Your Japanese word of the week is...

"tsuyu". I used to think it meant "strong rain", seeing as strong is "tsuyoi" and it's no stretch of imagination for the Japanese to use the Chinese pronunciation for rain. As it turns out, however, "tsuyu" means "rainy season" and the kanji for strong is nowhere to be found.

But you can forgive me for making that connection since the Japanese rainy season, which can last as long as a month and a half (early June til mid-July), is essentially marked by the downpours which can occur.

Oddly (and luckily), the very serious rains have been relatively minimal this past month. It does drizzle and at times there are rather ominous dark clouds loitering around, seemingly biding their time until they can drench a few million unsuspecting people, but all in all, it hasn't been too bad. Until this past Sunday.

This past Sunday when, with my parents who were in town for a day (at least the day was one day after my birthday, so that's a nice present), I got to visit Kamakura, a very popular day-trip destination just south of Tokyo that, a bit unfortunately, happens to have lots of outdoor sights to see.

Sights such as the Daibutsu, or "Big Buddha", in the picture on the right. This bronze statue was cast in 1252 and there it remained, with a temple housing it, until 1498 when a tidal wave swept the temple away (Kamakura is near the water, in case you missed the tidal wave part =P). Unmoved, the statue remained exposed for the past 500+ years although in 1960, repairs were made to it the statue's neck as well as seperating the body from the base to allow it to shift during an earthquake. Or dance, the latter being just an amusing thought I had =P..... a 121 ton bronze Buddha gettin' jiggy during an 7.6-Richter earthquake?? Now THAT'S worth paying 200yen to see...... Yes, you had to pay to see the Buddha.......

But I digress........

Don't let the picture fool you, too. I stood there for nearly 10 minutes before I managed to snap a shot of the Buddha without anybody in the way...... and that was more surprising than the rain- the sheer number of people determined to not let it ruin their plans. Including the 30+ people out surfing at the beach.......

Skipping a large number of the other sites, we headed to Enoshima, a small island connected to the mainland by a bridge. Up some stairs there is a temple of which I wish I knew the significance of but until I look it up, it shall remain the "Temple of Enoshima".

But I'd probably go back when the weather is better since it's not that far from Tokyo and its size makes for the ideal day-trip. There really are lots of other places to visit as well as simply wandering the quaint, winding, stone-lined streets, letting people weave and discover their way through the old houses selling new souvenirs.

Despite the rain, Kamakura really is very beautiful, with buildings and temples sprouting amidst the greenery; as if the roles were reversed, the city being the weed and the forest the lawn being intruded upon.

One last thing I'd like to point out are the extremely hard working rickshaw/tour guides in and around the Daibutsu area. These people were out there all day in the perma-torrential downpour, dodging cars, inhaling bus exhaust, and treading up slippery slopes all the while telling their customers of the history of Kamakura with a smile on their faces............

Never again will I complain about the rain during my 5-min bike ride to the train station............

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"yada~" which basically means "ewww.... no thanks!" or an otherwise equally emphatic "no thank you". Usually it's kids who say it but really, it's used by anyone any time they want to show a dislike or otherwise disinterest in something...... you can probably guess where this post is going to go then =P....

Bugs!
Yes, they're back. I totally forgot about them as the cold Russian wind currents swept the country and killed them all off, but as the temperatures (and humidity) go back on the rise, so do they.

The two things that gross me out the most are the spider webs seemingly everywhere and my new spotlight-cum-vending-machine which seems to have turned my front door into some all-night insect dance party........... without the groovy music.

Rent!
On the other hand, when I move closer to the town, hopefully I'll encounter fewer bugs since things like stagnant-water-filled rice fields and a lack of trees should mean fewer bugs.

At the same time, that's balanced off by the difficultly in renting rooms in Tokyo.

It's not out of the norm for apartments to require some if not all of the following: two month's rent up front, key money (which is essentially a "gift" to the landlord, sometimes as much as two month's rent), a "moving-in fee", fire insurance, a separate fee for utilities, a finder's fee (if the apartment was rented through an agent), and a guarantor, a sort of company or person who can vouch for your ability to pay the rent (there are guarantor businesses, but they charge for their services, which, unless there's more to it that it sounds, seems a very round-about way of facilitating rampant bribery......).

Assuming the rent is 80,000yen a month (~$800), that would mean to move in would require nearly 3 times as much up front.

Luckily, there are lots of people renting privately with as little up front as simply one month's rent, which is entirely reasonable. I've narrowed it down to either sharing an apartment within Tokyo or having my own just outside of Tokyo. I might aim to live within Tokyo because I am only here for 9 more months so might as well live in the heart of the city......... I'll let you know how it pans out.....

Pepsi!
Pepsi in Japan simply isn't very prominent but that hasn't stopped them from rolling out some new flavour recently, which I bought out of random curiousity.

Although the name should've tipped me off........ "Blue Hawaii" eh??.......

It's supposed to taste like "Pineapple&Lemon" but what it actually tastes like is........

Well, let me put it this way- it's like when regular people try to do fancy pencil sketches. People draw the same line over and over again trying to get the right curve to the face or shape of the arm, but at some point, it's so overloaded with "effort", it just completely ceases to resemble what the artist had in mind and just ends up being a mess of pencil strokes.

Pepsi Blue Hawaii is the palatable version of that mess of pencil strokes. If you try really hard, you can taste some pineapple in it, but essentially, it tastes exactly the way you'd expect a bright blue, palm-tree-adorned Pepsi would taste....... fake.......

