What Do Japanese Do on a Day Off? Part 1

Today (Wednesday) was a national holiday in Japan. Alas, the Japanese haven't yet discovered that they can relocate all national holidays to Mondays or Fridays -- I wish that would import that piece of western technology.

Anyway, because there's just one day you can't really take trips anywhere, so I hopped on the bike and spent the whole afternoon riding down through various neighborhoods to the Tama River, out the river to a place called Noborito, back to Shinjuku and finally back to the house. Here are some things I saw on the way.

#1: They train their children how to behave in traffic

This was an awesomely Japanese thing. In this small park called "Chofu Central Park", there's this area where Japanese children can train to be adults. They have their cordoned-off area where they practice all the good traffic habits they'll require later in life.




As you can see, it's quite big, and it comes with lane lines, direction indicators, and several special kid-sized traffic lights. It's never to early to train those children for societal conventions! Of course, the parents are watching to make sure nobody develops any bad driving habits. It's pretty amusing (and slightly chilling) to see a whole crowd of Japanese 5-year-olds stopped at a fake traffic light, patiently waiting for it to green before proceeding even though there is acutally no traffic in the other direction.

Japanese Toilet Training Video

I've often remarked that in Japan, the custom of having cute cartoon characters for everything has never died out, the way it has in the U.S. As always, the web offers more proof!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFVoLz88hiU

谷口楽器 is Japanese for "Nirvana for Left-handed Guitar Players"

Wow.

I brought my guitar with me to Tokyo and especially since moving into the new apartment I've been practicing pretty regularly. I've been thinking of getting a cheap electric as well to practice with, but I had resigned myself to the idea that it would have to wait until I went back to the states -- Japan isn't very open to the whole left-handed thing, and I doubted stores here would even have lefty guitars.

So, for the last few weeks I've been going to the jam session at a small (very small) local jazz bar. I was talking to one of the guys I met there (Caucasian, but was born & raised here in Tokyo) about being left-handed and the limited selection of guitars that ensues. He said I should definitely to go a store that I heard as "Tiny Guchi Gachi" in the Ochanomizu neighborhood, which actually had the most left-handed guitars he had ever seen in Tokyo (he's left-handed, but like Jimi Hendrix he plays right-handed instruments upside down).

Today I biked up to Ochanomizu. I couldn't find the store on the first try so I went into the local Internet cafe and did some web searching -- it turns out I heard the name wrong, it's actually "taniguchi gakki"　(谷口, taniguchi, means valley-entrance, and 楽器, gakki, means musical instrument; gakki is also the generic suffix for a store that sells musical instruments).

Armed with the information, I found the store on Meidai Doori in Ochanomizu no problem. The red-on-white text is the sign for taniguchi gakki.



Oh. My. God. It's not just that Taniguchi Gakki has a selection of left-handed guitars... Taniguchi Gakki is a Left-Handed Guitar Store! That's all they sell.



Yes, every one of those guitars is a left-handed model. And they're not done; there are three aisles of guitars in the store:



The fellow customer in blue, like me, was agape at the number of left-handed guitars, and was playing his way through a selection of electric guitars and wishing he had brought more money. It's not just that Taniguchi Gakki is a good selection of left-handed guitars for Tokyo; it's possibly the most left-handed guitars in one place anywhere in the world. The next time you lefty axemen are looking for a new option... come to the one store where you can play all the guitars and righties can't!

Price, cost, and expense

Some Japanese words I've learned related to these concepts. Posted in an attempt to help others!

Kanji	Hiragana	Romanji	English
価格	かかく	kakaku	price, sticker price
	この店は、価格が見にくいですね？
	Boy, it's hard to see the prices in this store.
値段	ねだん	nedan	cost, price
	値段から買わなかった。
	I didn't buy it because of the price.
物価	ぶっか	bukka	price (as of commodity)
	今から、円の物価が上がっていくでしょうね？
	The Yen will go up from now on, don't you think?
費用	ひよう	hiyou	expense
	費用を被りますか？
	Can you afford the expense?
原価	げんか	genka	"cost price", wholesale price, internal cost
	去年から原価が20％減りました。
	We have lowered our costs by 20% since last year.

Crowdsourcing

Not a good time to be making a living from stock.

Pretty inevitable though.

Leo

Yay! It's MySims!

The game I was working on before I left EA to move to Japan is finally announced: MySims. I can't wait 'til it comes out, I really enjoyed working on the game (I was sad to leave the team to come here, but hey, I got to move to Japan!).

