Kasai-san and the Rotating Sushi

I feel like I’m writing a series of Harry Potter novels.

So in Japan they have these restaurants called Rotating Sushi. Kasai-san kept calling them Mawaru Zushi, which litterally means rotating sushi, but I think there’s another name for them. Basically it’s a noisy restaurant where chefs put sushi on a conveyer belt and you pick up the ones you want and they charge you based on how many plates you have and their color.

I’ve never been before. I’ve never even seen them, so I was really excited to go and Kasai-san kept promising me that we’d go as soon as I got a car. Well the car is here, and it was time to go, so off we went (Kasai-san with her eyes closed while I drove) listening to funky J-Pop on the radio and singing along to the words we knew.

Aaah, the restaurant. It was very, very cool. Lots of weird looking fish I’ve never seen before and all Kasai-san could do was tell me the name in Japanese, to which I would shrug and pop the sushi in my mouth.

Well there was this one particular sushi I kept seeing come around filled with quite possibly the most … interesting thing I’ve ever seen. It was some sort of slimy white thing next to a VERY familiar slimy brown thing wrapped in sea weed. Both were in very generous amounts. I’m eyeing this thing like an angry bull eyeing a novice matador. I view it as a challenge, one that yours truly will overcome with grace and poise and elegance because I’m a cosmopolitan!

...or so I tell myself.

I take the slimy thing off the conveyer belt. “Ika!” Kasai-san said. I recognize that word. The slimy white thing is squid. But she tells me she’s not sure what the slimy brown stuff is. That’s fine. I know what it is. I know what I’m about to get myself into, so with a sense of reckless abandon, I pop the thing in my mouth and start to chew. Slowly. One fermented soybean at a time.

I had a snarky grin on my face for about two miliseconds where all I could taste was the squid. Extremely quickly the natto spilled out of the sushi and all over my poor tongue and I could FEEL the slime covering my tongue. The snarky grin is gone and it’s replaced with a look of sheer agony.

At this point I have my hand over my mouth and I’m trying desperately to chew and drink tea at the same time in order to wash it down as quickly as possible without looking like I’m dying. My stomach is having none of it. Suddenly, it lurches. I can feel my esophagus squeeeeeeeze as it begs me "Stop, Bryan, Stop! You don't have to do this! You can just spit it out!" and I’ve officially entered into fight-or-flight mode and I’M NO LONGER INTERESTED IN FIGHTING DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP. 

I clasp both hands tightly over my mouth at this point to keep myself from retching and poor Kasai-san (on her seventy-seventh birthday, no less) starts tearing through her purse trying to find a tissue for me. I’m not sure if it was so I could spit it out or so I could dry my eyes which had begun welling up with huge tears as my taste bugs begged for mercy, but either way she’s suddenly in panic mode, terrified that this scary foreigner she’s brought to the rotating sushi is just going to lose the 20 bucks worth of sushi he’s just eaten all over the table.

At this point I start to panic, too. The restaurant starts to fade to black since the only thing I can currently focus on is keeping my stomach exactly where it is while I chew and chew for what seemed to be the longest two minutes of my life with my gut fighting me every step of the way.

Focus, Bryan! Focus! You’re not going that 外国人 that pukes in the restaurant! I refuse! Kasai-san is filling my cup up with tea again but that’s not going to be any use because they make tea with SCALDING hot water but at this point scorching my taste buds seems like a safer option than the alternative.

Finally. I get it down. And my stomach is not pleased. Kasai-san is looking at me in terror, and I ask “Hazukashii desu ka?” You’re embarrassed aren’t you?

And god bless her, the lovely, tiny Kasai-san doubles over with laughter and shouts “Hazukashiku nai! Hazukashiku nai!” “I’m not! I promise!” We laugh. I cry. I pick up the next plate of salmon that comes by and decide that this was an awful experiment.

Ten or fifteen minutes later we’re ready to go, but I pull out my camera because I need a picture of this beast. Kasai-san notices I want to take a picture and calmly waits, not really paying attention to what I’m doing. When we get up she asks to see what I took a picture of, and as soon as I show her, she literally punches me in the arm and walks away laughing.

