This is my first experience with Chugen. Chugen (also called Ochugen) was originally a day that people gave gifts to the ancestral spirits. Shopping at Iwataya was amazing, there was one huge area dedicated to picking out gifts and a waiting area for sending them out. We sent the gift of… fish eggs! I took this picture with my camera phone. I didn’t think of taking a picture of the entire store, doh. The first picture were the choices we used, the 2nd picture are the eggs and fish stuffed with eggs.
The first Friday this August we went to a summer festival. I don’t know the official term besides ‘awesome’! Most people wore a yukata (looks like a kimono) or jinbei (shirt and shorts outfit), Fireworks lasted about 90 minutes, and the vendors sold crazy foods. It was about hot, about 85 F (29.5 C) with 90% humidity.
There were breaks between some of the firework explosions to announce sponsors of the event on a loudspeaker. I’ve never seen this before. I wonder how much an ad placement costs. One sponsor was Coca Cola and a big bottle of coke lit up near the end, but I didn’t get a picture of it.
Kids were using a flat paper net to catch goldfish, and turtles! It was ¥100 per try and they were doing great even though the net break easily. Food like grilled meat on a stick, takoyaki, dangly tentacles, and other mystery meat ran ¥400-500. Here are a few pictures.
I read this news article today which is funny because I was just talking about this with somebody this yesterday. I said whenever I take the subway or the bus and there’s a person (usually a guy) that’s 50+ riding along… and somebody smells… for real. My friend told me that it’s called Aging Odor, lol! WHAT! Now don’t go crazy reading this, of course it’s not every person that smells, and it’s usually guys who look like they used a lot of product in their hair. That + the heat is not a good mixture, and that’s what I assume the odor is from.
Aoki Holdings Inc, a discount menswear chain, last year started selling ‘deodorant suits’ as well as anti-odour shirts and socks.
Thank God I don’t smell now! If this is aging odor is real and comes knockin’ on my door, I’ll be taking 2 showers a day and I’ll keep using Right Guard (with the power strip!) and cologne.
When I came to Japan I bought a blue $20 Sigg bottle. I’ve used it almost every day at home and while traveling. It works great but sometimes it’s a little big. I saw a 500ml bottle at the ¥100 store but it was a ¥500 priced piece of junk. The other day I was craving some Lays Salt & Vinegar chips so I headed downtown for some underground shopping and ran across a ‘3 coin store’ where everything is 300 yen. I saw a Sigg like bottle that looks good inside and out and I bought it for a total of ¥315. If you have a store like this near you, or you ever see one in Japan, I highly recommend it. Will this 500ml bottle last forever? I’m not sure, but so far after a week of extensive use it’s doing good, and hopefully it’ll last with no corrosion on the inside. Here’s an image for comparison.
Did you know that Sony products in Japan don’t offer multiple languages? An employee at Bic Camera told me the menus and instructions are only in Japanese… AH HA! Maybe that’s why a lot of Sony products are cheaper than what I am used to in America!
I just bought a Sony DSC-T70. Mainly because it’s small, it’s fast, it has internal zoom, and I’m satisfied with the image quality. The menu is pretty slick. There are nice icons, lots of Katakana, and I also downloaded the English manual form Sony’s website. All it took to get used to it was going through the settings, reading the Katakana, and memorizing a little of the manual. Now I’m golden and I’ve saved about $50. I mean… um… ¥5000…
I hit up the local Round 1 with a group of friends for a game night. We had a good time playing video games, ping pong, using the batting cages, karaoke, and one of the coolest places was the relaxation area with massage chairs. I had to get a picture of the sign posted before entering. It kind of looks like somebody used an online translator which is a bit strange because there are companies offering translation services for a small fee (less than $1 a word or $35 a page) to translate Japanese to English.
I’m back after an extended time away and I was going to write something later this evening but I saw this in the news and thought it was pretty interested so I wanted to share. Eel is popular right now in Japan because of the hot weather. I haven’t done any research but apparently eel is packed full of goodness to help you get through these hot times. Either way, it’s pretty good! Sometimes it tastes like barbecued goodness, and other times it tastes a little earthy. I’m not to keen on the earthy flavor but I can deal with it. However an eel flavored drink? I’m not that into that so much. Eel can be a large part of a meal and I don’t think meat flavored drinks sound that appealing.
Forget cola, lemonade or beer – Japanese people sweltering in the summer heat now have a new canned drink to quench their thirst – made out of eels.
The fishy drink Unagi Nobori – which translates as “Surging Eel” – contains eel extract and vitamins found in the fish. The fizzy yellow liquid is believed to be the first mass-produced drink of its kind made in the country.
I’ll be on the look out at my local stores for this drink so I can give it a try. Who knows, even though I’m skeptical it could be good. If you’re not sure what “unagi” (eel) looks like, here are a few photos.
One of the easiest things to find in Japan is a barber shop or hair salon. Barber shops have the old school barber pole in front. Hair salons usually are bright, or trendy, or they have a person outside handing out flyers. I live downtown and a haircut is costs 4000-5000 Yen for men which is a pretty high price for me because I have short hair. I did some exploring and within a 12 minute walk I found a salon for 2800 Yen. Still kind of pricey, but the service is excellent. I did even more exploring and 20 minutes away I found one for 1000 Yen. They’re fast, efficient, and inexpensive which is nice. The more expensive salons take 60-90 minutes to cut my hair because they’re doing it with scissors most of the time and cutting little by little (and that’s fine, because you can always cut shorter but you can’t put it back on!). Here’s a picture outside of my favorite discount barber shop. It seats 3 people inside.
I thought I took a picture of a salon, but I can’t find it. So here’s a repost from my salon that failed post.
I posted back on April 11th about learning Japanese and starting with Hiragana. The following day I went to a Japanese conversational lesson and I had no freaking clue what was going on. The sensei spoke very little English and the other students were Chinese and were reading Kanji. After class the sensei suggested in a very straight forward way - Learn Hiragana before you come back. That made me smile because she said something that sounds kind of rude while having a very polite tone. The class is weekly so hell yeah I’ll learn Hiragana before next time! So I went home and started learning.
I studied about 2 hours every day and learned almost everything in a week. The next class was way easier to understand and I wrote about half in English, half in Hiragana and it was pretty sweet to be able to read Japanese. It’s like reading some cryptic language… and I feel cool… and now I totally sound like a foreigner by saying that. But it’s all good because now I can read things like “udon” and “karaage” and that’s a step in the right direction in my book.
The next week I focused on kya, gya, and characters like that, so it took about 2 weeks to learn everything. Am I a pro? No. I’m pretty slow when reading words and sometimes I have to think about what the character is but it’s a start! I decided to stop studying and dedicate time to work and our wedding that’s coming up. I still look at my flash cards I made every day and have read things every day so it’s still staying fresh, I’m just not studying every day. That should change on June 1st through!
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