Time to Go Home

Last blog post from Japan. I know I intended to blog every day, but I kinda ran out of things to say (though I'll probably think of more back in Australia. Then I installed HoN....).

Things I want to eat when I get back to Australia:

-fish and chips

-pasta

-pizza

-proper sausages

-Heinz big red tomato chips

-Grill'd

-burritos

-pies

-sausage rolls

-chips with salt (with the exception of McDonald's, which I hear tastes the same everywhere you go, every time we had chips (as in the fast food kind), they weren't salty at all. Probably because salt is bad for you)

-KFC

-chicken and sweet corn soup

-mum's won tons

-mum's tofu

-Indian curry

What I will miss most about Japan: soy milk melon pan.

Adventures in Japan, Part 4

My favourite suburb of Toyko so far has to be Shibuya. It's the teen-haven of Tokyo, but for me, it's food heaven. There are so many ramen shops there, and fast food places. At Rangers' suggestion, we finally tracked down a Freshness Burger there, which is kind of like Lord of the Fries, but with burgers. Of course, I have to mention the clothes shopping. It seemed like every single store was having a sale, so I thought maybe I'd be able to pick up some work clothes cheaply. MrMan5.5 told me Shibuya 109 was famous for clothing, so I took a look inside.

It was completely packed with females, ranging from teens to middle-aged women. The clothes looked as though they were aimed more towards young females, so maybe the older women were just there shopping for their daughters. After looking through some of the floors, I decided the clothes weren't really my style and headed over to the other store MrMan5.5 pointed out - H&M. I was amazed that I could find what I thought to be suitable work clothes for 1000 yen a piece - that's about $12. I bought a whole bag full of stuff for what I paid for one shirt back in Australia. I really don't understand why clothes are so expensive in Australia compared to Japan. It's all the same material, right?

Anyway, I would really recommend heading to Shibuya, if not for the tasty ramen, or cheap clothing stores, at least to see Hachikō. Not to mention MrMan5.5's other reason for wanting to go - it was where the popular Nintendo DS game The World Ends With You is set. It's also amazing to see the main intersection in front of Shibuya station at night on a weekend. The Elizabeth/Flinders St. intersection is nothing compared to this, it's a huge mass of people crossing in all directions, and yet everyone seems to make it to where they want without issue. It amazes me how people can get around without problems in a country with such a high population density. I guess one of the contributing factors is Japan's great infrastructure. Nobody is running for a train because the next train will be 3-4 minutes after that one, so it's not really a big deal if you miss it. The stairs at the station have arrows indicating which side is for walking up and down, so it is a lot more efficient.

The biggest adventure MrMan5.5 and I had today though, was trying to wash our clothes. There wasn't a coin laundry in the area we are staying in currently (Ginza), so we were told to head to Tsukiji to find one.

[Short tangent. I mentioned this before, but my number one warning for people planning to go to Japan is that there are almost no rubbish bins anywhere. Not only that, but Japan is really into recycling things, so even if you do find a bin, it is probably a recycle bin and not suitable for whatever it is you're holding. Every time we find a bin while out and about, I feel the compulsion to empty out my pockets of all rubbish, because it's unlikely that we will encounter another bin until we are back in our hotel room. In fact, the bin in our hotel room seems to always be overflowing.]

Finding our way around Tsukiji was a bit difficult. There weren't many notable landmarks that we could find, and seeing as neither of us was very good with kanji, we weren't really able to read the signs around the place. After walking around for a bit, and even stopping to ask someone for help, we managed to find the place, only to find it was completely deserted. All the washing machines and stuff were there, just nobody tending the store or anything. I read somewhere that the crime rate is really low in Japan, so I guess people are quite trusting. Quite a few times, I've seen boxes of stuff stacked outside stores completely unattended, and thought how easy it would be to walk off with a box or two, but maybe it was Japan's aura of dutifulness (to the society) that wiped any criminal compulsions from my mind.

It made me realise that although we are getting by on hiragana and katakana alone (it is super important to learn katakana, it makes life so much easier as you can usually guess the meaning of everything else), there are a few kanji that would have made things easier had I remembered them sooner. It's probably a bit late for someone who hasn't learnt Japanese or Chinese to learn all of the 2000 or so kanji that most Japanese are expected to know, and I don't really fancy spending the rest of this trip studying, so I tried to find a list of important ones for travelers. This site has a few, but I thought I'd add some of my own.

