Poor weather not dodged

We were supposed to fly back to Japan on Tuesday, but there was a ground freeze at Pearson airport which delayed our flight to Minneapolis Saint-Paul where we were supposed to connect with a flight to Narita. Since flights were doing just fine leaving Minneapolis, there was no way we were catching our flight to Japan so we had to reschedule. The earliest we could have flown out was Friday, but that flight was going to be through JFK and the woman who rebooked us did not recommend that approach.

Now we're flying back Saturday through Detroit, which means that we have some time to hang out here some more. I got my haircut earlier today, which I meant to do and then ran out of time to do earlier. I figure getting a haircut in Japan would be an issue since I don't really know how to describe what kind of haircut I want in Japanese. I also got to check out some of the damage from the ice storm that hit just before we got here.

Trees doing telephone
pole impressions.

The trees all around the city seem to have taken a hit, but parts of my parents' neighbourhood were really bad. There's one street nearby where it looks like "there were telephone poles on both sides of the street, but someone just went down the street and chopped off all the tops" as daid describes it.

According to my parents, the neighbours on that street lost power for more than a day (my parents only lost power for 5 hours or so). That street had much larger trees than the ones on my parents' street, which is probably why the trees did not fare so well, but the power lines run underground so I'm not sure why it was so much worse for them.

The maple tree in my parents backyard took a beating, but it was pretty bushy before the ice storm, so it should hopefully be okay for the most part. 

None shall pass!
(Without ducking)

The entrance to the park was in pretty poor condition, as you can see. The one tree lying across the path in the front had a trunk that was probably about 30 cm in diameter, but it was snapped just like it was nothing.

The trees further from the road (behind the fallen tree in the image) fared better, but the fallen branches still made for a nice obstacle course if one wanted to go to the park.

Of course, we did want to go to the park.

Our reward for climbing over and under the fallen tree and limbs was a wonderful view of a frozen park that we had (almost) all to ourselves. Here, the trees were sheltered by the valley so many of them had escaped major damage (though the forest was impassable).

A winter wonderland!

Sick day

We're still visiting my parents and will be flying back tomorrow morning. It looks like the weather should hold out and if it does, we'll have dodged storms by one day each way (we flew out of Toyko the day after the ice storm hit over here). Our connection in Minneapolis also looks like it should be fine too so we should be able to get back to Tokyo for Wednesday.

As much as I generally do like the snow and the winter, the temperature here has been pretty ridiculous, dropping to -20 C at some points (and it will drop again tomorrow as we're preparing to leave). During the cold snap, the furnace in my parents' house also broke which wasn't especially pleasant (though possibly the house was still warmer than our apartment gets in Tokyo) and I got sick as soon as the temperature started to hover around freezing so we haven't really gone anywhere.

We meant to make a trip to Toronto while we were here since daid hasn't been to the CN tower before and we have this trend of visiting tall buildings/things together. We also wanted to go to Snakes and Lattes to pick up some expansions for Cards Against Humanity, but that didn't really happen. This is perhaps the disadvantage of being in town for only a week.

We haven't quite managed to get all the foods we were planning on bringing back with us either. So far we have 9 kg of dried legumes (4.5 kg each of lentils and chickpeas), but we still have to go find some tahini before we leave so we can make hummus when we get back to Japan. It's always fun to explain what chickpeas and lentils are to the customs officials in Japan. Last time I think I explained that lentils are things that you cook like rice and that seemed to be an acceptable explanation.

Anyway, sorry about the somewhat boring blog today, not much has happened this week and I'm feeling a bit crummy still (but better than a few days ago). Next week should be more interesting.

Resolutions

Happy New Years, everyone and I apologize for the late post. It turns out that visiting family and being social takes away from blogging time.

I don't make New Years resolutions every year and I think last year was the only time I kept all my resolutions because I only made one (I resolved to finish my thesis). This year I have free time so I'm feeling a little ambitious about this sort of thing. So ambitious, in fact, that I will not only make resolutions, but also share them publicly.

First of all, I resolve to read more books. I'm not sure how many books I read last year, but it might have been less than ten. I read a lot of papers, but those aren't quite the same. I think a reasonable goal is somewhere around 26 books (this is one book every other week), but since I'm feeling ambitious right now I'll set a goal for 30 books. In addition, half of the books I'll read this year will be written by women simply because women are severely underrepresented on my bookshelves at the moment. I'll keep a running tally of the books I'm reading/have read in the sidebar.

