Escaping INTO the City - A mini-guide to Japan/Tokyo

A friend of a friend of mine is coming to Tokyo in a few weeks and asked me if I could give any suggestions on what to see/do to make a trip to Japan a great experience. Here's what I put together for him and for any future Japan travelers who might have stumbled across my blog:

Okay, my must-sees in Japan:

If you’ve got the time (e.g. at least a 10-day to 2-week stay), I definitely recommend spending at least 2 or 3 days in Kyoto/Nara. These cities were spared being bombed during the war, so they both retain an old Japan feel. Also, they’re both former capital cities of Japan, so they’ve got really interesting old buildings, temples, shrines, and neighborhoods.















As for Tokyo, here are some places where you’re bound to get some great photos:

-Harajuku/Meiji shrine on a Sunday morning – here you can see some of the famous Harajuku girls and a very big and pretty Shinto shrine. You’ll also probably come across a wedding or wedding photos being taken at the shrine.
















-Shibuya crossing/intersection has one of those typical, “500-people crossing the street at every light” scenes that epitomize Tokyo. There are also some grade A crazy Japanese teenagers there with weird make-up and clothes.












-View from Tokyo Metropolitan Gov’t building is unparalleled and FREE! I took the photo that is behind my blog's title from this building. Pretty, huh?

-You should indulge in karaoke at least once, though you’ll probably want to go again because it’s seriously addicting.
















-If you can't make it to Kyoto, Kamakura is a great alternative and is day-trip from Tokyo. It has the world's oldest, seated, bronze Buddha and the whole area is a virtual temple-a-thon.














Other tips:

-Definitely invest in a good guidebook, because things are really hard to find sometimes in Tokyo.

-Plan a budget and then expect to go over it. Almost everything is expensive here, including the trains/subway (although still cheaper than London).

-If you’ve got no food restrictions, it’s actually easy to find good food that isn’t expensive. If you do have food restrictions (e.g. vegetarian), do some research beforehand because almost everything here has fish or some kind of fish seasoning or extract in it and most salespeople and waiters are not knowledgeable about what’s in the food. The handiest aide in a case like this is your own personal Japanese to do the food negotiations for you, but since that's not usually an option, your best bet is lots of research. If you're a vegetarian coming to Tokyo, contact me for some resources. I can suggest a few restaurants and ways to eat in regular restaurants.

-As long as you’re in Tokyo, you can usually find some way to communicate in English with someone (though this is still harder than you might think). Once you’re outside of Tokyo or Kyoto, it becomes a lot more difficult.

-Are you staying at a hotel in Tokyo? If so and you're staying at a major hotel, the Airport Limousine Bus probably has the hotel on one of it's routes. The bus is the easiest way to get into the city from Narita if you're not familiar with the train system in Tokyo.

-FYI, end of July to mid-September is Fuji-climbing season, so if that's your thing, you may want to look into how to go about doing that. I have no idea on the particulars and wouldn't want to put anything out there about something like climbing a frickin' mountain that I don't know about personally, so you're on your own on figuring out the logistics of this one. Just wanted to make you aware of it in case you want to include that in your trip! Oh, my only tip (via one of my classmates): bring good climbing shoes or else your toenails might fall off a few months later!

Okay, hope this has been helpful! See you around the neighborhood!

my latest obsession/soulmate(s)

There's no excuse for it, but I am so in love with these guys. They're hot and they're funny and they can play instruments - all without taking themselves too seriously. Plus, in addition to being hiLARious, their songs are actually fun to sing. So, yes, I do sing along to this song quite a lot.



I even do the robot voices. Now, once again, without emotion...

p.s. Sorry to my "fiance" Matt. I guess the dancing just wasn't enough for me. ;)

p.p.s. If you want to see some REAL dancing, please watch 'So You Think You Can Dance' - I think I miss that show more than Target.

Go tell it on the...

This is what I saw when I woke up this morning:


Okay, granted, I wasn't at my apartment in Tokyo. I was staying at a hotel perched atop a mountain on the Izu peninsula. This was the view from the window at around 5:25am. By 5:40, fog had completely shrouded Mt. Fuji, so it was literally by a coincidental matter of minutes, that I got this shot. Amazing, huh?

I don't know, I heard about it from...