Natto is not your friend.

Planes, Trains, and Used Cars That Make Funny Noises

There are some silly things about Japan. When you call up an internet company and you want to start up some web surfing, normally they ask you when you’re available, and you’ve probably got internet in about a week.

The Japanese system has taken me thus far about eight. The first step was going to the Japanese version of Best Buy called K’s Denki, where I had a very painful conversation with the store clerk there. Mostly just painful because I didn’t really understand a thing that he was saying. He finished the half hour long conversation by saying “Owarimashita!” It’s done! And I sat there thinking “WAIT! What’s done!? What did I do!?” 

A week later I get something in the mail, I have to send them a copy of my Alien Registration Card along with some dates that are good for me for them to come and install the internet. But those dates have to be at least 17 days from the day I send them my alien registration card.

I’ve now been here about six weeks and no internet company wants to take my money.

Cut to: Leasing a car. I’ve been with my parents to car dealerships before. It’s always an obnoxious ordeal where you sit down with the salesmen and you have a long conversation and you negotiate prices and you try to convince them to give you accessories for free and then you talk to someone about insurance and yaddah yaddah yaddah. It’s seriously an all day event.

I met with the lady at the car dealership with my very-good-at-speaking-Japanese friend Aaron where we sat and he asked her if they good do the same deal for me that they gave him. She said it was no problem but that I’d have to come back another day because the car wasn’t ready yet.

So yesterday I give them a call to figure out when I should come in, and the lady says that she’s going to come pick me up from my apartment to have me fill out the paperwork, and by fill out, I mean I throw my signature down on a piece of paper and she hands me the keys. We drink some tea and I speed away in my new-to-me black Suzuki with custom break lights and some seriously tinted windows. So seriously tinted, that you CANNOT SEE into my back passenger windows. So seriously tinted, that I CANNOT SEE ANYTHING through the rear view mirror.

It’s very safe, I’m sure. 

Life is good! I can get to the beach in five minutes instead of 30 or 40! I can go buy a trunk load of groceries and I won’t have to bungie cord it to my bike. I can go wherever I want…. as long as I have cash to pay the toll roads, and sure gas if five bucks a gallon, and SURE there’s some sort of weird scratching noise the car makes in first gear, but repairs are INCLUDED in the price of the lease AND I have a CAR.

CAPITAL LETTERS.

Anyhow, life is good. And tonight I have a sushi date with Kasai-san. We’re going to one of those rotating sushi places where the sushi comes by on a plate and you pick it up and eat it and it’s delicious.

Hurray!

The Tanabata Festival 七夕祭り

I think I'm going to have to accept the fact that I'm not really going to understand the symbolism behind a lot of matsuris in Japan, but despite this they're still lots of fun and a good excuse to drink some beer and hang out with the locals.

Take, for example, the Tanabata Matsuri. I'm not sure exactly what the point is of the festival, but check out some neat photos of people having fun!

The school kids decorate these huge floats and take them around town to perform dances. I think there were about 10 of them floating around town everywhere.

The kids dress up as lions (or maybe demons) to perform a dance. The kids are so cute!

Aaaaand everyone in general seems to have a great time! At one point someone we (Aaron, Nicole and I) were standing by looked over, saw us, and then handed us free beer. He then took us to the front of where the kids were performing for some little old Japanese people and let us sit down and watch the performance!

As things start to get dark, the floats light up, and my favorite thing happens. Food venders. Selling food. Tasty street fair food, like grilled octopus!

I also have some videos to post up, but I think those will have to wait. The internet I'm.... borrowing.... isn't too happy about the uploads.

More to come soon!


Update!
Helen has taught me the story behind the Tanabata festival! Here's how our conversation went:

Helen:  so this guy whose name i forget finds this robe

and it belongs to tanabata, a goddess

and so she asks him if he's seen it

he says no

they fall in love and get married and have a gang of kids

one day, she finds a tiiiny piece of fabric from the robe, so the gig is up

 me:  ut oh

 Helen:  he has to weave a thousand straw sandals before he can see her again

and he can't do it

so they can only meet on tanabata

the seventh of july, usually

but it's when two stars intersect

 me:  oooooh

 Helen:  so it's very sweet

actually, more bittersweet

And Life Continues On

Mmm, it's a lazy Sunday morning over here in Glorious Japan. I'm sitting cramped up in a window sill because I found that this is the only place that I can steal someone else's internet until I get my own in the beginning of September.

