What is in Matsue? (Shimane)

I have to go on a business trip to Matsue, in Shimane, on an upcoming weekend. I've never been there before, so I'm looking forward to it. What is there to do in Matsue (Shimane) besides visit the castle? Have any of you ever been there?

This is for Nancy

If you want to watch a really awkward interview with Norah Jones in Japan, you can see the video here on Japan Probe.
-Norah is given a toy of a moving, barking stuffed dog for no reason
-Norah is given a DVD of cute, Japanese dogs (also for no real reason) that probably won't play on her American DVD player even if she wanted to watch it at all (which she likely doesn't)
-The announcer can't speak English but she reads an English letter to Norah about how much she wanted to meet her. Unfortunately, Norah doesn't look like the understands the announcer's English.
-The announcer is really cute, but the interview is pretty awkward and strange.
It's kind of funny.

★ I found a German gyaru ★

Hey, look. I found a blog by a German Gyaru named Jeni, full of pictures of her and her other non-Japanese Gyaru friends.Complete with photos of her toy poodle, Puri-Kura with friends and grainy cell-phone pictures of her nail art, this blog looks exactly like any self-respecting AGEHA model's blog, only it's written in German and the girl in the pictures isn't Japanese. For someone who isn't in Japan, she certainly does a great job of staying up-to-date on the latest Gyaru magazines and accessories. I'm guessing this isn't a big trend blowing up all over Berlin, so I'm wondering how this girl became interested in dressing like a Japanese Gyaru and how she found so many (hot) friends into this very high maintenance, Barbie-type Japanese subculture.Her blog is so interesting! It's written almost entirely in German, but she filled out a quiz in English and in it, she said that her dream is to go to Japan and get married here. If she spoke Japanese, I bet she'd make a lot of friends. Most Gyarus are young and don't speak English, so they probably speak even less German.Good luck to Jeni on learning Japanese, coming over here and shopping the day away at Shibuya 109 / dancing the night away at ____ club in Shibuya.I have never seen a blog like this before. Do they even sell glittery phone covers like this abroad? Does she import everything? This girl has dedication.

Staying Slim in Japan

For the record, I think that there are beautiful woman all over the world and in all sorts of different sizes. As long as a woman is healthy and happy, she can be beautiful no matter what size she is. I truly believe this. But in the past few weeks, I've gotten four different posts asking me how to lose weight / stay slim in Japan.

Maybe it's because it's January and everyone is getting into their New Year's resolution fevers. If you're big and happy and healthy and beautiful, please skip this post because you don't need it. If you ate too much Christmas cake and KFC this holiday season, this post is for you.I think that Japan is the easiest country in the world to stay slim in, for a variety of reasons.

Small girls everywhere:
In Japan, there are plenty of people who are much smaller than I am and they watch their weight, so it makes me conscious of what I eat and how much I exercise as well. In my home country, I am one of the smaller girls I see. Even among the Asian girls, I am average-slim. But if I go to a clothing store in Canada, I fit into sizes with absurd names like “Size 00” or “XX Small” which is crazy, because I’m actually quite normal. But seeing girls watching their weight all the time in Japan makes me remember to watch mine, too.

Eat the big meal in the morning:
This is what I do. If I want to eat something fattening (I love, love, love pumpkin tempura, yaki-udon, dried pineapple, avocado, tamago-kake-gohan, curry rice, yatsuhashi and omurice) I just eat it in the morning. Then eat a normal-by-Japanese-standards lunch and snack on fruit and vegetables all day and but I stop eating after 5 PM. That’s what I do. I research Saturday morning restaurants until I find a good one and I look forward to that all week. They I go there and eat slowly and just enjoy the perfect feast. Food is so much more satisfying when you're looking forward to it and really craving it.

