My Japanese Encyclopedia D-F
part two of this exciting installment, which if you're just tuning in is a collection of observations from my 3rd trip to Japan...
Delta they've changed the types of planes that fly nonstop from Atlanta to Tokyo, as they're now big huge jets that are seated 3-3-3 and we've now got individual TV screens. This was a huge improvement over the Dec 2002 trip, as we had just one massive screen for one whole side of the plane, so everyone was forced to acknowledge XXX 3.5 times as it aired encore after encore. Now we have about 5 movie channels to choose from (including one tease that was called "Arcade" that was actually no such thing - bastards!) and they actually had 2 movies I was halfway curious to see (The Incredibles and Lemony Snicket's...). But they still need to work on it, because they ended up showing Lemony Snicket (and all of the other movies it was competing against) once, whereas we had 4 opportunities to see the Incredibles (or that movie starring Ice Cube, if a 14.5 hour flight isn't masochistic enough for you). On the bright side, we can also track our flight to see where we are currently flying, but that was a little distressing as well since there were storms in the Pacific so our pilot decided to fly us up to Seattle, then alongside the west coast of Canada, the south coast of Alaska, and the east coast of Russia before hitting Japan from the top. Making a long flight even longer, but I guess it was pretty turbulence-free at least...
Also, Delta food generally sucks, unless you're flying from Tokyo to America, in which they serve Delta's version of Japanese cuisine which really isn't too bad. Yakisoba, tendon, teriyaki scallops, etc. Not exactly Iron Chef standard, but you can't fault 'em for trying, now can you?
Department Stores I'd never really been to a department store (or depato) any of my previous times in Japan, other than my first time in the country when I met all of S' family at a fancy French restaurant. Yes, you can find fancy French restaurants actually in department stores themselves. Usually at least one floor of a big department store (which can be 12 stories or more, in some cases) will have a block of restaurants for those relentless shopping machines to take a momentary break at. This time around, I was taken to a tempura bar located inside Yokohama's branch of Takashimaya but I'll save that story for later.
As for actual shopping, I went to 2 places this time around, both located in Yokohama. The first place (which as an aside had a Haitian restaurant, something I'd never seen before) was predominantly a clothing store, with every floor blaring at least 90dB of music fit for whatever couture this particular location was hawking. I saw a pretty nice shirt with a Big Daddy Roth-type sketch of a big-eyed monster on a hot rod with "Yokohama 1959" written underneath, and then I saw it was $150 so I decided that maybe I didn't quite feel like shopping today. On the other hand, it was quite fascinating to just look around and listen. Hip-hop and American bling culture are really huge here, to the degree that a lot of youths use some kind of skin darkener on themselves to give the appearance they're African-Americans (S told me about this, but I hadn't encountered anything else on this practice other than this website). Also the Christina Aguilera look is still huge, as 30-40% of all girls I encountered in this store seemed to infer.
After this store, we went to one of the more well-established stores, Tokyu Hands. S wanted to take me there, although I wasn't exactly sure why because it was listed in my guidebook as some sort of Japanese Home Depot of sorts and I'm not exactly a DIY kind of person myself. But she advised that the book was speaking nonsense, and indeed it was because "Hands" is full of just about all material needs one could imagine, from kitchen appliances to Okinawan toys to musical instruments. I guess its kind of like a catch-all Wal-Mart of sorts, only a bit more upscale and probably not nearly as exploitive. I had been in search for Cubees ever since I encountered them at that Tokyo toy store, and I found 3 of the 6 there so I picked them up. Come on over to our place and I'll have them sing a song for you. [note: I'll tell you all about the Cubees in my future entry on toys]
Driving I still don't know how people can drive in Japan. 2-lane streets are all about 8 feet across, with mountains, hair-pin curves, etc and don't even try to comprehend the practice of giving another car coming toward you the right-of-way on an even narrower street - something like you throw the car in reverse, back up to enough of a point where you can veer out of the line of traffic, and high-beam the other car in a sentiment of "you can go now" to which the other car beeps as it drives by, which probably is the auto way of saying "I'm sorry I have diverted you temporarily from your obviously more important destination." I may have gotten some of it wrong, but really they do something kinda like that. But I've noticed that before on previous trips too.
