Monorail

Here's the Tokyo monorail in Shinagawa.

 

Yes, in addition to having a million trains, Tokyo also has a monorail.

Going to the local farmer's market

On Saturdays and Wednesdays around the corner from our house, there's a nice farmer's market that starts in the afternoon and continues into the evening. This makes it much more convenient than farmer's markets we've seen in North America which tend to start at terribly early times and close early in the afternoon, so we end up going there a lot.

Learning kanji

Since January, I have been studying kanji using Anki (a flash card program). Before I started studying in earnest, I only knew maybe a dozen or so of them, but now I know many more (I've recently started learning the kanji that students learn in grade four so that probably means I know somewhere around 400 of them).

Well, at least for the definition of know where I can understand roughly what the character means in English, I know them. Not so much for the definition of knowing the kanji where I know all the ways the character is read (some of them have way too many readings for that). I also know how to write them for the most part because I actually bothered learning the rules for stroke order, but it's definitely harder to think of the kanji I'd want to draw than it is to see it and recognize it.

One thing that I've really enjoyed about learning kanji while living here is that a lot of the time, it means that I go somewhere and I see one of them that I've just learned. To me, this is pretty exciting because I can pass by the same sign and suddenly understand it (or at least more of it) when I couldn't the day or week before. It's like I'm suddenly able to see the sign in an entirely different way, if that makes sense.

I wonder if this is the sort of experience that other people have when they move to a place before learning the local language. I haven't really asked anyone else about their experiences with this, mostly because I don't think about it unless I've just seen a new kanji and if I tell anyone, it's probably daid who hasn't been studying kanji. It would be interesting to know if this is a common experience though. If anyone wants to share their experiences in comments, I would definitely be interested in reading them.

More of outside the palace

On Friday, I shared some pictures I took wandering around the area near the Imperial Palace and in the park just north of it. I thought it fitting to show the other pictures I took once I got onto the main grounds today. I warn you that they're much less exciting though.

To start, there's a big gate called Sakurada-mon.

Some guy kindly walked through it as I was taking a picture for scale.

A walk of contrasts: wandering outside the Imperial Palace

Today, I had a free afternoon and was near Tokyo station so I thought I'd drop by the Imperial Palace. Since this was a little impromptu, I wasn't expecting to get super close (past a certain point, you need to have reserved a spot in a tour group), but I figured there are gardens and the like that should be nice.

Anyway, I managed to make my way there without too much trouble despite only having a general sense of where it was, and I got to observe the contrast between the moat, old walls, old bridge and traditional-looking buildings...

...and the very modern city just across the street. 

Personally, I thought this was an interesting contrast. I got to spend much time thinking about this contrast too since the first gate I approached was closed. Since it was a nice day, I didn't really mind and figured I'd walk to the next gate hoping it would be open.

Random

This post is late and it will be both short and sweet with a more proper one to follow on Thursday (possibly Friday). Granted, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words and I think that this picture that I took at daid's bank says just so much about this part of Japan:

It's an umbrella stand. Umbrella stands are pretty ubiquitous around here, you'll find them near the entry ways to many (perhaps most) stores. This one is somewhat odd though because it is equipped with locks so you can store your umbrella and nobody else will accidentally take it because they look roughly the same (or steal it because they forgot theirs).

Opening a bank account in Japan

I have variously heard that opening a bank account in Japan can be tricky if one does not know how to speak Japanese especially well. I've heard that this is even true of some of the more foreigner-friendly banks here like City Bank. For instance, when daid went to open a bank account on his own he ended up with someone using Google translate on individual words, despite trying to go to a branch that was supposed to have English speakers. The other bank accounts that he's opened were both done with assistance.

I'd heard of a new-ish bank called Shinsei, which actually has a fairly good English website (a rarity in Japan). The website indicates locations where there are supposed to be employees who speak English, though it also warns that if one is concerned about communication, one might want to bring someone to translate anyway.

Despite the warning, I went to the location in Roppongi Hills (which seems to be a ridiculously fancy place) on my own hoping to muddle through. It turns out that I had absolutely no reason to be concerned at all because of the four employees I saw there, three of them seemed to speak pretty much perfect English (the fourth was working with a Japanese woman so English was not necessary).

I'm also not sure, but I think it was easier to open a bank account there than it generally is in North America. I just passed the clerk my residency card, typed my name on a computer a few times (it had to be put into katakana as well as romanji) as well as my postal code (which filled in most of my address). Then she got me to choose a PIN and give an example of my signature (giving a hanko was an option, but I don't have one) and she explained a few features of the bank and how their online banking works, gave me a card and sent me on my way. 

It was a very pleasant experience and I definitely recommend Shinsei to anyone who needs to open a bank account in Japan. Not only because of the relative ease when it comes to opening an account in English, but also because they don't have monthly fees or service fees on a lot of ATMs, including the ones in all major convenience stores.

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Note: I'll put up another post on Saturday-ish. I was going to post something on Monday, but it's been hard to write and I didn't want to leave you guys hanging. 

Five Japanese ingredients that go well in pasta sauce

You may not know this, but Italian food is reasonably popular in Japan. You can find Italian restaurants at various price ranges, you can find pasta in every super market (although you may have a limited selection of noodles) and Japan even has its own Italian-inspired pasta dishes. However, while people here will substitute button mushrooms for other local varieties and do interesting things with pasta like add tobasco sauce to pasta, it doesn't seem like people mix ingredients that are traditional to Japanese cooking into their pasta sauces very often.

This is something that daid and I have been doing at home though and we've had largely positive results. For the most part, we've just been using diced tomatoes as the base for our sauces because it's generally easier to find and cheaper than pasta sauce, but lately we've also tried making some Alfredo sauce (which is surprisingly easy). So I present you with a list of five ingredients that go in pasta sauces reasonably well.