Round Two

I'm back again to tell you all about what we did yesterday (Saturday). That's probably more interesting than the place we're staying, right? 

We went out earlier in the day to pick up some medicine for Cinnamon, since her stomach was still bothering her. Nothing is quite as frustrating as trying to find medicine in a different country where you're not very proficient in the language. She ended up buying some pills whose box had a picture of someone with their hand over their stomach, so we figured it's as good a shot as any. (I could only read enough to see that it said something about stomach pain).

After that, we came home and had a small meal. I ate my nikuman, which wasn't too bad. The filling tasted similar to gyoza, and the outer "bun" part was kind of springy and chewy. It wasn't quite what I had been expecting, but I'd probably eat it again.

We spent a few more hours bumming around our place, waiting for Cinnamon's medicine to hopefully take effect, because we were going out to see  "Rock Musical Bleach the Live, Bankai Show Code: 003" later on. (Those of you reading this who work at Barnes and Noble, yes, it is a musical based on the Bleach manga). 



No, I'm not making this up. If you're curious, you can check out the promo video on their website here. It's very entertaining!





This just shows where our seats are. We were on floor 1, row O (or 15), seats 14 and 15. Not too bad, really!

My friends had gone to see it the previous night at 7pm, so I just assumed that's when the show started. We had planned on leaving around 5:30 to get to the theater by 6:00 so we could buy goods and find our seats well in advance.

Well around 5:30, as we were just gearing up to go, Cinnamon says to me, "Why do the tickets say 17:00 and 18:00?" It always takes me a minute to convert things from 24-hour time, but I quickly realized 18:00 (the time the show starts) wasn't 7pm, but 6pm. Uh oh. 

Now it was time to panic. It would take us at least 20 minutes to get to the theater. So we hurried to Akebonobashi station and hopped the Toei Shinjuku line to Shinjuku staiton. From there, we just had to take the Oedo line to Kokuritsu-kyogijo station and walk another 10 minutes to Nippon Seinen-kan Hall. We were breathless and cold, but we made it just as they were making the "please put your cell phones in manner [vibrate] mode" announcement. 

I won't bore you with details from the show, because you definitely wouldn't be able to appreciate it if you didn't know the story, the characters, or the actors. (Fun fact: last time we were in Japan, we saw a lot of shows and events by the theater group *pnish*. Two of the members of that group are in the Bleach Musical, and at least 3 other cast members have been guests in one of *pnish*'s shows.) Needless to say, the show was a ton of fun, and I'm glad we're going to see it again on Monday for the very last performance.

Once the show had ended, my friends whom we had met up with were going to go out for yakiniku! If you don't remember this from our last trip, it's meat you grill yourself at your table. Cinnamon decided to take a pass this time and go home and rest, but the four remaining members of our party continued on to Den Yakiniku in Musashi Sakai.




That's Jamie (from Michigan) on the left, and Courtney (who lives and works in Tokyo) on the right.




Here we have a plate off delicious (if still raw) meat, a bowl of rice, and a dish of sauce.



Courtney's in charge of putting the meat on the grill and turning it when necessary. At one point, I was accused of being a "backseat chef" because I told her when to turn a few of the pieces over.




We're cooking rosu and karubi. Rikaichan, my handy in-browser Japanese translator, tells me rosu is sirloin, and karubi is beef ribs. I don't know how accurate that is, but either way, it was still very tasty.




Lindsay (who's from Nova Scotia), is anxiously waiting for the meat to finish cooking. We were all pretty hungry! It's a good thing this restaurant offers tabehoudai, which basically means "all you can eat." Of course, there's a limit of 90 minutes so you can't take advantage of it.




Courtney is goofing off and pretending to eat the raw meat. Sometimes it's okay to play with your food.