小　SMALL - This might be a really obscure way of remembering it, but MrMan5.5 described this kanji as a 'J' with wings, which reminded me of Jenny's nickname in Gossip Girl "Little J".

大 BIG - I like to think of this as a person stretching themselves out to their fullest to try to make themselves appear bigger.

(The toilet we have in the hotel room seems to have the kanji for small and big in place of the "half-flush" and "full-flush" icons.)

電　ELECTRIC - To me, this just looks like one of those Chinese-style lanterns, which are now probably powered by electricity.

車　VEHICLE - This one is another obscure explanation, but to me, it looks like the kanji for middle (中) that I know from mah jongg, only with extra lines above and below, which makes me think of a car driving in the middle of two lanes. Co-incidentally, this kanji alone is the kanji for car, though I believe the meaning is intended to be vehicle, as combined with the kanji for electric, you get the kanji for train (ie. electric car/vehicle). I believe this is also the kanji used for elevators, but I can't remember the word off the top of my head right now.

英語 ENGLISH - I learned this so that I would be able to see if the DVDs/Blu-Rays I wanted to buy had English subtitles. Then MrMan5.5 reminded me that they would be region-locked anyway. I was so disappointed, because I had found the Densha Otoko special box set. T_T Anyway, I can't even remember this kanji myself, I just wrote it down in my notebook so I could compare it with other kanji on the box, but the second one I do remember, because part of it is the kanji for five (五) which is pronounced "go" which is the same pronunciation for the kanji 語 with the meaning language. It's a nifty kanji to know, because you can easily find languages, for instance, 日本語 is the kanji for Japan combined with the kanji for language, with the meaning Japanese (the language, not the nationality). The first part of the kanji is also the kanji for the verb "to say", 言, so more stuff about talking. The last part of it is the kanji for mouth, 口.

Some useful katakana words that I have picked up:

カレー curry

バーガー burger

メロンパン melon pan

ラメン ramen (also found in hiragana)

ギョウザ gyouza (dumplings)

パスタ pasta

チーザ cheese

ドア door

ホテル hotel

ビル building (not to be confused with ビール which is beer)

グレンラガン Gurren Lagann

MrMan5.5 just went to our local convenience store and tried to buy some weird flavoured pringles. He wanted the store clerk to read the flavour for him (because MrMan5.5 didn't know what it said), but he wasn't able to get his meaning across, so he wanted me to add a part asking how to read something.

Sumimasen. Kono (kanji/katakana/hiragana) wa dou yomimasu ka?

-Excuse me. This (kanji/katakana/hiragana), how do you read it?

Adventures in Japan, Part 3

Not sure if I can keep up this blog-a-day thing while in Japan, as I'm quickly running out of things to say - and most of what I have said you can probably find on some tourist site about Japan anyway.

I forgot to mention yesterday, but MrMan5.5 managed to find a yakisoba roll at our local convenience store, so he bought one so he could see what they were talking about in Yakitate Japan.

We went to Hakone today, to try out one of the hot springs there. We decided to go to Hakone Kamon, which had good reviews, and was relatively easy to get to from the station (there's a free shuttle bus that leaves every hour, but there is also a bus you can catch for 100 yen that seems to be pretty frequent). The staff were really friendly, and the other patrons were also really nice as well. They were perfectly happy to take photos of us, and teach us how to tie the belt for the yukata.

I couldn't take the heat in the hot spring though, and so I didn't stay for very long. It was also kinda boring. They separate the hot springs based on gender (because you're naked while inside), so I didn't really have anyone to talk to, and I didn't want to bring my book in case it got wet. Any time I got into a hot spring, another woman would leave (was it me?), so even if I wanted to talk to someone, there wasn't anyone there to talk to. As we went during the week, the hot spring was virtually deserted.

When we first got here, I was pretty reluctant to speak any Japanese at all (despite spending 2 years studying it at uni). Whenever Japanese was required, I wanted MrMan5.5 to do the talking, because he looked like a foreigner, and so they would speak to him nice and slowly. If I did the talking, they would assume I was fluent, and so would answer with fast, complicated Japanese and we'd be clueless. This proved to be correct when we were in Akihabara and I asked if they had Gurren Lagann in Blu Ray and was answered with a long stream of Japanese. When he saw our clueless faces, he crossed his arms to make an 'X' and shook his head no.

