TheLeong.com

After a half weekend, I finally had a really good day off. What’s that? A half weekend? Oh allow me to explain. Every now and again apparently, AEON schools have a fun little event they call “Sunday Open.” This means that they open up on the normally closed Sunday, so that they can interview prospective students, teach some special classes, and so on. I was the lucky teacher chosen to work this Sunday Open, so I thus lost half of my weekend. I was paid for it, and it was only 5 hours of work, but I do have to say that I might have rather just slept all that afternoon rather than waking up and going to work on my usual day off.

But that’s all behind me now. Today, you see, I ventured to the nearby station called Soga. The last time I came here was sometime at the end of September when I was still trying to find a cell phone. I had heard that Blanchard got an au phone without his actual Gaijin Card, so I figured I could maybe try the same thing. I had gone to the nearby Goi au shop to check and they had (apparently wrongfully) told me that it would be impossible to get a phone without the magic card. Anyways, I knew Soga was a fairly large junction station, so I had assumed there would be big department stores and other cell-phone-carrying shops in the area. After walking around the station and not finding anything, I walked further away in hopes of finding something. After about 45 minutes of walking, I was in Chiba, the next big city up. Ah well. A wasted morning, and a ton of walking. After that fiasco, I figured that Soga was a bust and there was nothing there except pachinko parlors.

I recently found out from one of my students that there is a major shopping mall in Soga, apparently a short (and free) bus ride away from the station. Score. I checked out the mall, called Ario, and it is pretty nice. Everything looked brand new actually. Most of the stores are clothing, so there wasn’t too much for me to actually buy, but there was also a huge Ito Yokado department store inside that was kind of cool to walk around. After Ario, I hopped onto the free shuttle to the next place, called Festival Walk, which was equally if not more impressive. Festival Walk had a huge arcade, Sega Arena, a movie theatre, and a really nice internet cafe. The net cafe seemed way nicer than others I have seen, with a bigger cubicle, better recliner, and nicer computer/LCD TV monitor. And not only were there free soft drinks, but there is free smoothies and soft serve ice cream. Pretty good deal, and this place also looks brand new. On top of all that, there is also free darts and billiards, making this place a good candidate for an all-nighter. I think I might try it sometime soon. This Friday is a holiday, so maybe then.

And the best discovery of the day was a place called Poca Tacos. At long last, MEXICAN FOOD! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the place. In case you didn’t know, Mexican food in Japan is about as rare as any food can be here, so it was a welcome sight. I ate a bunch of food there, and it was really good. I had nachos, a small burrito, and a bunch of chili cheese tacos. Sounds weird, but they were pretty good. This place is only about a 10 minute train ride from Goi, which means I’ll be likely visiting Soga a lot more from now on. Please see the picture on the right to see the discovery of the weekend. And yes, the napkin does say “Taco Time.” Viva Soga.

Hello America (and maybe some other countries). It is a rainy Monday night in Chiba city, and I am enjoying the last few hours of my weekend. Not having internet hasn’t been as painfully rough as I would have thought, although I do miss having Outlook tell me exactly when I have a new e-mail, reading pointless news sites about gizmos, video games, and gadgets, and of course AIM and Facebook. But I have been coping. However, now that I am almost used to life without a regular internet connection, I have the NTT guys coming to my apartment this Thursday morning to prepare my apartment for a fiber-optic internet connection. Hopefully this will go off quickly and without a hitch. If things go according to plan, I will have not only an internet connection in my apartment, but a super amazing fast one. 100MBps. Yes, that would mean heaven (and major BitTorrent time) for the currently internet-deprived me.

Oh but stories, you want to hear stores about the mystical land of Japan, right? OK here are a few. Nothing spectacular, because in actuality my life here is pretty boring (as opposed to the super exciting life I led in America). Since I haven’t blogged in a while, these also aren’t in any real order let alone chronologically. But if you are sitting at your computer bored enough to navigate to TheLeong.com in the first place, then you may find these mildly amusing.

