Glittering Commerce and Trashy Fun

Life in the commercial niche is relatively comfortable around here in my not-too-big-not-too-small city by the sea. In fact, I’m quite looking forward to going around shopping for new home things. There was a day last week where we just walked around and around the shopping district of town, through a ton of stores in the big mall, to the Hard-Off, to the food places, and other various stops. Our mission was to find me a yukata for the summer festival :)

They had all sorts of ones on sale at the hip-young-woman stores, but I settled for one that wasn’t on sale because I figure if I’m going to be putting out some money I might as well get a good one. A yukata is a lighter and significantly less dramatic (and subsequently less cool) version of a kimono. Sometimes people wear them to summer festivals, though usually it’s little girls and mature women who do. I might equate it to wearing red, white, and blue on the Fourth of July – you look really cute and festive, though maybe a little hammy, and teenagers don’t think it’s cool unless they go really over the top with it. Almost no men do it, but the ones who do get a lot of attention from the ladies. When we went to a department store a few days later, I saw the really expensive lavish ones, but when I say really “expensive lavish ones” I also mean “definitely out of my price range!”

Wait. Did I say Hard-Off back there? Yes, I did. Hard-off is a Japanese resale shop and my new favorite store. They’ll buy your stuff from you, but only stuff that looks new. It's got sisters, Hard-off is for general purpose and clothes, but there is also Off House, Book Off, Garage Off, Hobby Off, and Mode Off. They usually have an amazing amount of still-boxed trinkets and towel sets that one imagines were unwanted presents. Speaking of presents, it's perfectly acceptable to re-gift here in Japan. Apparently people love it. This makes me very happy, because I think re-gifting and giving things you don't need to other people is a wonderful way to live.

From what I gather though, most people around here don’t know what to do with their stuff that looks too used for Hard Off. Maybe its different elsewhere, but no one I've met so far seems familiar with garage sales or a Goodwill. I think maybe the stuff just gets thrown away? Or maybe Japanese people just don’t get rid of things until they fall apart. So, there will be no Hippie Christmas here (which, as many of you know, is my third favorite holiday behind regular Christmas and Halloween) and I haven’t seen a Salvation Army or anything of the sort. In a way, I wish Japan could be more thrifty by taking donations, but at the same time, people choose to own so much less here, so I feel like the waste from most people in the U.S. is still higher. And before you say - they own less because they have less space, I really don't think that's true, because as much as houses tend to be smaller I've been in some pretty huge ones thus far and they have just as few things in them.

Speaking of throwing things away, Japan separates its trash. In my city, we only do “burnable,” “non-burnable,” and “plastic wrappings.” PET bottles and cans get picked up once a month when they cast magical nets outside the apartment buildings for us to fill. At school it’s also separated further into “wet garbage,” and “paper.” Often times there will be places for cardboard and milk cartons outside supermarkets. Meanwhile, I’ve heard of some cities where they make you separate garbage into as many as 20 categories – I’m sure that’s not common though. It can be really confusing, you’d be surprised about what can burn and how many different pieces can make up one thing. For example, when you have a bottled water, the label goes in plastic, the bottle goes in PET bottles, and the cap goes in burnable (or maybe plastic? I forget. See??) It gets further complicated by the fact that there are some broken clocks in my house – must I totally disassemble it before throwing it away? I might. From time to time I worry whether I’m doing it wrong, but I guess some old Baa-chan will just come and yell at me if I am.

What often happens in the JET program is that departing members will leave closets full of bottles and indiscernible trash items for their successors because they went a whole year without being able to figure out how to get rid of it. That almost happened to me, but I happened to open that closet early, which set the fire going under my pred's ass. It's not hard to figure out so long as you hang on to the form you get from the City Office, which I showed her. The same form has a picture of a gundam with a big X through it lol It's supposed to mean, "Models go into non-burnable trash," but I like to interpret it as, "Do not throw away your Gundam."

Japan definitely wins at the green movement though. At my hotel in Tokyo they left green tips on the nightstand. The grocery store charges for plastic bags, and all plastic wrappings and bags are recyclable. “My Bag” and “My Chopsticks” are very popular, (the English “My ___” means reusable). People own less cars and they’re smaller (I did see one hummer). When buying a car you need official verification that you have a parking spot off the road before they’ll let you have it. Also, every three years or so car owners must submit to an expensive car check-up. It costs more if your car is older and they’re more frequent the older your car gets.