Yada........

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"tatakai" which is a fight, tatakau being the verb "to fight". Of course, this being Japanese, there are lots of ways to pronounce the same kanji and in the case of "Sengoku", sen means fight and goku means extreme. Or, as it turns out, you could consider it to be an "ultimate fight"........ get it??

In case you haven't followed along, Sengoku is a mixed martial arts event and I attended an event this past Sunday, having been given a free ticket......... but more on that in a second......

The day before these big fights was more battles, except in the form of a school sports festival. When I think of "sports days", I recall lots of fun memories of doing three-legged races or balancing eggs on spoons in elementary school. Well imagine similar events, but with 17 year olds and competition not only between homeroom classes, but divisions and clubs.

In Japan, high schools are a huge part of the students' life, especially the club they enter in. High school level sports are a very important aspect both in terms of school image and the future careers of many pro-sports minded students. In the case of my school, they have full-time sports coaches as well as a dedicated "ball sports" training ground that includes a dormitory (lots of students from other parts of the country come to the school to play on the team), two soccer fields (one grass, one dirt), a baseball field, and tennis courts. In fact, high school clubs often take precedence over everything else and it's not uncommon for teams to train 4 or 5 days a week with games on the weekend. But for the chance to be scouted and these kids' future pro-careers on the line, it's worth it.

That aside, the sports festival was really fun. There were events like tug-of-war, obstacle courses, jumping rope, and an 11-legged race (guess how many people that is heh...). The coolest event of the morning was this piggy-back battle royale where kids with hats, hoisted up in the air by three others, had to try to steal each other's headwear. The afternoon was all relay races with some exciting races (like a girl from the cheerleading squad out-sprinting a girl from the soccer team). And it was just a fun time to hang out with the students. Although I did get a bit sunburnt.............. oh well heh.....

Anyways, back to the Sengoku event........

It was held at the Saitama Super Arena and I went simply because I was given tickets. Mixed Martial Arts, if you don't know, has become hugely popular in the past few years, not in the least because of the commercial break-out of the UFC series in America.

Interestingly, MMA has since evolved essentially into it's own martial art, so the original meaning of "mixed" is a bit lost. I remember watching old school UFC events (before they created reality TV shows about it) when fighters really did come from different martial arts and didn't all study how to fight the same way. With the commercialism came MMA-specific coaches and with the coaching came a more universally agreed-on "MMA" fighting style. And with that came the homogenisation, so now everyone looks kind of the same.

Despite that, it wasn't a bad event overall. Some of the fights weren't very interesting but the final 3 fight cards were rather good, the main event being Kickboxing and UFC Champion Maurice Smith vs Olympic Judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida (who won). What did kind of ruin it was rather poor reffing.

That and the insane cost of attending an event like this. I was lucky having been given a ticket by my friend but our floor seats would've costed nearly $300!! In all honesty, the event wasn't worth $300. I don't even think it was worth the $100 they charged for the seats in the nosebleed section but hey, who am I to say how much something is worth.........

Despite that, and the fact that I don't think I could get into watching MMA as much as I used to, it was a good night out.

Your Japanese word of the week is...

"nan ja sore!!". Ok, it's not a word. It's not even what I'd call "normal". It actually means something along the lines of " 'the hell is that!!" and the more incredulous of a tone you say it with, the more emphatic it becomes.

Yes, what you see above is what I came home to the other day. In case you can't see it clearly due to the ridiculous amount of light it's throwing off, it's a vending machine. "What the~?!?", I said. I've been meaning to write something about the myriad vending machines in this country so this would be a good time to do so.

Vending machines, I think, are the most accurate symbol of this country's obsession with choice and consumption. There are hundreds of different kinds of coffee and twice that when you consider you can get the some coffees both hot or cold. You can get various kinds of vitamin drinks or sports drinks or teas. You can even, on certain machines, adjust how strong of a coffee you want and how much cream and sugar you want in it.

That's the thing with this country- you can never have enough choice and there are enough people to consume it all. Take the cars for instance: Toyota can build two or three essentially identical cars and people still buy enough of them to make the business plan viable. The difference may be visual or, like, one or two seats, but people here are specific about what they want and nothing beats having something exactly the way you want it.

Sure lots of Canadians are also picky about what their Starbucks is like, but I find the scale of superfluous selection to be a bit over the top here.

What's more, people are constantly consuming. New TV's, new phones, new cars, new clothes, new, new, new. Perfectly good microwaves are lying in back alleys all over Japan simply because they're a few years old. And so, because people are constantly buying coffees or cars, it's not a problem to offer lots of choices.

As for the vending machine right next to my door........ I have no idea why it's there, but I actually don't mind. I mean, it is convenient to basically have an eternal supply of drinks for some spare change.

What does take a bit of getting used to is how bright it is. That picture's not a joke; when I walk past it, it's bright enough that it takes my eyes a few seconds to readjust to the darkness to find my keys. And it also lights up my room in a pale blue that makes me think I'm constantly being abducted by aliens...............

And, ironically, the drink choice is awful. It's all coffees, teas, and overpriced "glacier water" that I don't drink. About the only interesting drink there is a D1 coffee, which I believe has, at some point, sponsored the D1 Grand Prix drift series.

The only problem is I don't have a car. Soooo............

Perhaps I can chug a D1 coffee and drift...... my bike....... to the train station.......

Perhaps............. =P