I know I haven't posted here in a while ^^;; *bad*
Those of you already on my regular LJ's flist already got this but... XD

( MMMMM....FLESH. )

Current Mood: sleepy

'tis a lovely Tokyo day, though I'm sure the weather will turn cloudy this afternoon, like it did yesterday. I spent the day down in Shinjuku yesterday at Yodobashi Camera ヨドバシカメラ. One of the things to learn about Japan is that electronic stores all have "Camera" in their name, even though cameras are one of the many things they sell. The main Yodobashi store in Shinjuku is about 8 stories and sells everything from software to ipods. I was actually looking for a jogging strap for my ipod, and found one there (they even had different colors!)

I believe that there's a Yodobashi branch in Akihabara too, but really, why go to Akihabara when you have such a huge store in Shinjuku? XD I also hear there is a big Apple store in Roppongi, but I have yet to find it. Has anyone been there?

For the interested, a Wikipedia article on the usage of "old kana," including the outdated forms wi ゐ and we ゑ. Pretty interesting stuff. Those who want to know more can also follow the link in that article to the article on Hentaigana 変体仮名 (no, this is NOT an article about hentai XD).

Current Mood: awake

Well, Tata Young sold out, as I had half-thought it would anyway. I guess I will stalk Yahoo Japan auctions and think about if I really want to spend 10,000 yen on a ticket...

*ponders*

In the meantime, I finally got off my lazy butt and went to the grocery store today. I took some pictures of some of the food I got, for kicks, and posted them to my LJ galleries. Click on the link below to view some tasty treats!

日本の料理を紹介しますよ！

Last month I had the real pleasure of being able to get a ride on a US Army Blackhawk helicopter. There were a bunch of us from my flight that went, and we all brought cameras along to take pictures of the Tokyo scenery. The ride was a lot of fun, though I did get kind of queasy halfway through (definitely not near to throwing up though!) We went by Mt. Fuji, then through Kamakura and Enoshima, back to Yokohama, and then through downtown Tokyo.

Below are some of the pictures I took. The helicopter was going pretty fast, and we were high up and I wasn't sitting next to the window, so I didn't get the greatest shots, but I think most of these are all right. The smog picture (#8) is worth looking at, especially. >.>;; The pictures are hosted on my LJ pictures site, so just click on the thumbnail to see the big one. ^_^

Current Mood: sleepy

Well, a really cool short-notice tasker came down today for personnel to go to Nagano to help with the Japanese Special Olympics. They were looking for English/Japanese translators, and I thought that sounded really cool so I volunteered. I did this before asking my commander, because I figured I'd get my name in the pool early. I told my commander afterwards and he asked me to forward the email with the dates on it and stuff to him so he could look at it.

The original email which was sent out didn't have the dates, and when I requested them, the guy sent me back a really detailed email, which, among other things, said I would have to take leave to go. This isn't something that the original mail said, and I have absolutely no leave right now.

So I had to email him back and say sorry, take my name off cause I can't take leave. T_T I was really looking forward to going too. I think it would have been fun.

Oh well.

In other news, I'm going to try to get tickets to the Tata Young live at Zepp Tokyo in April. They go on sale 2/6 (this Sunday) and I'm HOPING that they won't sell out too quickly, since Tata's not that insanely popular here yet. Wish me luck XD

Current Mood: disappointed

Very tongue-in-cheek, yet oh-so-true article someone posted on the japanese community: Missing Technologies in Japan.

If you've ever lived in Japan for any length of time, or even visited for more than a few days, you'll sympathize with some or all of these. OVENS is the particular one of my pet peeves. I am lucky to have an oven here in my apt on base, but I do plan on moving back here sometime, and even though I don't bake much (just chicken and fish and stuff like that), the little fish-fryer that most older Japanese ovens have just doesn't really cut it.

A lot of this also depends on where you live, though, and what kind of house you have. My uncle and aunt's new Western-style house has pretty much all the household items mentioned in this article (sadly, 24-hr ATMs aren't included).

My first foray into Japanese fiction consisted of half-hearted searches in Barnes & Noble and other similar bookstores before I moved to Japan. I didn't really have any idea what I was looking for, and thus for the most part ended up empty-handed. I've never been someone who's liked "mainstream classics," so a lot of the books that were hailed as Japanese literature I simply thought were boring.

