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Here goes my attempt at a quick summary of what happened in September while I was internet-less. Actually pretty much just parties, since there were a ton of them.

First was a party with my school staff on Sep 8 with our self-study campaign prize money. Our school did a good job in terms of goals and revenues, so the head office gave us a bit of money to spend on whatever we wanted. Free parties are always good. We went to the 月の雫 (Tsuki no Shizuku) in Chiba, which is supposed to be famous for its handmade tofu. Seriously, it’s way good. I’m not talking about tofu as in a “I’m a stupid hippie who doesn’t shower, use electricity, or eat meat,” but closer to “I’m a warrior monk who killed seven people this morning with a travel alarm clock and a Bic.” Or something. But yeah, it’s really good. I like that izakaya a lot because it’s usually pretty quiet and most of the tables have their own little enclosed areas. Helping plan that party I also realized how the enkai courses are probably a good idea if you’re planning a party with more than 5 people, since it usually includes nomihoudai and a ton of food for fairly cheap. (Keep that in the memory bank.) The last time I had gone there it was good too, but we ordered everything a la carte and so it ended up costing a lot. Oops.

The following weekend, on Saturday the 15th, I had my Farewell Party with students as well as a Welcome Party for my replacement, Andrew. The party was at this place called 天狗 (Tengu) in Goi, a large chain of discount-type family restaurant/izakaya. It was OK, but I think the old place we used to go to was better. The food might have been better at Tengu, but the room was a lot more cramped and I didn’t like the way the tables were set up. The party was good, but I was super tired from waking up balls early to go from Chiba to Goi, then working all day. But overall it was a nice party and we had a very decent turnout especially considering it was a 3-day weekend so a lot of people couldn’t make it. It was pretty sweet when right before I left; one of my STP students led the entire party in the Japanese sanbonjime clapping thing. I felt famous. Awesome.

After that during the walk home I had my final and most impressive, if I do say so myself, test of hiding my Japanese with the students. The staff and about 3 students were walking from Tengo to Goi station and two of them were just talking about me hardcore, wondering about “exactly how good Anthony’s Japanese is,” since I guess they’ve heard random rumors and stuff. I guess my predecessor had told some of these students that I can speak Japanese, and also said that I “must get a lot of girls and go to hostess clubs a lot.” That’s gross but also funny – also note that I’ve only talked to my predecessor once since he left last year. Whatever. But I was of course able to completely act like I had no idea what they were saying. No reactions whatsoever as they walked behind me talking about me. Tamayo picked up the assist by saying stuff like “No, no, I think he can only say Hello.” Ha, ha.

The next morning it was time for an early party. I had to wake up before 9AM for a BBQ at Inage Kaigan hosted and planned by Konosuke. Despite it being at a time I would usually be sleeping, it was actually really awesome. Tons of food and drink, a lot of people – it was a good time. The only bad thing was the heat. Even at like 11 or 12 in the afternoon, the sun was completely blazing. I think most people, including me, got pretty sunburnt. After the BBQ ended around 3 or something, a group of us went to karaoke and then dinner, and then just hanging out. I didn’t head home until maybe 10PM, but when I stopped by a conbini to pick up some water, I walked by a mirror and did the walk-back thing and saw how red my face and arms were. I hadn’t noticed at all during the day, but I definitely got roasted. I don’t remember the last time my skin peeled because of sunburn. Maybe never? But oh well.

Went out with my staff on Tuesday night, one of my last days. This was after a full day of trying to tell Andrew everything I knew about classes in between actually teaching. I was tired from just talking so much. My last day was Wednesday the 19th. Before leaving school we had the usual speeches and stuff with the staff, and I got a nice pen and one of those signboard things with messages from everyone. It was very weird to finish at Goi, although I’ll be back there later to teach now and again. Went out that night in Chiba as well.

Sunday the 23rd, after Tokyo Game Show, we had Mikey, Bryan, and Nick all here from their respective JET prefectures (Tochigi, Ibaraki, Hyogo). Went to some izakaya in Chiba that I’d never been to before, across the street from Umaimonya. That was good. Had a pretty big group for karaoke, so we did that all night at Utahiro. It amazes me still how cheap that place is. I was feeling pretty tired and I’m sure I fell asleep for a bit. But it was great to have so many people in one place. And at least I wasn’t the only one to pass out:

I was in the mood for pizza tonight, so I ordered some Pizza Hut after getting home from work. Yes, we have Pizza Hut here, although it’s overall a lot different and a bit more expensive compared to the original US counterpart. Rule of thumb about ordering pizza in Japan is that they like (no, love) weird toppings here. Tuna, mayonnaise, corn, babies, and Pokemon are standard toppings. The pre-set menu items with tons of random toppings are usually pretty expensive, with a large costing maybe 3500 or 4500 yen (around 30 or 40 USD). Way expensive for something gross, right? But luckily you can order the basic pizza and more normal toppings, and the price will be only slightly more expensive than in the US. I usually get a large pizza with sausage and it costs less than 2000 yen. Expensive for dinner at home, but I always have pizza leftover to be dinner or lunch at some point over the weekend, so it’s not bad.

