Happy Halloween!!!

JapanYears Reader: "Hey, Mike. What's your favorite holiday?"

Mike: "Halloween. No doubt about it."

I love Halloween. I have ever since I was a kid. It seems so pure... people giving gifts of candy to kids without the expectation of anything in return, other than a friendly "trick or treat". Kids actually working for a goal: dressing up in a costume, marching the street carrying a big sack to fill up with goods, then lugging it around as it gets heavier and heavier as the night goes on.

Halloween is one of those days that evolves as people grow up. As a kid, I thought it was so cool that one night a year I could dress up in a cool outfit, go up to random houses, say the magic "trick or treat" phrase, and be given candy by perfect strangers. My dad - always safety conscious - would sift through the candy to look for any unusually tampering of the labels; and I'm sure on occasion he snuck himself a piece or three of my goods. But that's one of the benefits of parenthood. As a teenager, Halloween was a time for me to terrorize the neighborhood and I have to admit that on occasion I did some not-so-nice things involving cartons of eggs, toilet paper, and neighboring houses/yards. As a parent, Halloween has a new but equally meaningful vibe. Being able to watch Josh play and interact with the other kids, all in their cute little costumes, is an absolute blast. This year is the first year that Josh actually understands that saying "trick or treat" means getting candy. And he walked us all over Yokosuka Naval Base tonight to get as much as the little guy could carry.

In Japan, you often hear the word kawaii, especially when small children or Hello Kitty dolls are within earshot, because kawaii is the Japanese word for "cute" and Nihon-jin love cute things. There's also a word that sounds very similar to kawaii, but is pronounced "kowai". Kowai means "scary" in Japanese. What better day to combine all things kawaii and kowai, than on Halloween.

Before Josh's big Trick or Treat Candy Excursion, we met up with some of the other families that we call friends here on the Kanto Plain. Here are some of the resulting pictures:

Ska Show in Shibuya

Wednesday night, I had the privilege of attending a Less Than Jake (aka: LTJ) show in Tokyo's Shibuya area. I've been following LTJ for about 12 years now, which reminds me that I'm getting old. Anyway, I found out that they were coming to Tokyo about 3 months ago and worked out a deal with the greatest wife in the world so that I could head up there... I went solo since unfortunately we didn't have a sitter on hand for Josh - and Nicki's not a huge fan of the band anyway.

I took two hours off from work at the end of the day so I could head home early and get ready for the show. I threw on a pair of jeans and my old Avail shirt to support my hometown music scene, then headed up to Shibuya. My destination was a club called Shibuya-O, so with my internet-printed map in hand, I made my way to the train station... destination Tokyo. The doors to the show didn't open until 6PM, and after I had gotten a quick bite to eat near Shibuya Station, I started walking towards Shibuya-O with about 45 minutes to find the place. I'm glad that I got to Shibuya early. I started walking for probably about a mile and a half, then reached a place that was no longer very reminiscent of a "bar/club/entertainment area". So I turned around and headed back towards the station. Along the way, I found a koban (neighborhood police station) and asked the attending cop, "Shibuya-O wa doko desuka?". His reply: "Go up here, take a left." Perfect English. Sure enough, the koban was right on the exact corner that I needed to turn left to find the club. I was there a few minutes later, downed a Red Bull from the AM/PM across the street, and headed towards the doors of the club.

Within the blink of an eye, I had paid my 500 yen drink ticket charge, grabbed a cold beer, and sat down in a comfortable spot to people-watch until the show started. Suddenly, I heard someone behind me say, "Cool shirt, man", referring to my aforementioned Avail t-shirt. I started talking to the dude and found out that he and his wife were from San Diego and they had met at San Diego State - small world, since Nicki and I were most recently from San Diego and I attended SDSU for grad school.

As it turns out, a Japanese ska punk band was opening the show. So promptly at 7PM, I got my first taste of a band called Kemuri (link is in Japanese). I gotta tell you, I was seriously impressed with these guys. They're a seven piece act that includes guitar, bass, drums, lead singer, and a horns section - they all hail from Japan, but their songs are mostly done in English. They played very tight live, so well that I bought one of their CDs, called "77 days". The guy that I met before the show bought a different CD and we agreed to burn copies for each other and exchange them soon. Which reminds me... I still have to do that. In the meantime, I can't stop listening to my Kemuri CD, it's that good.