After that, we headed home, our bellies full, but our bodies awfully cold in the night air. I finally got back home around midnight, and my computer said it was 34 degrees with a windchill of 27. At least the insane 30mph wind from earlier had died down considerably.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you all about the first live we went to. (A live is like a small concert). We've been keeping busy! Tomorrow we have to go to Laforet (a store in Shibuya) and pick up some flyers for the *pnish* show/event (called *pnish* room vol. 7) coming up in two weeks, and then we'll be back at Nippon Seinen-kan Hall for the Bleach musical finale. After that, we get a little break in our activities for about a week. What will we spend them doing? Stay tuned to find out!

[I found a crude fix for my blog layout problem. I'm not very good with html code, so you'll just have to bear with a few oddly placed blue lines running through the middle of the posts. Sorry about that. If I knew how to fix it, I'd have done it already.]

Our Swanky Digs

Since the last time we were in Japan we didn't post--or even take--any pictures of where we were staying, we decided to make up for it this time. So this post is devoted to showing off our guest house. It'll be informative and interesting, I promise.



Here's the doorway when you first walk in. The area with the shoes is called the genkan, and since, in Japan, you don't wear your shoes indoors (so you don't drag in all the dirt from outside), you take your shoes off there before walking inside.



If you're standing in the genkan, this is what you can see. On the left is the door to our room. In the middle is the bathroom, and the door on the right leads to the toilet. 

In this picture, I'm standing in the doorway of our room, looking straight across. You can see the genkan on the right, the door to the toilet on the left, and the kitchen/common area and the other two rooms there in the middle. Both our roommates, Thomas and Frederick, are from France. They're pretty much always in the common area.

You've already seen our room, so let's start with the bathroom.

Obviously, on the right is the sink/vanity area. To the left of that is the washing machine. (In between them, you can see the hose of our little vacuum cleaner). And to the left of that, you can see the corner of our shower curtain. We'll check that out in a minute. First, we'll take a closer look at the washing machine. Fascinating.

Look at all those buttons! They tell you (from left to right) the water level, which cycle it's on, and how long of a cycle it is--90 or 30 minutes. Then there's the start button, and which course it's on. The last button is some sort of "auto off" thing. I'm not sure.

See that word right below the arrow? The one that says ドライ? That means this washing machine is equipped with a drying cycle! So you can wash and dry all in one! I definitely prefer that to hanging laundry to dry, which we had to do last time.

To the left of the washing machine, this is the entrance to the shower. You've got a shower curtain outside, and a door with frosted glass inside so no one can see you while you're bathing.

When you step into the shower, this is what you see. It looks pretty complicated, but it's not. That long, metal bar toward the bottom has a dial on the left to control the temperature, and the dial on the right controls which spigot the water comes out of. Turn it down, and the water comes out of the bottom. Turn it up and the water comes out of the shower head (which you can't see in the picture, but is at the end of the long cord). That little thing on the wall tells you the water temperature or something. I like to think of it as the shower's own thermostat. I honestly have no idea, but it looks to me like it'd be dangerous to have an electronic gadget so close to water. In the bottom right corner of the picture, you can see the other shower curtain.



This is what's behind it. You have a little cart (on the raised portion of the floor... the shower part is lowered so the whole floor doesn't get wet) where you can put your towel and clothes for after your shower. The curtain is there so they don't get wet while you bathe. Pretty clever.




Obviously, this is the toilet. That's all that's in here. On the back of the toilet is a sink (which doesn't work here). Normally, when you flush, the water that goes to refill the tank will come out of the faucet and you use it to wash your hands. Yes, obviously it's clean water. I don't know why this one doesn't work. 





Here we have the common area (with a small TV) and kitchen. Pretty self-explanatory.

 

This is the fridge, and a little cart with the microwave and toaster oven. Next to the cart are four trash cans. This is because you have to separate your trash when you throw it out. Burnables (paper products, mostly) go in one can, non-burnables (plastic and such) go in another. Recyclable PET bottles (anything with a number 1 or 2, basically) go in one, and cans and glass bottles go in the fourth. And they all have different trash days. Burnables go out twice a week.

