Do you understand Japanese?

Most people here are normal when it comes to language. There are two types of people who are different here in Japan.

1. The ones who ask you if you speak Japanese after you've just had a long conversation in Japanese.
Today, I went to Lush to pick up some soap for my friend's birthday. The salesgirl was very, very keen and insisted on helping me choose the perfect thing. She slathered creams and soaps all over my hands and told me about her life the whole time. She found out where I was from and asked all sorts of personal questions. She was very, very, very keen about her job. After about 15 minutes if talking to her, she asked me the question, "Do you understand Japanese?"
She asked me this question in Japanese.
We had been talking for about 15 minutes all in Japanese.
This happens all the time.
Do people feel like they're speaking a different language when they talk to a foreign person? I think some people actually do feel this way.

2. The people who cannot believe that a foreign person could actually be speaking in Japanese and respond in English only.
I understand that when a person is good at English and lives in Japan, they get excited to speak English to an English speaker. That's fine. The people I find irritating are the ones who don't speak English and get the most stressed look on their faces as they try desperately to explain something to you in English when you have been speaking Japanese to them. This usually happens in train stations with the train man frantically blinking and getting nervous tics as he tries to remember the English for "turn left and then go straight..." I guess it's a nice gesture, but it's a bit annoying to cause so much stress and embarrassment to an individual for no good reason. I wish everyone would just speak Japanese to me all the time.

Tokyo Meet Market - Tokyocherie's fascinating blog

Here is a follow-up to the last post I made about Japanese Gokons (group blind dates). For anyone who is interested in knowing more about dating in Japan, the best site is this Tokyocherie site. It is written in English by a Japanese girl who lived in NYC and finds the differences between dating in NYC and dating in Tokyo fascinating. It is a really interesting site! If you have any interest at all, it feels like reading the diary of a spy... she's writing in English about something that most non-Japanese people will never experience. It's really interesting.In other news, I am learning to play Mahjong.

Two pictures I like: Shrine rain and Group date

The next month will be beautiful. The month after that will be rainy and humid. After that, Japan will be sweltering again. Right now, the weather is perfectly beautiful. Please enjoy it, because it's all downhill from here. Please enjoy this month as much as possible. I'm going to go camping two times.
A Gokon is sort of like a group blind date. (Some people also call it a Konpa.) A guy and a girl meet and arrange a good time for the date. The girl invites three or four of her friends and the guy invites three or four of his friends out for dinner and drinks. At the end of the night, people who like each other exchange text addresses.

Usually people just end up making a lot of new friends and getting invited to other people's Gokon nights. In Japan, people sit in closed booths at bars and restaurants. They face the DJ and watch him the entire time at clubs. They go to Karaoke in small, soundproof karaoke boxes. They don't post their pictures on Mixi (the Japanese Facebook) at all. The Gokon style of dating is the main way people meet each other in Japan. Have any of you ever tried this kind of dating? Please tell me your stories.

Billy Blanks lives in Japan now

Given that Billy Blanks was God Among Men in Japan last year, it doesn't surprise me at all that he married a Japanese lady shortly after his wife Gayle divorced him. Now he lives in Osaka with her. Tomoka is a 39 year old interpreter. They just had a baby girl two months ago.

Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan

There are tons of them here in Japan, though I haven't met any yet. Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan tend to target foreign people. Every foreign person (co-workers, etc) I have met in Japan has had a lot of experience with these people coming to the door. I don't live in my own house (my name is not on the lease at all) so they have never found me at home. If someone speaks English to me on the road, I walk past them, so Jehovah's Witnesses have never bothered me.

My Chinese-Canadian friend was teaching English in Osaka and they'd come to his apartment all the time. They are really good at English and other languages. My friend has two names (a Chinese one and an English one) so they read the Chinese name and started off at his door in Chinese but then switched to English when they found his English to be better than his Chinese. They used to leave notes and copies of the Watchtower in his mailbox.

(The picture is something my friend found on flickr and mailed to me. It shows how much thoughtful detail and care Jehovah's Witnesses put into their recruitment.)

This isn't really a post about anything. Just that Jehovah's Witnesses exist in Japan.