I also resolve to draw more by making a point to draw something every day (or spend some time working on a larger drawing every day). Here, I'd like to make a point of drawing things I don't usually draw and playing with techniques I don't usually employ (because I'm lazy). Granted, usually, I don't draw things if I don't think about them so it's not especially easy to think of what should be included in this list so I might ask for suggestions from time to time. I'll probably post some of them on here every once in a while.

I also resolve to run more. I've been working on getting back into a habit of doing this regularly in Japan (coming somewhere cold and snowy has not been helpful for doing this at all) and I would actually like to participate in a race this year. However, since I'll still be in Japan, this means I'm forced to make an additional resolution.

I resolve to study Japanese more. Based on some preliminary googling, the way to register for the small races in Japan involves being able to register on websites that are only in Japanese. As good as Google is for translating these, sometimes it does some funny things during translation. Also, it would be nice to be able to communicate effectively (for obvious reasons). Thus, I resolve to learn at least one new kanji a day and to spend some time every week practicing my reading/writing/listening/speaking.

Finally, I resolve to blog more. Starting either next week or the week after when we're back in Japan and things have settled down, I will include a post on Thursday as well as the regular Monday posts (or normally regular). I'll try to keep the Monday posts about interesting things that happened during the week and observations about living in a new place (or however you would describe the topics of my posts so far) while the Thursday posts might be about something else entirely (I have some ideas).

Five foods I miss from Canada

Today we're flying back to North America for the holidays. Even though I've been here a little less than two months, it's still the longest I've been to Japan and possibly the longest I've been outside of Canada all at once.

While the most difficult issues when it comes to getting around in Japan are language-related like how I can't talk to store clerks, understand bar conversations or read all the signs, this isn't what I miss most about being in Canada. It's possible that without daid to talk to, I might miss this a lot too, but luckily we get to hear lots of English from each other.

Instead, what I miss most are various foods. I like the food that I've been eating here and many of the foods I miss are things that I would have maybe once a month while living in Canada (sometimes less). However, I think that the absence of all these foods at once just makes me miss them all so much more. Thus, without further ado, I present my list of five foods I love which are not available in Japan (or are at least not widely available and affordable here):

Pizza

I'll start by pointing out that pizza exists in Japan. I've even had pizza since I've been here (last time was when we made some pizza in Tsukuba), but pizza is kind of expensive here. For instance, at Pizza-La (the largest pizza chain in Japan and the only one I know of in town), a medium plain cheese pizza (プレーンチーズピザ) is 1050 yen (just shy of $11 CDN). In comparison, a medium plain cheese pizza in Canada can be had for as little as $5 and it will be considerably larger.

Cheese

Like pizza, cheese is something that exists in Japan and it can be pretty tasty. However, the cheese that's available here is mostly processed and there's not much of a variety. The stuff that isn't processed is pretty expensive (even by Canadian standards) and I think the only kind of non-processed cheese I've seen is Camembert. Maybe there are specialty shops where a nice blue or some cheddar is available, but I haven't seen it.

There was some time in undergrad where I couldn't afford to buy cheese and I was pretty unhappy about that. This is similar, but worse because I'm not finding free pizza every week either.

As a result of my cheese deprivation, I recently had a dream where all I did was eat various cheeses. It can't be good when one is dreaming about nothing other than eating dairy products.

Burritos

Before I moved out of London, a Burrito Boyz opened up downtown near my apartment. As a result of this development, I rapidly developed an addiction to delicious, tasty burritos. When I moved out, getting someone else to make me burritos became more challenging, but at least I had easy access to all the proper ingredients to make my own.

In principle, the ingredients for burritos exist in Japan, but some (like the wrap) are specialty items and others (the refried beans, possibly the salsa too) have to be home made. Also, sour cream in Japan is not the same as sour cream in North America. It tastes about the same, but it's a lot thicker and really expensive (a 100 mL container can be had for about 400 yen). Finally, there's the "no real cheese" issue again.

Falafel

Long predating my addiction to burrito is my addiction to falafel. These wonderful balls of chickpeas and/or fava beans and spices with tahini and garlic sauces, pickled radishes and assorted deliciousness all wrapped in a warm pita do not seem to exist at all in Japan. We've found places that sell chicken shawarma, but they do not sell falafel sandwiches, which makes me very sad.