I think most of my reluctant comes from experiencing people speaking Japanese in Australia. By people, I mean weeaboos, and by speaking Japanese, I mean screaming out a few phrases they've picked up from anime over and over again, completely ignoring the meaning and correct usage of the phrases. I think it's great that they're opening themselves to another culture, especially one so different from the one we have in Australia, but I cringe every time I see them. For one, they act quite arrogant all the time, like they're so much better than everyone else because they "know" another language. They sound all whiny and they seem to punctuate anything that is said with "Ee?!?!?!?!?!?!" that is really drawn out. It's something that Japanese people do as an expression of surprise, a bit like "Oh, really?", and seems to occur a lot in anime, but weeaboos seem to use it so much it sends shivers down my spine when I hear it.

Then you get the problem of their Japanese vocabulary being so limited that in order for them to talk, it is mostly in English, so what they end up doing is throwing in Japanese phrases when they can, and speaking English otherwise. Overall, it ends up sounding really stupid.

"I saw a neko statue today. It was soooooooooooo kawaii!!!!!!"

"Ee?! No way!"

"I want to go to Nihon soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much."

"Watashi, too!"

I know I'm acting all arrogant now, like I'm better than them because I actually studied Japanese, and have now actually been to Japan. It seems like my willingness to admit that: a) I'm not Japanese and b) I'm bad at speaking Japanese, is mostly my basis for being arrogant. In Australia, I will almost never speak Japanese, even if the situation might require it, because I feel like I'm butchering the language. When I call Graham, he always answers with "moshi moshi, Anna-san", and I always reply in English.

It seems silly not to use what little I know now that we're in Japan though. Even if my grammar is all wrong, and the pronunciation is off, it would probably help us and the people we're talking to get the gist of what we want across at least. So despite my reservations, I'm trying to say more and more in Japanese and trying to encourage MrMan5.5 to do the same. We learnt how to say "Are you a homeless person?" last night, and I want to get MrMan5.5 to say it to some random people and see how they react, and if they get angry, just pass it off as a foreigner's mistake. He only seems to want to ask me if I'm homeless. At any rate, I've decided that it's mean, and I'll probably burst out laughing if he does it anyway, so that would give it away.

To finish off, I thought I'd add some useful phrases for anyone else who is planning to visit Japan (please do not give this to weeaboos).

しゃしんをとってもいいですか。

Shashin o tottemo ii desu ka?

Is it OK to take photos?

しゃしんをとってもらえますか。

Shashin o totte moraemasu ka?

Can you take a photo of me?

みているだけです。

Mite iru dake desu.

I'm just looking.

それをみてもいいですか。

Sore o mite mo ii desu ka?

Can I look at it?

わたしたちにはたかすぎます。

Watashitachi ni wa taka sugimasu.

It's too expensive for us.

＿＿＿＿はどこでかうことができますか。

_______ wa doko de kau koto ga dekimasu ka?

Where can I buy _____?

＿＿＿＿＿がはいっていますか。

_______ ga haitte imasu ka?

Does it contain ________?

わたしは＿＿＿＿＿＿アレルギです。

Watashi wa ________ arerugi desu.

I'm allergic to __________.

ふたりがおねがいします。

Futari ga onegai shimasu.

Table for two, please.

えいごのメニューがありますか。

Eigo no menyuu ga arimasu ka?

Do you have an English menu?

Number of people who I have asked to take photos of us: 2

Number of convenience store breakfasts so far: 3

Number of people asked about their homeless status: 0

Number of giraffes tending the counter at 7-11: 1

Adventures in Japan, Part 2

One of the first things that happened to us when we got off at Akihabara was getting accosted by maids. They're on every corner, and while most of them seem to be from the same franchise, it seems there are quite a few different maid cafes around Akihabara. So today we decided we were going to try one out for lunch (when in Rome...) and ended up picking the PoPoPuRe Maid Cafe, which was lucky, because they had an English speaking maid there. The food was decent (the corn soup was terrible, don't order it if you go there), and the maids were very friendly, but it wasn't really what I expected. It was kind of fun "casting" the tasty magic spell on our food with the maid (although MrMan5.5 said it wrong, and I blame him for my food not tasting as well as it could have). They also have a dubbing studio for you to dub your own short anime for 1500 yen, but we opted not to try it after seeing another group fail terribly at it. You could also get a photo with a maid for 500 yen.