This all changed when I read Mishima Yukio's "Runaway Horses."

"Honba" 奔馬 is the second book in Mishima's landmark "The Sea of Fertility" 饒の海 tetrology, an "account of the Japanese experience of the 20th century." I've never read the other three books, and partway through "Honba" I realized I should have probably started with book 1, but it was partly through my own ignorance that I had never even heard of the other three books before. "Honba" is most definitely the most famous book out of the 4, and two pages in, I was already beginning to see why.

"Honba" is about the life of a Japanese nationalist living on the eve of the second world war. Iinuma Isao, the protagonist and for the most part narrator of the story, is a young patriot-fanatic raised by his parents to hate the Western "corruption" of Japanese society. Driven by the story of "The League of the Divine Wind," a (fictional) league of Japanese nationalist who attempted a government coup wielding nothing but swords against modern gunpowder and then committed seppuku after their coup failed, Isao strives to form his own "League," to uphold the core pillars of Japanese society as he sees it in his idealistic mind.

What I found so fascinating about this story wasn't really the politics and twists and turns of the nationalist rhetoric that Mishima spouts (Mishima himself attempted to form this sort of "league" during his own life, then committed seppuku.) Instead, I was simply floored by Mishima's narrative and the simple, but powerful language he used. There is almost no complexity to Mishima's tale, and that's what makes it so brutaliy powerful. The straightforward way that it's written portrays Isao and his friends and allies and even enemies in strong, vivid, simple pictures. I didn't identify with Isao or any of the other characters at all, really, and usually that's the point where I put the book down and move on. But you don't need to identify with Isao in order to become emotionally involved with this book.

Ultimately, I think this is one of the saddest books I've ever read. It's not sad in the way of a tearjerker or angst-filled novel. But it's sad in the grand tradition of all the old Japanese tales. If you've ever watched anime or seen a Japanese movie or even listened to a Japanese song, you'll understand what I mean. The main point of the "Sea of Fertility" is reincarnation, but yet I felt that the more Mishima emphasized that point, the more I felt that everything in his novel was leading up to some terribly sad, final ending. (of course, I was right, but you could have guessed that.)

Here's a more in depth review of "Honba." The rest of the books in the tetrology are "Spring Snow" (春の雪), "Decay of the Angel" (天人五衰), and "The Temple of Dawn" (暁の寺).

Late posting again x_x Hope everyone had a GREAT New Year! I had the luck to be able to take a trip to a Japanese air base last month. A couple officers from Yokota and I went down to Hamamatsu Air Base 浜松基地 in Shizuoka Prefecture to spend the day with the Japanese Air Self Defense Force. It was a real blast. Hamamatsu is a maintenance officer/pilot training base, so we got to see their T-4 trainers and sit in some of the simulators, as well as tour their maintenance facilities and see how they do business.

If you're interested, you can see pictures here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/darcenciel/gallery/00006qht

I got some shots of Mt. Fuji as we passed. Hamamatsu is located in the southern corner of Shizuoka, and Fuji is in the center. Unfortunately, at the speeds our van was traveling, most of my Fuji shots came out blurry. T_T

It's finally getting chilly here. The weather didn't want to make up its mind for a while and it kept alternating between REALLY COLD and REALLY WARM. Which resulted in the base turning off the air conditioning but not turning on the heat and then resulted in us alternately freezing and burning for about three weeks.

Joy.

Christmas shopping in Japan, if you haven't experienced it, is something everyone should do at least once in a lifetime. They weren't kidding when they say Japan is the land of cute and gadgets, and no time is this made more clear than the holiday season. There is just so much crap out there to buy, most of it either cute, cuddly, expensive, or all three.

But heck, expensive never stopped anyone. XD

I go back to Hong Kong in three weeks, so I'm trying to mail everyone's presents before I go. I don't know if it's going to happen. Holiday mail here on base is, to say the least, fickle. Anything that I really want to get there on time (like presents for parents and NM) is going with me on the plane.

