Here you see the soft drink entitled “Bubble Rocket”. It is Space Flavored (which actually means it is just kind of sweet and has a similar taste to something fruity), and as you can see from the fuzzy picture at right, is a clear carbonated beverage. Additionally, it appears to contain a lot of Vitamin B6. The phrase (in romaji, for some unknown reason) ASONDEKUREYO means something akin to “let’s have fun”.　　The other one, though ”HAJIKETEINAI”, though, I’m not exactly sure about. The Japanese below it is preceded by the word “Earthpeople”. I think ”hajikeru” is something like “burst open” or “pop”, but I think I need a little help, because I’m sure it doesn’t say “Don’t blast the earth people open!” 日本人、助けてください。

So the other night I went out to an izakaya not far from most regular izakayas, but I happened to see stuff like this:

There were six-year-olds and younger wrestling with adults. And here, at this place, you can have a beer, or some edamame, or some smoked salmon, or even smoke a cigarette if you wanted, and watch these children engage in this adult-style fighting tactics in a real live pro-wrestling size, shape, and equipment having ring. I even got to go in and make some faces myself.

And my friend got to wrestle, but she got pinned herself:

This, combined with the previous chickens in a tree, just makes me realize Japan is a place with much to be explored.

また一人で、また寂しい。

Trying out the streaming media functionality that my host provides. Here is a recording I made from my mp3 player of my subway train coming when I go to work (Meijo line, counterclockwise):

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

And here is the song it plays on the way home (Meijo line, clockwise). Now this song I nicked off of this video of some silly gaijin doing a video about Tokyo. The video was lame, but it was the best recording of the song I’d heard so far:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Now, I’d be interested in knowing if this didn’t work for you. I’ve tested it out in a recent version of Firefox and IE. But if they don’t work for you, let me know what errors you get. ありがとう！

On Sunday, as the second day in a three-day weekend, I went to Ise (pronounced /ee-say/) in Mie Prefecture, home of the most important shrine in Japan, and took a bunch of pictures starting here. Let me start right out by saying that every once in a while, you will see something you never expected you would ever see. Well, in Ise, I saw such an vision. That is, I saw chickens sitting in a tree. It might be the most incredible sight I have ever seen in my life. I still haven’t gotten over the shock, the thrill, the elation of seeing this. Here it is:

OK, so anyway, there are many shrines in Ise, and millions of Japanese come every year (6 million a year or so) to visit them. Especially the big one, 内宮　(naiguu). When I went, it was a throng of humanity:

Sugoi hito desu ne! Anyways, besides the many shrines, Ise is famous for udon. There is this old-style town there where you go to a shokken (a manual one, with a real person, not a machine) and get a wooden tab with a number on it. It was difficult to hear the number because there was taiko drumming going on about 10 feet away at the same time.

The noodles were delicious. I also had some other festival foods, a cucumber on a stick, crab on a stick, and some amazake, which is a hot drink made from fermented rice. It’s got an interesting, lumpy texture and is kind of sweet. No alcohol to speak of in it, so it’s even used as baby food. Here is a picture of me eating some kimuchi yakisoba okonomiyaki taken by a beautiful kind stranger:

I also found four Energy Gym machines. And also, a cool VW dealership. Did I mention there were chickens up a tree? This man explained to his son that the kamisama (god of the shrine) put them up there. OK, but why? Why would a divine entity take the time out of protecting the people of Japan to put chickens in a tree? WHY?

I bought this razor today. Now, I’m thirty-… I’m in my thirties (as David Brent would say). I would have thought that marketing of this kind of toy robot thing would be aimed at kids. But obviously, razors are marketed to adults. So this seems a little disingenuous, or something. I like that word, and I can’t think of a better one right now. Anyway, I’m in my thirties, and I bought the damn thing, so it worked on me. So it appears there are enough Japanese men who still like toy robots and stuff to buy razors because of it. So there you go.

Haven’t posted in a while. And not really too much to say, except that I’ve gone to karaoke twice in the last two weeks, something I hadn’t done in well over two months. I needed it badly, and boy, did it feel good. Of course, I did “My Way” both times.

When I was a young, pre-pubescent child, I loved robots. I thought that someday, everyone would have a robot friend they could program to do anything they want, but they would never hurt you because they were programmed to always be good. But honestly, I had never thought I would see something like that in my lifetime - I was thinking, like, year 2250 or so. And so I had never thought much about robots until recently.

