Three weeks in Japan

So you're passing from a pretty normal side street in Ueno after a good meal at 11pm, and all the doors seem either closed or on the verge of closing. Then out of nowhere you see 5 girls taking photos of each other and making a bit of a noise. Quite an attention grabber no? That's what happened to us. The girls were wearing kimonos and Brian thought of taking a picture with these girls. Not a bad idea at all - at the time it sounded a good way of showing our relatives and friends that "hey we're in japan!". So we ended up taking pictures with these girls, who turned out to be chinese actually. So that's not exactly a japanese experience..

At some point, I asked one of the girls (who seemed much better at communicating in english than the rest), about what they're doing around at this hour. After all, it seemed quite strange that these "students" were out at this hour partying. She told me that they were at this bar - and I asked about the bar - "any good?" - answered with "alcohol". Like hmm .. ok - that's always a good answer. Since they saw that we were interested, they asked us if we would like to join them inside and, not knowing what was in store for us, we agreed. They took us by the hand, and in a blink of an eye we were inside a small cosy bar sitting by a small table. A lady by the bar seemed to know the girls - in fact she spoke to them and the result was a whiskey bottle in the middle of the table. So it was Brian, I, a whiskey bottle and a few chinese girls ... in Japan of course.

But that's not the whole story - they asked us 10,000 yen (lm30), which is a bit more expensive than we were hoping. Ofcourse we protested that we only wanted one drink, not a whole bottle. That's when the truth emerged - the 10,000 yen is not for the alcohol, but for 1 hour of company. The 1 hour of company wouldn't have been as bad, if it wasn't the case that none of the girls could have a proper flowing conversation in english. In fact, trying to reach an agreement was very difficult due to constant communication breakdowns. After a lot of discussion, the girls agreed that we were not advised before that we'll have to pay for their company or that the price was 10,000 yen. We went out without paying nothing - not even for a glass of whiskey that they poured for us. That was pretty good actually.

As soon as we got out, we saw other girls in front of other bars taking photos of each other with either a mobile or a digital camera.. deja vu!

Quick post - Below are a few of the photos taken at Fushimi-Inari Taisha Shrine, a beautiful and inspiring location. More photos can be found on flickr.

When you're at the other end of the earth, you're easily forgiven for making some remarks which can sound rude or plain offensive to the locals. "Chin-chin" for example, seems to have other meanings other than the plain old european drinking salute. So if you don't want to have reactions over the table, avoid using that word in Japan, and instead use "Kanpai" which is the Japanese equivalent to "Cheers!". If on the other hand, if you like the shock value of it all, then using "Chin-chin", especially loudly, will probably raise a few eyebrows because "chin-chin" in japanese stands for "penis".

Even though we learnt this through trial and error, I made some research and found this funny reference:
"Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin"

That's the same night that we tried the monjayaki dish. This is how it looks like on certain occasions:

Engrish (broken english) is everywhere in Tokyo. I guess it's similar in the rest of Japan. I personally like it - it adds style in a way. Wikipedia has quite a neat introduction to the subject and the website Japundit has posts a pictures of engrish signs quite often.

Anyways, here's some of our captures featuring this phenomenon

I should be enjoying Roppongi life, but instead I'm in the hotel looking at my photos, fixing the colors and uploading away on flickr. These are some of my favourite posts:

So we're uploading images on a flickr account. Check out it out.
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Some pictures from the flickr page:

Even in the dull flat low-saturation light, Akihabara still manages to somehow look both colorful and lively. Full of electronic shops all trying to grab your attention, Brian and I got lost in loads of camera equipement, notebooks, mac shops and other goodies.

However after a long day in the humid warm weather, you'll feel the need for a refreshment, and probably will eventually need to dehydrate - i.e. go to the bathroom. That's what I did, and was welcomed by the sight of a high tech toilet such as the one below. Of especial fun is the spray button - I wonder what happens if you increase the pressure!

Your friendly neighbours in Ueno. Saw this near the Ryokan where we're living for these 5 days. It's actually funny because it looks like a caricature of the local people trying to look brave. Graphic is everywhere in the area.

fresh and variety .. wouldnt you like some? 

funky cars in japan! 

wardrobe at the ryokan 

Further advancements in the packing up business:

• Following howto wikis such as this one is not totally useless. They even tell you about what sleeping pills you should be taking. Wouldn't want to be asleep while an accident happens (instead of snapping photos and blogging the incident!)
• Rolling up the shirts like a sleeping bag, instead of folding them does help save up space.
  
• looks like i need some headphones because I cannot find mine! The ones that they provide on the plane are pretty shitty according to past experience - so it's always better to buy new ones. I'll do that at the airport. Will also buy healthy sleeping pills there.
  