Tonight the delivery guy arrived and explained to me that they were out of large pizzas. I don’t know how this is possible, but Pizza Hut didn’t have large pizza crusts left. Only in Japan. Anyway, instead of calling me back or something to explain what happened, they just brought me 2 medium pizzas, which is better because 2 mediums are more than 1 large. I’m going to have pizza all weekend.

PS – BBQ chicken at Japanese Pizza Hut is way good too

Behold! A Burger King double bacon cheeseburger meal with onion rings and a grape soda.

Yeah, yeah, this is nothing to you people living in America, where Burger Kings are on every corner situated next to Jack in the Box, White Castle, and Wendy’s. But this is Japan, remember? There are only 2 BKs in the entire country, and both of them opened in June. Burger King was here a few years ago, but did poorly so they closed down. But they’re making a comeback. And it was amazing.

Last Monday I was in between job interviews in Shinjuku and was feeling hungry. I was passing through the i-Land shopping mall area on my way back to the subway, and checked out the directory to see what food they had to offer. And I saw Burger King. By sheer coincidence, I stumbled upon Burger King! And I tell you what, it was the most delicious BK I have ever had. It was so fresh, so delicious. Definitely beats the McDonald’s burgers, and might very well beat restaurant burgers here as well, although I don’t really get them that often. And they just started having onion rings too, which was a welcome surprise.

Every Japanese person I’ve told about this, which is about 2, gave me an unimpressed “was it really that good?” The answer is YES, it was. Too bad it’s about an hour and a half away from me.

Ah, summer vacation. Japan has this national summer break kind of thing called Obon (お盆), where most people get a week off of work or school. There is all kinds of religious and other things related to this holiday that I don’t know much about, but you can read about it on Wiki. The important thing is that AEON gives us this week off, and with my normal Sundays and Mondays off, and 2 carefully used vacation days, I find myself in the middle of an 11-day vacation. Oooooh yeah.

Last Saturday after work, went with some other AEON people to the Chiba Port Tower fireworks show (see above), which was pretty awesome despite the ridiculous crowds and the heat outside. After the show ended, we hiked a good distance to some Italian restaurant to hang out. After that, went to the Ocean’s Eleven, or whatever it’s called, bar until last train. Sunday, I didn’t do much all day except watch TV, then headed to Tsudanuma to have a staff going-away party for one of our teachers who is retiring. That was fun and relaxing. Then headed with 2 of my co-workers to Chiba. Again, last train from Chiba.

Monday, more relaxing at home. Ate some yakiniku and okonomiyaki up in Chiba. Tuesday, more relaxing and then headed to Soga Ario. First, saw a movie by myself. Yes it is very loser-ish to see a movie by yourself, let alone the Kamen Rider Den-O movie, but it was fun and I enjoyed it. Shut up. Then ate tacos, did some shopping, and bought some cream puff things to take to everyone at school since it was the retiring teacher’s last day. Even though it was my day off, I’m not a complete jerk. Wednesday, I ran some errands around Goi, and tried this Sri-Lankan/Indian buffet near my apartment which I had never tried before, partially because the outside looks sketch and also partially because the place is called Samanara (サマナラ), which sounded a lot to me at first like salmonella. The people on the Goi mixi group said it was good, and indeed they were right. Spent most of the day at home doing job-hunting related stuff, and also watching News Radio on DVD. Went to the Chiba net cafe at night to print out some Korea-related stuff as well as some resumes, and then came home.

Tomorrow, well, really in a few hours, I need to wake up and head to Tokyo. Believe it or not, I’m going to 2 job interviews/info-session things. Nothing major yet, but it’s good to be starting this kind of thing. I’m not looking forward to waking up early to go into Tokyo though, especially wearing a suit in this heat. But at night I’m going out to dinner with a friend I haven’t seen in a while, so that should be good.