Don’t eat after 5 PM:
After 5 PM, I rarely ever eat. Big meals in the morning and small meals at night until 5 PM is such a healthy plan and if you do this, you will naturally lose weight. I like waking up super hungry and everything tastes better in the morning when I’m hungry and excited to eat. If you hate going to bed hungry, you can make yourself soup using Konyakku noodles (shirataki) or eat Konnyaku jelly. It is derived from potato but has no calories or carbohydrates and it’s filling.

Stop drinking alcohol:
The slim Japanese girls who care about their weight don’t drink alcohol. In foreign countries, if you don’t drink you look boring at parties, but it’s normal in Japan. Just order oolong tea and tell people you’re weak with alcohol if you’re worried about the calories. My (very skinny and cute) friend Mari just tells everyone she starts to feel sick when she drinks alcohol. That’s a lie. She’s actually a strong drinker but doesn’t want to gain weight so she chooses when to drink. She drinks socially at a fun party, but drinking with a group of girlfriends or coworkers (AKA a place where she doesn’t want to be flirty and look super fun) is a waste of calories.

Shame:
In my country, telling someone they got fat is just not done. Someone could actually be hugely pregnant and nobody would mention anything without actually knowing that the girl was truly pregnant for fear of offending her in case she was just fat. In Japan (and all over Europe, Asia, the Middle East) people tell you when you gain weight, even a little bit. The first time someone told me I got fat, I cried because I was shocked at his rudeness, but now I know that it’s just the culture. I have confidence and I know I’m not fat, but it’s still annoying to hear it from other people. I think that if a girl is actually fat, nobody says anything, but if a girl is thin and gains a little bit, people will say something. Hearing it is annoying, but it actually does keep me from gaining weight.

No eating in public:
In my country, people walk along the road eating or drinking things and nobody pays any attention. In Japan, coffee and soda bought from vending machines are finished in front of the vending machines and promptly disposed of, not sipped on while walking. In Japan, you rarely ever see anyone walking down the road holding an onigiri or a sandwich like you’d see back home. I don’t eat and walk / drink and walk in Japan and this has made me lose weight.

I didn’t make this up, so don’t attack me for this.
Japanese people often quit smoking when they move abroad because smoking is unpopular and seen as disgusting, unhealthy and unattractive. In Japan, fat/chubby people are generally seen as disgusting, unhealthy and unattractive so this makes a lot of people lose weight. If a fat person walks by when I’m around Japanese people, I can hear them talking about it and it makes me not want to gain weight. Many Japanese people generally think negatively about fat people, just like how many Western people generally think negatively about chain smokers. Obviously though, if you're chubby, healthy and happy, you can just ignore all of those haughty idiots and keep on living your wonderful life.

Avoiding Japanese food that will make you fat:
Many people think that Japanese food is somehow “healthy” by virtue of being Japanese, but there’s a lot of Japanese food that is high-calorie and here are some of them: white rice, mochi and sweets, red meat like yakiniku, dried fruit, bars like Calorie-Mate and Soy Joy, egg-based things like takoyaki and okonomiyaki, alcohol (especially beer and umeshu, sweet shochu), and fried things like tonkatsu, tempura and anything with fried batter. I’m not saying that I don’t eat these things. I’m saying that they’ll make you fat. Ultimately, I love food and I’m in a country full of delicious things, so if I want something, I’ll eat it. Also, obviously candy, gum (one piece of Japan’s Fits brand gum has 30 calories. That means that only 4 pieces of gum means you just ate the equivalent of a veggie sandwich. Also, I think people who still chew bubblegum after high school graduation generally look ridiculous and should stop)

Anything to add?

