Obon at Ito's

On the last night of the Obon Festival, one of the English teachers at Andy's school, Ito-sensei, invited us over for dinner at his house with his family. He and his wife prepared us a delicious assortment of dishes. His daughter Ami arrived late from school activities and joined us. After eating, we walked down the street to the river's edge, where we witnessed all the floating lanterns for Obon. Families sponsor a lantern with their family name on it to honor the spirits of their deceased ancestors.

After dinner, Ami played us recorded clips of American Idol and her celebrity crush, Adam Lambert.

Nice to Meet You, Laundromat and Video Store

8/12/09

Today Andy had a half-day and was home by 12:15pm. We whipped up a delicious lunch from leftover spaghetti with mushrooms, onions, and red pepper and added cooked pork, egg and parmesan, which resulted in a sort of carbonara-style dish. Of course we washed lunch down with a couple of Cokes. Reuben told Andy that Japanese Coke has a little bit of nicotine added to it. Now whenever I drink a Coke I notice that I get a little head rush. I think I’m hooked.

During lunch Andy put on the obligatory episode of Seinfeld. When we had visited Andy’s folks in Ohio before we came to Japan, Andy grabbed a season of Seinfeld to bring with us. That turned out to be a very good move. Having Seinfeld playing on the TV while we’re at home makes everything just a little more comfortable, and it feels that much more like home, as if we’re in the presence of old friends. And Seinfeld helped Andy pull through his rough first week in Japan. Alone and depressed, he would turn on his Seinfeld DVD’s for some “serenity now”. Sadly, by now we’ve run through every episode in the season several times by now. But we just keep on watching them over and over again. They never seem to lose their magic.

For the afternoon we planned to make a trek to the Laundromat. I had bought a set of sheets for our new bed, which had arrived by delivery from Nitori a couple of days prior, and they needed to be washed (and dryed) before we could use them. We have a washing machine in our apartment, but no dryer. This is typical for a Japanese household. Believe me, you don’t realize what a luxury it is to have a dryer until you don’t have one. Our machine will wash, rinse, spin, but then we have to hang the soggy, wrinkled items outside or by a window to dry them. What results are wrinkly and slightly crispy shirts, towels and undergarments that never feel completely dry. A pair of Andy’s underwear came out of the laundry the other day and was so crunchy when it dried that I think it would have felt like he was wearing newspaper. So I threw them back in the laundry hoping a second time around would improve matters.

Discovering that we had the capability to take our clothes down the street and throw them in the dryer at the Laundromat for a few dollars was a godsend. When we got to the Laundromat, we noticed that there were several dryers in use, but no one seemed to be washing anything. We figured out that most people wash their laundry at home and then hop in their cars and bring the wet clothes to the Laundromat to dry them. While we sat watching our laundry spin, we witnessed several Japanese people drive up, park, haul in a plastic bag full of wet laundry, throw it in a dryer, and leave. Hit and run. They would come back in a half hour or so to collect their belongings.

While our clothes dried, we decided to walk up a couple of blocks to the video store, called Video Love. We had already been discussing getting a rental membership at some point so we thought we’d investigate the possibility. We walked in and perused the aisles and spotted a whole wall of Foreign Films, which consisted mostly of new releases from Hollywood. The beauty of renting movies in Japan is that anything made in Hollywood is still in English, only the menus and subtitles are in Japanese. But you can just turn the subtitles off, and it’s like you’re watching an American movie from an American video store! I think the video store will be one of our greatest resources while we’re living in Japan. Back home, I’d had an ongoing list of movies I’d failed to see and had resigned to the fact that I would probably never catch up on all of them, but fate would have it that now was my chance! Not only would I be able to catch up on movies I’d missed, but I could choose from a section of popular American TV shows too. I never thought I’d get the chance to catch up on Mad Men or Dexter when I left for Japan, but what did I know?!

On top of the new releases there were several shelves of older films, which could be rented for ¥90 (approx. $1) a piece and kept for 7 days. Andy and I selected Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Broken Flowers as our first rentals. We also grabbed Disc 1 of Mad Men Season One from the TV series section. On our way to the front of the store we walked past a doorway through which I could see shelves of animated DVD’s from floor to ceiling. As I peered closer I could see that the animated characters on the front covers were mostly young girls and mostly half-naked. Some of them were drawn with giant bulging breasts and others were postured as to facilitate an up-skirt view of their penciled-in pre-pubescent genetalia. Most of them were wearing some form of schoolgirl uniform. It occurred to me immediately that these weren’t just your run-of-the-mill Anime videos…..these were dirty Anime, Anime porn! I glanced up to see a sign above the doorway written in Japanese. Though I couldn’t read the writing, I could read the number 18. Apparently this was the adults-only section.