Overall, yes, summer vacation has thus far involved a lot of sleeping and TV-watching. And that’s just perfect. I can’t imagine anything better than doing nothing during this break. If only you didn’t need money to live, I would probably sit at home all day the rest of my life. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, so I need to get only 2 hours of sleep to go into town for the possibility of getting another job. Ah well.

Korea in about a day and a half! Annyong!

Unbelievable. A terrible tragedy. No more McChicken sandwiches at McDonald’s here in Japan.

I was hanging out in Chiba on Saturday night and things were winding down. Having not eaten any dinner and with only 30 minutes left before last train, I decided to hit up McDonald’s. Now, I very rarely eat McDonald’s, and when I do I am very set in my ways. Of course if breakfast is being served, then it’s Egg McMuffin time. If not, then I will usually get a cheeseburger and a McChicken with medium fries and no drink. Sometimes instead of this I will vary it up and get a double cheeseburger set with Qoo to drink. However, I never vary from these patterns. McDonald’s in Japan is still as bad for you as in the States, but they actually make food fresh here so it doesn’t taste as nasty. The McChicken here is really good because it’s only 100 yen (less than a buck) and they use spicy mayonnaise, which they don’t use at the US McD’s.

So yeah, Saturday. I step up to the plate and make my normal dinnertime order. The woman says “I’m sorry but we stopped selling the McChicken. Instead, we now have the McPork.”

WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?lkjfladkjsljfd

Out of shock I kind of thought out loud and was like “Pork!?” Then, this was funny. The woman walked towards to the kitchen area and actually asked her manager if the McPork was made with pork. I mean, yeah, this was all in Japanese and we were using the word for pork (豚肉) rather than English like the sandwich name*, but you’d think she wouldn’t have to double check with her boss as to the contents of this new menu item. This would have been even funnier if the manager said it was made with something else, but at least they got the animal right.

Goodbye cheap chicken sandwich. Instead they are now peddling this thing you see to the left, which to be honest isn’t too terrible, but it doesn’t beat the chicken sandwich that once held the headline spot on the 100 yen menu. It is a pork patty covered in like a teriyaki sauce, with some scraps of lettuce and onion on it. Like the midget little cousin of the McRib.

*most sandwich names at McD’s Japan are the same as the US, and in English

Last Friday I left for vacation to Hong Kong for 3 nights and 4 days. This was my first trip since December, and also my first time to leave Japan since arriving last September. It was an awesome trip; amazing and cheap Chinese food and cheap knockoff products like DVDs, t-shirts, sunglasses, and watches. I wish I would have had more time to be there, but in the short amount of vacation I had I think I did a pretty good job of enjoying myself.

I did my usual pre-vacation routine on Thursday night, pulling an all nighter, not packing until the last minute, and rushing myself at the end so as to not miss my train/plane. I made it, however, with plenty of time to spare at Narita before my flight, even after getting my JAL mileage card and boarding pass stuck in a machine and arguing in Japanese with a retarded luggage carrier grunt. My JAL card had a dent in it, so it must have jammed the machine. After I put my documents into the machine to try and get my frequent flier miles, the machine shut down and displayed a “Out of Order” message. I call the worker guy over, and tell him that my stuff is stuck and I need to get them back. He is obviously confused by this, and points at the 4 kanji on the screen reading them aloud slowly, “Out. Of. Order.” I almost bodyslammed the guy right there. Yes, Ace, it went out of order after it ate my docs; get them out! Luckily a real desk worker lady came over quickly when she realized I was talking to the retard, and she helped me out with about a thousand apologizes and bows. So yeah, JAL staff is really helpful at the airport as long as you don’t ask the retarded luggage carrier guy.

It was about a 4 and a half hour flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong. I think it was actually delayed, but as soon as I sat on the plane I fell asleep until we landed. I was so tired I didn’t even wake up to eat the nasty airplane meal, which I usually would at least do. From the airport, got on the Airport Express train line to central Hong Kong island. The train was really nice, about on par with the shinkansen in Japan. I was quite impressed. Met up with Spiderman Derek, who works and lives in HK. He picked me up from the train station and hauled my suitcase a few blocks to his office. I would usually feel bad about my friend lugging my stuff that far, but since Derek can bench press Godzilla, I figured it was OK. Derek’s office was way sweet, if not in the very least because of the vast amounts of free snacks and drinks for the employees. I went to explore HK a little while Derek finished work, wandering around shopping centers in Central and Causeway Bay. It was pretty awesome just to explore. I’ve only been to HK once with my family when I was in middle school, yet somehow a lot of things seemed familiar. Even the smells of HK, good and bad, seemed the same as nearly 11 years ago. I should mention here, however, that Hong Kong was incredibly hot and humid, especially compared to the weather we’d had here in Japan before I left. Just walking around I felt pretty gross and exhausted from the traveling.

