Learn Japanese Blog

Okay. So i've started a new blog as a side project. Now, I know what you're thinking, "how can you want to do another blog even though you never update this one?" The answer is that I'm going to stop being lazy. I'll update this one more. I hope.

But anyway, the new blog. It's going to be most focused on the learning Japanese kind of posts on this blog, and it's also going to be a review site for Japanese learning materials. I'm going to try to consolidate the resources of the internet in a sort of functional way. Also, because I get paid by the post, I'm going to try to post on this new one every day. So if you are a student of Japanese and/or you have enjoyed my posts on the topic, check out the new blog:

www.learnjapanese.today.com

Other loyal readers, fear not. More updates will soon follow.

Mountain Climbing in Toyokawa

Alright. So. I drank so much yesterday that I couldn't do Air Alert (shitty jumping exercises), so I did that this morning. Then I rode my bike 20 miles and climbed a mountain. This is my story.

So Alex had it planned out that today would be what he likes to call an Adventure Day. Basically we left home on our bikes and biked towards these mountains that were way off in the distance, and didn't stop except to visit his host mom in the hospital. We basically just trucked it for 10 miles until there wasn't a road anymore, then we climbed. We climbed through this forest with a dried up stream bed, and it was really beautiful, and there was this old decomposed vehicle of some kind too:



We finally reached the top of that mountain, which was a construction site on the mountain we had originally intended to climb. I think they were turning it into some sort of residential area, kinda sucks that they need to destroy a mountain to do that.


We tried to go to the very top, but some construction workers told us we couldn't, even when we told them we work for a magazine (we don't) they said that today wasn't good and to come back another day. Anyways, the top of the mountain, even though it wasn't the very top, was still really high up, so we took some killer pictures.





Then we climbed to the top of the mini-mountain in the photo above, and we reached a small shrine in the middle of the woods, which we took as a proverbial sign that we had reached the end.


So we climbed back down, stopping briefly to carve our names into a tree and got back to our bikes. Now this is the part where I'm and idiot. I don't know how much you know about Japanese bike locks, but they are basically part of the bike, and then there's this metal piece you can pull out to stop the wheel from moving. Well, the little metal piece must have fallen out of my pocket at some point during the climb, because it wasn't there when we got back. Oh Fuck. First I tried to pick the lock with tweezers and a toothpick from Alex's swiss army knife, then Alex just beat the shit out of it with a rock until it finally broke. It was actually sort of cool, overcoming adversity like that, except for the fact that the lock broke. I hope it's fixable/replaceable.

From there it was a ridiculously long bike ride home during which we sort of got lost, but then we asked for directions and this lady guided us to a station Alex knew. Then we took an extra long way to go to a liquor store to reward ourselves. I bought the requisite 6-pack of Yebisu Black as well as a can of every beer I've never had before. It looked something like this:


It was at the register of the liquor store that I realized I was yet again out of money. Fuck that.

The Yebisu Museum

I just arrived in Nagoya and I'm now writing on Alex's computer, the same one he uses to write his blog. If I told you I was sober right now, I would be an うそつき, or liar. That's thanks to a successful day at the Yebisu Museum in Ebisu, Tokyo. If you're looking for something to do in Tokyo, I highly recommend this museum. Yui, Chris, and I left Yui's house around 1:00 and wisely decided to buy my ticket to Nagoya first, while we were still sober enough to do so. Then it was off to the Yebisu museum. The museum consists of a large central room with a tour going from the left-hand side and a tasting room on the right. First-timers are encouraged to take the tour, while repeat visitors can head straight to the prize on the right. The museum itself is free, and tasting costs about 200 yen for a 350ml draft beer. But we'll discuss that in more depth later. The tour was kind of fun, but all in Japanese, so somewhat difficult to understand. They had some neat old-fashioned brewing machines as well as some attractive glasswear and computer quizzes on beer knowledge. Here are some pictures I took from the tour:





But really, the tour pales in comparison to the tasting room. It's 200 yean for Yebisu Black (the best ever) and regular Yebisu (also awesome) and 250 yen for Weiss, which is actually really good and I think only sold in the museum. You can get some other Sapporo products and Guinness too for more money, but don't. The Black is where it's at. I had nine beers total, 5 Yebisu Black, 3 Regular, and 1 Weiss. It was delicious. With each beer you also get some complimentary beer snacks, which are pretty tasty. We spent a couple hours drinking, talking, and playing Nagano Snatch, and it was great fun. I don't have any pictures of this, but I'll show you some great shots I took while enjoying the black for the first time yesterday. Just imagine these pictures times 5.