A couple of beers into the show, the Kemuri set was over and Less Than Jake came onstage. As always (this was about my 5th or 6th time seeing them live), LTJ played a great show and were full of energy throughout. As was the crowd, which was predominantly Japanese and still singing and dancing along in perfect rhythm. I'm pretty impressed that a relatively small named band has made such a hit with their Japanese fanbase. Good for them.

After the show, I went upstairs to the nearest rest room to drain some excess baggage before my long train ride home. When I started heading back downstairs, I noticed one of the lead singers of LTJ, Roger, standing there signing autographs for a room full of adoring fans. But the masses started to part (fortunately) as I walked towards him. So I told him that I didn't have anything for him to sign, but I wanted to thank him and the band for coming out because it's rare to see cool Amerika-jin bands over here for a reasonable price. Silly me, I forgot to mention that I had been following them for over a decade...

But he probably wouldn't have wanted to be reminded of his age, either.

Paris Syndrome

Mike has left this link up to remind us to write something about this article we read last night. We had to laugh because any foreigner who has spent sometime in Japan would understand why, this would happen to a Japanese Traveler:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15391010/?GT1=8618

We'd love to hear some of your comments!

Friday the 13th??? That was nothin'...

First, a quick Happy Birthday to my dad, who reached a significant age milestone yesterday - ironically on Friday the 13th. Wish we could be there to celebrate with you in person...

Next, two reasons why Friday the 13th isn't nearly as cursed as Saturday the 14th seems to be. Nicki and I woke up this morning and our bed was rockin', but unfortunately the cause would not have been rated by the Motion Picture Association of America as anything above PG-13. We woke up at 6:37AM to a moderate-sized earthquake, which according to the USGS website was about a 5.3 on the Richter scale and about 30 miles south of us. Here's a picture from the US Geological Survey site:

The orange square up above shows the location of the quake. The yellow arrow (drawn in by yours truly) shows our approximate location.

In other news, a quick look at Weather.com shows the latest satellite images for our area:

Notice any round orangish-red objects directly south of us? Man, I hope that puppy makes a sharp turn towards the Pacific.

Shades of Mt. Fuji

Nicki, Josh and I are still in one piece, despite the tropical storm that brushed by the Miura Peninsula on Friday. I took Friday morning off from work to watch the Thursday Night (in America) ESPN college football matchup between my beloved NC State Wolfpack and the Florida State Seminoles. It was a close game that ended well, with the Pack coming away with a 24-20 victory.

The good thing about tropical storms and typhoons here in Japan is that afterwards, we usually experience several days of clear, dry, wonderful weather. That was indeed the case by Saturday. We spent Saturday morning in Yokohama at the World Food Festival in Yamashita Park, which was basically a big food taste-a-thon represented by most of the major countries in the world. We tried all kinds of different foods and a few beers from all kinds of different countries and had a blast. I'll share some pictures soon... but will trump them now with the events that unfolded later this weekend.

Sunday morning, I decided to get up early to head over to Hayama to shoot some pictures, assuming the good weather would carry over until Sunday morning. Unfortunately, I set my alarm to go off around 5am, but didn't actually turn the alarm to the on position... so I woke up a bit late and got a late start. When I got to Hayama, I found a nice free parking spot behind a car that I immediately recognized as SushiJeff's. Jeff is the one who told me about Hayama and last time I was out there, he was there the following day. I guess great minds think alike. I was going to leave a sign on his dashboard saying, "It's 7am, do you know where your Canon 70-300mm lens is?", because he has been kind enough to let me borrow it and it's the perfect lens to catch that view... but I didn't have paper and a pen handy. After shooting a few photos, I realized that the sun had come up just too far for me to get the shots that I wanted. So I gave up and went home, determined to come back the following morning to try again. When I got home, I read my email and found that Boston Jeff (a fellow member of the Wolfpack Nation currently spending a semester up in Tokyo) had sent me an email. He was in Kamakura earlier in the day and got a few pictures of Mt. Fuji from there. So Fuji-san must have been a hot topic in the minds of gaijin throughout the local commuting area.

Today is Columbus Day so I had the day off from work, which worked well in my plan to get up early and head back to Hayama. I set my alarm for 4:30am and this time set it to the "on" position. Sure enough, the clock woke me up at dark-thirty, then I grabbed my gear and hit the road. I got to Hayama a few minutes after 5AM and was completely set up a few minutes after that, still in time to catch a few pre-sunrise shots, too:

After shooting for a while with SushiJeff's lens, I noticed that the moon was still visible above the view. So I switched over to my "walkaround lens", my 28-135mm. Despite the space between the moon and Fuji-san, I was still able to catch this shot:

One thing I've learned about Mt. Fuji is that her photographs are like snowflakes... no two are the same. I guess the same thing can be said about most photograph spots, but it amazes me that during the spring, fall, and winter, and at all different times of the day, you can get great pictures of Fuji-san from all different perspectives, each with its own unique sense of individuality and beauty - just have to avoid the summer months, when the mountain is typically covered in a blanket of haze.