• Writing down stuff on papers. You know - papers never have battery problems. They don't die out - which is probably one of the reasons why they're still around. My internet tablet has a lot of info on it - but it will eventually die out. Actually, after 3 hours of use. So will my laptop. So it's important to write down email addresses, intructions on how to get to the hotel and telephone numbers on a piece of paper. I'm trying hard to think practical.
  
• Put the flight tickets and passport in an easily reachable place. Such as under a gargoyle statue in my room.
  

While I've been trying to pick up words in japanese, I've also been noticing how many english words somehow end up as part of the japanese language. The name for these words is gairaigo - meaning "borrowed word". Here are some of the funnier sounding gairaigo:

• rimokon short for rimooto kontororu! This means remote control. Where did I put the remote control would be "Rimokon doko ni oitakke?"
• sekkusu - yes it does sound a bit like "sex". That was an easily guessable one!
• this is my favourite: "Pantsu getta"! Obviously means pants getter. I won't go into the details of this new hobby here .. but it's quite interesting. traceback
  
• internetto - not so sure how often this one is used. I mean, some people (another) have used the word. But it sure as hell sounds funny to me.
  
• tarento meaning talent. This refers to TV celebrities.
  

Notice any others which sound funny? A nice list can be found on wikipedia.
You know that you've been on that wikipedia page for long enough, when people start giving you weird looks as you try to pronounce some of those words ;-)

The concept of communication, for most people over 40, tends to stop at phone calls. And at times, it really does. I mean - admit it - chatting on MSN or an email isn't anything near a phone call when you need to interact. Of course there's the video conference thingie - but that's a bit too intrusive if you know what I mean. Apart from the setup costs - you have another issue called privacy. For example - did you ever pick up a call while you're in your underwear? I do it on a daily basis.

So I decided to check out how mobile phone "roaming" would work. I did what anyone else would do - call Vodafone Malta customer care. They were very helpful - providing me with information on how to make a connection from Japanese Vodafone to Maltese phone numbers and so on. Basically it works by making use of the callback feature.
So you dial *121* then the number (in the case of maltese numbers it starts with 00356 the international calling code) followed by a #. Then you get disconnected and you wait for your mobile phone to start ringing. If you decide to answer the call, it should then (hopefully) connect you to the other party.

Then the customer care support went on to tell me about the tariffs:

• From 8am till 6pm it's Lm1.09 (2.50 EUR) per minute
• The rest costs Lm0.91 (2.15 EUR) per minute

That is expensive.

A few questions later, I found out that I'll need a 3G phone even though Vodafone Japan says that it supports GSM. *sigh* It's starting to sound too complicated. I don't have that.

So I've been reading about Skype and Gizmo and all that.A bit of price comparison:

Comparing phonecall prices

service provider	landline call to malta	mobile call to malta	landline call to japan	mobile call to japan
SkypeOut	lm0.07	lm0.09	lm0.01	lm0.06
Gizmo	lm0.09	lm0.09	lm0.015	lm0.07

At this stage, I guess I know what I want to use ;) Besides, everyone's quite familiar with Skype. Of course, a laptop is not as handy as a mobile. The name says it all. So 10 Euros later (actually 11.50), and I'm testing it out. Sounds good - even literally - considering everything.
So .. what about these funky Windows mobile devices with wifi? Adding that to the "wanted" list.

First things first - and in this case the first thing is a very long flight from Malta to Japan. Actually we'll be stopping at Heathrow London Airport because there is no direct flight to Japan. So that takes around:

Malta - Heathrow flight 3:30hrs
Standby time at Heathrow 4hrs
Heathrow - Narita flight 11:30hrs


A little bit of calculation .. 19hours; of which a good number of them we'll be bored, unless quite well prepared. So I've been stocking up my hardware with good software to fill up my time.

These are some of the things I've done:

• put a few ebooks and scummvm games on my nokia 770
• stock my laptop with freely available software such as Picasa and VMPlayer
• a real life book. You know - in this age of ebooks and so on, real life books still don't need any electricity source. I'll either be carrying "Freakonomics" with me, or Spam Kings as reading material.
• my camera (a trusty canon 300d) will be on me.. just in case.
  

What's left picking up ?

• sleeping pills! It's the one practical thing that people do when they're so bored - that is sleep. Not that I typically have problems sleeping but these things might come in helpful.
• instructions on what to do once landed.
  

In the end, I guess sleep will prevail.

A week to go for the Japan trip, and I'm finally realizing that I
should be preparing myself for some real world experiences. First step it seems, is to approach my room's door - with caution of course.