Finally it was time to leave, and we headed to Tokyo station to catch my shinkansen. We got to the station in time to drunkenly devour some tasty curry, then it was time to say goodbye. I had a great time with Yui and Chris, and I can't wait to hang out with them back in the Minnie-Min. I rode the Shinkansen drunk, and it was sort of difficult because I was paranoid about missing my stop. So I read some Dostoevsky and The Cat Who Lived a Million Times again. I arrived in Nagoya safely, and now I'm ready ready for bed.

Children's Books and Beautiful Black Beer

Let me start things off with this video.



This is one of the funniest South Park clips ever. For those of you unable to translate the Japanese, it goes something like this:

A wonderful penis thing
The testicles have hair
Is that sound a baby monkey?
No, it's Ninjas!

Hey, Hey, Let's go, there's a fight
The important thing is to protect my balls
I'm a badass, So let's fighting
Let's fighting love

That being said, I have discovered my favorite beer and my favorite children's book. Both today. First was the children's book,
hyaku-man kai ikita neko, or The Cat Who Lived a Million Times. It's about a cat that has a million different lives with all kinds of people who love it very much, but it always hates the people. Then it becomes a stray cat for one of its lives and loves it because it gets to focus on itself all the time. This cat then becomes really popular with all the other cats because of all the stuff he's learned in his million lives, so he starts to get really full of himself. Except there's this one beautiful white cat that never even notices him. He keeps going up to her saying things like "i've lived a million times i can do all sorts of tricks" and she just says "that's true." Finally, the cat realizes he's not gonna impress this other cat with his previous lives, so he just humbles himself and asks if he can sit with her, and she says yeah. So then they get married and have a bunch of kids and eventually all the kids leave home and the two cats get old. Then the white cat dies, and the cat who lived a million times cries a million times for days on end, and dies and doesn't come back to life. It's an awesome story, and I could actually read and understand it in Japanese with just a little help from Yui. I highly recommend children's books, especially this one, for practicing reading Japanese. I bought it at Village Vanguard, which is basically a spencer's gifts of Japan, with tons of really weird stuff. It was such an awesome purchase, i think I'll read it again tonight.



From Village Vanguard we headed to a small bar named Harmonica, Chris knew which served Yebisu (king of Japanese beers) on tap. We were expecting just regular Yebisu, but we discovered they had Yebisu Black (like Guiness) on tap. We each ordered a glass at what we thought was an overpriced 530 yen. Oh how wrong we were. It was the most delicious beer I've ever had and we took some great pictures of ourselves enjoying it, which I will hopefully put up tomorrow. We happily ordered a second glass of the dark ambrosia then took the train home. While walking home from the station we stopped at the konbini and bought yet another Yebisu Kuro (black), and discovered it was almost as delicious from a can as it was from the tap. I'm going through some anxiety over this because I know it will be nearly impossible to get this beer in the states. If anyone knows where you can get Yebisu in the states or online, please please please let me know. It's just too delicious.

We ended the day drinking beers and eating snacks (I recommend Cratz) in the park. Tomorrow we're going to go to the Yebisu museum, which happens to have a tasting room. Hell Yes. I'll see you tomorrow if I'm sober enough to remember.

Tonkatsu Snatch, Nagano Snatch, and Other Fun Card Games to Be Played Without Women

Right now I'm at my buddy Yui's house in Tokyo, and I am unable to upload any pictures, oh wait, Yes I am, he has an SD reader built into his laptop. Suh-weet. So me, Yui, and Chris spent just about all of today traveling from Nagano to Tokyo, and I have to say it was the best day of travel I've ever had. We got up late this morning mainly because of the large quantity of beer we consumed the night before and the late hours we spent playing Tonkatsu Snatch.