Some other select pictures from my session in Hayama this morning are posted under today's date (10/09/2006).

Gardeners Amongst Other Frustrations

Folks may have noticed that our blog has been pretty inactive. Well, we just haven't had much going on lately. Mike is still playing catch up with his photography and I've just been doing the typical Mommy stuff. Be prepared, for this blog post will include ranting...

We took a ride to Yokohama to check out the World Fair at Yamashita Park. They had tons of good food from Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Belgium, Germany, France, and many many more countries. It was a nice morning trip and we were able to make it back home in time for Josh's nap.

On our way home, we were noticing all of the nice homes by our train station and having a little bit of renters remorse about our townhouse. Then it got us both on a rant about the differences between home maintenance here in Japan vs. the US. Our biggest pet peave since we've been here is the typical Japanese gardener. The process of lawn and shrub maintance is pretty much non-existent here. In fact, we specified that we get a gardener in our rent contract. We foolishly assumed that this would mean a person coming weekly to maintain our yard. Most of the time landlords in the US will have someone come once a week to mow the lawn and trim the shrubs. Here, they come just about every 6 months, butcher the grass, shrubs and trees leaving nothing but sticks and then let it over-grow for the next 6 months till they come and annihilate the yard again. This is also the general practice at most of our neighborhood parks. To us it just seems so silly. How is this process efficient?! If anything, it lets the grass and weeds overgrow giving the weeds time to polinate and spread to neighboring yards, making our neighbors daily pull weeds out of their flower beds. It's also disgusting to walk in an overgrown park where dogs like to pop a squat or lift a leg to do their business. We never know when our shoe will fall victim to poo. Why not just come every week, do an hour's job trimming and be done with it? Something I will never understand.

Not only is it yards and parks, but also homes. Many times a house is built and just not treated properly. Most houses are still built "on the cheap", but many places over 10 years just look horrid. Wallpaper peeling off, shoji papers are not replaced in the sliding windows, retaining walls crumbling... WTF? The reason many people rebuild their houses after 7-10 years is because they just don't seem to take care of them in the first place!

OK, OK... I know that this has turned into a rant/soapbox moment. We really do like the location of our place. After all we do live right next to the ocean. I suppose most of the frustration just lies with our landlord in this case and maybe our champagne tastes. There are just certain things that a landlord in the States is pretty much expected to provide that I suppose a Japanese landlord is not.

Another thing recently that I've noticed is the slippery tiles in the train stations. As soon as it rains it's like walking on glass. It rains so much in this country. I'd think the engineers would plan for a little more traction for train commuters.

Oh, and there are never enough elevators at train stations. Sometimes there is an elevator for one platform and as soon as we get to the next one, there is no elevator to be found. Better yet, there is an elevator but we have to climb a set of stairs to get to it. There's also the poeple who get on elevators that just don't need one. Especially the extremely rude salarymen that cut in front of old women and strollers. One day, I'm gonna clip one with my stroller... then look at him wide eyed, "OH, GOMEN NASAI, GOMEN NASAI!!!" (still ramming him in the process). Maybe then he'll get the message.

I know, I know. If this is all we have to complain about, we have it pretty good. I suppose now more than ever we are plain just missing home. I particualarly miss not being scrutanized constantly by the general public. If someone is rude to me in America, I know how to handle it. Here, for the most part we have to suck it up. Not only because we don't know how to handle it otherwise, but also because when we arrive here in Japan, we take a class offered by the military where it is drilled into us over and over again that we are all acting as embassadors for our country and for us to be on our best behavior if not better than our best behavior. This whole process has really helped us understand what immigrants coming to America must go through.

We enjoy Japan for the most part, along with it's people. Again, we just plain miss home. Which brings me to my next announcement. We will be taking a trip to the states in early 2007. I'll be spending about month there with Josh and Mike will go for about 2 weeks. Luckily I have the kind of job where I can be on the move. Mike, on the other hand, needs to stick around at work and make his visit/vacation a little shorter.

Apologies if this has brought anyone down. Again, we always talk about what fun we have here. We just haven't had much of an opportunity to vent about what frustrates us.