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I haven’t really had to deal with any Japanese bureaucracy for quite a long time, although today’s trip to the Immigration Office certainly made up for the drought. The basic premise of this journey was simple. Since I’m going to Hong Kong next week, I need to get a re-entry permit for Japan, otherwise my work visa is canceled when I leave the country. I can’t do this through the mail? Fine. I’m fine with that. I thus have to go in person to the closest immigration office, which is luckily up in Chiba not too far away. I was informed to go there with my passport, fill out a form, and I will then receive the stamp in my passport that will allow me to come and go as long as my working visa is valid. Sounds easy, right?

I went to Chiba, took the monorail to the City Hall station, and found the Chiba Chuo Community Center where the immigration office is housed. I enter and the place looks like a terrible airport terminal waiting area. Boring white walls, boring white furniture, crappy signs all over the place in Japanese and Engrish, and 1 tiny TV against a wall that was playing some samurai soap opera. On the far side is a barricade of counters, where the officers were working and slowly calling people to step up with their paperwork This place was packed. It actually seemed to be primarily packed with hostess ladies and/or prostitutes, either active (with their old man Japanese sugar daddy in tow), or former (older, even fatter and uglier, and with a bunch of kids). Now, of course not all of these women were necessarily sleazy bar hostesses, but I’m willing to bet a good share of them were.

I use the dispenser machine to get a number for waiting in line. I was number 457. I looked up and saw that they were on around 305. Great. I go back to one of the tables and get my form and fill it out. Went downstairs to the Post Office to get a 6000-yen stamp for the payment. Pretty much the Japanese equivalent of a money order, although it’s just a small postage stamp. I remember holding it and going back upstairs thinking to myself don’t drop it, don’t drop it. I come back upstairs and check out what number they were on. 307. What?! About 20 minutes and they had only moved 2 numbers? I knew then it was going to be a long day.

There is actually a Yamada Denki electronics store less than a block away, so I figured I would have time to go there for a quick look around, then come back. I was gone for almost 25 or 30 more minutes. They were on like 312. To make a long, long, painfully long story shorter, I spent about 3 hours walking around the Community Center building, either listening to my iPod, calling travel agencies to finalize my HK plane tickets, or staring at the Yamaha Music store wondering “why is this in a supposedly government building?” When they were at around 450, I went to go sit near the number display on the counter since you can’t really see it unless you’re really close. Finally, they called me, I submitted my application, passport, and Gaijin card. I sit down, and start writing a mail on my phone. Before I can even finish the short little message I was writing, they call me up. I thought there was some kind of mistake. Nope, it was done. In less than 2 minutes, he had approved, processed, and validated my passport for multiple re-entries into Japan. I’m sure the most time-consuming part was him peeling off the printed barcode to stick in my passport. 3 hours of waiting for the guy to give me a sticker.

I don’t completely understand why you have to hand them your application/passport. You are waiting to just give them your paperwork. You’re not waiting for them to process it, because you don’t need a number for that. You are taking a ticket and waiting for several hours just to hand the desk clerk your documents. Wouldn’t it make more sense to immediately upon arrival receive your paperwork, maybe even do a quick check to make sure that’s you, then let you go do whatever for a few hours, coming back at your convenience to pick up your newly stickered passport? I hate government offices like this.

Anyway, I am all set now. Booked my plane ticket on JAL, paying for it tomorrow, then I’ll be ready to go. I’m looking forward to not only having a 4-day mini vacation, but also to being able to buy tons of counterfeit stuff and eat awesome Chinese food for cheap.

Golden Week’s already over.

So yeah, on Thursday went to LaLaPort in the daytime. Had lunch at the Shakey’s there, where Nick had the balls the challenge me to a pizza eating contest. It was a grueling match, with me defeating Nick as he was nearly in tears with his 14 slices of pizza. I had 15 slices, and claimed victory as the Shakey’s Champion. Afterwards, we both felt rightfully ill and I spent the rest of the day digesting. Nick somehow needed the rest of the week to do this. Anyway, that night we went to hang out in Chiba with Sato-san at an Izakaya. I was still full of pizza, so it was hard to do anything but rock back and forth. Either way, it was a fun night that ended up with Nick trying his eyebrow-slicked “hey hey kanojo” pickup line on random old women outside of Chiba station. And when I say old, I mean like over 50. Pretty gross. He was joking, at least I think (and hope).