Facebook is an interesting site and I still haven't figured out what to make of it yet. One cool feature that it has is to see what random groups your friends have joined. Today, I saw that my friend Lara had joined a group called "When I was young I watched Macgyver, Gummy Bears, Airwolf & Night Rider..." The group is mainly made up of South Africans, so I didn't join, but I did read one of their discusion posts - "What's it called??? SOMEONE must know!!!!!!" I've had this exact same sentiment many times when trying to remember the titles of those cartoons I used to love so much that make me say really old people things like, "Cartoons these days just aren't as good as they were when I was a kid." Anyway, the show this guy was talking about is apparently called La Linea. Here's how he described it: "The whole show was a line drawing of some character which just used to yell at his illustrator to draw him stuff to use/eat. If the character didnt like what was drawn he used to yell louder."

It wasn't one that I watched in California, but apparently it was a real hit in Germany and South Africa!

Second Harvest Japan

Watch this.



Saturday, instead of sleeping in - because how would that make Saturday any different from any other day in my current unemployed schedule - I got up bright and early and headed to Akihabara to help prepare and assemble a whole lot of food - I helped with cookie packing (don't think I'll be able to look at a chocolate chip cookie again for a long time... this is a good thing) - for distribution to the homeless of Ueno park. After we finished with the preparation, I went with the other volunteers to Ueno, where we spent a couple of hours handing out hot and cold food to over 500 people. We even had enough to give some people seconds, so in total, we handed out over 700 meals plus bags of cookies, edamame, beef jerky, fresh fruit and veggies, bread, and pastries for people to eat throughout the week until Second Harvest shows up again, same time, same place, to do it all over next Saturday.

Today had no one, huge life-changing moment for me, but rather, more significantly, small reminders of how we're all just neighbors in this world, so to speak, and hopefully we lend a helping hand when we can. It's easy to wonder how the people I saw today got into the situation they're in and, somehow, it always occurs to me when I meet people who are in living situations so different from my own, how it was probably one small thing, one choice at a crossroads, that brought them to a line at a soup kitchen, or a park bench as a bed, or a sketchy job on street corner. Or maybe it wasn't even their choice at that crossroads, but a choice made by someone else, out of their control, that brought this man or that woman to stand in that giant line, waiting for a bowl of rice, potato salad, sausage, pickled vegetables, and a cup of clam chowder. Whatever the case may be, what's more neighborly than making sure that a couple of your neighbors get a hot meal once a week.

If you're interested in volunteering with Second Harvest or if your company could possibly donate money, supplies, or time to the effort (a group of employees from NuSkin Japan was helping to serve up grub today), please check out the website and/or get in contact with Patricia (volunteer@2hj.org). Every hand helps.

Desert storm

Okay, I don't know what to tell you about that new picture behind the blog title. I took that photo while driving through the Arizona desert last December. And I just figured out the whole "you can put a picture as a background for your title" thing. So, this one just happened to look really cool and be the right angle. What can I say? Um, there'll be a storm a-brewin' if Tokyo ever looks like that? Who knows. If you can come up with a more clever (cleverer?) explanation, more power to ya. In the meantime, that picture will just have to do because I think it looks pretty and I haven't yet found one from my time in Tokyo that has the same proportions.

The Gaijin Strata

Generally speaking, gaijin fall into 1 of 3 categories (for none of which do I qualify):

1) Livin' the High Life

These are the lucky ducks who were either hired from overseas or transfered from overseas and are not only earning big bucks (or pounds or euro, as they're generally paid in their home currency and hence really benefit from the weak yen), but they're saving big bucks. They are paid a competitive salary based on their home country's rates, but almost all their living expenses are taken care of by the company, including, but not limited to, their housing, car(s), children's private international school education, health insurance, transportation within Tokyo, at least one trip home per year for the whole family, driver (if they're big enough of a big wig), membership at the Tokyo American Club - a kind of country club (or something similar), and housekeeper or nanny for the kids. That means that pretty much everything they're making is going right into a savings account back home. And sitting there, earning interest. This is pretty standard operating procedure for most situations like this, it's not particular to Japan. An Italian guy I know who's here working for a German company recently challenged my declaration that Tokyo is an expensive city. To which me and all the Japanese people sitting around him replied, "Eeeeeee?!?!" His 75 sq. meter, 2 bedroom apartment for one single guy is fully paid, including utilities. He didn't even know how much the average electric bill is in Tokyo! But, hey, more power to 'em because it's one of my greatest aspirations to work me out a deal as sweet as this one someday. Also, I benefited from being in this stratum when I lived in Tokyo as a kid, and I can tell you, it's as great as it sounds.