And lastly, here's the rest of the kitchen. As you can see, we have a set-top 2 burner stove, but no oven. Those are hard to come by around here, as most Japanese people (at least in Tokyo) don't do a whole lot of baking.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of our place. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures, like our harrowing trip to Nippon Seinen-kan Hall! (And if anyone can tell me why the white background of our layout keeps messing up--and how to fix it--please let me know!)

First Day Jitters

The current time is 12:10am on Saturday, and I'm surprisingly not too terribly tired. I'm sure I will be by the time I finish this post, but I wanted to get started with the more fun parts of our posts--pictures! So this post will be about our long, long, tiring journey to Japan.

It started bright and early... okay, dark and early Wednesday morning--4am, to be exact. I got a late start packing, so I just stayed up all night (as usual), but I got it all done!



That's my suitcase in the midst of the packing. I was able to pack less this time, so now I have room for more goodies!

After all the packing was done, we headed off to the airport. Got there shortly after 5am, made it through security with little problem, and waited at the gate for our plane to board.



Here's Cinnamon snacking on a mini bagel while we wait (please notice it's still very dark outside). Finally, we were able to board, and 2.5 hours later, we landed in Chicago at O'hare International Airport. There was snow on the ground!





Naturally, I had to snap a picture of it, as I hadn't seen snow in person (even if I didn't get to touch it) in a good 20 years. That picture of a footprint was out on the tarmac and was taken while we sat inside waiting for our connecting flight. It's nice to have a camera with 20x zoom.


We landed at about 8:30am (which is 9:30am EST), and our next flight wasn't until 12:02pm. So we went to Chili's and had breakfast. Yes, breakfast. I didn't know they served it, but I'm guessing it's solely an airport offering. And let me tell you, it's painfully obvious the people who work there hate their jobs.


After our nourishing breakfast, we made our way to the gate and waited.





Cinnamon took a little nap. I took pictures of Cinnamon.



I also snapped a shot of our plane--this gigantic looking 747. Last time we flew to Japan, we took a 777. This one didn't have video screens on the back of each seat.

After what seemed like a small eternity, we finally got to board. This time around, I had a window seat, Cinnamon had an aisle seat, and the seat in the middle was empty. ...Or so we thought. I arrived at row 41 only to find some guy sitting in my window seat! Cinnamon and I were most unhappy. But we sat down anyway and made ourselves comfortable. Sort of. We were running a bit behind because they had to load some more cargo, and while we were sitting there, I noticed in the row in front of us, only the aisle seat was occupied. So I very kindly asked this seat-usurper if he wouldn't mind moving up a row so we'd all have some more space. Thankfully, he complied, and we were able to have our free seat for stretching out a bit.


We were very glad to have it, as 13 hours on a plane will certainly make you want to move. For whatever reason, even though I had been awake nearly 24 hours at that point, I wasn't very sleepy. I napped a few times, but probably got off the plane with no more than an hour and a half of sleep under my belt. I whiled the time away reading magazines, listening to music, and being awed by the spectacular aerial view of the Canadian Rockies and the vast, snowy mountains of Alaska. Who knew the Pacific Ocean could ice over so far out! It was neat to see, though... all the snow-capped peaks, frozen rivers and ice floes.

Cinnamon, on the other hand, didn't fare quite as well as I did on the flight. She was uncomfortable and didn't feel very well. I felt bad for her, but there wasn't much I could do. I let her sleep on my lap for a bit and tried not to disturb her when she was trying to nap. Not much else you really can do when you're 33,000ft above ground and going roughly 530mph. If you've ever thought an 8 hour shift at work went by at a snail's pace, try being cooped up on an airplane in economy for 13 hours. It's one of the reasons why I don't understand how anyone can visit this country for only a week. 


But finally--just when I thought I couldn't take another minute--we landed in Japan, flying over brown fields and wide rivers before touching down at Narita airport. Immigration and customs were a breeze, and we hit up the ATM for some cash before heading down to buy our tickets for the Narita Express (or N'EX) that would take us into Tokyo proper in only 90 minutes. For some reason, we didn't think to buy the tickets together, and since all seats on the train are reserved (as in, you can't just sit wherever you want), we ended up getting seats 5 cars apart. 





