Not all Japanese are mean and cranky!

This was my most Japanese weekend yet. I stayed with Errol who knows Japanese. This opens up a whole new world. Not only does he know Japanese but he has friends who know Japanese and also like to have fun. That's a lovely combination to run into after being by yourself for a while.

Friday - Niggata City (where Errol lives)

Ate sushi! (Kind of) - First was a corn and mayo roll, then some fried tofu thing, then 1/2 a salmon thing, then some cucumber rolls. About the salmon, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't good. I guess isn't something that I'd go out of my way to ever eat again. Second, I didn't know about the wasabi inside the rice. My eyes started tearing. Wasabi and I are not friends.

Izakaya- A really fun place where you order some dishes for the table, and then where they're all gone you order more. And more. And more. And you have beer or some alcoholic beverage to keep you company throughout the food eating experience. By the end of the meal, you're drunk and full which is the perfect time for...

Karaoke - Yeah, that's right. It's so much more than in the States. It's not a huge bar where one person sings in front of a room full of strangers. You get a room with your friends (there were 5 all together, perfect number I think) and there's a huge TV and fancy remote to select songs. There are two microphones, so it's really just five drunk people, crouched over two microphones, singing Mr. Big at the top of their lungs. Really fun. I don't remember all of the songs but I know we had Meatloaf, Salt & Pepper, Alanis Morisette, Justin Timerblake, Oasis and then, my solo, Hanson. It was really really fun. Also, unlimited drinks were included in the price. Ice cream sundaes however, were not included in the price. I got an American Sundae and, just like in the US, it had corn flakes in it. Japan has a lot of wrong ideas about America, one being every dish we make comes with corn in one form or another.

Talking Japanese - The best part about being with people who speak Japanese is you can ask them how to say things and then say them and that leads to... communication?? Is that the word? It feels so foriegn. I think that's it. Yeah, so along with my new friends I got to talk to... fancy dressed boys on the street, the youngest cab driver evere seen in Japan (he was 30, cab drivers are usually plus 50), a drunk couple on the train platform, and more drunk kids on the train. FUN FUN FUN!!!! I then did something very un-Japanese...

Lost My JR Pass - I forgot how sometimes you're not great at things when you're drunk, like putting small really expensive pieces of paper in secure areas. I guess I put it in my back pocket or something, cause it totally fell out on the walk from the train station to Errol's apartment. Friday night I definitely didn't notice. Saturday morning we were kind of in a rush to get to the train station to go to Yuhiko, so I looked for it, but when I couldn't find it figured it was just buried somewhere and I decided I would just pay the train fare this time ($13) and find it when I got back on Sunday. On Sunday, I got back, went through every part of Errol's apartment, couldn' t find it, Errol called the station, the police and then we went out to retrace our steps. On the way back to the station I found it on the side of the road in a muddy gutter type area. BUT, I'm a super genius and I was carrying it around in a plastic bag, so it was fine! It was a little wet, but not muddy at all! So we went back to Errol's and hung it on the laundry line.

Back to Saturday

Saturday - Yahiko in Niigata - Ken (Niigata Prefecture, like State)

Yaki-niku-don - Took a train about an hour outside Niigata City, where Ayumi (a cowork of Errol's)'s parents live. Shet met us and we went to eat at a place I would have had to skip by myself. I got terinikudon. That means grilled (yaki) meat (niku) on a bed of rice (don). It was really good!! The meat was beef and in addition there were peppers and onions and a sauce that I liked. She and Errol taught me the kanji (borrowed from Chinese) characters that represented the teri, niku and don so maybe I can find it on a menu in the futre!

Kiki Festival - After lunch we walked through a park and then went to a shrine where they were having the Kiki Festival. There were a lot of things going on. First, chrysanthemum(`kiki` in Japanese) flowers all over the place, then some bonzai trees, the winners from the rice competition (got to see the pictures of that!) and lots of little 3, 5, and 7 year olds dressed up in kimono for the 3-5-7 Celebration. Duh. If you're one of those ages it brings good luck if you dress up and go to a shrine and have your family take lots of pictures and video of you trying to walk in very silly shoes. Overall, a really beautiful, nice place to walk around in. There was also a food vendor area where Errol got some octopus stuff. I passed. As I was taking a picture of the plate of octopi the guy behind the table said `I used to think people were taking a picture of me, then I realized I'm not that cool and they're only taking a picture of the octopi.` Errol translated and then went over and asked if I could take a picture of him because I thought he was cool. He laughed and then posed.