Ikea
I visited the Swedish furniture and home supply store Ikea, which has a location in Minami Funabashi, about 30 minutes by train away from me. For some reason, I was under the impression that Ikea was supposed to be a cheap place to get somewhat trendy furniture. Brian Blanchard, whom you might know from such films as The IES Train Orientation Video, also came along and was under the same impression. Boy, were we mistaken. The store was huge, colorful, and crowded with hot Japanese chicks. The prices, however, on this European furniture was absolutely ridiculous. I don’t even really know what I was going there to buy in the first place. Maybe a small couch for my apartment, maybe a cheap plastic dresser to store my clothing in. I ended up buying none of these things, because the average price for a sofa I saw there was around 600 bucks US. And no, not a nice comfy couch like you would see on the popular Indiana University Student Television show Hoosier Date?, but a really small weird Japanese-Swedish couch hybrid which would only seat two average stature midgets. You know how Japanese people sit on the floor traditionally? I have come to the conclusion that this is not because of a cultural difference, but rather because it is far too expensive to buy a damn couch at Ikea. The only thing I bought at Ikea ended up being a hot dog for 1 or 200 yen, which was delicious but still not delicious enough to make me not bitter about Ikea.

Gorging
It is actually quite cheap and easy to find good-tasting food in Japan, of both Japanese style and more foreign fare. However, portions here tend to be small, so it is the responsibility for every foreigner here to, on occasion, find a 食べ放題 (all-you-can-eat) and absolutely destroy the place’s profits for that day. One such place I visited was Shakey’s Pizza, which I think was at one point an American chain that went under. All you can eat pizza, pasta, and salad for like 900 yen (about 8 bucks). There is a line to get in, but once you get in you can enjoy a wide variety of pizzas like mushroom, pepperoni, and sausage. Of course, this is still Japan, so there is also a Tuna and Corn pizza, mayonnaise pizza, and a pineapple custard dessert pizza that was actually pretty good.

Tabehoudai find number two is an old favorite. Top Run Super Yakiniku Viking in Makuhari, a dietary staple of the A-Team, has since been renamed Hanamasa Yakiniku Viking. Don’t panic! The place is still mostly the same, although it has been stripped of its sweet name and the Super title. Actually, I think the place is even better now. There are the same favorites as before, like the all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ, consisting mainly of a variety of raw meats that you cook at your table. The make-your-own waffles, ice cream, gyoza, and rice and curry are still all there. But to increase the value of this place, they now also have kara-age fried chicken, fries, takoyaki, about 4 different jelly desserts, and now lamb meat. This place is awesome. Long live the Super Yakiniku Viking. It will always be Top Run to me. 1500 yen for dinner. Is this cheaper than before?

AEON Bootcamp, Parts 2 and 3
Week and a half ago, I had two days of AEON related workshops and training to do, which made my week pretty much short, but also very long. That doesn’t make sense, I know, but it was a weird week. For the first day, I had to take a 2 hour train ride back up to Omiya to have AEON Kids Step-Up Training, which was training just for kids classes. Although I only teach two kids classes, one for 5th graders and one for Junior High kids, the training was still necessary and it covered ALL kids classes, from preschool up. It was fun in a way because I got to see about 10 people that I had Initial Training with, but other than that it was a bit painful because of the repetitive kids training we had all day, including an hour of singing and practicing these kids songs that I don’t even use in my classes. I am pretty sure the AEON Hello Song and dance are secretly a way to summon the devil. Oh well. The day after that, I had an hour and a half journey to the AEON East Japan head office in Shinjuku, where I had a four hour workshop on Self-Study materials that we are preparing to sell to our students. Oh, and I shouldn’t say sell, I mean “providing our students with materials to meet their English dreams.” Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I got to see a few more people from training, but overall I don’t feel like the workshop was that helpful. Then I had to high-tail it back to Goi in time to teach my two evening classes. Nothing like enjoying this busy schedule.

Staff BBQ
Last weekend I went with a bunch of my co-workers to the Yorou Valley, which is about a 45 minute drive from Goi. The weather was a little Fall-chilly-ish, but the BBQ was awesome. We got to the camping ground, set up a BBQ, and ate about 80 bucks worth of grilled meat, vegetables, and yakisoba. One of our students also came along, and she also brought with her a ton of food. We ate a lot and hanged out at the camping ground, then headed back to town. Japanese cookouts or BBQs are a lot different from back in the US, especially among college students (which would mainly just be burgers and hotdogs). It was a really fun time, and again I had to gorge myself on tons of food.

Death Breath
Ah, the headlining story of this blog entry. So I was on the train a week or so ago, minding my business and listening to my iPod. I was standing near the doors, because as usual on the late night trains, all the seats were taken, save for having to uncomfortably cram next to someone, which you just don’t do here. So about 2 or 3 stops before Goi, this girl is waiting at the station with her boyfriend, and they’re being all lovey dovey and stuff saying goodbye, before she gets on the train. She gets on, stands on the other side of the door to the left of me, and she sadly waves her boyfriend goodnight. Boohoo, right. I didn’t pay much attention to it. But once we are away from her station, she slowly turns her head to the right, so that she is no longer facing the car doors, but pointing in my general direction.

