Morioka and stuff

Well, what has been happening this past weekend. I took a trip to Morioka with Tina, Seth, and Natalie. ‘Twas fun

What shall I write about? I want to write about something clever, fun, and new to those who aren’t living in Japan. I suppose I could write about one complexity of the language. In Japanese, “un” and “uun” are two different words with opposite meanings. “Un,” means “yes,” while “uun” means “no.” To make things even more confusing for you all, this is only in informal form. I’ve been learning the formal form up until now. But don’t worry, I have yet to learn at least one other, more respectful, form.

Japanese must be great for rappers though. All of the sentences end with the verb, and the verbs all end in the same last few syllables (-masu, -masen, -masen deshita, -mashita). Rhyming has to be wicked easy! I can picture the Japanese rappers now, with their long, sonic-the-hedgehog’s back dipped in bleach-hair, sitting around the izakaaya, thinking up lyrics.

“Hey man, what I should I rhyme ‘hanashimasu’ with?”
“How about ‘shimasu,’ ‘kakemasu,’ or any other verb in the formal present/future positive.”
“Oh…yeah.”

I don’t mean to insult or “diss,” as you kids sometimes call it, Japanese music. I’m obviously making an overgeneralization…I think. Regardless, I chose the wrong language to be perapera (fluent) in for my rap star future.

I had the pleasure of going to a Don Don Down on Wednesday (yes, this is all in English on their signpost) in Morioka. They have an interesting fruit and vegetable based economy system. Thinking back, I should have taken a picture. Basically, instead of having price tags on their clothes, they instead have tags of fruits and vegetables (only 1 per item of clothing). The tags correspond with a price, but that corresponding price changes every day. So, a pineapple today costs about 1/2 a mushroom yesterday. Unfortunately, two eggplants and a pineapple was a little out of my price range that day. Very interesting store, I’ll be back for sure.

What else shall I ramble about? Today the annoying kid wouldn’t stop hugging me. He’s a great 1st grader, really, but he’s also the loudest and most interruptive. Every time he sees me, he just runs up and hugs me, saying “hello, hello, hello, hello, hello” ad nauseum. I put a ban on hugs when he is particularly disruptive in class. I don’t think he understands that his behavior is the cause of the single-person hug ban, so I give in and just let it go anyways.

I was in Morioka this past weekend. Tina, Seth, Natalie and I drove down on Saturday. I think “drove down” is an incorrect phrase, because we actually drove in a huge circle before actually driving downwards to Morioka. We arrived quite late, we expected to check into the hotel at 3, but by the time we got to the mall outside of Morioka where we spent a few hours, it was already 5:30. But, this mall had Starbucks, and there were enough Starbucks junkies in the car that it warranted a stop. After the coffee, though, we had to look around the mall. A little Japanese girl somehow got attached to our group.

Actually, I know exactly how. She was on the escalator behind us when she heard Tina, who is of Asian descent, speak a language that wasn’t Japanese. I think it freaked out this little girl’s world, because she couldn’t stop staring at Tina. The little girl followed us around for a good 15 minutes, until she ran away somewhere.

Which was perfect timing, because it was time for Taiko! Yes, sweet game of my existence! The Super Mario Brothers theme song is on the machine, so we, of course, had to play that. I was driving the car, so they had to obey me anyways, hardy har har.*

*Note, pirates have nothing to do with this story, nor do I normally “hardy har har” at people in my regular day-to-day activities.

So, anyways, we made it to the Root Inn much much much later than expected, and it really only gave us time for a short walk down the main street to dinner at this wicked cool café. Then, back to the hotel for onsen and sleep.

On Sunday, Seth and Tina were taking the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test, aka our entire reason for coming to Morioka). What did this mean for me? I got to accompany the famed shopper, Natalie L from Shingapo-ru, around Morioka. I actually didn’t mind, I need some winter clothes and figured she’d be able to help.

We hit up a second hand clothes shop, didn’t find much (except a hoodie for $1.50), and went downstairs to the Freshness Burger, where I met up with the ordeal of ordering outside the box.