My Bathtime Secret for Japan's Summer and Winter

Japanese bath rooms are different from most Western bathrooms. For one thing, unless they live in a really, small, cheap apartment with a Toto brand boxed bathroom, Japanese people wouldn't ever want the toilet in the same room as the bathtub. Taking a bath is like a hobby in Japan, and having the toilet visible from the bath is terrible. Japanese people usually have a toilet room with just a toilet in it and a bath room that is divided between sink-and-mirror-area and bathtub-long-mirror-area by a sealed, frosted glass door. That sealed, frosted glass door can be very useful. In fact, that sealed, frosted glass bathroom door is the key to a pleasant or frustrating time in Japan during (the worst) two seasons of the Japanese year.
★Winter★

Keep that door open for a free home humidifier

A Japanese winter is cold and dry. The air is so dry and there's no central heating in most houses, so some days your throat can feel terrible in the morning. Air that's too dry isn't good for you. That's why, if you take a bath at night (or live with a Japanese person who does / most Japanese people I know take baths every night in the wintertime) you should keep the bathwater in the bath and leave the bath-room door open. The mirrors near the bath room all fog up and the air gets a lot more bearable to breathe at night because it's got more moisture. Remember to let the bathwater out in the morning unless you want to be scrubbing the sides hard every night.

★Summer★
Close that door unless you want hundreds of gross new roommates

Cockroaches are a fact in most areas of Japan during the summertime. You'll see them on the sidewalk and very often, in your house. I turn into a very, very neat person in the summer to minimize my chances of attracting them. Japanese cockroaches are big. Then, my friend told me about a great trick. If you live on the first, second, third or even fourth floor of an apartment building, you'll likely have a problem with cockroaches in the summer. The older your building is, the likelier you are to have cockroaches in the summer. What most people don't know is that the main way they get into the house is through the drains in your sinks and in the bath area!

If you keep that sealed, frosted bath door closed during the summer, the cockroaches may enter the bath area through the drain (don't keep your toothbrush in the shower area unless you don't mind taking the chance) but they won't be able to access the house because the door will be shut and they can't get through the seal. It's great. You can also buy special mesh nets to go over the kitchen sink drain so that they can't come in. When my roommates and I started vigilantly keeping the door shut this summer, we noticed a great improvement! I only saw two cockroaches in my house the whole summer!

New Baby!

I used to have a part time job at a cafe near my house. My ex boss / now friend just had the cutest baby in the world! Congratulations! His name is Sakuya. He was born last week. He's half Chinese and half Japanese and he's in Hokkaido now being spoiled by his extended family.

It's time for my sister to get on this train and bring a little Turkish Delight into the world.

I love China. (Can you recommend some things to do in Shanghai?)

I love China.
Once again, I'm back on a China kick where I want to read as much as I can about China and learn how to cook more Chinese food.
-I made gyoza again last week using my friend's Hong Kong style recipe. I made friends with a Taiwanese girl and we've been hanging out a lot lately and going running together. I haven't been to Taiwan yet and I really want to go, but I want to go with my friend Eve more than with anyone else.
-My cousin just moved to Shanghai.
-Hong Kong has the best food in the entire world, and anyone who disagrees with that has no taste.

Factory Girls - Leslie T. Chang
I'm reading this book about the girls who work in all the factories in Shenzhen and Dongguan. These are two of the main cities in China where most things like shoes, toys and electronics are made. It's really interesting, especially now that I've been to Shenzhen and can picture what it's like.

Shenzhen is pretty rough and bleak. I didn't see any green at all, really, except a single tree planted outside of a chain hotel. The book is pretty interesting. It's written by a Chinese-American woman who lived in Dongguan on and off for a few years while writing articles for the Wall Street Journal.

My cousin Andrew just moved to Shanghai.
Can you recommend any interesting things for him to do / eat there?
Can you recommend any groups he can join or English magazines / websites he can read?
Does anyone know anything about an international community there so that he can make some friends with Shanghai's people and people from all over the world?

Stereotypical Japan accoring to Google Auto Complete

I read an interesting post from this guy via Japanprobe. He was interested in what stereotypes would come up in Google's auto complete feature if he typed in "Why is country name so" for various different countries. Japan's auto complete feature got the following stereotypes: weird, perverted, successful, rich, expensive, advanced, healthy, clean, successful in world trade, cool. Canada got these stereotypes: cold, expensive, sparsely poluted, great, rich, boring, diverse, multicultural, awesome, peaceful. Other countries got less flattering stereotypes, unfortunately. Check out the guy's blog post if you're interested in how China and America fared in Google searches.

