The collected works of The Keeper - Page 2

It's all about trust, perceived or otherwise. Folks are basically decent, but there are a few bad apples out there to remind you how cold and cruel life can be.

I used to trust people, but I've been burned so many times now that it's just a matter of course to be fully prepaid before shipping. I don't even think about requesting prepayment. To me it's part of the transaction process now, just as one of the steps is to pack the item and print a packing slip.

Chris

Or were we talking about a certain naval base that was involved with the country that this forum is named for...

While you're in the immediate vicinity of the 山の手, could you please do me a favor and confirm which of these tunes you hear while on that line?

http://www.kalisiak.com/japan/movies/JR_01.mp3
http://www.kalisiak.com/japan/movies/JR_02.mp3
http://www.kalisiak.com/japan/movies/JR_03.mp3
http://www.kalisiak.com/japan/movies/JR_04.mp3
http://www.kalisiak.com/japan/movies/JR_05.mp3
http://www.kalisiak.com/japan/movies/JR_06.mp3

My wife and I can't really recall the details at this point...

Thanks!
Chris

Shyouko, thanks for the confirmation. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could figure out which of those tunes is what station. The stations on the yamanote that have meaning for my wife and I are ueno, shinagawa, meguro, shibuya, harajuku, and ikebukuro... If any of those tunes match up with any of those stations, then that's cool. Right now, JR_02 is my ringtone, and JR_01 is my wife's, because we seem to recall those tunes sounding familiar.

Maxsleg, heh, actually, I have two pachinko balls sitting here on my keyboard. Wow, the noise in those parlors! Even the noise of the one vintage 70's pachinko machine I have at home can be a bit much, let alone over a hundred of them with loud music playing in the background...

Chris

What, only an inch? Amateurs...

The now-common sushi-ya in the US is all well and good, but there's so much more to Japanese cuisine than sushi...

Has anyone stumbled across a ramen-ya in the US? Or maybe a shop serving donburi?

Chris

Nom nom nom...

I've been to the left coast twice (Santa Clara and Seattle), but neither provided much opportunity to track down anything of interest.

Fortunately, I did just find out about a ramen chain that actually has two locations in Toronto (about a 90 minute drive for me) and a location in Vancouver:
http://www.ajisen.ca

It even calls out corn on the menu! It must be a Japanese place then!

Chris

Heh, yeah, hamei, fine dining is exactly what I'm _not_ looking for when looking for ramen. Interesting note about the vinegared cucumber. I'll keep an eye open for them if/when I make it up to one of the ajisen in Toronto. I could certainly see it as being a Japanese thing, especially if it's a rice vinegar.

If I do ever end up on the left coast with some time to kill, it'll be a tough choice, between stopping by the SanFran area or Granite Falls, WA...:
http://www.tsubakishrine.org/home.html
The head priest there probably knows me by name at this point...

Mostly totally off-topic, that song came on in a ramen shop in Harajuku when my wife and I were there... Thought it was rather ironic...

Back on topic, a good friend of mine that lived in Japan for 20 years can't really relate very well with American females, only Japanese ones. So there must be something there.

Even based on the number of different shinkansen, and the number of different locations, it certainly does appear that they covered quite a bit of Japan. A bunch of them might have been touristy, but probably more for Japanese tourists than non-Japanese tourists. There was Tokyo, Kyoto, everything in between, and everything on either side. Some rural, some sea-side, and some mountains.

You'd need probably $10k to cover what they did, and probably at least a month. And either the ability to speak Japanese or a guide. You can't do 1/10th of what they did if you don't know at least some Japanese. Tokyo has a lot of english signage, but once you leave Tokyo, you better be able to read some kanji and/or speak with the locals to figure out how to get around.

Interesting video, but ~5FPS is too quick for a bunch of stills.

Chris

You could do it for a lot less if you go over there to teach English for a year, and make a bunch of weekend trips to various points across the country, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. And you'd still need to know some Japanese to get around.

Not sure if the fallout from "Nova" going, well, nova, has settled yet, though. I'm sure it's not _too_ hard to get an English teaching job in Japan at this point, but it might not be quite as easy as it used to be, with Japan also being in a recession.

The trick is to do this sort of thing before you land a permanent job, and before you buy/rent somewhere to live.

LOL, I had the volume turned down, so I didn't notice.


Yep, that multi-way intersection next to hachiko and the train station, with the huge white bands all over the road, are unmistakable.



And the shinkansen... Trains and subways are simply a way to get around Japan, but the shinkansen is an experience in and of itself... And we were on one of the "slower" shinkansen that only had to go from Tokyo to a "suburb" about 37 minutes away (_average_ speed of 110 miles per hour) by shinkansen or 100 minutes by standard train.

When we go back, we're planning on flying in to Narita and taking a shinkansen to Kyoto, primarily so we can experience one of the "faster" shinkansen. (That would allow us a few days in Tokyo, and the cost actually works out to about the same anyway.)

LOL, after I read the subject line of this thread, I was jokingly expecting to see a Billy Mays commercial.

Funny how that's basically what they used to clean up the computers...

Chris

A brief foray back to the pachinko discussion...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYkw-5htPw0

And we now return you to your regular programming...

Careful there, you're treading on thin ice. This is hamei you're talking to.