I think Japan likes things in orderly boxes, rules, and regulations. While I’m not always breaking the box (do you break it? Or do you more step out of it if violence isn’t your thing? They need to get a good verb to describe the transition from inside the box to outside the box, but I digress), I took one step too far. Here is a brief transcript from my conversation, trying to order a set of Burger, fries, and drink.

“Sumimasen, may I have this set please?”
“Sure, what do you want to drink?”
“Water please.”
“Oh, you can have any of these drinks on this list.”
“It’s ok, water is fine.”
“But, it’s not on the list.”
“It’s ok, I really like water.”
“Errr….umm…..”
“Ok,” *looks at list* “I’ll take the brown tea.”

We sat around Freshness burger and talked for a good while. Then walked elsewhere to continue the shopping. We hit a mall, that Don Don Down on Wednesday place I mentioned earlier, and so on. I was drained. I won’t say it nearly killed me, but I’ll imply it by leaving the previous phrase in this post.

We made it back to the hotel, and I was dead. Dead as in drained, not dead as in it nearly killed it and then I actually died at the last second. Seth mentioned his point of view when he met us at the hotel. Natalie was sitting and waving at Seth and Tina through the window as they were coming in. My head was back on the chair, legs splayed out, and eyes closed.

So, I was tired, which meant I clammed up for the rest of the trip, which was too bad, but ah well, I was still able to have fun. We had Jaja-men, a special type of noodle found in Morioka. Quite good. We also ran into a ton of other JETs at the restaurant, which was really cool to see.

Afterwards, we went to an asobihodai. Like a tabehodai, where it’s all you can eat, and a nomihodai, where it’s all you can drink, an asobihodai is an all you can play (I coined the term myself, add it to the Japanese dictionary, pronto!). We paid $15 to play as many arcade games and sports as we wanted for 90 minutes.

You know what this means.

Taiko! Batting cages! Airsoft rifles! Soccer, volleyball, archery, badminton, sniper shooting games! It was too much, it was not enough! It was pure bliss with massage chairs mounted with flatscreen TV’s that we didn’t have time for because we were having too much fun elsewhere. It just didn’t last long enough. They did give us free claw-game tickets and 20 coins for playing stuff though. It was a huge maze of free stuff begetting more free stuff, just to keep us in the building. We probably stayed an extra 45 minutes to an hour after we originally planned on leaving. It was such an insidious plot on their part! Well, of course we’ll try to win the stuffed snoopy. 20 coins? Why not try and win more? At one point near the end, I remember looking everyone in the eyes and saying “we have to go, or we’ll never leave.”

And go we did, driving back to Hach. Seth and I didn’t want to end the trip though, so after dropping Tina and Natalie off at their houses, we went to a ramen shop. It’s an interesting thing in that, when Seth gets tired, he talks a lot more, whereas I talk a lot less. Regardless (or, irregardless if you want the extra syllable, [irregardless of which you like, I prefer to use regardless]), we had the most interesting conversation about God. His background as the son of two ministers was a really cool backdrop to the conversation. I won’t go into the details for obvious reasons, but it was really cool and I’d welcome a return to that conversation.

I like being able to write like this. It means you, the reader, are stuck in my solipsis, where my thought process actually make sense because you can　sort of see it working. Ugh, remember when I try talking this way in normal face to face conversation? It just doesn’t come out the same, or come out at all.

Ah, I didn’t mention the Friday night of that weekend! I was invited to a dinner at one of my karate co-students (not sure how to word that) house. His family was so friendly! We stumbled along in Japanese, and everything went well until I asked where his brother was that I saw in the pictures. It turns out he passed away a few months ago…please take a moment for them and their family.

Aside from that quick issue, we jumped back and had a great conversation. I didn’t expect them to keep me so long, so I felt terrible when I told them I had to go to my friend’s birthday in Nanbu. They walked me into the train station, and watched me buy my ticket. Sort of awkward, but ok.

I made it to Matt’s house from there. That family even gave me a gift of 2 nihonshu’s (Japanese alcohol) to give to Matt. We watched Alien 2, and I got their late so I missed the potluck, but it’s ok. Matt, Seth, Joe, Laura, and I went to a bar afterwards. It was only the coolest bar ever. The owner was so chill (and, get this, he doesn’t drink), and the patrons were quite friendly. Too friendly, in fact. The Japanese guy on my right was sniffing our drinks and almost took a taste of mine!