For the record, Denmark got happy and expensive, France got popular and far away (ha).

In case you were wondering, because a lot of you were, according to Google, I found a page that sort of answers the riddle "why is a raven like a writing desk?"

★Tomorrow is Seijin No Hi ～ Japan's Explosion of Pretty

Tomorrow is Japan's Coming of Age Day (成人の日 - Seijin No Hi) and one of the best people-watching days in the world, in my opinion. Charge your cameras tonight and try to be in a big city tomorrow starting at around noon. It's a national holiday, so most people have the day off. The Coming of Age Day is held on the second Monday of January every year. It celebrates all the people who turned 20 (In Japan, 20 years old is the beginning of adulthood) the past year. On the Coming of Age day, all the fresh 20 year olds meet at a prefectural office or hall for a speech by a city leader and a bunch of other traditions (The meeting is called the Seijin Shiki 成人式)This Sejin Shiki part, according to my Japanese friends, is equivalent to having to sit through the speeches at high school graduation before the fun part where you get to throw your caps in the air and take a bunch of pictures. Nobody likes the Seijin Shiki part as much as they like the part where you get to see what all your friends are wearing, take ten million photographs and then go out and _______ (party with your friends all night / go to Disneyland / go to a sponsored event / eat a tremendously expensive meal with your family).Girls look absolutely beautiful on this day, so if you want to see an explosion of pretty, take a walk tomorrow. Girls wear a special kimono called a Furisode and since it's really elaborate and hard to put on, they usually go to a salon to get their hair, makeup and clothes done all at once. As you can see, animal rights activists aren't excited about this holiday because of the amount of real fur that everyone is wearing. Japan just isn't as conscious as the West is about fur farming and the skinning of animals. Fur is gross. Fake fur can look really real these days.I think I'll love ★ギャル★ forever.　The dark tans, the nails, the attitude...Guys usually wear suits to Seijin No Hi these days, which I think is such a total shame because Hakama looks really handsome. Luckily, two types of guys have started wearing Hakama in the past few years. I hope it gains popularity. Hakama looks totally regal and makes men more handsome just like a kimono makes a pretty Japanese girl prettier. Oddly enough, the two types of guys who wear Hakama are the very traditional ones (the ones in elite universities or very small towns, the one with strict parents) and the exhibitionistic guys (the gyaruos, the show-offs, the peacock types). They are the absolute opposite sides of the spectrum but I'm glad they wear it..Here are some photos for Jared in Nakano, who is a genius at finding and capturing divine examples of male vanity in Tokyo. Check his website in a few days and I'm sure he'll have some great picture on his website. Actually, go there now and see the pictures he took of Japanese policemen.I love Seijin No Hi, and not just because it means I have a day off tomorrow.

If you're a Japanophile, here's a blog for you.

This is Dannie, and she's so cute. She's from Southern California and she loves Japan so much. She also loves fashion. LOVES FASHION. And she's a journalism major. Dannie hasn't been to Japan yet, but she's sure to visit someday. A lot of the people who read this blog are Japanophiles who want to come to Japan. They admire Japanese street fashion, J-music, food and Hello Kitty from their home countries. I tend to get a lot of comments whenever I post something related to these things, especially Japanese street fashion. That means a lot of you are interested in it.

I wish I could give you more of that Japanophile creative fashion stuff you want, but I'm too shy to take pictures of random people on the road and I'm sort of into a different aesthetic than the Hello Kitty / Fruits-style fashion that's popular with Japanophiles abroad.

If you like that kind of fashion, check out Dannie's blog. The best thing is when she dresses up and takes pictures of herself because she's a really cute girl and always has interesting hairstyles.