Shinjuku Park Hanami

This weekend, I went to a hanami (a Japanese picnic under the cherry blossoms) in Shinjuku park, Tokyo. It was even more beautiful than last year. This weekend was probably the last great weekend for hanami this year. The blossoms were huge. They were the size of my fist and almost looked more like roses.Here is my friend Atsushi drinking some wine in the park. There are signs telling you not to, but everyone does it anyway. Spring is the season to eat and drink under the cherry blossoms.After the hanami, I met REANNON at a restaurant near Tokyo station. It was great to meet her! She has one of the best blogs about Japan, and now she's moving away from Japan. I'll really miss the way she writes about things I'm familiar with. We have really different opinions about this country, so I always find it interesting to read her perspective on Japanese things.

The Best Japanese Dad lives in kamakura and loves Canada

In Kamakura this Sunday, I met the cutest man. I was walking part his shop and noticed a bunch of Canadian flags in the window. When I looked into the store, I saw that he had a UBC shirt still wrapped in plastic hanging on the wall and a bunch of other posters of Canada. I went inside and he excitedly asked me where I was from. When I told him I was from Canada, he got so excited. He started to bring out all sorts of random things from the back room. His son's UBC graduation bulletin, old copies of the West Ender, old Georgia straights and magazine clippings about Toronto and Montreal. This man was Canada's superfan.

The man spoke no English at all, but excitedly told me about all the things he likes and dislikes about my country. He told me about the water (most delicious and fresh in the world) and about the beds (far too soft and squishy) and about the fish (the portions are too large, but everything tastes nice) and about visiting all of Vancouver's tourist spots (he adored the steam clock in Gastown).The cutest thing was that this man saved his old bottles of Dasani water from Canada and had the empty bottles on display in his store.

His son lives in Vancouver near Kits beach. He works as a landscape artist and garden designer. This man was so proud of his son. I hope that his son knows how much his dad loves him and how proud he is of him.

Get your free money from the Japanese government

It's coming to you in the mail if you live in Japan.
It comes in a brown envelope.
You have to fill it out and put in your bank information.
Make use you check the "I want the money" box.
Get your friend to read the letter for you if you can't read Japanese.

Making your own mochi

Last week, I went to a mochitsuki festival and made mochi with the little vegan boy.
From Wikepedia:

Mochitsuki is the traditional mochi-pounding ceremony in Japan.

1. Polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and cooked.
2. The cooked rice is pounded with wooden mallets (kine) in a traditional mortar (usu). Two people will alternate the work, one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy kine.
3. The sticky mass is then formed into various shapes (usually a sphere or cube).

美空ひばり Misora Hibari was fantastic.

美空ひばり

I am listening to so much early Misora Hibari these days. I love discovering artists / writers with decade-spanning careers. You know that you'll be listening to fresh, quality music for months. She has over 1,200 songs, so I am set for life. Misora Hibari is from Yokohama and was born in the 30s. She was the first woman in Japan to receive the People's prize of honour for her contribution to the Japanese music industry.Misora Hibari was also very beautiful. She played the shamisen and the ukulele. She sang a wide variety of genres and always had poise and grace in her live performances, even when she became sick. Misora Hibari died of pneumonia at only 52. She also had hepatitis, chronic leg pain and liver damage because of heavy drinking. You can read more here. I especially like the songs she recorded during the 1950s, but she recorded songs up until she died in the 1980s.

しらたき LOVE!! (Konnyaku has great texture)

しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!! しらたき LOVE!!

I had eaten shirataki noodles before but only those folded and knotted ones you find in nabe. Then, I read about shirataki noodles again on THIS Japan blog that I love. She wrote:

"I love shirataki. They're the noodle form of konnyaku and have no calories or carbohydrates or fat, just a few grams of fiber. They soak up flavors and are good in lots of recipes, especially hot soups and nabemono."She posted pictures of a delicious-looking soup she made using shirataki noodles, and I had to make my own that same night. (My first shirataki soup is in the picture above.) Now I eat it almost every day. The noodles are made from a potato extract that has basically nothing in it at all. The noodles just provide great texture and bulk without adding any extra fat, calories, gluten or carbohydrates.

Shirataki has nothing in it, so you have to add good things to it to make it nutritious. I like adding tofu, mushrooms and all sorts of onions and spices to it if I want to make it a meal and I like eating it cold with yuzu-flavored ponzu just before bed if I just want a filler-type snack at 2 AM.Shirataki comes in a water-bag that looks like this. Go to a small, family-style grocery store and you can get a bag for 30-50 yen. (In chain grocery stores, a bag usually costs 120 yen.) You take the noodles out of the bag and wash them. Then you cook them or eat them raw. They have a great texture.

