This is for Jason and Jered.

I climbed Osaka Castle. And I did it all for my two N______ C______ friends. And I didn't get caught. And I did it in a dress. And I'm in Japan. And I didn't reveal anything about the N______ C_______ to anybody. I hope that I succeeded in bringing honor to the N______ C_______ and that I might hope to increase my rank at some point, even though I'm a girl. 
I am always thinking of you guys even though I'm bad at returning emails. I am hoping and wishing for the great day when the three of us are united again. In Japan. There are so many fantastic places to eat here. And then hide. And then, potentially, to eat and hide once more. And even to do both at the same time. Let's keep this great dream alive.  I just wanted to let you know that I said "Long live the N________ C_______ and its great leaders" while I was scaling the wall like a real N______. I didn't shout that, though. I said it quietly so that nobody would find out who I really was. I miss and love both of you guys so much! Sorry to those of you who aren't Jered and Jason and who don't appreciate reading in-jokes. Please enjoy the pictures. I am also sorry that you're not Jered and Jason. The world would definitely benefit from having more of these great men in it. More exact duplicates of Jered and Jason would be nice.Miss Trixie loves you.

I am in a magazine.

Last month, I was walking around and some people asked me if they could take my picture. Today I looked in the new Soup Magazine and found out that I am on page 201. Two other people I know are on page 202. Neat.
It was nice of them to put me in there. This magazine will be a nice souvenir of Japan for me, even though it's a pretty awkward-looking picture. Do you like the dress I am wearing in this picture? It is my favorite dress.

爽健美茶LOVE爽健美茶 Best. Tea. Ever. だけど...

爽健美茶美味しいだよ。Sokenbicha is the best tasting tea I have ever tried. I have always preferred coffee over tea, and I finally found a kind of tea that I love more than coffee. I drink far too much coffee and it has been like that for years. 高校生のとき, コーヒーは好きだけど、紅茶は嫌いでした。 I've have always wanted to switch to tea because it's so much healthier. Sokenbicha has a nutty, barley taste like mugicha or genmaicha, but it also has Puarh in it, a green tea from Hong Kong that is very healthy. Sokenbicha has a lot of ingredients and all of them are delicious: Adlay, genmaicha (brown rice tea), evening primrose, Sokenbicha, Houtanya Cordata, Senna and Puarh. この茶が大好きです。I love this tea.

Then, because I drink so much of this tea, I decided to look it up on the internet. And I found out that the company is owned by Coca-Cola. 失望した。It's too bad. I really don't like that company at all. They also own Georgia Coffee in Japan, Kilimanjaro water, the most popular water brand in Tanzania and Tian Yu Di, this really good drink I liked in China. I wish all of their products were as gross and unappealing as Coca-Cola or Minute Maid orange juice. Here is a fascinating article about Coca-Cola that I know Asli (my best friend) will love not just because it's about global branding and media, but because it's all about one of her home countries.

An AC Nielsen report says that though Sokenbicha was launched in 1994, the tea had won more than half of Japan's $1.46 billion blended-tea market by the end of 1997. That is huge. Think about how much blended tea people drink in Japan. In only three years, this brand basically took over the market. I've never actually seen a Sokenbicha advertisement so I'm not sure how persuasive they are, but I can tell you that this is a delicious tea. It is also apparently one of the Coca-Cola Company's darlings. This May, Muhtar Kent (the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Coca-Cola Company -- did you know he's Turkish, too?) was in Tokyo doing a speech for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. He specifically mentioned Sokenbicha with gushing pride noting it as an early success story, "In the early 1990s, about 10-to-15 years ahead of the current global tea craze, Japanese consumers were first reaching for our Sokenbicha tea brand." What do you think about this?

Really, what do you think? Have you ever loved a product only to do research into it and wonder if you should still buy it? I think Lancome is the best skin brand I've ever used, but the company tests on animals so I had to stop buying Lancome products even though I love them. Do you have any examples of this sort of thing from your life?

爽 This kanji is SO. It means fresh.
健 This kanji is KEN. It means healthy.
美 This kanji is BI. It means beautiful.
茶 This kanji is CHA. It means tea.

One really nice thing about this tea is that the kanji on the bottle has furigana written over top of it so that foreign people can read it, too. I learned two new Japanese characters from this tea. I just wish it wasn't owned by Coke.