On the way home from the Laundromat, we stopped at the local supermarket near our house, called Minatoya, to pick up something to make for dinner. We usually end up getting something from the fresh seafood section to put in the broiler. As I was looking at the selection of salmon and mackerel, but Andy pointed to some styrafoam plates containing fresh crabs. These crabs were so fresh, in fact, that a few of them were still moving! Unbelievable! These crabs had probably been in the ocean only hours before. Poor crabs, they never knew what was coming!

Connected At Last

8/11/09

Today I was determined to get on the internet, no matter what it took. Being cut off from the web for a whole week was so strange, almost a form of torture, but I suppose it was good for me to be fully focused on adjusting to life in Japan for the first week. I had been building up to today, knowing that I was going to have to take the bus across town to get to the internet café. Andy and I had taken the bus once before to get to the same area, to go to Nitori. Nitori is the closest thing we have found to a Target here, and we feel very at home walking down the aisles there. Nitori sells all your basic housewares: bedding, kitchen wares, curtains, and even furniture. I would actually liken the second floor of the store to an Ikea. Upstairs you can amble around the giant space looking at living room and bedroom replicas set up with Nitori’s couches, beds, and cabinets. You can move from model room to model room and imagine each one as a possibility for your own home. This kind of consumerism is a nice escape when you need to zone out. That’s one thing I have in common with the Japanese…. we are all consumers.

Leaving the house I was strangely nervous. I imagined all the worst-case scenarios of the day in my head – getting on the wrong bus, not having the correct change, not being able to communicate where I wanted to go. To boot, I was carrying a giant closet rod, probably 5ft long, that I would attempt to return to Nitori, as it had been to big for our closet. I rehearsed the word for “return” over and over in my head; luckily there was a section in my Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook that addressed this situation. So I walked down to the bus station wielding my weapon-like metal rod and my umbrella (I had gotten rained on the day before and wasn’t about to leave the house unarmed). I had gotten instructions from a worker at the bus station on how to get to the stop closest to Nitori the last time I’d gone, so I planned to follow the same instructions this time. Luckily, within a few minutes after I arrived, the proper bus pulled up and I got on. Having watched several other buses pull in and depart, I realized that the electronic window on the side of the bus actually showed the upcoming stops. I began to realize that I didn’t need to stress out about getting on the exact bus, that any bus that listed my stop would suffice. This made me feel at ease. So at the transfer, I hopped on the first bus that listed my next stop and sure enough, I arrived!

My Nitori return went as smoothly as could be, so again I had no need to worry in the first place. I even asked the clerk, successfully, where I could find the internet café; it’s called Super Freaks. I set out to walk the few blocks between Nitori and Super Freaks and immediately began sweating. It was the first beautiful, sunny day in awhile, and of course I had worn jeans and was still carrying my umbrella. Figures. The only time it rains is when I forget my umbrella.

Super Freaks advertised itself on a giant orange sign, calling out all its amenities: internet café, video game center, karaoke, comic books, movie rentals, and food. I walked in not knowing what to expect and was greeted by a clerk at a counter in the front. To my left was a room lined in glass in which I could see digital dartboards and other arcade games and a sign for karaoke. As I approached the desk, the clerk said something about a membership card and I shook my head. She managed to communicate to me that there was a membership fee, but that once I was a member I could come back anytime and use any of their services. I nodded and she pulled out an application form. Once we managed to fill it out together I indicated that I would like to use the internet and she showed me to a little cubicle that contained a big flat screen monitor, an office chair, and a pair of slippers. She launched Internet Explorer for me, and once I was sure that I could type in English, she stepped out and closed off my cubicle with a small sliding door.

Ahhhhhh, the internet!! Finally! I had been waiting for this moment for so long. It took me a good two hours to check and return all my emails and pay my online bills. After finishing and paying for my time, I wandered back to the bathrooms, and on the way passed rows of private cubicles dedicated to playing video games, watching movies, or reading comic books. How ingenious! I would have loved to have a place like this to come to when I was a teenager.