Yesterday was an amazing day. Four of us jumped into our buddy Aaron's wee little K-Car and set off on a journey up the coast of Japan. The weather was hot but not humid and the sky was a lovely cloudless blue. We stopped off at a supermarket to grab some food and silly hats, and then we were off to the beach to swim and lay in the sun.

The place was stunning. Three giant rocks jutted out of the water a ways off. People were snorkling or floating around in inner tubes. The water was warm and calm and my giant beach parasol came in wonderfully handy.

When I got back home I stopped off at a convenience store to grab something to eat. I grabbed an onigiri which is a triangular rice ball wrapped in sea weed, and I was happy enough to find one I've been searching for since I first got here. It's fully of spicy, tasty... something. I don't know what it is. It's red, and it's good, but whether it's fish or beef or crushed up spider guts still remains a mystery. And it might just be safer that way.

So back at my apartment I'm sitting watching some silly Japanese drama about who knows what, when I realize that that time when I first got here and first ate that spicy onigiri for the first time was so long ago. I've already hit five weeks. I've already moved into my apartment, gone to work, met with coworkers, met new friends, gone on silly adventures to the beach, and it's all be absolutely lovely.

And life continues on. Today I have boring errands to run like grocery shopping and buying laundry detergent which will invariably be made fun because of my inability to really speak any Japanese.

Kasai-San and the Giving War

My landlady is Ms. Kasai. She’s about four foot six, probably in her late seventies, and she’s really incredibly sweet. I needed to pay her some sort of city fee (or maybe she just wanted to fool me into giving her money for beer, I’m not sure), but when I give her the money she asks if I’ve had lunch. 

Truthfully at this point in time my fridge is pretty bare. I’ve got some orange juice, some weird tasting milk, bread, eggs, and some sort of noodle soup mix that I’ve been eating for the past three days. They don’t have stuff for anything that I recognize here. There’s no cereal or sandwich stuff or really anything I can easily recognize other than produce. I’m sure my stomach was rumbling.

She invites me in and puts down a plate of food and a cup of coffee in front of me and proceeds to be the most patient person on earth as I stammer off lots of really broken Japanese. I don’t really understand most of what she says, but she speaks really slowly and simply enough for me to catch most of what she says.

After a bit of chatting (and me not knowing proper Japanese etiquette), I’m sure I rudely and hastily excused myself. Too soon.

Cut to a few hours later. I’m taking a bit of a nap on my couch as Family Guy plays on my computer, pretty much thinking about skipping dinner since I don’t want to eat the same noodle soup three nights in a row. 

Suddenly there’s a knock at my door. It’s Kasai-san with a receipt from earlier. She asks if I know how to use my rice cooker, I say I have no idea, and I invite her in to help me.

The next thing I know we’re sitting on the floor of my kitchen trying desperately to figure out which of the six buttons you have to hit in order to turn the thing on, and then we’re making rice. I show her some pictures and my Japanese flash cards (which she thought were the coolest things in the entire world apparently) and then suddenly we’re making Onigiri, these tasty rice balls and now I have dinner *and* know how to make rice in my rice cooker.

This is who the giving war began.

Japanese are all about giving things. 

"Hey! Thanks for giving me directions! Take this chocolate bar!" 

or maybe "Oh man, that lunch you made for me sure was tasty, here, take this bottle of wine I don't have room in my house for!"

or also "That sure was a great class you gave today, here, take this Porsche!" At least I'm hoping that one happens to me sometime.

Anyhow, after Kasai-san helped me make rice balls, I thought I was being clever by making her pancakes topped with bananas and sugar one day for lunch. Like, "A ha! Take this! I'll make you delicious pan cakes and then we're even!"

....that was, until I left that day with a grocery bag full of food. I had been one-upped, and my plan had been ruined. So now I have to come up with something else to give her. I'm thinking ice cream, since it's so awfully hot these days.