I took more pictures. ( random pictures )

Current Mood: geeky

I've finally updated SUNSHINE with new pictures of my trips to Kyushu and Kansai. There are photos up of Asakusa, Beppu, Fukuoka, Hakone, Osaka, Tokyo, and random ones of the area in and around base that I found on my hard drive.

I went through and converted the table in the image menu to CSS, so if it looks funny, please let me know (and take a screenshot if possible). Except Laurel. I am 99.9% sure your computer won't be able to see it, so don't bother. XD

Current Mood: accomplished

The annual Ginger Festival was on the first of September this year. I attended with a friend in the neighboring town of Akiruno あきる野市 and we had a great time, despite the fact that it started drizzling in the last 15 minutes or so we were there, as we tried to eat our yakitori.

The Ginger Festival is pretty self-explanatory - obviously, it's a festival about ginger. There were a lot of booths set up selling actual ginger plants. Not just the root, like you usually see in the store, but actual big ginger plants. I would have bought one if I was a family, but I don't think I could eat a whole plant by myself. I can barely finish a small root in a month. But the plants were cool to look at.

Besides, that, there were the regular yakisoba/takoyaki/chocolate banana/okonomiyaki/cotton candy/game and prize booths. The festival was held at the local shrine, which could only be accessed from a set of narrow stone steps, one on each side of the hill on which the shrine was built. Because the steps were quite high and narrow and obviously not meant to accomodate huge festival crowds, it took quite a bit of time to get up to the top, squirming by kids clutching chocolate bananas and parents trying to keep them from spilling their drinks. As it turned out, we BARELY missed the actual festival parade (the shrine carriers were just disbanding when we reached the top) but were in time to see one of the plays that was put on. I couldn't understand most of what the actors were chanting, so we stayed for a bit and left.

I must say, though, even though they had only one yakitori stand, it was some of the best yakitori I've ever had. Yum.



...and there was just an earthquake o.o *peers at swaying table uncertainly*

Current Mood: dorky

The harvest moon a pale globe,
The distant bridge a dim mirage.
The night a sigh, the world a dome,
The wind as waves, the stars as snow.

[Tama River, Tokyo, Japan]

Tonight, I received what is probably the best compliment I've had since I got here, or maybe even my whole life. =P

( Me, my parents, and the Japanese guard )

Current Mood: sleepy

I have been spending the last five days dragging my parents and brother around Tokyo. They got here last Thursday and will be here till next Tuesday. Tomorrow we're going to Kyoto, but today my father wanted us to go to Asakusa. I'd never been there before, but he was insistent on going because apparently Kaminarimon Gate 雷門 is world famous (which I didn't know).

Asakusa is famous for the Sensoji Temple 浅草寺, which Kaminarimon is the entrance to. It's the big gate with the red lantern-like thing hanging down from it, with kanji painted on it in big white and black letters. Apparently, it's not even the real gate because the original was destroyed in the war, so this is a reconstruction. The gods of wind and thunder 風神(Fuujin) and 雷神(Raijin) flank the door on either side (Final Fantasy 8, anyone?)

Inside the gate is the outdoor shopping arcade of Nakamise 仲見世, which is basically a bunch of market-place style shops selling Tokyo souvenirs. Reminds me kind of like the Ladies' Market in Hong Kong, except everything is more expensive. Not horribly so - we got some nice souvenirs for my parents' friends at pretty reasonable prices (as souvenirs go). I bought a keychain or two while I was at it.

The temple and shrine are really nice (it's a Buddhist temple), but as far as shrines go, it's still rather standard, I think. More ornate, maybe, and a little on the grander scale than, say, Meiji Jingu (of course Meiji Jingu is a Shinto shrine so that may be the difference there). Apparently, Asakusa used to be the red-light district back in the day when Tokyo was Edo. Now, it's just touristy. I think half the people in Asakusa today were Chinese.

( Asakusa pictures )

I have been wanting to write about Tanabata all week, but I'm always too tired when I get home...and it's been over and it's already Bon Matsuri now. Maybe when I get back from Kyoto I can just write one long festival post....

If you want to know more about Asakusa and Sensoji, visit this page.

Bai bai.

Current Mood: sleepy

There are 47 Japanese prefectures, yet most people only hear about 4 or 5 of them (mainly, Tokyo, Hokkaido, Osaka, Kyoto, and Okinawa). What are the other 42? What are their names? What do they mean?