Salt and Vinegar Chips

Edamame chips. Possibly
delicious, but no substitute.

There are chips here and there are a variety of flavours some of which I've never seen in North America, such as pizza or edamame flavoured chips. I wouldn't want to eat all of the chips that are around either: I'll pass on the shrimp and octopus flavoured chips.

My favourite kind of chips is missing though. It's not clear why salt and vinegar chips don't seem to exist here, since salt and vinegar are two flavours that seem to be appreciated in Japanese cuisine, but apparently not in chip form.

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Soon, I will have access to these foods and I'm so excited about this prospect (which is probably kinda sad). Unfortunately, I won't be able to bring all of these with me when I come back (maybe I can bring some chips, but those aren't going to last long). However, since these foods are not necessarily good for me, I'm probably better off without them on a regular basis anyway.


On another note, I found the followers gadget (as the things off on the side are called) so if you would like to follow my blog, please do so. :)

Land of (in)convenience?

If you haven't been to Japan, you might associate it with being very modern and in many ways it is. However, Japan is a largely cash-based society, which can seem rather old fashioned, especially if one is coming from Canada, the country with the highest rate of debit use per transaction in the world where plastic money is accepted just about everywhere, even the dollar store. In Japan, if one want to buy groceries, clothes, a meal at a restaurant or even pay a hotel bill, one typically has to pay in cash.

There are also issues with ATMs here, such as after hours convenience charges---where "after hours" means "after 3:00"---and there are ATMs which close at times as early as 4:00 on weekdays and do not open at all on weekends. In addition, most ATMs do not accept international bank cards, so if you want to take out cash and do not have a Japanese bank account, you have to find a 7-11 (which is easy since Japan is home to 30% of all 7-11s in the world) and use their ATM or find a post office ATM (which are sometimes at train stations, but are not open all the time). Note that if you use an ATM at a 7-11, you should be aware that you are required to take out at least 10,000 ¥ ($102.89 CDN as of 2013/12/16), which is very unlucky if you happen to have a daily withdrawl limit on your bank card set at $100 CDN and forgot to change this before coming to Japan (oops).

So, on Saturday when I wanted to take out some money, it was a bit of an ordeal. First, we went to the post office near our apartment and found that it was closed. Then we went to the big post office in town which was open, but for some reason, the bank machines in the post office would not accept my PIN. I would input my PIN and the enter/confirm key would light up, but wouldn't do anything when I pressed it. At this step, the "cancel" button had disappeared so I had to wait for the machine to time out and return my card.

We thought that the first machine we tried might have been broken, so we tried another one only to get the same result. At this point, we had to run because daid had a meeting so we tried the 7-11 machine on our way (and found that it had a transaction limit that was too high for me to take out money). Eventually, I managed to get some money out by stopping at the post office ATM in the train station later, but it was still much more hassle than necessary.

The ATM by the cafeteria at daid's work.

I've had some issues getting cash in Canada before (if memory serves, finding an ATM downtown Calgary on a Sunday was lots of fun), but that was typically because I tried to use my own bank to avoid fees and even then, I could still buy things with my credit or debit cards. I've also never seen a closed ATM in Canada. I've seen buildings which contain ATMs that are locked, but in Japan there are times when the building is open and the ATM inside it is closed. For example, to the left is picture I took of the ATM outside the cafeteria at daid's work during dinner service. Across from this machine, you can put money on your meal card, but if you didn't get money earlier in the day, you're out of luck.

Although I have heard Japan referred to as the "land of convenience" due to the proliferation of convenience stores, which are indeed very convenient (in a previous post I briefly mentioned that it's possible to buy entire meals at convenience stores), in some ways things here are quite inconvenient. To a point, I can understand why some stores might not want to add credit card functions (it costs the store for each transaction) and I can understand why banks charge after hours convenience fees (everyone else does it, so why not make a bit extra off your customers). I do not understand why ATMs close when the buildings they're in are still open though. One can get inside the train station most hours of the day, but the ATM in the train station closes at 9 pm on weekdays and even earlier on weekends (hours before the last train comes in). So if you spent your last yen on beer out in Tokyo, you can't buy a snack when you get off the last train.

Another thing that seems like it should be easy to do and more convenient for customers is to leave packages at the closest post office to one's home after a failed delivery attempt. Last month, daid got a care package from his parents and we went to the post office near our apartment to pick it up. The package wasn't there and we had to walk to the main post office in town to pick it up. It's not that far of a walk from where we live, but it is the only post office where you can pick up packages in the entire city. This probably explains the giant line that seems to exist every time we've been to the post office (there's also only one window at which one can pick up packages).

