or your school on your side. When they both gang up on you, you’d better comply or your days are numbered. Also, pay attention to the subtlest clues that something strange is afoot, since neither party may mention that you’re in trouble.
3) Perverts come out in the spring, cafes are for prostitution, and pissed always means pee.

This post was a submission for the April 2010 Japan Blog Matsuriall about ‘Secret Japan’ hosted at Gakuranman.

Inspired by Ryan North who drove down from Toronto for Reflections | Projections 2009, I realized that Toronto was easily reachable by automobile.

Or not so easily – we spent the first day of our trip dealing with car trouble, and returned back to where we started (see Dave’s blog for details). On day two, our new plan worked and we made it all the way across the border and to Niagra Falls.

Lesson 1: Niagra Falls in March is a GOOD IDEA
$115 gets you a 42nd story suite overlooking the falls. We did not have to actually go visit the falls, which is nice, because it was cold.

On day 3 of trying to get to Toronto, we got up and left Niagra Falls, drove another 1.5 hours away or so and finally reached our destination!

After navigating the numerous one-way streets of downtown, we finally found our hotel, the Strathcona which had a great location (right in the middle of downtown) and sadly no parking. We did manage to scam our way into free parking though, by finding a parking lot where they had a flat overnight rate but no ticket or any marking on the car, and then leaving it there for 3 days without leaving the parking lot. 1 day’s parking cost for 3 days (and it was like 20 bucks, so it’s pretty significant savings here!)

One other essential item the hotel did not provide was free internet. We looked for a coffee shop, and got extremely annoyed at the sketchy internet connection at Second Cup, so we paid for one day of internet and laid out a game plan, using the map. Having this map was really helpful, and it highlights kinda the “important” neighborhoods in the different colors and explains them. Yes, Gaybourhood is the one in pink.

Tuesday Adventures
1) Headed for Yonge, the downtown shopping district (in yellow on the map). Checked out some record stores and such.

2) Went to the World’s Biggest Bookstore which was sorta big, but really not all THAT big. There was a smaller bookstore right next to it.

3) Took the subway west to Koreatown which might be my favorite place in Toronto. We went to a restaurant called “Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu” and YOU ALL SHOULD GO THERE TOO. Look at our glorious feast. SO DELICIOUS!!!

Wednesday Adventures
This is the day we walked way too much.

We started by walking east to the St. Lawrence Market, where we found wonderful baked goods and tea to eat and drink for breakfast (my first scone consumed in the country of Canada).

Then we started walking farther east to explore the less city-like parts of the city and eventually arrive at Pizza Pide, a Turkish pizza (and some lahmacun) place.

Area near the hotel

The CN tower is visible pretty much anywhere

My delicious feta/spinach noms.

We took a streetcar west, passed through little Italy but did not stop, and walked south until we were in the Queen Street West neighborhood. It was artsy and we stopped by the very small Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

Afterwards, we needed to regroup a bit and get some internetting done. Due to our horrible experience at Second Cup, we realized a bit more research needed to happen before choosing a cafe to visit. Luckily, blogTO had an article about the best cafes with free wifi. We went to the White Squirrel, which was just about the size of a living room, but somehow reminded me of the Dolores Park Cafe in San Francisco (there was also a park near this one, and something about the layout of the cafe… I dunno.)

Queen West as a neighborhood was pretty interesting. It had a lot of clothing stores and kind of a wilder bunch than most of the other parts of Toronto we’d walked through. The street itself sort of reminded me of being in downtown Santa Cruz. CRAZY.

On the way home, we hit up The Beer Store to get Dave’s precious Labatt 50. The important thing to know about The Beer Store is that when you walk in, there is NO BEER. There is an empty room, and a menu on the wall of beers, quantities, and prices. You walk up to a guy behind the counter and tell him what you want, and he brings it to you. Based on the signs around the store, they have a pretty serious recycle policy too, when you bring back empty beers. Oh yeah, and The Beer Store is a chain. We saw like 50 of them in the week we were there.

The fruits of Dave’s Beer Store adventure

Later that evening, we hit up Chinatown for some noms, and went to Bread and Circus, a bar with a stage, and a stand-up comedy group was performing that night. Small place, pretty cozy, hilarious show. blogTO strikes again at giving us a good suggestion (downside: now I want a blogTO website for every city in the entire world).

Thursday Adventures
Today was the day to visit the University of Toronto. First we went to The Dark Horse Espresso Bar in Chinatown, where you needed a cell phone to get texted a password (and we didn’t have our phones with us) so that didn’t work out so well. Next the Kensington Market, and then walking up to the University.

Lots of little Hogwarts-like areas too. But the best part was the Computer Science building, which blows Siebel Center out of the water:

Very magical.

Next was the Shoe Museum (this is like the equivalent of the beer store for me), walking through Gaybourhood, and chilling out in the hotel again in the evening, stealing internets from our paying neighbors.

And that, my friends, was Toronto.

On Friday we packed up, headed out, and stopped at a bagel place in Mississauga on the 10-hour drive home. Ahhh bagels.