I am still minding my own biznass, looking at the passing evening scenery, and I suddenly feel my stomach chur
n and my gag reflex half-kick in. I am smelling something absolutely foul, like what you would imagine Abraham Lincoln’s corpse to smell after a rainy day at the cemetery. What in the world is that smell?? I scream to myself. I spin around, looking for a homeless guy or a huge moldy pile of dog poop, and all of a sudden I realize that the girl who said goodbye to her boyfriend just moments ago was leaning with her head on the train door, facing me, and from her mouth was coming the most revolting breath I have ever smelled in my entire life. I kid you not. Pure toxic wind. If it were not for my self control, I would have vomited all over the train. Her breath was THAT bad. Bad beyond what I would have thought was humanly possible. You could brush your teeth with human feces for a month, then chew on a rotten guinea pig, and your breath would still not compare.

After freaking out internally and realizing that I should probably run to the other end of the train car, my deep rage instead turned quickly into internal laughter, and I almost busted up on the train thinking to myself how bad this girls breath was, and at the thought that her boyfriend was probably back at the other station puking his guts out after making out with his ugly girlfriend with the breath that could cremate old people. Luckily, my stop was soon after, and with it, the opening of the doors and the glory that is fresh air.

Since it was raining pretty hard around noon today, I decided to finally try the hotel buffet for lunch. The place has a sweet name: Glass Court Super Buffet. It’s pretty pricey, about 3000 yen for lunch, but it was one of the classiest buffets I’ve ever eaten at, maybe just not as good as Vegas. They had so much gourmet/classy food there let me try and think of what they had: whole scallops, mussels, fruits de mare with uni sauce, crab, grilled lamb, and a variety of cheeses. Although it is pretty expensive, it was really good and I ate way too much than I should have. I’m going to probably go back at least once before I leave on Monday.

Next to the place where the guy grills the lamb meat for you yakiniku style (they called it Mongolian “Ghengis Khan” style), there was a RAMEN STATION. That’s right, all you can eat ramen. This is the best idea ever. Too bad it wasn’t that good for ramen. They should hire the Chinese renegade chefs from Bikkuri, and this buffet would be perfect.

I also got some dessert, and since it is a Japanese buffet they of course had an entire table devoted to different ice creams and cakes. Japanese girls love dessert. But they had some kind of special Hokkaido ice cream, and since it was such a unique flavor, I decided to give it a try. It was CORN FLAVORED ICE CREAM. Yeah, corn. It tasted like you would expect it to; a lot like the Japanese cream corn soup. If you’ve never had that, just think about taking American canned cream corn, blending that until its smooth, and then make ice cream out of it. It was actually a little sweet and not horrible tasting, but you can’t really enjoy it that much because you realize this is an ice cream freak of nature.

One thing people always talk about when comparing Japan to America is the level of service at restaurants, stores, hotels, etc. For the most part, you don’t have the whole “what the hell do you want?” attitude from service workers here. Instead, people are polite and very helpful in any store you go to. Whether or not they’re sincere, it doesn’t matter really, but they at least play the part very well. I had McDonald’s for breakfast the other day, and even though the guy had some kind of stuttering speech impediment, he was about ten times nicer than the normal McDonald’s workers you would run into in the states. You don’t have to go up to the counter and wait for the employees to finish up their conversation about the latest trailer park gossip before grudgingly having one come take your order after losing the game of paper-rock-scissors with their co-workers. Here in Japan, before I even entered the door, the Japanese McDonald’s worker was standing at the ready, smiling, and happy to push the “Filet of Fish” button on his register. Yes, you can get the fish sandwich for breakfast. It is Japan, after all. The only similarity I can see between American and Japanese McDonald’s workers might be their teeth, because damn.

One more quick story about customer service in Japan. I was leaving my room a bit late on Friday, around 12:30 in the afternoon, and had already received a note under my door saying that room cleaning goes until 3, and they wanted to make sure they could clean my room if I wanted. I called the housekeeping number before I left the room, and while I was waiting for the elevator, I heard the maid down the hall get a call on her cell phone or walkie talkie confirming the request to clean my room. Talk about service.