Marge and Sally

I hate spiders right. You know this, I know this. The whole internet knows this by now. And of course, Japan is covered in spiders. They’re everywhere. Of course, I’m blessed with this terrifying sight right above my door every time I leave the house:

Terrifying. Huge. Green. GREEN.

And the second I turn around for refuge I’m greeted with this thing over here:

Now, in attempt to become less of a wuss when it comes to spiders, I decided “Hey! Wouldn’t it be fun to give them really harmless names that way they’re less scary!? I know! I’ll call the one above my door Marge, and the one next to her Sally, that way they won’t be as scary!” Right? Wrong.

Marge and Sally are still terrifying. The only difference now, is that on my second day of being here when I looked up and saw that Marge was gone, I instantly panicked figuring that some bug man had come and destroyed all their webs to get rid of them and now Marge was somewhere on the street living destitute and selling her body to feed her kids. I began plotting revenge on this exterminator man, figuring I would hit him with the broom that he most likely used to obliterate Marge’s home that she had worked so hard to construct herself.

Until I looked a little to the left and saw she was still there. Instantly a ride array of emotions hit my head. First: Gross, I can’t believe I felt bad for a spider. Two: WHY hadn’t a bug man come and destroyed her web? Three: Crap, I still have to see her every day. Four: But now I’d feel bad if she suddenly disappeared.

Ugh. I don’t like it. And now I’m just wandering around mostly terrified that a bug is going to land on my head and eat me. Eeeesh.

Two Things

There are two things in this world that I absolutely hate with the fiery passion of a thousand rabid beavers in a wicker furniture store: Bikes and Spiders. I’ve already explained to you my deep seeded hatred of spiders which mostly derives from the fact that nothing natural has EIGHT LEGS AND EYES with which to build terrifying sticky traps of stangulatory death. (Spell check says strangulatory isn’t word. I disagree). So on that particular note I won’t go into much detail.

Bikes, however, allow me to explain. I have a long history with bikes. For a good portion of my life I happily avoided them until one quarter at school where I had no choice but to take back-to-back classes that just happened to be on exact opposite ends of the campus.

No problem! I thought riding a bike would be fun. Hey, I’d get, you know, exercise and fresh air and all that. That is until the very first day I’m riding my new bike.

Here I am, happily peddling through the street when I come up to a street with no sidewalk. The bike lane here is one of those where it’s between the right hand turn lane and the lane next to it, and about 300 feet of what I call the Passage Of Peril where you have to transition from being as far to the right as possible to being in between two lanes of traffic. Which means you have to navigate through cars.

Of course, as I’m navigating the Passage of Peril on my first day ever of riding my new bike -- happily peddling along, mind you -- I hear this tiny little clink of a noise and very quickly notice that even though I’m peddling my sweaty, fun-sized butt off, I’m actually losing speed. Not just losing speed, I’m coming to a stop, and I’m grinding and grinding those peddles to no avail.

Cars are flying past me and careening on to the freeway on ramp! Fratholes are honking at me! Spoiled brats in convertibles are leaning out their windows and haggling me, that stupid kid on the bike who doesn’t know how bikes work even though the chain connecting all the gears has been left behind and now MY BREAKS AREN’T WORKING and I’m forced as soon as I come to a teetering halt in the middle of the intersection to walk my stupid brand new first-time-ridden bike back to campus in the middle of the scorching hot May Riverside sun.

Eventually that bike was “stolen” and whoever “stole” it completely destroyed the frame making it completely unridable.

What. A. Shame.

So I don’t like bikes. I also don’t like spiders. So low and behold when I first get to my apartment with my new supervisor he’s like “Hey check out this bike that you can ride around town! It’ll get you places and it’s awesome and you won’t have to walk since everything is so far away!” Of course the bike is COVERED in spider webs and huge green spiders that are just aching for a chance to jump onto my face and kill me.