But now that I’ve moved to Japan, I’ve visited the Robot Museum here in Nagoya, and this place called RobotPlace in Fukuoka, and I have really become entranced with the idea of robots again. I really really want to have an AIBO someday. Basically, it seems to me, that if you can give something like a robot 500 or more possible tasks that it can do, much of the time, its behavior can seem indistinguishable from a real dog. Of course there are the advantages of sanitation and the fact that you don’t have to feed it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that a robot dog could replace a real live pet in all its facets, I just think that, for someone like me, who can’t have a real pet at this time for many reasons, it is finally a real, viable, and extremely interesting alternative. But the really cool ones are way outta my price range at this time. Someday, though. Someday.

Also, here, my student alerted me to the robots that they use to help direct traffic around construction zones. His name is Anzentarou (Anzen means safety). I just think that’s the coolest thing. Why don’t we have those in North America?

I’ve talked previously about how obsessed I am with this drink. But I don’t think I’ve expressed how I take a photo (with my keitai) of many of the vending machines ( 自動販売機 ) that carry this miracle beverage. Oh, and another wonderful thing about Fukuoka that I didn’t mention is that the place is lousy with Energy Gym Dydo machines! I actually wasn’t able to take a picture of every Energy Gym Dydo that I saw there. That city has a lot going for it - ramen and Energy Gym, and something else I’ll mention soon. So far, the closest one to where I work is about a 12-minute walk, kind of far for this cold weather. But I have found one near Meijo Koen, not too far from my apartment. But oh, to live in Fukuoka, where there are Energy Gym machines like every 100 yards!!!

I just wanted to write a few more details about the greatest bowl of ramen I have ever eaten in my life. On January 2nd, I was in Fukuoka for about seven hours as I waited for my Shinkansen back to Nagoya. Being the New Year’s holiday, most establishments were closed, and so the place was in many places like a ghost town. But I was hungry, and I wanted some tonkotsu ramen, which Fukuoka is famous for.

So after walking about an hour from the ferry terminal downtown, I came upon this place, which had a fast-moving line outside. I saw that the price was 650 yen for a bowl of ramen. I also noticed that just around the corner was another open ramen shop, completely empty, and selling their noodles for 380 yen a bowl. Obviously, there was something to the first place.

So I waited in line. While waiting in line, I read the establishment’s long-winded policy, written on a wooden plank above the door. (Hey, I am getting a little better - I only had to look up two kanji to read it). It basically said they are open 24/7/365, and they were dedicated to providing the highest quality ramen to their customers. Also, their standard is to serve the ramen within 33 seconds of placing the order. So you buy a ticket from the shokken (food ticket machine) from the outside (I also bought an extra order of pork and a 生ビール - draft beer). It took about 15 minutes to get through the line to the inside. The place was dark with red curtains all over the place. As we get to the end of the line, a shopmember gave me a slip of paper with about ten different criteria for my ramen - spiciness, garlic, ginger, and so on, and different levels for each one. I didn’t have time to read or understand the whole thing, but I was able to circle the middle one, or “standard” for each criteria.

   When it was my turn, a blue light shone on a seating board up on the wall, and I was directed to my seat. It was just like a peep show or something - there was a red curtain in front of me, so I wasn’t allowed to look into the innards of the restaurant. I set my tickets and order slip down, and they were quickly snapped up. Definitely less than 33 seconds later, I was presented with the most heavenly bowl of broth and noodles I’ve ever experienced. Absolutely every single aspect of the noodles were perfect - temperature, consistency of the broth (not too fatty, not too thin, significant spiciness), a bit of pickled ginger. By the way, this was Hakata ramen, so the noodles are much skinnier than you usually see in Japan. Adding to that, the medallions of roast pork were divinely cooked, as if they waited until they extracted only the top 1 percent of the pig and threw the rest away. Literally, I was crying, it tasted so good. And although the serving size was maybe 2/3 the size of the usually hefty bowls of ramen you get in Japan, that in itself was another characteristic of this meal that made it perfect. It was exactly the right amount. I swear, I was thinking about how good this ramen was for the next two hours walking around the city. It may not even have been the best ramen in Fukuoka, as far as I know, but for this amateur ramen-lover, it satiated me in the best way possible. Most unimaginably highly recommended. Rating: 6 Godzillas