On Friday, headed into Tokyo and checked out Shinjuku, Harajuku, and the Meiji Shrine. Brian met up with us after recovering from a week of being tourguide, and we walked down Takeshita street. UNFORTUNATELY at some point during the walk back from Meiji to the end of Takeshita, I realized I had dropped and lost my sunglasses. Rest in peace, trusty old black aviators. We had a lot of good times. Anyways, me, Nick, and Brian wanted to hit up Tabasa for dinner, since we were in the mood for some all-you-can-eat hip hop and jelly, but the line was super long and we opted to go around the corner to a very similar (looking) place offering all-you-can-eat pasta and pizza and stuff. Big mistake. The place we went to, called Gonzo’s or something Italian with a G, had sub-par cold food, pizza that was hard as a rock, and not even any hip hop. Add on top of that a fat Russian waitress who could barely speak English let alone Japanese, and a table of lowlife hippie types who came in about 30 minutes after us, and you can see that I will never go to a Harajuku pasta buffet ever again that is not named Tabasa.

After eating, we walked around Kabukicho for a bit, looked around, and got harassed by some Nigerian princes who wanted us to come to their clubs. Mainly we just went to a few arcades there, and realized that karaoke would be too expensive at this early in the evening. Thus, we went to Shibuya around 10PM to kill some time before finding an all-night karaoke spot. Went to The Lockup*, which was actually pretty sweet although there were no jail breaks or monsters. The nomihoudai was decent, and about the same price as a normal izakaya. We had the Electric Shocks first, which were as bad as before. After that, went to a Shibuya branch of Utahiro; not the one I went to last time in Shibuya, and it was a nice place. Did that all night, during which time I was given permission to use Nick’s phone to be a jerk to his ex; some yakuza-speaking girl who didn’t believe I wasn’t Japanese. It was pretty funny. After karaoke ended at 5, hit up McDonalds for some breakfast, saw some cops get all riled up because of a security alarm going off, and then headed back home. All in all a good Shibuya all nighter.

*Note: I uploaded my first YouTube video; us entering The Lockup. There are automated traps and stuff that are supposed to scare you. I took it with my new camera, so it’s pretty shaky, dark, and terrible, but hey, it’s online.

After getting home around 7 and sleeping for a few hours, Nick headed back to Hyogo via Shinkansen. I slept some more and headed to Chiba to hang with Brian for the usual family restaurant/arcade excursion. We ended up finding a trick to one of the UFO Catcher-type machines, and ended up walking away with an entire bag each of plastic Mario Mushrooms. Pretty awesome. Sunday hit up Global Viking again, and saw Spider-Man 3 again. It was totally worth it for the Venom scene, and also since Blanchard and I used our IU IDs to get student tickets.

Today, Tuesday, I started back up at work. It’s seriously rough having 9 days off, with complete freedom, fun, etc, then having to haul back into work. I couldn’t even speak slow enough to my first student today, so for the first half of class he had no idea what I was saying. I’m not going to write more about work now, since it will make me depressed. Tomorrow I have to wake up early and go to the head office in Shinjuku for a workshop. Yippy skippy.

So earlier this evening I saw one of the most fun movies I’ve seen this year. Spider-Man 3. Yes, I already saw it. Apparently at some point over the past few months, they changed the release date in Japan to May 1, while the rest of the planet has to wait until May 5. I assume this is because of Golden Week, but who cares? I got to see it before pretty much all of my friends.

Now, I will post a very long and nerdy entry about the movie. There will, of course, be spoilers and stuff, so if you don’t want to spoil any of the movie for yourself, DON’T SCROLL DOWN!

Now, this isn’t really going to be a true review or anything. Just me running my mouth. If you want to read a review or something really objective, I suggest you look elsewhere. And since I’m writing this half-asleep at past 4AM, things might not make sense. There is a change I’ll edit this post later, but mainly I wanted to get it up before you guys actually watch it in the US. But yea, I loved the past Spider-Man movies and even used to be really into Spider-Man stuff back in school, so of course I was looking forward to this movie for a long time. Just the fact that Venom is in it would be enough to get me to pay money to see it. I’ll say some negative things about this movie, but overall it was a lot of fun and very entertaining. The story and everything isn’t necessarily the best in the world, but if you want to just be entertained, you’re getting your money’s worth. If you like action, sci-fi, comic book stories, etc, then you’ll be getting more than your money’s worth.