What I found interesting this time struck me when brother-in-law Y took us for a drive around Yokohama's futuristic Minato Mirai 21 area in his new car. [Editor's note: damn, I should've made Cars one of my encyclopedia entries, but I'm too anal to screw with my established alphabetical order. The big difference between buying new cars in America vs. Japan? In Japan, the cars are always built-to-order, so there's no such thing as saying "today's the day I'll buy a new car" and expecting to come home with a new one. They generally take a couple of weeks to fully assemble, with any customizations you want added in] Anyway, he's now driving a Mercedes Benz E-430 Avant Garde, with one of the customizations being that the steering is on the left-hand side of the car. This might not sound all that strange to some of you, but keep in mind Japan is one of those countries where people drive on the left side of the road, and as such the driver usually sits on the right side of the car. Japan accommodates both types of steering, which has far more implications than I immediately thought. For example, when we exited the parking deck of the department store we had eaten at, he swiped his parking pass through a machine sitting just outside of the left window, but of course there was one on the right window too! I don't know if this extends to all things (do fast food drive-in windows even exist in Japan? I don't think I've ever seen one myself) but it kinda blew my mind when I started to think about it. Y himself likes steering on the left side because if he street parks somewhere, its a lot easier to get out of the car as opposed as the usual strategy of "wait, a car's coming...wait, there's another car coming"...
Escalators [this topic dedicated to ikahana, as I had forgotten about this until reading a rare rant from him recently] continuing the thread from driving and that whole left/right thing. Like I said, in Japan cars drive on the left side of the street. In similar fashion, people generally follow this routine. So when you're making your way to the subway, you go down the staircase on the left side, or if you're on the escalator you stay put to the left. Simple enough, but still a bit surreal when you're used to a lifetime of walking on the right. However, I've been to Japan twice before (and England too, for that matter) so it didn't take so long to adjust this time. Enter Kyoto. In Kyoto, the rules are the opposite and people walk on the right hand side, from what we learned. Except for the tourists who may still walk to the left. As for me, I had no idea what the hell was going on, but like a crowdsurfer I just basically let myself go limp and figured the swarm of people would direct me the way to go...
Family Relations please forgive me if all of these entries come across in one of those annoying tourist "I just love Japan and everything they do is so perfect!" styles because I know there is no ideal. There are advantages of living in the USA that would be unthought of in the Far East (being able to walk into a restaurant that has invisible air and not a nicotine-induced haze, for starters). But this Confucian-derived respect for family still amazes me. Of course, there are dysfunctional families there too, and I'm sure that with the Japanese love for television there has to be some kind of Nihongo equivalent to the Lifetime Channel that details all of the pains they go through. But to counter that, what about this:
Its a Sunday afternoon in Yokohama, and I just got home with S and her parents from a trip to a great soba restaurant. S & I decide to pay a visit to her neighbors across the street, this family with 2 teenage girls and a cute dog who I befriended on my first trip there in April 2002. We cross the street and knock on the door, to find the father who says they're currently out. Then all of a sudden a minivan comes pulling through the neighborhood and its the mom and the 2 daughters (now aged 18 and 15, I believe). S waves and at the sight of her (van windows down) both girls squeal in unison (kinda like the brakes on my old Grand Am, if you remember) and they rush out with the mother quickly behind and we all talk with the father bringing the dog and her 2 children (who weren't around the last time) out to partake in the conversation. Since I can do little except stand, smile, and snap the inevitable picture, I watch the interaction between the family. And its almost like they're not family at all, since they're conversing freely, joking, etc. Aren't 18 and 15 year old girls supposed to be all "whatever" and such towards all things in the world, particularly their parents? [Disclaimer: I may be effeminate in many ways, but I have never quite crossed that gender threshold so please forgive my gothy stereotype] They look and act genuinely happy, which is honestly quite shocking to me!