I went through and annotated the meaning of all the prefectures' names in kanji in the following list. As with most things Japanese, prefecture names are quite poetic. =P Take a look:

( Prefecture names and meanings )

There is really horrible enka-type music going on outside. I suppose it will be there tomorrow night too, since it's the Summer Festival this weekend. >.>@it

Current Mood: hungry

So I haven't updated this in a while.

I got a Suica Card today!

Riding the JR around and buying tickets for every stop you're going to isn't as bad as it might sound, but it does get a little monotonous and annoying after a while if you're going to use the train a lot. I usually only ride the train once or twice a week, since everywhere that's fun to go to is too far to go on a weekday from where I live. But parents are coming in a week and I figure I might as well splurge for the Suica Card. Suica (means "watermelon") is a prepaid card that lets you ride the train anywhere you want without buying a ticket. It doesn't give you any discounts, but instead of having to stand in line and buy the ticket and put it through the machine, you just scan your card through the ticket reader and you're on your merry way. Basically, it's the Japanese version of the Hong Kong "Octopus" card (and symbolized by a penguin XD)

Now, even though I've lived here for almost a year, I still hate buying things in Japan and I still hate ordering food. I can do it, but it's not my favorite thing. It's quite ironic that buying things and ordering food, the thing that you will interact with Japanese people most for, is the hardest for people to master (and I hear it's the same with any culture). I think it's because there are a lot of set phrases that the retail and food industry uses, phrases that you just have to get used to. I know it took me years to get confident enough to order food in America!

Anyway, so I was a little hesitant to go get a card since I didnt want to stand there while the guy blabbed at me without me knowing a word he was saying. But today I was like...well, now or never. So I went into the ticket office and stood in line and then went up to the counter and asked if this was where I could buy a Suica Card. And to my amazement, I understood everything the guy said back to me. Either my Japanese is getting better, or he was dumbing it down for me XD

The Suica costs 2000 yen to get, 500 of which is actually used to pay for the card and 1500 for a deposit of sorts. Then you have to go to one of the regular ticket machines outside in the station and insert some more yen to "charge" the card. I put 5000 yen in mine and will probably put some more in next week so I won't have to charge it again till the family leaves.

Suica!
The Suica Penguin in action!

Current Mood: blah

the clouds over Oita at dusk
are like smoke coming down from the mountains.

Current Mood: calm

I have been realizing how amazingly different Tokyo is from the rest of Japan. We visited the town of Beppu 別府 today in Oita Prefecture and I almost felt like I was back in Cheung Chau. Very hilly, very country-like. I'll post pictures later when I get home.

Tokyo people are a little spoiled, I think.

I have been in Kyushu for about 5 days now and I will be here till Saturday. The pace of life here is definitely slower here, and it's the biggest difference from Tokyo, I think. Even in a suburbian town like Fussa, everyone is always in a hurry to get somewhere. Oita and Beppu are more relaxed, though of course downtown, people are always trying to be like Tokyo people as much as possible.

There's a nice river (the Oita River 大分川) that's about 2 blocks away that has a wonderful running path along its banks. In the evening you can see the mountains very clearly against the sunset. We have the Tama River back home, but it's always so busy around there and no parking, so I have never gone there to run. It makes me think that maybe I should find a way...maybe even take the train or something. It might be worth it.

The highlight of my trip, of course, was seeing Gackt in Fukuoka last Saturday XD I've always said that Gackt was not one of my MUST SEE LIVE artists, but I would definitely go again. It was a stunning show. I have maintained that the reason I like Gackt is not only because he's very talented musically, but because he really believes in what he sings, and you could definitely feel that at the live. He kept the crowd small, too. No screens, half the seats in the stadium blocked off so that everyone could be as near the stage as possible.

He didn't play Dears, but I don't think he needed to. The tone of his voice when he thanked us for being there was enough.

Current Mood: sore

I just returned from Sendai. It was a pretty relaxing weekend overall, one which I spent mostly moseying around the house and playing with the two terrors aka my cousins, ages 7 and 5 and who are just as incorrigeable as they were when they were 5 and 3 (the last time I spent some time at their house).