Overall Impressions
- The weather: was no worse than the midwest. Toronto is a perfectly acceptable spring break destination

- The Europe: You definitely felt the French influence. Most cafes and bakeries were run by French people. This could help explain why there was so much good pastry in Toronto.

- The City: Toronto is kind of like one of those cities you see in movies: skyscrapers, parks, businessmen walking around, lots of people from different ethnic groups who all appear to be socioeconomically similar, and the appearance that nothing bad EVER HAPPENS. It was clean, there were very few homeless people, and even the worst parts of the city were not at all frightening.

- The transportation: Toronto had excellent (albeit slightly expensive) public transportation. We wanted to see a lot of things by foot so we rarely used it, but by using the subway and the streetcars, we could get across the city pretty quickly. The subway was clean and nice and reminded me of a less high-tech (PHYSICAL TOKENS! PHYSICAL TURNSTILES! WHAT IS THIS!?), less crowded version of subways in Japan.

One of the best subway pictures I have ever taken

- The coffee lids: This is my main complaint about Canada. Every lid I encountered was flat and the tab wouldn’t stay down. Here is some other guy’s rant on the same issue. Come on people!!

- The fashion: NO ONE IN TORONTO WAS WEARING PANTS. They all had those stupid leggings. I sent these pics to UIUCNoPants. The no-pants epidemic definitely crosses international borders:

In short, I would totally live there, and just hope they figure out that whole fashion and coffee-lid thing beforehand.

Also, I too, like Canadians, love to eat the Internet for breakfast:

Massugu na Otoko (“Straight Man” or “Honest Man” in english), an extremely recent drama (aired Jan-March 2010 in Japan) stars Sato Ryuta as Matsushima, an incredibly honest, upstanding dude who is confronted by the existence of Narumi (Fukuda Kyoko), a cheating, mischievous girl who effectively tricks Matsushima into giving her money, free food (mostly parfaits) and, eventually, falling in love with her. Whoops!

Fukuda Kyoko has left a bad taste in my mouth since Strawberry on the Shortcake so she made the perfect pretty bad-girl. She is bitchy, she’s self-centered, she can’t hold a steady job, she had a rocky childhood, but even though she’s borderline homeless at times, she still manages to have perfect hair and makeup and a killer wardrobe. Hmmm…

Fukuda Kyoko (left) doesn’t need a roof over her head at night to maintain flawless makeup.

Sato Ryuta on the other hand, normally a pretty funny guy, had way too straight of a character for this show to be any fun. He’s great because he’s bizarre, not because he can lecture people about ideals of honesty during coffee break at work better than any other actor. His main skill in this role was being able to pull off naiveté like nobody’s business, which is pretty important, as only really naive people ACCIDENTALLY FALL IN LOVE WITH CRIMINAL WOMEN.

And then decide to raise someone else’s child for said criminal woman.

LOOK HOW HONEST HE IS: REALLY HONEST

But I guess on the inside, Massugu na Otoko is just another Upstanding Guy Meets Unconventional Girl and Falls In Love genre of drama. Let us recall: Nodame Cantabile (Nodame is freaking bizarre, and can’t keep her room clean), and Hotaru no Hikari (Hotaru definitely does not have her act together whatsoever, also does not have a clean room). In both of these other dramas, as well as in Massugu na Otoko, the girl just kinda shows up and throws herself into Upstanding Male Costar’s life, wreaking havoc on the perfect world he has constructed around himself.

The side characters were as slimy and perfect as the main two: Kanjiya Hihori played the good girl-next-door, who Sato Ryuta was SUPPOSED to be in love with. She’s just the girl next door and boy is she boring.

The girl next door could use some help with her wardrobe

And finally, we have Watabe Atsuro, the creepy ex of Narumi, who kinda just hung out with her at the bar, constantly. I guess they slept together sometimes? It wasn’t clear what his role was, because although he was unreliable theoretically, he did seem to ALWAYS SHOW UP AT THE BAR whenever she wanted. I guess she just wasn’t that into him.

Watabe is just as smiley and weird in this show as in ROOM OF KING

There was also a female bartender who seemed to exist for the sole purpose of (other than serving the occasional drink), making sexy eyes at Watabe Atsuro for no reason.

This also brings us to an important point about jdramas that will need to be eplored later: WHY DOES EVERY SHOW HAVE A FREAKING BAR IN IT!? I know they’re convenient sets to have, but it’s getting a little odd how almost every drama has a minor character who happens to own a bar that is doing so poorly that only the 3 main characters in the show ever visit said bar, and yet the bar never goes out of business and is never closed. Either something fishy is going on, or all of my friends in Japan also must own bars and I’d better get into the bar-owning business right away because it seems to run on magic and dreams and fairy dust.

Empty bars are an essential part of Japanese social life.

Sadly, as expected, Sato Ryuta manages to turn Fukuda Kyoko into a nicer, more upstanding young lady. I’m not sure whether they live happily ever after, but I do know that when Fukuda Kyoko’s character turns good, I worry that her fashion sense may suffer.

Also, she has a giant Rilakkuma pillow that I am insanely jealous of. If you are a fan of mokudekiru, please buy me this pillow immediately!!

AND a kotatsu? Fukuda Kyoko is LIVING MY DREAM here.