Dance Party Wallflower

My friend showed me this video that would be embarrassing if it weren't so funny. My Okinawa rock n roll friends gave me their Osaka friend's numbers and those people invited me to a 1950s dance party about two months ago. I am learning to do the twist and some other dances now. This video is taken during the party. Now I am friends with a lot of people because of the lessons, but in this video I only knew 3 people at the whole party.

This is 8 minutes of the dance party. Basically it is 8 minutes of me watching dancers, sometimes standing alone and sometimes chatting with my friends. I don't know how to dance and this was my first time at this kind of party. You'll find me easily in the video because I am the only Caucasian person and I have this weird spotlight shining right on me. Ha.

Making Mochi, Okinawan food, cherry blossom parties = best weekend ever

This weekend, I will go to a Hanami and take a walk around a park that is famous for cherry blossoms. They are all in bloom now. The cherry trees really make everything feel fresh and light. even if you've been here for ages, it is still so beautiful to walk around a Japanese park in the Springtime. This weekend, I will make my own Japanese mochi with the little vegan child and his father. This is something I have always wanted to do in Japan. It is certainly the number one "Japanese culture" thing I have always wanted to try. I have little interest in the tea ceremony or in learning karate, but I have a lot of interest in making and eating my own mochi.Here's a picture of my friend Atsushi in Tokyo last year. (Next week I'll have another hanami with Atsushi and his friends in Tokyo.) I can't believe that it has been almost a year since I last saw Thuy. We still talk and write often. Last year, because she was moving back to Denmark, we decided to see all of the cherry blossom parks in Tokyo in only one day. We made it to Inokashira , Shinjuku, Yoyogi and Ueno. I'll go eat Okinawan food with my friend from Okinawa. One of my 1950s rock n roll friends introduced me to one of the dance team members now living in Osaka. I am learning to do the twist, but tomorrow is just eating delicious tofuyou, goya and jimamidoufu.

-One thing I think is ridiculous is when people post rants about their jobs, bosses, co-workers, students, customers on the internet. The internet is forever, as far as we know. What you write will come up on search engines years from now. That's why I don't write anything on here that I'd be humiliated if someone accidentally found. If my co-workers were all awful, I wouldn't write about them on the internet. But they're not awful. My new co-workers are all great. I'm really happy and lucky that I'm able to say that.

-美空ひばりMisora Hibari is one of my favorite Japanese singers. Lately, I have been listening to her a lot, and I highly recommend her. She has a gorgeous, low voice and her music is beautiful. She plays around with all sorts of genres. Sometimes, she sounds like Edith Piaf and sometimes she sounds very traditionally Japanese. I have also been listening to Amalia Rodriguez and her song "Fado dos Fados" makes me hold my breath. It is so good. Lately, I have been listening to this kind of music a lot. I've also been listening to The Tenniscoats, Pocopen & Nishiwaki and Yura Yura Teikoku.
And non-Japanese songs I've been listening to on repeat lately...
Beach House -Heart of Chambers
Ratatat - Montanita
The Ronettes - Be My Baby
Caribou - Melody Day
Serge Gainsbourg - La Decadance
Pavement - Harness your hopes

-Have any of you been to Ibaraki? I've been invited there. I know it's famous for natto.
What else is there?

Sometimes I meet people who are getting tired of Japan and want to move back home.
I have not felt that yet at all. Japan is the easiest place to live. I feel happiest and healthiest in Japan. I know I'll leave someday, but I think it may be a while. I only miss my family and friends.

How do I use Mixi - Japanese facebook?

First off -- I have no Mixi codes. Do not ask me. I made a Mixi a few months ago. Mixi is like the Japanese version of Facebook.

But I can't use it very well. It takes such a long time to read anything and I can't recognize any of my friends on there. (They all have nicknames and pictures that aren't of themselves and they change them all the time. It's hard to know if you're writing to Mayoko or Akaya when all you see for a name is ぬこ(=Φ×Φ=)☆+ﾟさん and a picture of a ferris wheel or Ayumi Hamasaki.

How do you join communities or add people with similar hobbies? Random people msg me all the time. How do I send messages to people? It might be good practice to have a pen pal on Mixi. How do I find out who lives in my area?

Mostly importantly though, how do I make Mixi stop sending me updates by cell phone? I wake up in the night because of them.

Thanks for your help. If you leave a comment it will help other people, too.