Those characters still look *really* cute!

...I'd better hurry and get my Wii. Unfortunately, that requires a television, which is sort of expensive...

Mi Casa

Well, finally the apt. got the critical ingredient for a household last night: the guy from NTT showed up to turn on the Internet connection! After some time debugging at 2am last night (I went to our local jazz dive for a couple hours) and debugging mail today, I can once again post from the comfort of my very own bedroom.

You can see what I've been up to the last few weekends if you check out my Tokyo blog -- there's actually an apartment, with furniture an everything! We can even host a guest (futon on floor in Living Room), so stop on by. Here's a couple shots from home sweet home.

watashi no heya:

From Leo's Tokyo on Picasa

living room:

From Leo's Tokyo on Picasa

View of Tokyo Tower from the Balcony:

From Leo's Tokyo on Picasa

You knew it had to happen

These are real, official Japanese post office stamps.

Almost... a... house...

I just got confirmation that my stuff I shipped from America will show up next Tuesday morning! Yay! I'll have Japanese prints on the wall again, and most importantly, I'll have my bike. That will trim my commute from ~35 min. now to about 15 min. (at least on non-rainy days).

In other news, Yoichi took us on the trip to Ikea for furniture's sake Sunday. I actually have (some) furniture in my room now!

The other exciting thing is that the new apartment is along a river with hundreds of cherry trees... and sakura season should be early this year. I've already seen two cherry trees in full bloom here (there are some varieties that bloom extra-early). It certainly has been a weird weather year.

Sorry for the no-posty interval lately. I moved two weeks ago, and the new apartment doesn't have an internet connection yet, so my connectivity outside of work is suffering. And, at work, my MacBook is running Windows all day, so I'm not so motivated to post :-(

Later!

El Jogo no Mundo Real

This is some serious fanitude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyLCi9RIZu4&eurl=

All these years later, and I can promise you it's pretty much shot-for-shot accurate. I remember a lot of those shots by their shot number even now!

Vegetable Cravings

Back when I was taking Karate, I would get serious meat cravings. I was working out enough that I would look in a meat counter at raw meat and actually salivate.

Here in Japan, that happens too, but it's with vegetables. Although the Japanese diet is very healthy (I've lost weight since coming here), it's hard to get any big servings of vegetables -- this ain't California. When I look at a display of nice tomatoes or other yummy veggies, I completely have the salivate reaction.

Veggies here are really nice but ridiculously expensive ($3 per bunch for Broccoli anyone?) so I'm always on the lookout for more. The other day in a British pub I actually ordered the ¥400 "vegatable stick" (aka carrot stick) appetizer just to get some fiber. On the way home the other night, I bought a package of cherry tomatoes (¥380) and looking at them in the store I was totally salivating.

The only vaguely affordable vegetable is carrots -- they're only $1 or so each (Japanese carrots are very thick but short, so they have more volume than a single U.S. carrot).

Shaker

Whee, we had a nice quake last night: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007xpa9.php

It very distinctly made the building I'm living in (narrow and tall like most of Tokyo!) sway. As always, I woke up knowing it was because there was an earthquake. Another milestone of living here -- my first quake!

Leo

Found a permanent apartment!

Today was get-daragged-all-over-Meguro-ku-by-Hasegawa-san day. I needed to find a permanent apartment, my temporary place is coming up for renewal again, so I found an rental agent this week and also decided to look for a place together with a friend from work, Matt Smith (1-BR and 2-BR apartments are almost the same price in the part of Tokyo I was looking in).

Today we found one, on the second place we saw! It's near Meguro-eki, halfway between that and Nakameguro-eki, right on the Meguro river:

From Tokyo

It's on the twelfth floor of a high-rise, not really my preferred situation but the location is super-convenient (it'll be an easy 10-15 minute bike commute) and the views are pretty good. It's on an end, so it has a window, and here Matt demonstrates that the room is, in fact, wider than your outstretched arms:

From Tokyo

I don't know yet when I can move in, but hopefully it's before my trip back to the states on the 26th!

Engrish in Action

This is a clothing store in Shibuya:

From Tokyo

I was trying to figure out, what's the opposite of "casually casual"?

Mt. Takao hike

Today and did a great hike, up Mt. Takao and Mt. Shobatakeshiro. There were some fantastic views of the sunset from the second summit and a stumble across a suspension bridge and a dam in the dark at the end!



For the full story, check out the photos!.