But I decide to suck it up. I grab a broom (which involved another terrifying battle that almost resulted in my arm getting amputated due to spider venom) and head over to the bike to clear off the spiders webs. And it’s as I’m doing this that I realize that I’m actually saving this bike (Side note: I’ve already decided that ALL bikes are spawns of the devil and should return straight to hell) from being covered in terrifying spiders. No, I should leave the bike to the spiders. If the spiders and bike want to be friends, that’s fine and frankly I’m not interested in their affairs as long as they keep the inevitable post-honey-moon-phase arguments low enough so I can’t hear them over my Coldplay album.

If I get a knock on my door and through the peep hole I see a sobbing, battered bike who just needs to vent about how awfully he’s been treated, I’ll tell him through the door to call the police and I’ll go back to my own business.

So I head back the spider covered shed, battle the bastards once again to put the broom back, and decide that, quite frankly, I can walk to the god damn store just fine. No bikes or spiders involved.

The Boy In The Rain

When Google Maps says that the ocean is an hour walk away, it’s not kidding. You should be fully aware that you can trust Google Maps to give you an accurate ETA for your destination and not assume you can get there in half the time because you think you "walk quickly." 

So I head out to the beach from my apartment and before leaving I take one look at my umbrella and says to myself “Should I bring this? ….naaaaaaaaaaah. It only rained this morning, why would it rain any other time today.”

And on the way there it was a good choice. No rain was to be had, except for the rain coming from my arm pits, back, and thighs. I congratulate myself on outsmarting the weather, and give myself a nice pat on my extremely moist back.

Walking along, my map in hand, I finally make it to the beach thanks to a kindly family that took one look at me when I asked for directions, and then asked if they could give me a ride. Why not! I still had a quarter mile to go and by this time I was obnoxiously sweaty and probably just as smelly. 

“Ki ni tsukete, kudasai!” they said as they dropped me off. “Take care of yourself!”

And there it was: dark blue waters against a warm gray sky, crashing onto rocks while silly Japanese pop music blared from speakers that I’m going to assume double as an emergency alarm whenever there’s an earthquake or typhoon.

Ah, the sea! The water was cool, but not cold, and upon taking off my shirt I realized that I, who never sweats, had made a complete mess of the back of my shirt. I also smelled like fish. Which is weird. Because I don’t smell like fish. But the water is nice, the sand was fine, and I stretched out under the overcast sky spreading myself thin as I tried to soak up every last drop of sun that might be squeezing through those clouds overhead.

Finally it’s time to head back. It’s one hell of a walk, and frankly it’s already 4:30 and I don’t want it to get too dark before I get back to my--CRASH. THUNDERRRRRRRRRRR. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN WET WET WET WET

Wow. 

Wow. 

What. Just. Happened. It was like the clouds had decided to look down upon the city and say “Screw you, city! I’m tired of you coming between me and the earth! It’s all out waaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” 

And in about 30 whole seconds I’m drenched. My hair is a mess, the my shoes are pretty much thrashed, once again soaked through. I look like a wet dog. I probably smell like one too.

I quickly find the nearest overhang I can and I hide for a bit, trying to dry off and thinking that the rain might just let up just as quick as it started, but to no avail. No, the rain just intensifies. It’s sending out the reserve troops in an attempt to completely destroy the city and as it comes down it’s so loud that it’s hard to hear anything except for the rain. And I stand there, looking down the long street ahead wondering if I’m ever going to get home or if I should just take a seat and get comfortable for a while.

“Kasa” says a tiny little voice from behind me.

I turn around and see the tiniest little boy holding a dark blue umbrella that’s nearly as tall as he is. He holds it up to me.

I smile and say “Daijoubu desu!” waving my hands at him to say “No, it’s okay! I’m fine!” ….Really, I know I look like I wet mess, and frankly I am, but I smile and tell him it’s okay when suddenly out steps his father.

“Please take it!” he says smiling, and I just laugh because of how absolutely ridiculous and helpless I must look. “We want to give it to you.” I look at him a little warily, I’m not sure how to accept things in Japanese culture gracefully, but now the father is holding it out to me, so I take it, give a little bow, and say “Domo arigtaou gozaimasu.” They smile, wave, and I just laugh.

So the next day I returned the umbrella to the same spot where I got it and I left some American candy tied to it.

Hopefully they'll take it as a "Thank You" and not a "Hey, eat this poison candy little child!" because that would just be awkward.