Those are the seats on the train. After being stuck in economy on the plane, I'm always happy to be on a long distance train in Japan -- there's so much legroom!





And here's the view from my window, looking out at Narita Airport Terminal 1's station. Not a lot going on there at 5:15pm.





Leaving the station, you can now see some people moving about. I had intended to take more pictures along the ride, but by the time we left the underground station and saw the outside world, it was nearly dark outside! I'm definitely not used to darkness falling at 5pm! Clearly Florida has spoiled me.


We made it into Shinjuku around 6:45pm, and signed the lease on our guest house at the office and picked up our rental phones. We were given a very widemouthed cup of hot green matcha tea, along with two sweets that were either daifuku or mochi maybe. One was square (about an inch on all sides), brown, and kind of sticky-chewy. The other was very similar in consistency, but was round and had a flaky coating on the outside. Either way, they were tasty.


After that was all settled, we just had to go find our place. Much to Cinnamon's dismay, we decided to simply walk to the place instead of taking the train, which would have been faster, but also a lot harder at 8pm, and with quite a bit of luggage. It took us about 20 or so minutes to find our place. It's in a building whose small entrance is sandwiched between a florist and... some other shop I never looked at very closely. 


We had to haul our luggage up a rather narrow staircase in order to get to our second floor room, but we finally made it! So here it is:





This is what you see when you first walk into the room (nevermind the luggage). On the right is a window, and on the left is a tiny balcony that I later found out basically exists just to hold the external part of our room's AC/heating unit.





I'm standing on the bed to take this picture, but here you can see the futon, the door, and our very large closet. Strangely, this time around, we have plenty of places to put our clothes... but no hangers. How inconvenient!





Lastly, you can see our dinky little shelves, complete with some dishes. This room is much bigger than our place in Shirokanedai was. I'd say it's probably 12'x12' or so. But I've gotta say if there's one thing I already miss about the US, it's central heating. Here, we have our own heater in our room, but as soon as you step outside to go to the kitchen or bathroom (both very close-by), it gets cold! There's no heating unit out there, so it tends to be awfully close to whatever the external temperature is. Certainly not fun when you want to take a shower.

We did meet one of the guys who's also staying here (there are two other rooms on this floor). His name is Thomas and he's from France. That's pretty much all we know at this point. We weren't feeling particularly chatty, so we pretty much went right to bed.


Today, we decided to take it easy, since we learned the hard way last time what happens when you get too ambitious that first day. I woke up at 7am (yes, me--Persimmon) because my left arm was asleep and numb, and then I couldn't go back to sleep. Cinnamon woke up an hour or so later, I think. We decided to go get some food, then go to the grocery store to pick up some things for later on.





But first, while Cinnamon was in the shower, I snapped these photos of the "view" from our balcony. We're on the back side of the building, so as you can imagine, there's nothing much to see. Judging by how close those other buildings are, you can see now why all the glass in people's homes is frosted for privacy.





Down below the balcony, there are some bikes. And that's really about all that's outside. Not too fascinating. Last time we at least had a tiny "garden" (we're talking about a foot and a half wide).


We ended up going to two different 100 yen shops that were across the street from each other. At one, we picked up some food, and at the other, we bought some hangers, soap, laundry detergent, and a little plastic basket with handles to put our shower things in. Then it was back home to eat!





This was my first meal: a carton of strawberry milk (marketed as "strawberry au lait"), chocolate chip melon bread, which--as you may recall--I made and brought in to work almost a year ago now! I really missed this stuff. It was huge and filling, and only cost me 105 (which is now the equivalent of $1.15). And I bought some nikuman, which is essentially meat inside a dough "bun" that's steamed. I haven't eaten them yet, so I'll let you know how they are.





Cinnamon got some yogurt, though I don't know what flavor it is. Strawberry? She also got a little apple pastry/danish type thing, and a little carton of the tiniest, cutest, most perfect strawberries I have ever seen. She took pictures of them, so I'm sure she'll post them for you all to see. American strawberries look like overgrown monsters compared to these. And she got some sort of hot noodle cup to eat later.