( And click here for family babble. )

Anyway. End of family babble. To close, I just have to talk a bit about this really great TV show called "Quintet", which is coupled with a show "Nihongo de Asobo" (Let's Play with Japanese). It's a kid's show that helps teach Japanese (obviously) and it comes on NHK around 6 PM or so, right after "Eigo de Asobo" (Let's Play with English). The Nihongo show isn't just your average Sesame Street show; they take phrases from famous authors and old poems and teach it to Japanese kids. It's way above my level, but I still enjoy watching it. The sumo wrestler Konishiki is on the show too. He wears this terrible orange costume with yellow cones stuck all over it. >.> But yes. Very entertaining if you are a rabid Japanese grammar and literature consumer.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/kids/nihongo/

And Quintet is just fun. All the characters, who are members of a string quintet, are puppets. The puppets teach kids various lessons about life and everyday activities (today's was about going hiking and ironing your clothes) and at the end, they always give a concert, showcasing various classical music pieces. Today they played a medly from "Carmen." As you know, I am a great advocate of classical music. I think every kid should grow up learning about classical music and learning to appreciate it. Nothing wrong with rock and popular music, of course (come on, this is me the jrock addict you're talking about) but a foundation in classical music is, I think, good for everyone.

Anyway. Watch Quintet.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/kids/quintetto/

Current Mood: hungry

I went to Shinjuku today to browse Kinokuniya's English books section. I don't mind not having an English bookstore near me since I read a lot of Japanese books anyway. True, my selection method consists of going into the store, picking the first book off the shelf of which I can recognize all the kanji in the title, and paying for it (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't). My other Japanese book fix comes from the Shibuya Tower Records, where the jpop/rock artist books section on the 2nd floor is extremely happy to see me every weekend.

Anyway, back to my story. As I said, I don't mind not having any English bookstores around, but I've been trying to get into Japanese history lately and so I went to Kinokuniya to browse their English Japanese history books section. I think my Japanese is pretty good, but "pretty good" means I'm up to popular novel reading level and definitely nowhere near history book reading level. Besides, history books of any genre tend to bore me and put me to sleep if they're not written in a semi-narrative style. For these reasons, I didn't want to just randomly order stuff off the internet if I could go somewhere nearby and browse an English selection in a relatively sane manner.

Fortunately, I live in Tokyo, so it was just a matter of hopping on the train to Shinjuku and heading up to the 6th floor of the Kinokuniya bookstore next to Takashimaya outside the train station (box step! *grin*). They have a huge Japanese books section. I suppose that's to be expected, being in Japan and all, but I'm so used to the "Japanese history" section in bookstores being limited to maybe one whole shelf of books in America. I could have spent all day there...

...if I had the money. As it was, I only brought along 5000 yen, so I had to choose wisely. This being Japan and Tokyo at that, you have to plan for everything to be at least twice the price of what you'd buy it for elsewhere. I wanted to get the most bang for my buck (or my yen, in this case). I was actually looking for a book on the Tokugawa era, particularly Ieyasu, but the only things I found from that time period was "Political Writings from the Tokugawa Era," which sounds like it could put me to sleep just from staring at the title. There was also a book entitled "The Last Shogun," about the last Tokugawa shogun, translated from Japanese to English, but it was hardcover and around 4000 yen. No thanks, said I.

I finally found what I was looking for in the literature section. Musashi, by Yoshikawa Eiji, a novel about the life and times of Miyamoto Musashi 宮本武蔵, Japan's most famous hero. I've seen parts of the Musashi dramas on TV, and I know that half the cities in Japan are named after him, but I never really knew anything about this guy. This 1000~ page novel, which played a huge part in cementing the Musashi legend among the Japanese people, seemed the perfect place to start.

I've read about 33 pages so far. You'd expect a historical book that is 1000 or so pages and written in 1935 to be a bit dry and dull, but so far it's anything but that (it appeared in serial form starting in 1935, so I'd actually compare it more to The Three Musketeers or others among that genre).

Anyhow, be sure to watch this space for more info on Mr. Musashi-san when I discover more about him. Otanoshimi ni~!

Current Mood: hopeful