The coolest part of the maid cafe was if you order a rice omelette, they draw a picture for you.

The melon float (spider) that MrMan5.5 ordered was also really cute.

The menu was in both English and Japanese, but the English names weren't all the descriptive of what the food was. Mine said it was a tomato sauce pasta, so I was expecting Napoli sauce or something like that, but it ended up being a Bolognese. Although to be fair, I think the katakana said something along the lines of "meat sauce", but just beware if you're a vegetarian and can't read any Japanese.

Japan is such a cute country. The people are cute, the food is cute, even the sewerage system is cute.

(Rar! I'm going to eat you... Om nom nom)

One important thing I learnt about Japan was that even though there are pedestrian crossings everywhere, they're not like the ones in Australia where cars have to give way to pedestrians. They're more like recommendations for where you should cross. Some have traffic lights, but people seem to ignore them sometimes, so it's important to look out before you cross.

Omiyage today: GP, Olek, Anjelica

Gashapon played so far: 6

Meals served by maids: 1

Number of people who celebrated their birthday at the Pokèmon Center today: 2 (and we got free stickers!)

Adventures in Japan, Part 1

We arrived in Japan and spent most of the first few hours working out how to get to Tokyo station from Narita airport, and how we were going to get from there to our hotel. The map of the train system wasn't all that helpful, as there are so many train lines, and we only had a JR pass that let us on JR lines (there are lines owned by other companies in Japan). After fumbling around at a few information booths, we finally got told to catch the subway to Ginza station. It was 160 yen for a ticket, which is about $2, so not too bad, especially considering how fast and clean the trains are. One of the first things we realised once we started walking around was that Japan is so clean, but there are no rubbish bins. Well, there are a few, but compared to Melbourne where you see rubbish bins pretty much on every corner, Tokyo is pretty much a rubbish bin void - which makes me wonder how it is so clean.

MrMan5.5 had an encounter with Japan's crouching ground toilets, and now he's afraid of bum sprays whenever he goes to a toilet. I wasn't nearly so silly, and went to the Western-style toilet. Tokyo is actually really good as a tourist city, there are signs everywhere for important places, and a lot of them are in both English and Japanese. We are still a bit wary of ordering food, as a lot of menus are Japanese only, but so far, I've had curry, which I know the katakana for, so it's all good! MrMan5.5 has been a bit more brave, and has tried something other than curry. At his suggestion, we also had a convenience store breakfast, which he says is something a lot of Japanese people do.

People weren't kidding when they said there are vending machines everywhere. We have yet to find a vending machine for used high-school girls' panties, but we did order dinner from a vending machine today:

You put money into the machines, pick the meal you want to buy, and a ticket pops out. If you are done ordering your meal (I assume you can order multiple meals in one transaction), you pull the lever at the bottom, and your change drops out. MrMan5.5 ordered a katsudon and udon set, and I ordered curry soba.

Obviously, one of our first stops was going to be Akihabara (a.k.a. Electric Town), where MrMan5.5 nearly had an orgasm as we stepped off the train. We didn't see anyone in cosplay apart from people who wore it as part of their job, but it was so much more amazing than I imagined.

One of the first things we noticed was how tall all the buildings were in Tokyo. I imagine the design process for new buildings goes something like this:

Owner: I want to build a convenience store.

Architect: OK.

*6 months later*

Owner: I only wanted one floor.

Architect: Sorry, we only know how to build skyscrapers.

Owner: What do I do with the rest of this space?

Architect: Rent it out for lots of money.

Owner: OK.

We walked maybe 1km in terms of distance away from Akihabara station, but managed to lose hours there, because every store we walked into had at least 5 floors. It reminded me of the huge Pokèmart in Celadon City. There is a floor directory on each floor, and you can go up and down via stairs or an escalator. All the stores were really cramped though, you will spend a lot of time trying to edge past people. Which is not surprising, given Tokyo is about a quarter the size of Melbourne ( 2187 km^2 vs 8806 km^2, yet has over three times as many people living there (13 million vs 4 million) according to Wikipedia.