The downside to being in this group is that the people lucky enough to be a real 'expat' have the unfortunate situation of rarely being forced to learn the native language of the country they're living in. They tend to live in gaijin ghettos where almost everyone speaks English to some extent and, therefore, sadly lack in creating an authentic local-living experience. They also tend to work in environments where it's not necessary to learn the local language. I had a situation kind of like this (without all the above perks, of course, though I did get "free" parking all over the city) when I was in Paris and I ended up deciding to take a four-nights per week French class because I was hardly using French at all in the international office I was working in - I ended up using French more to chat with my new friends from Spain, South Africa, Uruguay, and Japan than with French people. Ha! Hey, there's got to be some pluses and minuses for every deal, right?

2) The rare but suuuuuper lucky university-level professor

There aren't too many of these wandering the streets of Tokyo these days, but if you can figure out a way to set yourself up in one of these cushy jobs, consider yourself Charlie (as in "Chocolate Factory, I've got the Golden Ticket" Chuck). These folks get similar deals on housing and paid trips home, but they're paid in local currency and have to pay their own utilities. But the BIG bonus here is that they get FIVE, yes, 5, months of vacation a year!!! And, during the school year, they rarely teach more than 15 or 20 hours a week. Of course, they have to put in time planning lessons and having meetings, but, otherwise, they're free to live the semi-high life. Another benefit of this stratum is that you generally get more of a chance to meet and work with locals and, if you make the effort, learn the language. The major obstacle to hooking one of these posts is that you MUST have a Master's degree. Usually in some kind of language or teaching-related field, but if you don't, that's not an automatic disqualification.

3) The lowly NOVA (or any other massive foreign language-teaching company) teacher

This is still not such a bad gig. You still get a fairly decent pay and are guaranteed a certain number of hours per week so you don't have to worry too much about how much your next paycheck will be. However, these companies are also widely known for ripping teachers off, being really strict with dress and time policies (e.g. Nova doesn't pay you anything if you're 5 minutes late for a lesson even with good reason), having sometimes strange student experiences, forbidding any kind of socializing with students outside of class (e.g. if you happen to be at the same party but didn't know some of your students would be there, you're supposed to leave), and you have to pay all your own expenses, except the initial flight over and flight back to your home country, which they reimburse you for after the fact. Another big minus for me is that you have to use all their materials and there's not much room for including your own lesson plans. This makes perfect sense from a standardized course, chain company point of view, but it just doesn't work for me.

*4) Special mention: Hostesses

There's only one word for this group. This final group is not usually mentioned because of it's bad reputation, long nighttime hours, relatively low pay, and inevitable association with stripping, prostitution, and organized crime. There's definitely no minimum level of education required for this, though I'm pretty sure that most have at least a high school diploma. One girl I met hadn't finished high school, but still seemed a smart cookie as she was teaching herself how to write kanji. Of course, I'm also pretty sure she had some kind of serious drug problem. There's always the stories of the nice girls from overseas who think it's gonna be just partying and a chance to earn a lot money (which of course they'd use to pay their way through school, a PhD no less), but I'd guess that most girls are just looking for some easy money and don't mind having to chat with drunk businessmen who want to grope you. I almost considered doing this just to see what it'd be like - I mean, I'm definitely never gonna be a prostitute or a stripper, so I figured this was the closest I'd ever get to see how the other half lives. However, a fateful all-nighter in January where I was obliged to be nice, out of consideration for my friend, to the really drunk, really obnoxious ass friend-of-a-friend who was out with us at 4 am after hours of watching him get progressively drunker and progressively more obnoxious and me getting progressively less patient (I was seriously ready to ditch the people I was with to escape this guy), I figured that was close enough for me. Final verdict: NOT WORTH IT!! I'm not that desperate though I don't begrudge the girls who are - everyone's got their own situation to deal with.

So there you have it, the 3 plus 1 groups into which most gaijin in Japan fit. My limbo-ness in terms of a job extends to my limbo-ness in terms of stratum status too. I'm not quite gaijin and definitely not quite nihonjin, so while I haven't been forced to take a Nova-type job, neither am I qualified to work as a regular Japanese person (the language barrier seems to grow as an obstacle daily!). I may be poor-ish, but at least I don't have to worry about being deported. Anyone looking for an under-qualified bartender or an over-qualified assistant who can't help you with any logistical problems?