As usual, the movie starts off with a really long and drawn-out credit sequence, with CG graphics and a musical score. This time, however, it didn’t seem as eye-gougingly boring since they gave us a nice summary of the past two movies through short video clips. Spider-Man’s life is great. People love him, he’s got his picture on magazines, a hot girlfriend on Broadway, parades in his honor, yada yada yada. He is, however, still fighting with his pal Harry, played by worst actor in the world James Franco. This time, it’s literal, since Harry, who couldn’t pass high school science without help from Peter, has somehow managed to use his father’s leftovers and engineer himself a brand new set of Goblin equipment, including a new glider that looks more like a hoverboard from Back to the Future on crack. And with his new gear, he attacks Peter. The fight is pretty sweet, especially since Harry ends up getting destroyed, laying unconscious in a rainy ditch Did I mention I hate James Franco? So he goes to the hospital, gets fixed up, but conveniently now has memory loss and can’t remember anything that happened since before the first movie.
Note: there are an awful lot of things that happen in this movie that are very convenient for the plot.

Oh yeah, Peter is going to propose to Mary Jane, but of course not before a long speech from Aunt May. There is also a small meteor that has crashed on Earth, conveniently bringing with it a black symbiote alien that attaches itself to Spider-Man. Next up is Flint Marko, played very well by Thomas Hayden Church. He is the guy who really killed Uncle Ben, escaped from prison, has a sick daughter, and is on the run from the cops. He is being chased at one point, jumps a barbed wire fence into a molecular alteration lab area, and falls into a pit. This pit is filled with sand, and also a giant machine being used to alter the particles of the sand in the pit. Although it’s sometime very late at night, the scientists at this lab are hard at work and getting ready to run a test. Marko gets sucked up in the particle changer gadget, and instead of dying like in real life, gets fused with the sand into Sandman. He is the emo villain, who is supposed to be a good soul who is only fighting and destroying the city to save his daughter. Yeah yeah yeah.

Spidey saves this girl from his science class, Gwen Stacey, as she is falling from a building that is being destroyed by a construction crane run amok (huh?!). She is actually pretty hot. Who would have known that Ron Howard could have a hot daughter? Anyway, since he is such a super hero, the town gives him the Key to the City, with her presiding over it. She gives him the upside-down kiss, and Mary Jane gets angry. She is pretty much angry the entire movie, by the way. Sandman interrupts the parade, fights with Spider-Man, and escapes for now. We then find out that Sandman is actually the guy who killed Uncle Ben, which gets Peter all pissed off. This goes well with his new black/symbiote suit, which amplifies his anger and rage and stuff. Black Spider-Man goes to track down Sandman. Bunch of fights, sweet. Since I’ve forgotten most of the intricate details of the movie’s chronology, I will mention here that Bruce Campbell has a long cameo in 3 as a French Maître d’, and it is awesome.

Oh yeah, Harry also regains his memory and attacks Peter again, but the black suit has warped Peter’s mind so he’s all angry and moody, causing him to totally own Harry again in their next fight. Dark Peter has a pretty cool scene at the end of this fight, throwing a cheap shot of a Pumpkin Bomb back at Harry. Although the bomb goes off right next to his head, it doesn’t kill him and somehow only gives him a slightly disfigured face. Ah well. All along in this movie, we also have Eddie Brock, a new photographer character played by Topher Grace. He is more of an Eddie Haskell type, sucking up to people and saying all the right things. As if his personality wasn’t enough of a giveaway, he is a con, revealed after he Photoshops a picture and sells it to the newspaper. He is ruined by Dark Peter who exposes his Pshop job. Now Eddie Brock is angry. Dark Peter is almost completely mental from the symbiote, which makes him either be really nerdy, dancing down the street like he’s a ladies man, or really angry and wanting to beat the crap out of everyone.