It is stupidly easy to spend money here. 100 yen coins look and feel like 10c coins, but are actually worth $1.20. Maybe I should convert all of my money to 1 yen coins, so I can actually feel what I'm spending (but then I'll be worse than the people with the 5c coin jars, since things typically cost around 2000-3000 yen).

My loot so far:

Omiyage so far: Gerald and QC.

Gashapon played so far: 1

Non-McDonald's/KFC meals eaten so far: 3

Failed attempts at trying to communicate in Japanese: Priceless (????)

Sucks To Be Female

I'm becoming quite fond of James Devlin's blog, Coding The Wheel. I really like his writing style, and his posts are usually really helpful and easy to understand. I stumbled upon his post about the Matt Aimonetti/Ruby event, and when I read it, I was astonished that such a thing actually happened - not the part about a guy putting semi-pornographic images in a slideshow, but the part about people being completely outraged. Then again, I live in a country where we have the right to freedom of speech, and although we're sliding towards an era of super political correctness, we're mostly a free-speaking people.

Seeing as this seems to be one of my "crusades", I'm sure I've gone on ad infinitum about the whole females in a male-dominated environment. What this made me think of, was a comment Paul made a long time ago, about how people should learn to speak English. I'm sure I blogged about it before but I'm too tired to search for it, and just saying it like that is completely out of context, so please don't think badly of him! It's not as bad as it sounds. Still, I'm starting to agree with him to some degree - if you want to go somewhere different, don't expect people to bend over backwards to accommodate you. Despite the fact that English is taught at schools in Japan, when I go to Japan, I am going with the expectation that people will speak Japanese, which is why I'm equipped with my trusty "Eego o hanasemasu ka?"

Ah, I tried to stop myself, but it seems like I'm going to go on my crusade anyway. I became an engineer with the knowledge that this is a male-dominated field. I didn't even pick chemical engineering, which is apparently starting to approach a 1:1 ratio of genders, I picked software engineering, which is stereotypically full of geeky guys, and based on my 151 class, probably holds true to the stereotype. If this were marketing, and some company designed an ad to appeal to a market sector which turned out to be predominately males, if such an ad were to feature scantily clad women lying around on sports cars, nobody would bat an eyelid. If a speaker wants to make his presentation more appealing to an audience of mostly males, and he adds similar images, it sparks debate. Why? Supposedly because the females in the audience felt that it was insulting to them and degraded them.

OK, I understand that. I would prefer to be treated as an intelligent (arguable) being, rather than a piece of meat. So this reminded me of something MrMan5.5 said to me at Manifest last year. I said that I thought it was disgusting the way that some of the people were looking at some of the female cosplayers. He argued that they dressed that way because they wanted people to look at them. Taken completely to the extreme, it leads to the whole, it's OK to rape girls if they dress like sluts, but that's not what he meant. He meant that these people put time and money into their costumes, with the intention of having people take photos of them and admire them. A bit like art. I disagreed with him at the time, but I see the point he was trying to make now.

What if pornographic images cause males to objectify those women who chose to be photographed and not every single woman in the whole-wide world?!

When my online gaming started involving more than tower defense maps in Starcraft, and I encountered more people, I was exposed to a large number of ways to be told to suck someone's balls, or something of that variety. At first, I thought, "What?! Did he really just say that?" and was curious as to whether this was how males really speak when there are no females around - which, admittedly, was part of the appeal of hiding my identity. Now it doesn't even phase me at all, and when someone drops the C-bomb, and if someone calls them on it with the excuse that "there are ladies present", I usually end up thinking that person is being oversensitive. To me, that kind of stuff is part of the "gamer lingo". Sure, it might be offensive and/or exclude people, but it seems the majority of people who are part of that community are fine with the way that it is.

Side note - the kanji for "bride" consists of the "woman" and "home" characters, which is meant to signify a woman moving to her new home after getting married. The kanji for "wife" consists of the "woman" and "broom" characters. Both of these seem pretty damn sexist, if you think about it, but nobody is up in arms about that!