Which brings me to my main point, Tonkatsu Snatch is the greatest. Any invented card game that is still fun after 2 hours will likely be fun forever. I'm pretty sure that'll hold up. Anyways. Tonkatsu Snatch was born on Chris and Yui's bus ride up to Nagano. It started out as a version of war, except when you have two cards of the same value against each other you can try to "snatch" the card from the other person's hand. They then upgraded it to any time there are two cards of the same suit, the lower card can try to snatch the higher one. Only one snatch per card. If any of these snatching rules are broken (multiple snatches, snatch from high to low), the rule breaker receives a backhanded slap. When Yui and Chris arrived in Nagano, we soon adapted this masterwork game into a three person variant, where any time there are two of the same card or two cards of the same suit a snatch-for-all occurs, in which any player can snatch a card greater than or equal to their own. If no snatch is successful, the highest card wins. If a successful snatch occurs, the other player keeps their card in hand below the next card, to be snatched, won or lost on the next round. All of the same slapping rules apply for misdemeanors. The game ends when one person runs out of cards, at which point he is slapped by both other players, and then the player with the most cards wins. Don't be perturbed by all the rules, as the game will still be fun while most of these are bent or broken. The name tonkatsu snatch comes from Chris's habit of accidentally calling the kotatsu (heated table) where we play, tonkatsu (pork cutlet) combined with the given snatching nature of the game. Also, this is what I would look like if I were Jesus:

Next is Nagano Snatch, which we invented on the train from Yamanouchi to Nagano. Although Nagano Snatch is a much simpler game, it requires some special equipment, namely a deck of nude playing cards. The game is played similarly to spades, where all the cards (including the Jokers) are dealt out to the three players. The players must follow suit, as in hearts or spades, and the MOST ATTRACTIVE card wins. This is subjective, but it isn't hard to reach a consensus. If it is between two cards, the third player not involved in the dispute is the judge. If you do not have any cards of a certain suit, you can play any card, and jokers are every suit. For additional fun you can play with the scoring system of spades, making it a really multi-faceted game. Try different decks and players to change the experience. We played this game for 4 hours on the bus to Tokyo amidst downing a liter and a half of delicious Japanese beer apiece, I highly recommend.

We're currently working on some more games to incorporate into some kind of Todd, Chris, and Yui olympics. That should be pretty sweet. Also, has anyone seen that awesome kimchi commercial on fujiTV, I think. It's where this guy adds a bunch of green onions to a pot of kimchi in slow motion, then he reaches in his chop sticks with his mouth wide open ALSO in slow motion, then eats it. All the while, in the background the music is a bunch of men yelling "Kimuchi Kimuchi, Kimuchi Kimuchi". It's probably my favorite commercial ever. I will be forever indebted to anyone who finds me a link to it online. I looked hard, but this is what I found instead. Make sure you watch to the very end, that's the best part.

Japanese Haircut: Great Success

There comes a time in every man's life when he needs to get the most popular haircut in Japan. For me, that time was yesterday. I returned to the same guy that cut my hair last time I was in Yamanouchi. I don't know his name, but everyone in my family calls him masuta- (master). He's basically really good at cutting hair. My picture on the wall of his store twice and on his website here. It's a pretty brilliant photo from last year. Be impressed.

So I followed my own advice on getting a Japanese haircut, and studied some vocabulary before I left. During the haircut, I noticed he was trying to ask me something about my bangs, and he was happily surprised when I said, "maegami wa nagai hou ga ii" or "You can leave my bangs long." It was awesome. When he asked me what kind of style I wanted, I answered "jouhinna katto hoshi, ima nihon de nani ha ninki ga aru?" meaning, "I want a stylish haircut, what's popular in Japan right now?" He proceeded to describe the haircut I have now, to which I happily agreed. Rather than describe it to you, I think I'll just show you:






That last one is me and the master. That's one for the fridge. I'll let you guys know as soon as he puts new pictures up on his site.