Fish Market (I forgot the official name) - There was a lot of fish. I zipped my jacket all the way up. Fish smells a lot worse than crab and squid. I felt bad whenever I would tell someone I didn't like fish because the second question was always, `Ooh, so Americans don't like fish? Japanese love fish.` The whole `individuality` thing is lost. Errol on the other hand, loves fish, so we tried to use that as an example of `personal differences.` It's hard represting an entire country. I'm kind of weird. And so is Errol. Japan must be very confused.

Onsen (public bath houses from natural hot springs) - I did it. I got naked and `bathed` with probably 100 Japanese females from age 5 to like 95. I figured if I didn't go with Ayumi, I probably would just end up skipping it all together. To be confused is one thing, but to be confused and naked, yeah, it wouldn't happen solo. So the bathing thing is kind of weird. You first sit on a upsidedown plastic tub and wash yourself. Then you go into the mineral baths. I t was like 500 billion degrees and I couldn't stay long without feeling like I was going to pass out. But, I was in there for long enough to completely ruin all of my sterling silver jewelry. Yeah, I forgot to think about that. When I first noticed that my silver rings had all turned some wierd blue/brown/purple color my stomach dropped. It didn't feel good. A lady saw me freaking out and told Ayumi that a jeweler can fix it. That's half true. They're not blue/brown/purple but they definitely don't look like before I went in. He said curry, stomach medicine and toothpaste may also work. I haven't tried them yet.

Dinner at Ayumi's parent's house - There was a lot of food. We ate, watched volleyball and then Dad & Friends came home. Completely wasted. Oh my god. I don't even know where to start. None of them really know English and they knew that I didn't know Japanese but that didn't stop them from talking to me. A lot. They would look at me, say stuff, then look at Ayumi or Errol and wait for one of them to translate. The questions were, 'Where are you from? What baseball team do you like?Is (insert name of probably somewhat famous Japanese baseball player name here) famous in America? Where are you from? Do you like him?' What sports do you watch? Where are you from?` Answering `New York` just started the whole cycle again. I should really learn about the Japanese guys in baseball. People would like me a lot more here. One guy was Ayumi's father, one guy had won the golf game they had played before they started drinking, one guy was right wing and saying weird stuff that upset Errol and then said it's good we came to Japan becuase the US has no culture. The other guys replied he was acting like a Korean or a Chinese person, saying that his own country is better than another country. That's one thing I didn't realize before coming here. Asia is one big dysfunctional family, with North Korea (as someone Friday night put it) as 'that crazy uncle who talks about what he can do with all the shotguns in the attic and you don't know 1) if he's serious or not or 2) if he's crazy enough to use them.' So yeah, being called Korean or Chinese is about the biggest insult you can give to a Japanese person. Very strange night. When the friends went home and Dad still wanted to have fun he did what any drunk middle age man would do... got out a calligraphy pen and wanted to write a kanji character. Ok. And then wanted me to write one. He choice `ai` which I think means forever, because that's what the prime minister had Laura Bush write when she came to Japan. And since I was female and from the US it seemed appropriate. Flickr has the finished product. Errol then wrote Niigata in Kanji (I think) and then Ayumi wrote yaki-niku-don and gave it to me to keep! Now I can walk into any place and hold up the piece of paper and hopefully get food I like! It was really an interesting night. One thing that made me pretty uncomfortable was the husband/wife dynamic. While the husband sat at the table drinking with his friends and spilling wine, breaking glasses, etc, she was just often running back and forth cleaning everything up. They barely spoke and after he was done with the kanji he went to sleep. Also, in Niigata they have a slightly different dialect and when he was talking to Errol he said something like their dialect is especially good for ordering wives around or something like that. I was shocked. Not right away because I had no idea what he had said, but Errol eventually translated and yeah, it was pretty weird. I guess the deal is, in Korea husband beat their wives pretty regularly, so if the worst Japanese husbands do is ignore their wives, at least it's not as bad as Korea. Very very strange. And Ayumi is really smart. She got her masters in International Relations and Environmental Policy or something serious and important like that. So I wonder how she feels hearing her father say stuff like that. If it's normal or if maybe kind of bothers her. I don't know, but I wouldn't want to ask. Anyway, it's not like he was mean to her in any way, and she was definitely at the table most of the time, there was just kind of a weird vibe.