All of this political correctness makes me want to cry. Sometimes I find myself censoring myself because I'm afraid of who I am going to offend (which is why I'm worried about posting certain things on Facebook, and given some of the things I've heard about that have happened due to Facebook posts, I might be right in doing so). What are you meant to call "black people"? I once saw some (I'm guessing) American tourists talking about a man playing a didgeridoo in Sydney. "We should give some money to this poor African-American man, he obviously looks like he's starving." Contrary to what some people seem to think, not all dark-skinned people are African or American! They seemed like kind people, but just wow...

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is:

- if you're going where no (wo)man has gone before, keep in mind that you're entering a place with its own culture and traditions

-political correctness is becoming too much

-if you feel really uncomfortable being where you are, perhaps you should consider moving somewhere else

Leaving you with something to think about, Violet Blue asks an interesting question in her article, "2010: The Year of Whining about Women in Tech":

Everyone, every single one of you who have whined about women in tech this year are full of it until you can tell me one thing. And then, I will believe you are of a worthy cause. Like so many women in tech, I will no longer avoid attending your “women in tech” events. I will stop despising this cultural segregation for being female. I will stop hating your pro-women-in-tech posts that single us out, all cloaked in goodwill that always feels like it has a darker agenda.

Tell me why we should have more women in tech.

If you’re telling me we should, then tell me why we should. Why it is better. What benefits it brings to business, to profit, to innovation. To development. To leading companies and advising them.

And One Clown

<th3no0b> Im going to be the next hitler
<th3no0b> Im going to kill all the jews and 1 clown
<rageagainsttheamish> why the clown
<th3no0b> See? no one cares about the jews
<rageagainsttheamish>lmao

-Quote #171987

Procrastinating for a bit and skimming Facebook. I realised I have a weird tendency to " Like" someone's comment even if I only liked one small part of it - though I guess that is the point of the "Like" function, to get you to interact with the site even if you're only reading briefly, so that hopefully you will stay longer and it can flash more ads at you. For instance, a friend of mine mentioned something that she her plans were for today(which was obviously so important to me that I can't even remember what it was), and at the end, she said that she was going to watch the third season of The I.T Crowd.

My cursor hovered over the "Like" button, but one of the other things I hate about liking someone's status is that because of my settings, every time someone comments on that status, I get an email with what they said, and most of the time, I can't even remember what the original comment was, so I end up having to log back into Facebook to check (again, probably another one of the reasons for the function). Instead, I clicked the "View all x comments" button, and read the comments. A lot of them were people commenting that they also liked The I.T Crowd.

I wonder if I could change my status to something with a completely outrageous statement, but have something at the end like "I just saw the new Harry Potter movie and it was awesome!!!!!!!!!!" (although arguably, some people may believe that is outrageous) whether people would comment on the outrageous thing or mention Harry Potter?

Joanna linked this article describing someone's experiment to try to find Facebook's algorithm for deciding which news items to show you. I always wondered why I would click on someone's Facebook profile to see what they've been up to lately, and see an entire wall full of status updates that never entered my news feed. Strangely enough, MrMan5.5 is never on my news feed, despite the fact that we are listed as being in a relationship together on Facebook. Something weird going on there! Maybe Facebook just assumes that I know everything going on in his life because we're together, and so I don't need to be updated with his status on my news feed. But if that were true, then you'd never get comments like this - though I do check MrMan5.5's profile every now and again to see if people have tagged him in photos from ages ago, so sometimes I comment on his status even though it doesn't appear in my news feed, but I am usually late to the party. =(

Anyway, back to the one clown. I'm trying to think of what kind of thing would be the most likely to cause people to focus on it. The one clown example works because the addition of "and one clown" causes confusion - how is the clown related to the Jews? Is there something about Jews that makes clowns important to them? Is the person saying Jews are clowns? Did Hitler hate Clowns? Whichever question is the first to pop into your head, it invariably leads to the question, "Why the clown?" which is what makes it work.

I thought the Harry Potter statement would work, because it's not entirely implausible to make it seem like a sarcastic comment, and I know a lot of people who like Harry Potter, though maybe I should wait until the next Twilight movie, because a lot of people seem very vocal about their opinions about Twilight, and will probably end up arguing about that and completely ignoring whatever else I said.

So the next part is, what can I say on Facebook that won't completely damage my "e-reputation", but will be shocking enough that I can make a "nobody cares about the Jews" comment? This is a huge can of worms, which I think deserves a post on its own, so I'll leave it at that. Suggestions, anyone?