A Case of the Rumbles

8/10/09

We woke up to an earthquake last night. Actually, I think it was an aftershock. Both Andy and I sat straight up in bed, “Did you feel that?!” The violent shaking only lasted a few seconds. It wasn’t nearly as frightening as the tremor we had felt earlier in the night while we were at a fireworks-watching party with one of the English teachers from Andy’s school, Ito-sensei. He had picked us up at 5:00 and, after stopping by his house to pick up his wife, Yumiko, and daughter, Ami, had driven us down to the waterfront where the party would be held in a concrete building across the street from the water. The building’s owner was a friend of his wife’s, so we had a reserved room on the 5^th floor with a spectacular view of where the night’s festivities would be taking place. The problem was that it had been raining all evening, and there was little chance of the fireworks actually being set off tonight. It turned out that there were no fireworks, but had there been, we would have had box seats to the event! What a shame.

Although the building was in a desirable location for the night’s events, the building itself was by no means prime real estate. Upon entering there was a damp, musty smell – one that I’m starting to get used to here – and when we got to our designated room on the 5^th floor, there were two gaping holes in the ceiling and obvious water damage to the walls and floor. Wallpaper was sloughing off at the corners, there was a moldy discoloration to the walls underneath, and the carpet-like floor covering had shrunken and separated to reveal the concrete floor beneath it. There was no question that the building was in disrepair.

This was all fine and had no real effect on the function of the party, that is until one of the guests interrupted my conversation to tell me to look at the windows. I turned around to see that the windows were shaking ever so slightly and steadily… it took me a moment to realize that this was an earthquake. It was subtle enough that, had I not gauged it by the visual cue of the rattling windows, I might not have noticed that it was happening at all. Being alerted to the fact that we were in the midst of an earthquake was not so troubling; it was my awareness that we were in a dilapidated building during said earthquake that triggered my panic response. I immediately asked the other guests what the protocol was for earthquakes, should we go outside? Stay inside and take cover? What should we do?! As I expected, the correct answer was to leave the building. But our hosts just reassured me that everything was fine and that it would be over soon. But their reassurance did nothing to quell the visions that began to flood my brain, of me under a pile of rubble less than a week after having arrived in this country. Was this really how it was going to end? Was this how I was gonna go? Did I have to come all the way to Japan to meet my fate in this crappy building on a rainy Friday night?

Heading Down the Hill

8/7/09

I’ve been spending the last couple of days doing house work – laundry, dishes, cleaning, moving things around, with occasional breaks to study a little Japanese or watch a movie, or to walk down to the ¥100 store (Seria) or the small supermarket (Minatoya). Today I managed to not leave the house all day….I’m not even sure what I did for over 6 hours. Andy had made one request for me to drop his laundry off at the dry cleaners, but I had managed to push that task off until it was almost time for him to get off work. So I decided I’d walk the 10 minutes down the hill to wait outside Hachinohe High School for him to come out. I grabbed the dry cleaning and started my trek down the hill. I’ve learned by now that there’s no point in taking a shower at the beginning of my day because, by the end of it I’m covered in a layer of sweat that sticks to me like a greasy film.

At about 3:45 I saw Andy emerge from the school gates. He was surprised to see me waiting for him. As he walked over I motioned to him that I had the dry cleaning. He crossed the street and we headed toward the cleaners. I knew deep down that I had put off going to the cleaners until now for a reason. It’s much easier to encounter unfamiliar situations here when you’re with someone else, and I was much more at ease tackling the Japanese dry cleaners with Andy by my side. It turned out to be one of my more successful ventures.

We had to hurry straight home after the cleaners because tonight was the night of Andy’s official Welcome Party thrown by the teachers at Hachinohe High. We were to meet Satchiko, Andy’s supervisor, at the school promptly at 5:20 – tardiness does not exist in Japan, and when a party starts at 6:00, that means the first toast is at 6:00 sharp. Satchiko was waiting in the parking lot when we arrived. She was fairly short, young-looking – maybe mid-30’s, with the standard Japanese bob.

There seem to be three official hairstyles here that all young people choose between. There’s the bob, usually a longer version than what you’d picture, and the length can either be consistent all the way around or tapered toward the bottom. Then there’s what Andy has dubbed the Japanese Brit mullet. It’s a shaggy cut, thickest on top and then thinning out in uneven layers as it contours down around the base of the head and neck to the shoulders. Third, there’s the long hair pulled up in two symmetrical pigtails and the thick bangs, curved around the temples to frame the face. This look exemplifies the image of the Japanese schoolgirl, with her neatly tucked pinafore frock, pleated skirt and knee socks. This image is what grown Japanese men fantasize about: and it’s hand fed to them in every form of media - Manga and Anime and countless other types of illustrated quasi-pornographic materials. There seems to be a bit of a cultural irony in the fact that Japanese society is so repressed in so many ways, yet it is completely acceptable for grown men to drool over images of prepubescent school girls in public.