Spider-Man finally ditches his symbiote on the top of a church, where a down-and-out Eddie Brock happens to be praying. The symbiote latches onto Eddie, and we now have the sweetest movie villain ever: VENOM. Unfortunately, Venom isn’t used as much as I would have liked in this movie, which is a real shame because Sandman was overall pretty boring and the New/ninja-like Goblin also overall sucked. What we do get to see of Venom is awesome, but it just makes you wish you could see more of him. He teams up with Sandman, and Peter convinces Harry to help him. We have 2 on 2, in a huge fight that is overall pretty amazing and very well put together. Sandman is lame and has morphed into a giant monster, and he fights Harry. Harry gets killed saving Peter from Venom. Sandman ends up…dying? I don’t really get it. He apologizes to Peter, they make up, and he flies away.

Venom is beat by Spider-Man, who uses a bunch of pipes and the vibrations from them to paralyze the symbiote, who is weak to noise. Spidey uses a Pumpkin Bomb to supposedly finish off Venom, although I’m sure he just escaped. Let’s hope they make a 4th movie. Venom’s voice was also slightly disappointing, because I was looking for a two-voices-at-once thing like they had in the 1990’s Spider-Man cartoon. While unfortunately there was no “We are Venom” quote, the Venom scenes are overall
amazing, although extremely heavy on the CG. I don’t think there were many shots of just Venom’s face, probably to hide the fact that his head was always CG (blame it on the huge mouth, which would require an animatronic head or something). The fights were very fast paced, with Venom flying all over the place and being awesome. Oh, and of course I couldn’t find a good picture of movie Venom online, but this concept art I found is pretty close to what he looks like. Very close to the comic/cartoon, but more realistic (not built like the Hulk), and definitely supposed to be a dark Spider-Man. Overall he looked great, trust me.

Definitely see this movie.

Had my kids class again today with the kid I mentioned last week (Pork Bowl). After he got a telling off by the Japanese staff before class started, and after I gave him the “oh hell no” attitude before class, he actually was fairly well behaved today. Thank goodness, because I think I would have had to kick him out of the window otherwise. If he can keep this up, my Wednesdays will be great.

Last weekend was awesome, primarily because I had absolutely nothing to do. After a month where I had every weekend booked with friends in town, party obligations, Sunday Opens at work, etc, it was great to have absolutely nothing to do. On Saturday I just went to Chiba to hang out, after the usual grueling Saturday shift. It didn’t help that I stayed up until around 3AM the night before downloading 90’s songs (long story), then was up for almost 40 minutes in the early morning in a duel with a killer mosquito that broke into my apartment… via an open window. Sunday I slept until the mid-afternoon and couldn’t have been more satisfied. I went to Makuhari in the afternoon and finally bought a bike from Carrefour. It was pretty cheap; the label price was about 8000 yen. However, when I paid it ended up being only 6900 yen which was a nice surprise. With the registration cost, delivery charge, and new lock I bought, it cost me around $100 USD for a new bike that will increase the convenience of Goi a lot.

Now, please note that this is no mountain bike. It’s a pretty typical traveling bike in Japan, called the “mama-chari,” (ママちゃり) which translates to “Mom bike.” Yes, this is the kind of bike that old ladies ride around to go shopping. I don’t care. Of course I could never ride a bike like this in the US, but here in Japan I am one of millions doing so, thus it doesn’t seem so bad and I won’t be ridiculed for riding it in public. My bike has a basket, a light, and a bell. Watch out Hells Angels. I realized that renting a bike every weekend from the shop here in Goi would add up, and since I was able to get a bike this cheap, I figured might as well just buy one. I’ll never get used to laying down a ton of money and walking away empty handed in Japan. Since a lot of people don’t have cars when they go shopping for big stuff, most stores are very good about shipping stuff to you for cheap. It only cost me 1500 yen to ship my bike, but I also had to wait a few days. It should be here tomorrow morning (Thursday).

After taking care of the bike stuff on Sunday, I went to Outback for dinner. Never would I have thought that an Outback burger would be so tasty. I don’t usually think about how much I miss American food like that, but it felt great to eat a real restaurant burger. Monday was raining and stuff, so I spent pretty much the whole day again just loafing in my apartment. I actually went shopping at Ito Yokado for a bit in the evening, but that was about it. I missed being super lazy on the weekends.