And I must admit, it’s a lot easier living greener here than it is back home, so hopefully it will get me in the habit.

Some Take-Out Foods

I did a lot of eating out in my first two weeks, which I think was, on my predecessor’s part, a combination of time constraint, a last attempt to live it up, and a disdain for cooking. At any rate, I got to try a lot of great things, so now I can sit at home and be a food miser.

Takoyaki – octopus dumplings. Sounds awful, I know, especially when I tell you that it's dough around a chunk of octopus, then covered in katsuo (Bonito fish) flakes, severed with mayo and wasabi. I don’t tend to like anything with the same consistency as my tongue, but the octopus is so small. Same goes for fried squid legs. You can’t really taste it, it’s like eating a breaded mushroom. I’m not saying I’d like to eat octopus prepared in any other fashion, but this is ok. It’s cool to watch them make it too, because it’s like a big sheet of half-spheres, and as it fries, it gets turned with cooking chopsticks, and so it keeps that form, which makes it a complete sphere. I bet there’s not a single person among you who wouldn’t enjoy this dish. I once ate at a fast food joint that served only variations of takoyaki and fried potato (which are also very popular, think streak fries that have been breaded), though really it's a festival food, like a corn dog in the States.

Often times at fast food joints, there’ll be both water for free and hot green tea, that’s how common tea is here.

Yakitori is what my city is famous for, which means the delicious smell is always wafting down the streets and into my windows. Technically "tori" should be chicken, but it’s always pork here. In fact, most meats here are pork, which is considerably difficult for my pred because she can’t eat pigs. One of our city icons is a pig eating yakitori (and smiling). Counter-intuitive.

On my first real yakitori night we went to a famous joint in town. Everybody ordered a drink and then it was a crazy mess of ordering appetizers. That particular night was a welcome party for all the new foreigners in town, planned by those we were replacing. I did a lot of networking that day and ate some mayo-sauced soba noodles (yeah, I don’t know, but it was good!), pickled daikon, yakitori, fried rice ball (not fried rice, but a rice ball filled with cheese that’s been fried), fried potato, fried chicken (see a theme?), and various other things I won’t be able to remember because I didn’t know what they were. All I can tell you is that there were a lot of sauces.

On the topic of mystery foods, there is a food called "Handsome Yaki," which it what looks like a fried oval with a man's face on it. It's quite charming, but I don't know what it is. Our little family here hasn't been able to figure it out. It will have its own booth at the Jazz Cruise, so perhaps I will buy some and let you know.

Another very popular restaurant of the fast food variety is Mister Donut, or “Miz-do,” as it’s affectionately called. Every time we go, someone will be there. There is always one or more adult friend of The Pred’s in this restaurant (especially because it’s a popular hang-out for people going to the private English classes held across the street) but also there are always kids there too. On one occasion, we ran into a girl from the school and one of her friends. They were very excited to talk with us and insisted on being call Saki-chan and I-chan instead of their last names or even their full names. It was pretty cute. We had a spirited conversation, and I can tell this girl will be key to winning over the other students during class hours (she’s the girl I mentioned who danced “macho man” with The Pred on my first day).

My favorite interaction at Miz-Do thus far, however, was the one with the little girls from Sapporo. I was waiting in line for The Pred to get a green tea doughnut with crunchy crème filling (delicious) when I saw a little girl gawking at me. I smiled and said “Hello,” in English, figuring that’s what she was going for. There was a layer of glass in between us, but she kept staring and mouthing, “Hello.” Eventually she came over and said it to me. I asked if she spoke English and she said no, but I told her it was okay because I spoke Japanese. The only table open was next to her, her cousin, and her grandmother. The Pred joined in and eventually we discovered that they were taking English lessons, and that they were 5 and 7 year old cousins from Sapporo here visiting their grandmother. The grandmother didn’t speak English, but she was tickled by the girls' excitement and so she kept feeding them more questions to ask us in Japaneses. Most of the conversation we translated into both English and Japanese so the girls could learn but still understand what we were saying. There was a lot of talk about the new nail polish they bought, how cool they thought our names were, (“Naoko is such a boring name! I hate it!”she said), and what everyone’s favorite colors were.

People tell me that it gets old having strangers strike up conversations with you just because you look like you speak English, but I kind of think exciting conversations with little kids is what I live for. I might be wrong, but I think it’s going to take a long time for me to get sick of it, if ever.