However, there was notable angst in the dog family though, as the two young ones fight for the attention of their mother. So maybe there is a dark side to some species' family life in this country after all...
Delta they've changed the types of planes that fly nonstop from Atlanta to Tokyo, as they're now big huge jets that are seated 3-3-3 and we've now got individual TV screens. This was a huge improvement over the Dec 2002 trip, as we had just one massive screen for one whole side of the plane, so everyone was forced to acknowledge XXX 3.5 times as it aired encore after encore. Now we have about 5 movie channels to choose from (including one tease that was called "Arcade" that was actually no such thing - bastards!) and they actually had 2 movies I was halfway curious to see (The Incredibles and Lemony Snicket's...). But they still need to work on it, because they ended up showing Lemony Snicket (and all of the other movies it was competing against) once, whereas we had 4 opportunities to see the Incredibles (or that movie starring Ice Cube, if a 14.5 hour flight isn't masochistic enough for you). On the bright side, we can also track our flight to see where we are currently flying, but that was a little distressing as well since there were storms in the Pacific so our pilot decided to fly us up to Seattle, then alongside the west coast of Canada, the south coast of Alaska, and the east coast of Russia before hitting Japan from the top. Making a long flight even longer, but I guess it was pretty turbulence-free at least...
Also, Delta food generally sucks, unless you're flying from Tokyo to America, in which they serve Delta's version of Japanese cuisine which really isn't too bad. Yakisoba, tendon, teriyaki scallops, etc. Not exactly Iron Chef standard, but you can't fault 'em for trying, now can you?
Department Stores I'd never really been to a department store (or depato) any of my previous times in Japan, other than my first time in the country when I met all of S' family at a fancy French restaurant. Yes, you can find fancy French restaurants actually in department stores themselves. Usually at least one floor of a big department store (which can be 12 stories or more, in some cases) will have a block of restaurants for those relentless shopping machines to take a momentary break at. This time around, I was taken to a tempura bar located inside Yokohama's branch of Takashimaya but I'll save that story for later.
As for actual shopping, I went to 2 places this time around, both located in Yokohama. The first place (which as an aside had a Haitian restaurant, something I'd never seen before) was predominantly a clothing store, with every floor blaring at least 90dB of music fit for whatever couture this particular location was hawking. I saw a pretty nice shirt with a Big Daddy Roth-type sketch of a big-eyed monster on a hot rod with "Yokohama 1959" written underneath, and then I saw it was $150 so I decided that maybe I didn't quite feel like shopping today. On the other hand, it was quite fascinating to just look around and listen. Hip-hop and American bling culture are really huge here, to the degree that a lot of youths use some kind of skin darkener on themselves to give the appearance they're African-Americans (S told me about this, but I hadn't encountered anything else on this practice other than this website). Also the Christina Aguilera look is still huge, as 30-40% of all girls I encountered in this store seemed to infer.
After this store, we went to one of the more well-established stores, Tokyu Hands. S wanted to take me there, although I wasn't exactly sure why because it was listed in my guidebook as some sort of Japanese Home Depot of sorts and I'm not exactly a DIY kind of person myself. But she advised that the book was speaking nonsense, and indeed it was because "Hands" is full of just about all material needs one could imagine, from kitchen appliances to Okinawan toys to musical instruments. I guess its kind of like a catch-all Wal-Mart of sorts, only a bit more upscale and probably not nearly as exploitive. I had been in search for Cubees ever since I encountered them at that Tokyo toy store, and I found 3 of the 6 there so I picked them up. Come on over to our place and I'll have them sing a song for you. [note: I'll tell you all about the Cubees in my future entry on toys]
Driving I still don't know how people can drive in Japan. 2-lane streets are all about 8 feet across, with mountains, hair-pin curves, etc and don't even try to comprehend the practice of giving another car coming toward you the right-of-way on an even narrower street - something like you throw the car in reverse, back up to enough of a point where you can veer out of the line of traffic, and high-beam the other car in a sentiment of "you can go now" to which the other car beeps as it drives by, which probably is the auto way of saying "I'm sorry I have diverted you temporarily from your obviously more important destination." I may have gotten some of it wrong, but really they do something kinda like that. But I've noticed that before on previous trips too.