My leg hurts.

My leg is killing me. I have a severe muscle cramp or sprain of some sort that goes from the right side of my right foot all the way up to my knee. It's hard to walk.

I don't know why it happened, but I think it's because I walk a LOT in cheap shoes. My friend just told me to drink a lot of water, relax, take lots of baths and buy these little minty-smelling bandages (シップ)that old ladies use for their arthritis and backaches in Asia. Do you have any suggestions?

> それはたぶん日本語で 「足がつった」 と言う。すごく痛い。忞僕もよくなるよ。水をたくさん飲むといい！ 痙攣けいれん とも言う。

IMALU is Sanma's daughter.

A few months ago, I bought a magazine called Zipper and I cut out a picture of one of their models because her face and hair reminded me of my friend Angie. Yesterday, my friend called me to tell me to turn on the TV because there was a TV special about a Japanese girl who grew up in Canada and returned to Japan to become a pop star.

I turned on the TV, and there was the girl whose picture I liked in the magazine a few months ago. Her name as a pop star is IMALU. I started watching the TV program because she went to high school in Victoria, a small Canadian island that I also lived on for a few years.

Then, I discovered her father is probably my current favorite Japanese celebrity, Sanma Akashiya. I just wrote about him two posts ago. IMALU's mother (Shinobu Otake) is also a famous actress.

Anyway, here's IMALU's blog.
I wish her good luck!

Happy New Year! (Japan-style)

This New Years Eve, I had a cold so I stayed at home with some friends who also had colds and we were lazy, watching New Year's specials on TV together with the heat turned up and kleenex everywhere. (We watched the Johnny's Special! Haha) We did the countdown together (with Johnny's) and then we put on five thousand sweaters and went to the busiest shrine in the city for a huge party.

New Years in Japan is totally different than New Years in foreign countries. In foreign countries, there are big parties and people drink a lot and kiss each other after the countdown. In Japan, New Years is like Christmas -- a quiet, family event centered around dinner and watching nostalgic TV. I was lucky that my friends are from far away places like Hokkaido and Tottori and China and couldn't afford to go be with their families this year, otherwise I would have been alone on New Year's Eve.

The New Year's party in Japan is always at the shrines. It is exactly like the summer Matsuri parties, but colder. You can buy all of the staples, like jagga-butter, corn on the cob, wagashi, takoyaki and all types of fried noodles. You can walk around and drink a variety of drinks. You can throw a 5-yen coin into the shrine and make a wish.

It was fun! Then yesterday, I spent all day sleeping off the cold and the jet lag. Now I feel great.

明けましておめでとうございます！

★

明石家 サンマ ★Sanma and Alpaca

I don't know what has made the alpaca so popular in Japan recently, but they are everywhere. First, I noticed stuffed alcapas in stores all over the place. Then I noticed people with alcapa cell phone straps and teenagers with little alcapa stuffed toys stuck to their backpacks. Watching the new years TV specials, I noticed alcapas in 4 different ads. My favorite magazine (Tokyo Grafitti) had an article where they asked random people off the street "what is the image on your cell phone" and out of 50 people, there were 5 alcapa pictures. Do you know why the sudden alcapa boom? (Beyond the obvious answer that they are cute and weird looking) This is Sanma (明石家 サンマ) and I love him. (The older one with the white teeth) I think he's really hilarious. His shows are fun to watch because he is always, always cracking up laughing and has a great "laughing face" where his eyes get all crinkly and his shining, unnaturally white and straight teeth get shown completely. He's so loud and hilarious that I wouldn't even want to meet him because he would make me laugh until I cried and embarass me in public with his loud voice and wild energy. I am the type of person who can't stop laughing when people start making me laugh, so it would be awful. I love watching Sanma's shows, though, because they always put me in a good mood and he seems like a nice person. I even have a small picture of him on the back of my door. His face makes me happy.