Had lunch at some Chinese fast food place. For 39 HK dollars, only around 5 USD, I was able to get a nice bowl of rice with cha-shu roast pork and a drink. Absolutely amazing. I wish food in Japan was half as good and cheap as food in HK. Then for dinner, Derek took me to this place named Satay King which has some amazingly good and cheap food as well. We ordered enough food to feed the entire Brady Bunch, and did pretty well on it, having to only take 2 small doggy bags afterwards. We had some good chicken wings, stuffed snails, curry, and a ton more food. The absolute best, however, was one of the most popular dishes of the house. It was some kind of special Satay noodle soup, kind of like ramen but with the thin vermicelli noodles. But the soup, oh man. It was amazing. Kind of like a thick miso ramen base, but definitely had more interesting spices and maybe some kind of peanut sauce in it? I actually have no idea what was in it, but it was probably the best soup I have ever tasted in my entire life.

If you haven’t guessed already, one of the main reasons I went to Hong Kong was the eat awesome food. Sunday morning, Derek and I went to get dim sum. We were going to try the City Hall place, but it was packed so we headed to another place Derek knew in Causeway Bay. It was definitely not a bad second choice. Much more local, but it was amazing nonetheless. Between Derek knowing how to speak Chinese and read some, and me knowing how to eat Chinese food and read a few kanji, we were able to figure out what was what on the menus. We ordered tons of food again, and yes it was great. Cha-shu bows, noodles, more noodles, tripe, chicken feet, etc. After lunch and on our way out, the rain of the day started up. It was really strange; kind of on and off but really pouring whenever it started. Anyways, I went off to check into my hotel for the last 2 nights. The Eaton Hotel somehow gave me a free upgrade, so for pretty cheap I had a really nice room on the 19th floor. I spent the rest of Saturday shopping in Mong Kok and Temple Street, the famous night market which happened to be 2 blocks from the hotel. These street markets are the kind of place where you can get the shady bootleg stuff. I picked up a t-shirt, a watch, and some DVDs the first night. Unfortunately, Hong Kong is recently cracking down on the bootlegs or something, so while you can still find them easily, it’s not as ridiculous as I was hoping for. They also had a lot of stuff on DVD-9 format, which means you get a ton of episodes, but the compression is so high the quality is terrible. I had a feeling this was the case, and luckily only bought 1 set to test first. I got the first 3 seasons of The 4400 on DVD for 100 HK bucks (about 13 $US). Not only were the episodes TV rips probably gotten off BitTorrent, but all 3 seasons were compressed onto 2 discs, meaning the quality was like YouTube. Needless to say, I didn’t bother buying anymore of these super compressed sets.

Sunday, slept in and watched some TV. I hadn’t seen American stuff like Leno since last year, so it was fun to watch. Also I was never a Letterman fan, but has he always been this terrible? I watched an episode and pretty much every joke seemed just awful, and the bald guy in the band who is like Letterman’s co-host really needs to just shut up. Anyways, met up with Derek again and did some shopping and exploring in MK (everything in Hong Kong has an abbreviation it seems) then headed to Causeway for dinner. First we had snake soup, which was pretty delicious, then we had time to kill so we went to this electronics shopping mall which was cool to look around in but very tempting. Then for dinner, went to this great yakiniku viking. Believe it or not, I defeated Derek. Yes. The King of Yakiniku was defeated. Actually Derek had to get up and run to the toilet to relieve himself supermodel-style. Hahaha.

Spent my last night shopping in Temple Street and trying to buy a bunch of stuff. I got a nice compact DVD player for 300 HKD that plays pretty much everything: any region of DVD, DIVX, VCD, MP3, MPEG, karaoke, etc. It actually works, so I’m happy. I bought some more DVDs, t-shirts, 3 fake RayBan aviators, and a polo shirt that was cheap but feels really thin. Anyways, I stayed up late, woke up later than planned, and had about an hour of panicked last-minute shopping at the nearby department store. Headed home in the afternoon and arrived in Japan around 8PM on Monday n
ight. Narita was a ghost town that late, which made immigration and customs super fast. All in all an awesome trip. I’ll write some more about HK observations, but now I need to go to bed.
(I finished this blog around 4AM after starting it much much earlier tonight and being distracted by Futurama on my mega-DVD player.)