A week and a half until Golden Week. I won’t be going anywhere really on vacation, but it looks like Nick is coming up to Chiba to hang out. Brian will have his mom in town, but he’ll be able to hang out in the evenings most likely. Should be nice to have everyone off and near enough to actually hang out. It will also be nice to just have a week off with nothing to do. I’m hoping to do some really touristy stuff around Tokyo as well.

Links:
Japan Cycling: Mama Chari

Am I petty enough to actually complain on my blog about a 10 year old kid? Yep!

So with the new kids classes that started this month, I started teaching different kids in my Upper Elementary class (5th graders). Three of the kids are really good, but the last is one of the trouble maker kids at the school. Not trouble maker as in “beats up old ladies and smokes behind the dumpsters,” but trouble maker as in “doesn’t pay attention, won’t shut up, and is disrespectful.” Either way I’ve only taught this kid once before when I had to substitute for Matt, but I’ve heard the horror stories and know that overall this little punk is a pain in the butt who thinks he’s a hardass (please note that he is 10). For privacy’s sake, I won’t give his name, although I will describe him as a Japanese version of Augustus Gloop with a buzzcut. For this blog, I will call him Pork Bowl. It’s a funny name.

Today was the second class, and to be honest last week he wasn’t too bad. He started off on a bad foot today though, going into the Staff Only storage room and taking a basketball. Not too bad. He was, however, being a pain when I told him to give it back so we could start class. This kid has some kind of complex where he thinks he’s tough even when faced with adults/teachers/other people who are obviously higher than him on the food chain. He also wants a lot of attention, and I don’t think he gets much from his parents since I heard that while him and his sister are in class, his mom plays pachinko. Sounds like a great parent. Add that to the fact that he is big for his age, his English is the worst in my class, and he smells (haha), and you can see that this kid has issues. So yeah before we even started class I wasn’t too happy with this kid. Anyway, during class he’s doing stuff like screaming nonsense, laying down on his desk, and zipping his jacket over his torso to hide his fat head. All of that wasn’t so bad because I would just ignore him.

Then I have the kids sit on the floor and play Memory with these flashcards. Pork Bowl is again being a pain, screwing up the cards and also throwing the cards up into the air and around the room. All the time I’m telling him in a stern voice “Pork Bowl, stop it.” He knows what I’m saying also. It’s getting worse now because he’s actually interrupting the other kids playing the games, and he’s starting to damage school property. Anyway, he’s a pain the entire class, even with me ignoring him, not including him in games, and almost making him cry. Is it terrible that I was hoping he would cry to teach him a lesson? He didn’t this time, but he’s done it in Matt’s class before. So the whole class I’m having to keep an eye on this kid, and I can’t do things as well as I usually would. I take the kids out of the classroom to ask questions in the hallway and lobby, and Pork Bowl is pouting on his desk. I have to take him with us though, since otherwise he’s the type who would rip up my books or something. He’s dragging along the way, trying to hide in classrooms, etc. He doesn’t participate in asking questions, doesn’t follow instructions, and then after the exercise he goes back in to the storage room and tries to hide. That actually didn’t bother me too much, until I get him out of the storage room and he slams the door really loudly. There were other classes going on, and this kid was already trying my patience, but the door slam really did it for me. Most of the time I’m very good at keeping my cool, but this set me off. I glare at the kid and in a voice I would use towards a dog who just pooped on the new leather sofa, scream “Pork Bowl, NO!” I saw the other kids in the class look at me for a second with a look of fear. Matt told me later that he heard it from his classroom.

So really this rant/story/blog is pretty bad, but I’m writing this mainly for recording purposes. I’ll probably want to read about this later on, since I don’t think I’ve ever actually gotten this angry at some little kid. I’m trying next to either have this kid and him mother talked to, or even better having him leave the school. I shouldn’t have to deal with this little snot, and neither should the other kids in the class, who actually have excellent English for kids their age.