A common English mistake you'll find in Japan if you teach here

Using Almost instead of Most

Here's one of the most common mistakes Japanese people make when they speak English. The word Almost is almost always used in place of the word most. You hear sentences like "Almost Japanese girls like Ayumi Hamasaki" or "Almost people choose Spring as their favorite season" every day. It's easy to see why this mistake is so common. If you switch the word around and made it into "Most Japanese girls like Ayumi Hamasaki" or even the slightly awkward "Most all girls like Ayumi Hamasaki" it would be better than using almost. 

Remember:

The only "almost Japanese people" are the babies being born in Japan at this instant. The only "almost people" are fetuses and werewolves. Almost is a word that means close to but not quite, or not completely.   "I was almost asleep when the alarm rang" or "I almost missed the bus (but I didn't)". People in Japan usually use almost when they really mean most. Most is the word you use when you're talking about the quantity, degree or number of something. Luckily, this is the kind of mistake that is easy to break. Usually, when I teach the difference between Almost and Most, everyone understands right away.

Do you like this picture? It's of an old Catholic school in Japan.

 

Liberty Osaka Human Rights Museum

Last month I went to Japan's Human Rights museum in Osaka. This museum is really commendable. Japan is a wonderful country and I am so lucky to live here, but like any other country, Japan isn't perfect and there have been a lot of black areas in Japanese history. Unfortunately, Japan also has a pattern of not acknowledging those historical wrongdoings. The Liberty Osaka Human Rights Museum is a refreshing and humble look at parts of Japan that most people don't hear about very often. For me, the museum answered a lot of questions I had that I was too shy to ask my friends out of fear of offending them.The museum really goes deep into issues like racism (towards Koreans and Okinawans especially) homelessness and attacks on the homeless, recent disasters like Minamata disease, gay and lesbian issues, discrimination against the Buraku people, living with HIV/AIDS in Japan, the role of women in Japan, class issues like the Kamagasaki Riot, what it's like for disabled people living here, air pollution and over-crowding, and Japanese indigenous groups like the Ainu.The Ainu exhibit was especially fascinating to me because (as you'll notice right away if you're Canadian) don't you think that Ainu art is so similar to our Haida art? West coast Canadian First Nations people have very similar art and even similar music. The art depicts similar things, too, based mostly on nature. The Korean exhibit was also wonderful because it had hours of archived footage of Koreans living in Japan but maintaining their Korean traditions. The videos really made the exhibits come alive. The blood scandal exhibit was really sad but interesting.

The Liberty Osaka Museum is really worth seeing. Go there on a rainy day. There's so much I learned more about there that I want to tell you and I've been procrastinating because it takes a long time to write. I don't even know if I want to really touch on controversial issues with this site. If you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to try and answer them, but I think I'll just let you search online for any of the topics I've mentioned above.

Kansai food is completely delicious.

I am so glad that I get lots of exercise exploring my new city and walking to work and back every day. The food in Kansai is so good. Osaka is especially famous for being delicious. People come to Osaka from all over Japan just for the food. A lot of it is fried but a lot of it can still be really healthy. It all tastes really good to me. Also, it's often served by cute old ladies called "Obachans" (That's the affectionate word for "grannie" in Japanese) who are hilarious and sweet and have sarcastic attitude. I basically always go to the same two places near my house because I am in love with the Obachans there. This week has been fun because two different people (Haru and Atsushi) have visited me from Tokyo and I have gotten to explore Kansai more. Now that I know more about it, I can write about the food here are how rad it is. Haru was great because he grew up in Kansai and knows a lot about the foods here. Atsushi was great because he loves to eat anything, all the time.Takoyaki is probably the most famous Osaka food. It's little balls of pancake dough filled with fried octopus and covered in really delicious sauce. Then it's covered in Mayo and topped with nori and sometimes onions. I never tried it (I don't eat meat) until this weekend when my friend got the most famous Takoyaki shop in Umeda to make a special dish of Takoyaki with no octopus inside it. I'm sure I was missing the best part, because while it was delicious, it wasn't as special as people say it is. If you eat meat, you should try it. I liked Akashiyaki better because it was full of kimchee. Akashiyaki is a lot like Takoyaki except that it's served on a red plate and doesn't have all the fattening extras like mayo and dressing. It has a lighter and more fluffy texture and I think it is more delicious. You can order a number of different things inside it. I like Kimchee the best. I like to eat Kimchee in everything. (It's a spicy Korean cabbage.) The best Kimchee is from Tsuruhashi, a station in Osaka. Tsuruhashi is kind of a Korea-town and it's got a really unique feel to it. Totally different from any other place I have been in Japan. Okonomiyaki is the absolute best food ever created. It's a savory pancake stuffed with so many different fillings. My favorite Okonomiyaki has cabbage, mushrooms, kimchee and onions inside it. Kansai Okonomiyaki and Hiroshima Okonomiyaki are totally different from each other, and I like both. The kind I tried in Hiroshima had noodles in it. Okonomiyaki is really something you need to try.