Personally, I find most Japanese beers to be about the same. Assuming you're talking about real beer, and not the cheap stuff made primarily from rice. I prefer darker ales over most anything else. I'll take a porter over a stout, a stout over a nut brown ale, a nut brown ale over a red, a red over, well, there's not a whole lot left that I will discriminate between. The only beer I _don't_ like are german darks. Sorry, dark pilsners really just don't do it for me. They do it for other people, but just not me.

When I order Japanese beer, I order Kirin Ichiban, but that's because my friend, Kurt (son of The Destroyer, who is famous in Japan), indicated is his favorite. It didn't matter all that much to me which one to call "mine", so I figured I'd go with the Kirin to make him happy.

I rather like this stuff, however, because they make some interesting non-standard brews:
http://www.kodawari.cc/engpage/kodawari ... achino.htm
Their stout was pretty good, and I thought I remember having one of their beers that had ginger in it, but maybe I'm remembering funny.

Chris

Here's the one I was trying to think of. Picked up a bottle of it yesterday.

LOL, I was almost hoping you wouldn't ask, because I can't really describe it very well.

It's apparent that the ginger was involved in the brewing process, instead of being added later, because it doesn't taste like ginger. It's kinda like a red beer, but a little more sour, like maybe as though a little lemon juice was added. It's a bit more complex than that, though, because of the notes that the ginger adds. It's reminiscent of ginger, but it doesn't have the pungency of raw or pickled ginger.

I asked my wife what adjectives she'd use to describe it, and she just said "umm".

So, it's just something you'd have to experience, I guess. It's not a light beer by any stretch, and it's not something I'd want to have more than once a month or so, but it's certainly very enjoyable.

Chris

"They tried and failed?"
"They tried and died."

Not that this really helps the decision-making process, I just figured I'd take a shot of a can of Japanese beer... The can of squirt is there for size reference...

Interesting, you don't have Squirt down there in VA, eh? I seriously doubt it's specific to the Buffalo area, but maybe it's a northeast thing? I know it's carried by one of the big two (can't remember which), but being a grapefruit-based drink, it's not a super popular beverage.

Chris

LOL!

With the number of other geeks here, I knew it wouldn't be hard for someone to pick up on the reference. I have nothing further to add to that discussion.

The tabi boots, tights, and jeans shorts, all make for an interesting combination...

かわいいですね！

I took some time off from the day-to-day "gotta fix this" housework on Sunday to make a frame (using some 80-year-old cedar siding that was salvaged from the back of the house when the addition was built last year) for the plaque we ordered (on sale, even!) while in Mishima (about a half-hour southwest of Tokyo by shinkansen)...

Chris

Err, yeah, I have... Why...?

Oh, yeah, it's perfectly square. The cedar ended up being almost exactly 2" (sorry for the english units) wide, and the plaque was 7-7/8" wide. The plaque itself is also perfectly square. I cut a 1/4" groove to retain the plaque, and left a 1" overhang.

(It's funny because the back of it has stamped in it, "Made in Italy", in English, even though it was actually fabricated in Japan.)

Any kilter you're seeing is the angle I was shooting at. I'm pretty sure I wasn't straight on.

Chris

Dinner included zarusoba with tsuyu, tamago, agedofu with panko and with kurogoma, age kabocha (not tempura, just deep fried, with honey and salt), two tsukemono (one with enoki and the other with serori (celery)), "unpen jiru" (temple garden chowder), and, even though meshi isn't supposed to be on the same time as sake, meshi.

Beverages included nigori sake, junmai ginjo sake, grapefruit sours with mugi shochu, Iichiko shochu "neat", ume shu, a locally produced plum wine, and Kirin Ichiban.

Chris

(It's been a busy weekend, so I haven't been able to stop by Nekochan in a couple days...)

Thanks for the comment! It was actually my wife's cooking. (She's as "American" as I am, also with a strong interest in the Japanese culture.)

Chris

That site has an interesting mixture of languages, not just the asian ones like at engrish.com.

The funny thing about engrish in Japan is that it's everywhere. Pretty much all you have to do is just look around, and you'll see some. Like a day spa that my wife, sister, and I walked past, that I just happened to glance at. It said "refleshing", because they think that any word with an "r" sound in the middle should be transliterated as an "l"...

Chris

Sounds like a plan! At least you have the pronounciation part down, with the Japanese sounds being just about the same as Spanish. There's a crapload of memorization, though, with the kanji...

Good luck!

Chris

Yeah, there was a torrential downpour the second day we were in Hakone... That and the crazy-ass bus ride back down the mountain, after I had eaten a bit too much kamaboko and oden made that the worst part of the whole visit in Japan.

But this shot made up for it.

Chris

We did partake in the consumption of some of the kurotamago at Owakudani, yes. Not 7-year, though, they're basically hard-boiled eggs that just have been cooked in the sulphur spring.

(The picture's not the best; it's just a thumbnail-type pic. We're heading off to a cruise in the Bahamas in an hour, so I don't have time to clean it up...)

Oh, ok! I had no idea there was supposed to be some sort of lifespan extension after eating some of those.

Wonder if there's a loss of lifespan if you buy some and forget that you bought some? That's exactly what my sister did -- we bought a bunch, ate half of them while we were there, then she forgot that she put the rest in the fridge at the ryokan.