Personally, I'm not sure what the purpose of having a local post office is if not to hold onto packages for you. I guess you can mail packages from there (in principle, we haven't tried), but if they can hold onto outgoing packages, it shouldn't be too difficult to hold onto incoming ones for the neighbourhood as well. If they don't hold onto outgoing packages either then there's not much point to having a post office; it would be easier to sell stamps at the grocery store or something and have a drop box for letters outside.

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Pouch can be used as underwear and PET bottle?

On an unrelated note, daid and I went out to buy some crafting supplies for a project that we're making at home. I'll post pictures of the finished result some time in the new year since we're unlikely to finish it before we take off to North America for holidays next week. However, while we were at the store, I discovered that yarn here is significantly cheaper than what I find in Canada. The selection wasn't so great, but since we shopped at a department store this isn't surprising.

We also spotted this pouch (pictured to the right). While it seems cute and somewhat practical, I feel like it cannot be used as underwear, contrary to the claim on the packaging.

Christmas in Japan!

If you know a little about Japan, you might know that the most common religions in this country are Shinto and Buddhism. If you know a bit more, you might know that more than 70% of people in Japan are not religious at all, really. At any rate, the percentage of the population who are Christian is something like 1 to 2%.

Some signs even look fairly permanent.

So why, you might wonder, am I posting about Christmas here? The answer is quite simple: Christmas is relatively popular in Japan. Complete with signs, lights, fake trees and Christmas carols in the stores replacing the usual store theme songs (yes, some stores here have theme songs) all wishing passers by a Merry Christmas in one way or another.

Obviously, the religious aspects are not popular and people do not get the day off work, but the part where people are encouraged to buy things for each other is very popular. Especially with the stores who want to sell more things.

Because everyone loves capitalism!

Even Kentucky Fried Chicken has gotten into the Christmas spirit, or rather, it has been in the Christmas spirit since I arrived at the beginning of November. While KFC is pretty omnipresent in Japan generally (Japan is its the third largest market after the US and China), the company has also convinced Japan that fried chicken is a Christmas food, so they start promoting special Christmas meals early (because they have to be ordered in advance) and dress the Colonel in a Santa suit and hat.

Colonel Santa brings you tidings of fried chicken!

It seems that Christmas has also become a romantic day, which is a more recent, but still interesting trend. It's a bit odd that Christmas has become a romantic holiday since Valentine's day (where women give men chocolates) and White Day (where the men give gifts to the women who gave them chocolate) exist here as well. It almost seems like Japan is making a point of being rough on single people. 

Second Thanksgiving and the really long fall

On Saturday, we went to a Thanksgiving party hosted by one of daid's friends. It was a potluck, which is normally fine since neither of us mind preparing food. Unfortunately, we still don't have a burner at our apartment (and we're never going to get an actual oven) so our cooking abilities are somewhat limited.

Luckily, we do have a rice cooker and there are surprisingly large number of things you can cook in a rice cooker, like this recipe I found a recipe for a vegetable hot cake. So we tried to make that, though we swapped out all the veggies for different ones, added some spices, sprinkled some cheese on it and doubled the batter. That last decision was probably not the best idea since we ended up cooking it twice in the rice cooker and then putting it in the microwave (which has a bake function that we still haven't really figured out) before it finished cooking on the inside.

In the end, we got something that reasonably resembled a hot cake and was pretty tasty. It also disappeared almost immediately at the party which is always a good sign. We made it again yesterday for breakfast using a single serving of the batter and it turned out much better. Clearly, this calls for more experimenting with the rice cooker. Perhaps the next step is to make some actual cake!

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One thing that has been really nice about living near Tokyo is the weather (though I will probably not say the same thing in the summer). Unlike back home, where the weather will shift from summer to winter in a week or two (and vice versa in the spring), it's still fall here. The leaves are still changing and the air is nice and crisp. It's getting a bit cold at night (though still above freezing), but during the day it's warm enough that one can almost do without a jacket.

Granted, I'm not sure that Tokyo has what I'd consider a proper winter at all since the temperature doesn't seem to drop much below 0°C and it doesn't snow very much. It's still nice to have a long fall since this is a relatively new experience for me.