What I found interesting this time struck me when brother-in-law Y took us for a drive around Yokohama's futuristic Minato Mirai 21 area in his new car. [Editor's note: damn, I should've made Cars one of my encyclopedia entries, but I'm too anal to screw with my established alphabetical order. The big difference between buying new cars in America vs. Japan? In Japan, the cars are always built-to-order, so there's no such thing as saying "today's the day I'll buy a new car" and expecting to come home with a new one. They generally take a couple of weeks to fully assemble, with any customizations you want added in] Anyway, he's now driving a Mercedes Benz E-430 Avant Garde, with one of the customizations being that the steering is on the left-hand side of the car. This might not sound all that strange to some of you, but keep in mind Japan is one of those countries where people drive on the left side of the road, and as such the driver usually sits on the right side of the car. Japan accommodates both types of steering, which has far more implications than I immediately thought. For example, when we exited the parking deck of the department store we had eaten at, he swiped his parking pass through a machine sitting just outside of the left window, but of course there was one on the right window too! I don't know if this extends to all things (do fast food drive-in windows even exist in Japan? I don't think I've ever seen one myself) but it kinda blew my mind when I started to think about it. Y himself likes steering on the left side because if he street parks somewhere, its a lot easier to get out of the car as opposed as the usual strategy of "wait, a car's coming...wait, there's another car coming"...
Escalators [this topic dedicated to ikahana, as I had forgotten about this until reading a rare rant from him recently] continuing the thread from driving and that whole left/right thing. Like I said, in Japan cars drive on the left side of the street. In similar fashion, people generally follow this routine. So when you're making your way to the subway, you go down the staircase on the left side, or if you're on the escalator you stay put to the left. Simple enough, but still a bit surreal when you're used to a lifetime of walking on the right. However, I've been to Japan twice before (and England too, for that matter) so it didn't take so long to adjust this time. Enter Kyoto. In Kyoto, the rules are the opposite and people walk on the right hand side, from what we learned. Except for the tourists who may still walk to the left. As for me, I had no idea what the hell was going on, but like a crowdsurfer I just basically let myself go limp and figured the swarm of people would direct me the way to go...
Family Relations please forgive me if all of these entries come across in one of those annoying tourist "I just love Japan and everything they do is so perfect!" styles because I know there is no ideal. There are advantages of living in the USA that would be unthought of in the Far East (being able to walk into a restaurant that has invisible air and not a nicotine-induced haze, for starters). But this Confucian-derived respect for family still amazes me. Of course, there are dysfunctional families there too, and I'm sure that with the Japanese love for television there has to be some kind of Nihongo equivalent to the Lifetime Channel that details all of the pains they go through. But to counter that, what about this:
Its a Sunday afternoon in Yokohama, and I just got home with S and her parents from a trip to a great soba restaurant. S & I decide to pay a visit to her neighbors across the street, this family with 2 teenage girls and a cute dog who I befriended on my first trip there in April 2002. We cross the street and knock on the door, to find the father who says they're currently out. Then all of a sudden a minivan comes pulling through the neighborhood and its the mom and the 2 daughters (now aged 18 and 15, I believe). S waves and at the sight of her (van windows down) both girls squeal in unison (kinda like the brakes on my old Grand Am, if you remember) and they rush out with the mother quickly behind and we all talk with the father bringing the dog and her 2 children (who weren't around the last time) out to partake in the conversation. Since I can do little except stand, smile, and snap the inevitable picture, I watch the interaction between the family. And its almost like they're not family at all, since they're conversing freely, joking, etc. Aren't 18 and 15 year old girls supposed to be all "whatever" and such towards all things in the world, particularly their parents? [Disclaimer: I may be effeminate in many ways, but I have never quite crossed that gender threshold so please forgive my gothy stereotype] They look and act genuinely happy, which is honestly quite shocking to me!
However, there was notable angst in the dog family though, as the two young ones fight for the attention of their mother. So maybe there is a dark side to some species' family life in this country after all...