Andy recently got an email from another JET, a girl named Karissa whom he befriended at their orientation, with a link to an article about Japanese men who engage in “2-D Love”. In other words, they become so obsessed with a particular Anime character that they then carry out a romantic relationship with that character by affixing the character’s 2-dimensional image to a body pillow. They wine and dine the body pillow, they take it on dates, and at the end of the night, they have sex with it. I guess this is a more portable version of the life-like sex dolls that originated in Japan and were made famous on the American silver screen in “Lars and the Real Girl”.

Lunch on the Town

8/4/09

Today’s course of events was a bit unexpected. I was lazing about the house after breakfast and Andy had left and I heard the doorbell ring. It was about 11:00 or so and I wasn’t expecting anyone. I was still in my PJ’s and un-showered, so I prayed it was not a Japanese person that would witness my unkempt state. It was Erin, the previous tenant of our apartment and Andy’s predecessor ALT. Andy had mentioned that she might come by to take out some of the trash she’d left in our storage shed and also to remove the unsightly exercise bike from our living room. As much as Andy had described her to me, I could not have gotten the full picture of Erin without having met her. She is quite something. Nice as can be, no doubt... She’s from Colorado and has been in Japan for the last 4 years. After she arrived I accompanied her to the neighborhood trash drop where we deposited 3 bags of recyclables. Erin informed me that recyclables are only picked up on Wednesdays - recyclables being cardboard and plastic bottles and aluminum cans that have been rinsed, and whose labels and caps have been removed. All other trash is collected on Tuesdays and Fridays and is ultimately burned. I assume this burning of trash is responsible the steady stream of thick white smoke emitting from a nearby smoke stack that I can see out my upstairs window. This may also have something to do with the ever-present haze on the horizon that veils our elusive ocean view.

Once we’ve dropped the 3 bags at the local drop spot (3 bags is a bit scandalous since we’re really only allowed two per week), Erin mentions that she might be grabbing lunch downtown with her former Japanese teacher and that I’d be welcome to join them. I eagerly oblige since my day’s forecast consists of laundry, errands, and biding my time until Andy gets home from work. Erin agrees to call me when she finds out the plan.

An hour or so later the phone rings and Erin assures me that plans for lunch are a go. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to get out of the house, so I happily agree to come. She picks me up in her maroon 4WD manual Honda Civic, the car she offered to sell to me and Andy for a steal, but that we declined. We were hoping we wouldn’t need a car at all in Japan, but we’ve found out pretty quickly that we will need to purchase one if we care to go anywhere beyond our immediate area, especially in the winter. Although public transportation is readily available here, it is often not as practical as one might expect. A bus trip to the beach, for example, is said to take over an hour, when a car ride to the same location is 10-15 minutes. I am reminded that no one takes the bus in Southern California for the same reasons.

As Erin drives downtown we chat about our impressions of Japan and she provides insight on her experiences as a four-year veteran of the JET Program. She admits that when she arrived in Japan she was overwhelmed by excitement but that that excitement died down after about a month and she then went through a short period of disappointment and depression. I wonder if that will happen to me.

We park and walk a couple of blocks downtown before we see a Japanese woman waving from across the street. Erin gets excited as she approaches; this is her Japanese teacher, Satchiko. Satchiko introduces herself to me and then leads us to the lunch spot. We enter a hallway that appears to be the entrance to a real estate office, but as we continue down the hall I hear the clink of glasses and smell the aroma of food. Sure enough, upon entering a door on our right we happen upon a cute little café called Pizzeria Corte. This place is adorable. I couldn’t have picked better décor for my own place; the furnishings have a retro modern flair and there’s a little outdoor patio in the back with some modern hanging wicker chairs. The menu consists of Italian-style gourmet pizzas and pastas. There’s also a coffee drink menu. I think I’ve found a little slice of comfort in Hachinohe already!

After lunch and another hour or so with Erin I can see why she has stayed in Japan for the last four years. At lunch, her spotty Japanese and little anecdotes about teaching and all her gaijin (a Japanese term used for foreigners) experiences in Hachinohe continually amuse Satchiko and her friends. Everything Erin says is greeted with a smile and a laugh. She is the center of attention wherever she goes. I start to realize that it is going to be a big adjustment for her when she goes back to the US. Reverse culture shock will likely come in the form of very few people finding her as funny and charming as do her Japanese colleagues. Her stories about and comparisons to Japan and all things Japanese will wear on the nerves of her American acquaintances much more quickly than she probably expects. The novelty of her 4 years of life in Japan will wear off soon enough, and then she will be left to fend for herself, having missed out on her own mid-twenties American experience in favor of the comfort offered by her life as a semi-celebrity in Hachinohe. I am apt to wonder if she didn’t miss out on some important life lessons in the meantime. I ponder the reasons why she chose this form of escapism during what would likely have been some of the most exciting yet challenging years of her American life.