Joe then showed us the Resident Evil bathroom. Complete with windows just waiting for zombie dogs to jump through, the safe room with typewriter, and stairs that we can’t go down until we get the hexagonal key.

Afterwards, we got in a taxi and headed back to Matt’s house. Before going to sleep though, we decided it would be really cool to play his electric drum set upstairs (while some people were sleeping downstairs…), at 3 in the morning. It was cool, you could change the sounds and everything. Luckily no one downstairs woke up, so everything was good.

So, that’s what has been going on with me lately, shoot me some comments and tell me what is happening with you.

T-Day

Happy Thanksgiving, family and friends.

As you know, Japan doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Blasphemy, right? Well, for those of us who live in a country with a Plymouth Rock (and perhaps a few too many field-trips to Plymouth Plantation, and by “too many,” I mean one), Thanksgiving is an integral part of our culture.

On Thanksgiving Night, which I shall now designate at T-Day, I got Seth, Melissa, Helen, and Nick to come to my place and make the trek to KFC, the closest thing we can get to a traditional Turkey Dinner. Funny thing about Japanese KFC, due to cultural differences, they don’t have mashed potatoes, nor do they sell huge buckets of chicken. A “Family Meal” is 6 pieces of chicken and 2 packets of fries. Yeah, I paid the price for it and was still hungry afterwards. KFC is apparently synonymous with Christmas in Japan, because they had a registration list, and the Colonel’s statue was bedecked with a red suit and plenty of Christmas cheer.

After making it back to my place, we opened our meals, and had a round of what we give thanks for. Then, it was time for Superbad. I love this movie, it makes me crack up every time I watch it. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it has a lot of rough language, and it’s based around very small grains of truth for males who have gone through the American public High School system. Poor Helen, our proper British/Kiwi friend, she had to preserve her image and blocked her head between her knees to stop the horrible sounds coming from my computer monitor.

So, that was last Thursday’s small Thanksgiving celebration.

We had a much more normal Thanksgiving at Weldon and Crystal’s (a married couple) on Saturday. They had all of the usual fixin’s- turkey, mashed potatoes (which yours truly made), cranberry sauce, etc. etc. We even played football in the schoolyard nearby.

My team, team Turkey Awesome, won the game! With 2 touchdowns, and a third on the way (until the security officer came by and kicked us out), we were clearly the victors.

Afterwards, we returned to their house and watched Starwars (Episode VI, aka the best one), played Jenga, Uno, poker, and the Midwesterners split up and played their alien “Euchre.” Yeah, I don’t know either, it has something to do with cards and being from a geographically unknown region. Yours truly won poker. After edging out the early Kiwi menace (Tina), kicking out the Kentucky Fried Southern leader (Eric), and surviving the great Singaporean drought (Natalie comes in and, in 1 hand, reduces all of our money at least by half), I made it out in the end with all of the money, $36 to be exact.

Sunday, I did a lot of nothing. Which is just what I needed after a busy day and week. I slept late, cleaned, ran some errands (which included filling up my precious kerosene, and getting a terrible haircut), and met up with Paul for dinner at Gusto.

This week, on Tuesday, after Japanese class was Matt’s birthday. Not only was it Matt’s birthday, but a new generation of game has been born. After assigning people around to me positions in my currently fictional, soon to be non-fictional, world takeover, I named someone the Pompadour of Pies. Well, this quickly turned into an all-night game, where each sentence had to have at least one word that started with the letter P. Yours truly was also the unofficial winner (even though this game has no “winners” per se) of this game. Perhaps, one my say that I was the paragon of pithy p-words, a prodigal player proliferate with positively perfect performance. Purple. I can’t wait for next week’s letter.

This week’s entry was brought to you by the Japanese word “marumarumaru.” Because nothing gets your Japanese teacher rubbing her upper chest (not oppai, get your mind out of the gutter) like the word “marumarumaru.”