Sunday - (Yahiko --> Niigata City --> Tokyo)
Got back to Errol's apartment, went crazy looking for the JR Pass, eventually found it, went to the bookstore, bought a book to learn Hiragana and Katakana (the two other scripts, easier than Kanji), then went to lunch at a French place. I was really happy. It came with a salad and a croissant. Then walked around, went to a shrine in Niigata City, saw a kids' playground next to it that had something like, `A Monument for the Happiness from Pine Trees` or something like that. My camera battery was charging so I didn't take a picture. We also walked along the `American Thift Store Clothing` street and went into one place that had not one, but TWO UW-Madison sweatshirts and a UW-LaCrosse sweatshirt. Wow. I tried on a shirt that had Grover in a disco clothing and it said Sesame Street Fever! But it was too big and I didn't get it. The guy was super nice. Errol and I went to dinner at a soba place where I got soba (buckwheat noodles) in some soup stuff and vegetables. It was good. He got eel and I tried some. I said something like, `Yeah, I mean if I had a gun to my head I would eat it` and he replied, `Yeah, if you had a gun to your head I would hope you would eat it.` Good point. But it's just like all the other stuff. It's not terrible, it's just not good. To me. I got a banana/chocolate/ice cream crepe afterwards.

Crazy Fun Night in Tokyo - I was heading toward my internet cafe for the night and some guy says `Hello.` I got so excited. This was the first time anyone in Tokyo had voluntarily spoken to me. I said Hi back and we started talking and then he asked me if I wanted to go to this after party for a show his band had just played. He was with a girl and another guy who seemed really cool, so I said sure. So the show had been 5 bands and one all girl hip hop act. And then they were all there at this bar with all of their friends. Probably like 40 or 50 people in all. There were two people who were native English speakers. One guy from Seattle who had been in Tokyo for 5 years and did TV, movies and rapped apparently. Then another guy, a singer in one of the bands who grew up as a Japanese-Canadian in Vancouver but was now living in Japan. It was nice because I didn't talk to them for most of the night but if the people I was talking to didn't know how to say something they would ask either of them and either let one of them say it or have it whispered into their ear so they could say it to me themselves. It was really really cool.

It turns out the group of kids I was talking to most are either in or friends with the band Killing Skill 48. Most of them spoke English really well and were really excited to have someone to speak English with. They also tried to teach me Japanese. My favorite part of the night may have been when one of the guitarist in the band, said `Let's Learn Together!` Definitely the name of the English book he had in school or something like that. The singer actually went to a Japanese high school in Knoxville, Tennessee. I think. It seems kind of strange. He said there were a lot of Japanese companies in the area so there was a high school for all the kids of the employees. Hmm...

Anyway, they didn't have any CDs, but they're available at Tower Records and HMV so I think I might buy one. They did show me their music video which was pretty cool. The song was all in English which I thought was strange because their English wasn't that good, but the American guy later told me he wrote the lyrics for that song.

So the whole group of kids were really nice, really funny and really fun. Another cool part of the night was when one of the guys asked if I had a boyfriend and I said yes and I was kind of nervous they less interested in talking to be, but instead they started asking questions about him! They asked what did he do and I told them he worked at a recording studio and they said, `Tell him to come to Japan and record us!` And I hadn't even mentioned Garbage, Death Cab or anything! And then they asked if I had pictures and when I showed them some pictures they all said, `Oh! Handsome!` and passed around my camera explaining that was my boyfriend. They were just psyched to be talking with me, not trying to make out or anything. What a difference from Australia! A lot of the girls didn't speak English as well but they tried hard and joined in with the `Handsome!` commenting. It was really sweet. One of the girls in the hip hop group actually gave me her card with her cell phone number and email address and said we should keep in touch when I go back home. I have a picture of the troopers from the night (the ones who stayed till 5:30am). Oh, and to get us to leave they started giving out sticks of gum. I liked that.

So the band has another show in Tokyo next Sunday which is when my rail pass expires. I was originally planning on going to Osaka and then flying to Hong Kong from the airport there but I think I may come back to Tokyo to see their show and then fly out of Narita the next day.

I'm so happy I finally get what Michael Thompson was saying about Japanese actually being cool, fun and into learning about foreigners. I definitely was not feeling this way earlier.

Monday - Tokyo (Shibuya Internet Cafe)
I've been sitting/sleeping here for just about 6 hours. Now that I've finished with this I think I'll look into places to stay around Osaka and head there. Mt. Fuji may not happen. We'll see.

Pictures from Niigata Weekend
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wigramroad/sets/1409222/