The past 2 days have been somewhat boring and non-blog worthy. I’ve actually been doing my research, acting like a spy inside department stores and such, and later this week I’ll be making a lot of phone calls I think. But this blog’s audience, all 3 of them, want to hear things at least 5% more exciting than that, so here we go! When I say “wasabi,” what do you think of? Hopefully, after skipping the Budweiser commercials and Jackass: The Movie in your mind, you will arrive at “that green paste you eat with sushi.” And you would be correct But did you know that wasabi doesn’t naturally come as a green paste? For lunch the other day, I ordered some combo meal that had some zaru-soba and chirashi (see left), but it also came with some fresh wasabi (生わさび). The store seemed to specialize in that or something, because they even had little bags at the table where you could take home your leftover fresh wasabi. Fresh wasabi is a type of root, and kind of looks like ginger. They give it to you on a little dish with a grater on it, and you grind the root into a green paste that is a lot less neon-looking and not as chemical-tasting as the normal wasabi-in-a-tube stuff that everyone, even Japanese people, are used to. It tasted a little less spicy and more vegetable-like, which was good. I would recommend trying it if you get a chance. The picture below here is of course the fresh wasabi, half grated down so you can see the paste.

In other food related news, I got to add a new animal to the always in-progress “Animals Anthony has Eaten” list. Whale! Yep, I was at a kaiten sushi place and they had raw whale sushi (くじら) so of course I had to try it. It was pretty expensive for that place, 315 yen for 2 pieces, but I wanted to try it since I’d never eaten the blubbery creature before. It was a very dark red, kind of like a beet, meat. I think it’s a fish, right? The taste was very meaty, kind of like beef, but it was also very fatty and a little stringy. It’s not as chewy as squid, but definitely took a good deal more chewing than normal fish sushi. The taste wasn’t too bad, although there are definitely other fish that I would rather eat. I would have taken a picture, but the place was pretty busy and I was sitting right across the counter from one of the chefs, and I was afraid he’d knife me or something. But hey, at least I got to try a new food.

Ah, Namja Town. Quite possibly one of the happiest places in Japan, and for sure one of the tastiest. For those who don’t know what it is, pretty much this place is the Golden Saucer from Final Fantasy VII, only instead of fighting in the Stadium, you eat gyoza (pot stickers). Tons of different variaties of delicious gyoza. There is also Ice Cream City, and a Cream Puff Town, and rides, etc. It’s like a food amusement park. Amazing indeed.

Going along with my recent abundance of free time (ahem), I’ve started exploring Mixi quite a bit. It’s like a Japanese Facebook or MySpace. The groups/communities on there are really kind of cool, because they’re more like mini message boards. Going along with the whole “community” title, you also have event calendars and other things in each group that you can use to communicate with the other members. Of course I joined the Namja Town group, and saw an event posting earlier today for private event at Namja Town, on Sunday at 4PM. Japan time-wise, this is already going on as I type this. At the Sokkuri Sweets Museum, they have a 3.5 LITER GIANT PURIN! Holy crap. Japanese purin is pretty much the exact same as flan, but 3.5 liters of it?? Absolutely amazing. Apparently they’ve done this in the past before, but I don’t think it’s available all the time (these pictures are from past events). It costs about 6000 yen (about $60 USD), and you’re supposed to split it with at least 6 people, so you’ll pay less than 10 bucks to stuff yourself with pudding. Who’s up for the challenge?

Special thanks to Air-Wind-san, who let me use his pictures.


Links:
Namja Town official site
Mixi site (if you know Japanese)

So this whole Canada thing has been pretty interesting. I work the registration desk for the CS Mantech conference with my parents, and am getting paid by the hour for sitting there and handing out nametags, every so often printing out something or running a credit card. I had wireless until yesterday, which was great because I just sat and did e-mail and stuff that I would normally be doing, just not getting paid. Sometime around 5PM last night they cut if off though, so that was annoying.

I don’t really have that much time to write a blog, since I just popped into the “internet cafe” area to sync up Outlook and send an e-mail. Two nights ago I went to the peak of Mt. Grouse with the conference group for a big international reception. The party wasn’t all that great, but we rode a tram (kind of like a giant ski lift) to the top of the mountain and back; that was kind of cool. Last night we got invites to the Sumitomo Electrical party, whcih was probably the best food I’ve ever eaten. Lamb chops, risotto with truffle oil, shrimp, suckling pig. Oh man.

I’ll write more later on; I should get back to work now.