Please tell me what else I should try. What Kansai food do you recommend for a vegetarian? What Kansai food do you recommend in general?

Thing I have been doing lately...

1. Chalk and coffee grounds. I work every day now, which means I am very busy. I love my jobs and my life though, so I'm happy. The school is wealthy and beautiful but for some reason, they still have chalkboards and my hands are always covered with chalk. My clothes are always covered with chalk. My hair is always full of chalk. My face has chalk smears all over it. Chalk. Chalk. Chalk. On the weekend, the chalk is replaced with equally attractive ground-up espresso dust.
2. Soccer I went to Tokyo and played soccer at the Urawa Reds field on a very sunny day. I discovered recently that not only do I like watching soccer but I also enjoy playing it. I am terrible at it, but it makes me so happy. I want to join a soccer team but I doubt anyone would want me on it. Playing soccer made me miss Kanju so much! We used to train together in their field between our houses at least a few times every week.

3. A girly TV drama. My roommate owns the DVD set of this Japanese TV show called Orange Days and I started watching it two days ago. I am now hooked on it for a few reasons. One reason is that it's easy enough that I can understand the basic plot of it without subtitles. The other reason is that I can watch it with Japanese subtitles and learn the Kanji. It's about a deaf girl, so she speaks in sign language a lot. Even though I don't read sign language, the show is made for average people who also don't read it, and so the meaning of what she says gets spelled out pretty easily for the average viewer through the context of the scene. It's such good practice even though it's a pretty sentimantal drama. Another reason is that even though I just found it in the house and started watching it, it actually has two of my favorite Japanese actors in it. One is Hiroki Narimiya, the guy from Sakuran. The other is Eita. Eita has a very strange face and large ears but somehow, he's popular enough to be one of those famous people who doesn't need a last name. I love both of these actors.4. Test time. Now it is exam time for my students, so I've been busy writing and grading exams, teaching extra classes, working overtime and helping students who have skipped classes catch up. I actually love my job and I like the kids too, so it's not really as boring as it sounds.

5. Tokyo. I have friends in Kobe now, but my best friends are still in Tokyo. Last weekend I went back to see everyone. We went to a gay club called Arty Farty for my friend's birthday party. That was crazy and funny. In two weeks, I will go back again for Thuy's going-away party. I am going to miss her so badly. The more time I spend away from Tokyo, the more crowded Tokyo feels when I return. I love that city for so many reasons, but I much prefer living where I am living now. The one thing I miss about Tokyo is the anonymity, though. Nobody notices you in Tokyo, which is nice.

6. Learning Kanji. Forget cringing over the bad cover and title, because this book is the best thing to help you learn Japanese. It's written mostly all in Japanese but with English explanations that don't feel at all like they're textbook examples. It's a practical book with a lot of practical illustrations. I hate manga, but I still think this book is great. It's called Japanese in Mangaland by Marc Bernabe. The White Rabbit Press Kanji cards are also amazing, especially for quick memorization and learning proper stroke order. So is the Genki textbook series for beginners. I use these three things every night after work.

Things I want to do:

-Make more friends with girls. Almost all my friends are boys. My life is always like this, but in Japan it's good to have girl friends because the way guys speak and the words they use is/are totally different here, and I don't want to learn a super-masculine version of Japanese. That, and it's nice to have a mix of friends from both sexes.

-Learn something, like a sport or an art.

-Learn to cook Indian food. This time, I am serious. I am going to find a teacher.