I finally got a haircut on Sunday. I hadn’t gotten a haircut since I was in the US back in September, so it was long overdue; quite possibly the longest my hair has ever been. It was past the back collar of my shirt, which was getting too hippie-ish for my tastes. A few nights before, I had the stupid idea to try and cut my hair to a better length myself, but I quickly realized that it was futile and made the smart choice to stop and leave it to someone more professional. Also, I don’t know how you’re supposed to cut the back of your own head. My attempted maneuver with a standing mirror and the bathroom mirror didn’t really work as well as I would have thought. Also note the only tools I had available were a small pair of desk scissors and a beard trimmer.

After wasting 5 hours of my life for the sake of a “Sunday Open” at work, it was haircut time. For some reason, almost anywhere in Japan, even Goi, there is an amazing number of hair salons and barbershops. I’m not quite sure how this is related to the abundance of chicken-heads in this country, but I’m sure there’s a connection. A lot of places will charge as much as 4000 or 5000 yen for a normal haircut, and will have varying price levels for the amount of extras you want. Common extras in Japanese haircut places are shampoo, massage, perms, and tonsillectomy. On the other end of the spectrum, there are a lot of super cheap haircut places in Japan, usually with some kind of gimmick. For instance, there are a lot of “QB House” chain stores that will give you 10 minutes of haircut service for 1000 yen. I’m not quite sure I would trust a 10 minute haircut and/or a rush job, so I decided against one of these places.

Two of the four Goi haircut places, all within a 1 block radius, seemed to be really cheap, but also more factory-like, and were still super busy at 5PM to boot. I didn’t feel like waiting, so I decided to go to the Takazawa Salon or something, which advertised a 1600 yen haircut. Not exactly the $7.500-with-a-coupon haircut at Super Cuts by a big fat redneck lady, but seemed cheap enough. This was the middle ground, higher than the super cheap places but not as expensive/fancy as the place right next to Matsuya. Most barbershops in Japan are closed on Mondays, which is bad for my day off schedule. I decided that it was either a Sunday or never. Unfortunately, the barbershop I went to didn’t offer the basic “Cut Course” on weekends, meaning that I had to spend 2600 yen total for the “Cut and Shampoo Course,” something I didn’t really want or need. Overall, though, it was an interesting experience and not all that bad.

First, the old lady asks me what I wanted done, and I explained in garbled Japanese. I suppose she understood, and off we go. She washed my hair once, dried me off, and started cutting away. At first I was getting nervous at how much seemed to be coming off of my head, but I think it was just because I had a ton of hair. She finally finished and there was enough hair on the floor to make a baby black panther. The length and everything looked spot on, however, so I was happy enough. Note that during this entire process there was no conversation or small talk at all. I don’t think this was because I’m foreign (which she probably didn’t even realize), as the guy next to me wasn’t talking either. Overall I prefer this to trying to make small talk with Fat Lady at Super Cuts, which I really never liked. I remember one time back in Bloomington when one of them was asking me about myself the entire time, so I lied just to entertain myself.

Back to the story at hand. Next she trimmed and cleaned up my neckline and sideburns with a straight razor, something I’d never had done. It didn’t feel sharp, but I guess if it did I would have been bleeding a lot. After that it was time for the shampoo, which she did with me still sitting upright. She then put me back in the sink for a rinse, and put some more stuff in my hair. Instead of shampoo, I think this stuff must have been rubbing alcohol or gasoline, because my scalp felt ON FIRE. I expected to look up in the mirror and see Ghost Rider. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and I was back up in the chair, my head feeling tingly like it had been drowned in Listerine. Next was something unexpected; a back massage. It was pretty short, but at one point I’m pretty sure she was just punching me in the shoulders rather than actually doing any kind of massage. After that she dried my hair with a blow drier and asked if I wanted any product in my hair. I said gel, just because that’s what I usually use at home. She started using the blow drier, a brush, and a lot of gel to shape what I thought looked like a fairly normal haircut into something from the days of zoot suits and the Fonz. Please see the picture on the right for a bit of clarification.

I guess it was because I had never tried anything like that myself, but I was personally amazed at what was created out of my hair with just a blow drier and some gel. My hair felt rock solid and had some kind of curl to it. I almost thought about leaving it like that for the night, but since I was going into public I decided against it. I did take a ton of pictures just because I will probably not get a chance to rock a mini-pompadour like that for a while. Check out that curl!