After eating, we ended up not going to the grocery store, as we were both pretty tired. Around 4pm, Cinnamon declared it naptime and ended up sleeping until about 8pm.

We were supposed to go meet Courtney and a friend of hers for curry at Coco's after the show they were seeing was over (around 9pm), but Cinnamon still wasn't feeling very well, so I went next door to the Family Mart and bought her some crackers. She stayed home, and I went out for curry. Turns out two other people came along too, so it was a lot of fun chatting with them and eating delicious curry. But man was it cold out there! When I left, it was windy and about 39 degrees, so it felt much colder. By the time I made it to Coco's, I could hardly feel my hands or my face. The walk home was better because the wind had died down a bit. As of right now, it's 36 degrees with a wind chill of 31. Tomorrow, it's supposed to be 45 (today got up to 48). 

And right now, it's already 1:42am, so I'm going to brush my teeth and hop into bed. Sorry this post was so long. I'll try to keep them shorter in the future, but I hope you still enjoyed reading about our adventures... or at least the pictures. 

Until next time!

Okerinasai!

Just checking in for our first post from across the Pacific. It's currently 9:15pm here (Thursday), and we just got all settled in to our new place about half an hour ago. Cinnamon is already sleeping, and I will be following her shortly. Pictures and a real post forthcoming, after some much needed sleep.

On Our Way

Good morning, world! It is currently 2:10am, and I am still awake. I'd like to be asleep, but it's kind of a bad idea to do that if you're not done packing. Okay, that's not entirely true. I'm pretty much done with packing, but because I didn't start until about 9:30pm, I finished late and missed my chance to nap.

In about an hour, Cinnamon will be awake, and an hour and a half from now, we will be on our way to the Jacksonville airport to catch our flight. We're flying from Jacksonville to Chicago, and from Chicago to Tokyo. That last leg involves a 13 hour flight, so if we don't update our blog to say we're alive and settled in right away, we hope you'll understand. 

Let's put this in perspective. We leave Chicago at 12:03pm Wednesday. By the time we arrive in Tokyo, it will be 4:15pm Thursday (that's local time, of course). From the airport, it's a 90 minute train ride to Shinjuku, where we have to check in and pay our rent for the place where we're staying. That generally takes about half an hour. Then we have to find the place, which hopefully won't take too long. Last time we wandered in the wrong direction for about 45 minutes, but this time we have a very good sense of direction in the city, so it shouldn't be nearly that long (or frustrating). In any case, by the time we get to a place where we can finally lie down on a real bed and sleep, it will probably be close to 7:30pm, so it's very likely we'll just pass out for a good 14 hours or so.

Time to go take care of some last minute business. Next time you hear from us, we'll be on the other side of the world!

A Winter Theme

Most of you didn't get to see what the blog looked like when I created it, but over the past few days, I've revamped the layout to make it a little more personal. It now has a sort of wintry theme, and I added in the polaroids using pictures I took on our last trip to Japan. If anything doesn't look quite right to you, let me know and I'll see what I can do to fix it.

For those of you interested or curious, this time around, we will be 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. (So just add two hours to the current time and change AM to PM or vice versa. 12:26am becomes 2:26pm, for example). However, there's one little exception. On March 14th, the US observes the start of Daylight Savings Time. Japan doesn't observe it, so from March 14th to the 17th, we will only be 13 hours ahead. I'll see if maybe I can somehow add a little Japan clock to the blog to make things easier. In the mean time, join us in our countdown to takeoff -- only 14 (almost 13) days left to go!

Welcome Back, Dear Readers!

Hello, everyone! We decided to make the switch from Vox to Blogspot so anyone can leave us a comment without having to create an account. I hope that will encourage you to comment more often while we're away.

This may be our second time in Japan, but rest assured we've got a few new adventures in the works this time around. So stay tuned to find out what they are! We'll be kicking things off February 5th, and we hope you'll keep checking back and checking in while we explore Japan in winter.