So, Here We Go!

Day 1 – 8/3/09

So here I sit, on the floor of my Japanese apartment in Hacninohe, in the northernmost region of the big island of Honshu, Japan. I just put my first load of laundry in the Japanese washing machine…. it’s making the strangest noise; it literally sounds like someone is hand washing my clothes in a tub of water with a soap board next to me. I’m praying that I pushed all the right buttons and that the machine doesn’t revolt against me or my laundry.

I’m a little frazzled from my full day of travel yesterday: a 10+ hour flight from LAX to Tokyo’s Narita airport; a 1-hour train ride on the Narita Express to Tokyo Station; then a 3 and a half hour bullet train up to Hachinohe. Needless to say I was and still am exhausted. My anxiety about navigating several forms of Japanese public transport once I arrived had kept me from some much-needed shut-eye on the plane. Luckily everything seemed to go rather smoothly. Tokyo’s not so hard to get around, but the further and further you get away from Tokyo, the fewer and fewer English translations there are to guide you.

Andy met me at Hachinohe station at 10:17pm (trains arrive and depart EXACTLY on schedule here) and we hopped in a taxi back to the apartment. Andy pulled out what he refers to as his “idiot card”, which is just a piece of paper with his name, address and telephone number written in Japanese, and handed it to the driver. The cab driver had a little trouble figuring out where we were headed despite his handy little touch screen navigation system, so he had to consult another cabby quickly before we were on our way.

Andy had picked up a few things to nibble on once we got to the apartment; a sushi sampler, some self-cook yakitori and gyoza and of course a couple of Sapporo tall boys from the nearby Kon-bi-ni (Convenient store). There were a couple of questionable varieties in the sushi sampler, including nato, which is chopped up fermented soy benas and smells like dirty feet. We both passed. Most Americans do not have a taste for the stuff, and even those who have been here awhile and have mastered Japanese cuisine otherwise often don’t come around to appreciate nato.

The laundry machine just beeped and everything seems to have gone as planned….of course there’s no dryer, so everything has to be hung around the apartment. I’ll be weaving in and out of hanging boxer briefs for the next couple of hours.

Our apartment is small, but nowhere near the uninhabitable little pillbox I had imagined. It’s actually two floors: kitchen,



living room,



shower room



and toilet



on the first floor (the toilet seat is heated!), and two tatami style rooms (with straw floor mats) connected by sliding screens on the top floor. When the dividers between the upstairs rooms are opened up, the space becomes somewhat of a master suite. We’ve essentially made one room the bedroom and one the closet, to my satisfaction.

The apartment gets a lot of light compared to some Japanese houses I’ve been in. Any of the windows can be opened up to just a screen, and there’s a nice breeze that comes through from the upstairs hall window. This window is by far the best spot in the house. On a clear day, if you gaze at the horizon, you can see ocean! Yes, the ocean! Our humble little apartment has an ocean view! We’re up on a hill, so there’s a great spread of city below us that provides a nice panorama as well.

Today I met Andy at the high school where he will be teaching, Hachinohe High (Hachiko for short). It’s about a 10 minute walk, just down the hill from our place. The grounds are beautiful; it almost feels like a small college campus. The office workers and teachers I met were so thrilled to be meeting Andy’s wife they could hardly contain themselves. I was immediately told how cute and good at Japanese I was and promptly handed a cup of coffee and a cookie.

That's Andy on the left in his "Cool Biz" attire.

Japantaloons Disclaimer

Ok, listen. So I know how this goes. We start a blog. We excitedly email all our friends and family and anyone whom we so self-righteously think might have the slightest interest in our day-to-day lives and opinions, and we tell them to come check out our blog! We write in it constantly for the first couple of weeks, updating it with cute photos and witty observations, and we remind people almost daily to Check out our new post! Check out our new post! Then slowly our posts get fewer and farther between; our entries become repetitive and uninspiring; our real lives seem to start taking precedent over our online ones; we get busy; you get busy.

So, all that said, this is the debut of the Japantaloons blog.... some of you asked for it, others didn't. But here it is. To coin some original Engrish here: Take Rest Time Enjoy Pleasure of the Pantaloons!