June 29th (Day 3)

Mieko's house

Mieko's house has a very strong unidentified smell - not bad, just strong. My guess it's some potpourri or something but I could never identify the source and you quickly get used to it and stop noticing it. It is a two story structure of average size filled to the brim with knick-knacks and china. She owns enough cups to outfit an army of choreographers, hair stylists, and interior decorators.

Sink area with television, tiny dishwasher, and control for the bathtub The tiny unused oven With an area for a single piece of fish The very steep steps up the second level

Electric water heater with 'panorama window' Super multi-compartment fridge

The bathroom area is separate from the toilet and consists of two rooms. The first room has an oversized sink (designed so you can wash your hair in it easily but lacking counter space). The second room is a walk-in bath. There is a seemingly normal bathtub at one end but the entire room can be used as a shower. The shower is just above a small seat and runs a faucet for filling buckets. The idea is you sit on the seat next to the running faucet, fill buckets with water and then dump them over your body. You could also use a flexible shower-head if you liked - hooking it to the wall higher up. Every place I bathed in Japan had these flexible shower heads. The water heater is electric and is controlled by remote controls in the bathroom and in the kitchen. It's possible to set the temperature and fill the tub (assuming you left the plug in) from the kitchen. Shamara said when she took a bath and dialed in a specific temperature it cycled the water through the heater to retain that temperature.

The walk-in shower. Sit on this platform and dump water over yourself using the buckets and scoops.

The toilet exists in a separate room and is extremely high tech by American standards. Akira printed out a picture of the control panel and translated all the buttons for the controls. The toilet had motion and pressure controls and would open it's lid when you approached, cycle water when you sat down, flush when you got up, and close the lid after you left. There were also controls for spraying water on your behind in a variety of ways and with varying intensities. I never tried the bidet functions and perhaps my experience of Japanese culture is lacking because of it.

The Bedroom

I slept in A's old room on the second floor. The bed was very firm and had a light blue terrycloth coversheet. It was like sleeping on a towel. The room also had it's own air conditioner (as did most rooms in the house). I think the air-conditioner was too high-tech for it's own good. When first turned on it would slowly move the air vanes into position with the sound of whining electric motors then the blower would turn on full blast. As the room cooled down it would reduce the speed of the blower fan. This is different from other air conditioners I've seen which typically run the fan at a set speed and modify the temperature of the exiting air. As it ran, it cycled from silent, to quiet, to blaring - typically going through one of these cycles every two minutes all night. It sounded like there was a storm raging outside all the time and it would have kept me up at night if I wasn't so always exhausted.

The Japanese Room

Shamara and A slept in the Japanese room on a futon. This room was decorated in a more traditional manner with tatami mats on the floor, alcoves for religious(?) idols, and a low boudoir you could use by sitting on a pillow on the floor. The door to the room was a sliding panel and the windows were hidden by sliding doors with paper inserts.

There were specific rules for the footwear you could wear in the house. The shoes you wore outside had to be kept in the entryway and slippers were provided inside. There were different slippers for when you went to the bathroom and you weren't supposed to wear anything on your feet at all when you went into the Japanese room. Thankfully it was ok to just go barefoot everywhere and it wasn't much of a change for me. The only difficulty was when I forgot these rules or when we all wanted to enter the house all at once (with all our luggage). It took elaborate gymnastics to step out of your shoes and stand on top of them (you couldn't pollute your bare feet on the entry-room tile floor!) then balance until you saw an opening to leap past everyone onto the wooden floor of the house proper.

Before we could bring our airline luggage out of the entranceway landing A had to clean the wheels with a wet rag.

Mieko and H had been burglarized in the past. The burglars came in a ground floor window and stole cash. I don't know how much was lost but considering the amount of cash I saw typical Japanese people carry (and M in particular) it could have been a gigantic sum. As a result of the burglary, M was especially paranoid and every night we locked down all the windows with heavy metal shutters, put multiple locks on the sliding doors, and closed the curtains. Each morning the process was reversed and the loud air conditioners (one to each room) were switched on.

Going on a walk

The first morning I got over my jet lag pretty quickly and woke up at 7am before the others. When the others eventually got up M passed out gifts of handkerchiefs and fans. She also informed A that she wanted him to help her translate some scientific papers by the next evening. They were busy with this so I wandered outside to explore and S tagged along. We wandered through some local parks and into a small bamboo forest. It was my first time in a bamboo grove and it was interesting. It's hard to imagine an entire forest of these trees - it would be very tedius to travel through. We passed many schoolchildren wearing identical uniforms and white helmets riding bicycles home. All schoolchildren wore similar uniforms and even small kindergartners wore pastel uniforms with straw or cloth hats.

The fruits...umm..tubers of a home garden

I wanted to get pictures of some of the school costumes but it was difficult because of a strong local fear of 'perverts' Apparently several school children had been abducted and killed semi-recently in japan and most adults were extremely suspicious of our presence whenever we strayed too close to school areas. We saw many signs warning people to watch out for perverts and there were extensive patrols of old men and women on bicycles around school areas watching for suspicious people.

We returned completely drenched in sweat and tried to cool off inside (where it was 30 degrees and 70% humidity). Mieko handed me her garage door opener and a small set of screwdrivers and asked me to fix it. The battery wasn't making good contact and I cleaned the metal and re-bent the contacts to get it working. She was very, very thankful.

Shamara told me that when she got up that morning M told her in broken english to 'Please, please, brush your teeth and wash face!'.

I chatted with A about some Japanese words:

uchiwa = 'fan'
ju = 10
hyaku = 100
sen = 1000
man or (ichi man) = 10000
and 'umi' with your voice going down at the end means 'ocean'
but 'umi' with your voice going up mean 'pus'

Shamara was very stubborn and avoided any new foods or other aspects of Japanese culture in general. She refused to drink tea, eat rice, eat vegetables, or eat fish (or any kind of seafood). This rules out 95% of the Japanese diet. She also refused to use chopsticks. The worst part however, was M assumed I was the same way and persisted in giving me silverware for meals and going out of her way to buy American food for me to eat.

I also learned S turned down the complicated Japanese wedding M wanted for a simple ceremony. The typical Japanese wedding requires the bride change clothes 4 times and I (or ideally my father) would have been obligated to speak some words and 'give her away'. This stubborn unwillingness to try new things distressed M and considering how much money she spent to accomodate us during our visit and the amount of money she spent to stage the wedding I thought it was pretty rude.

Breakfast in the morning was americanized somewhat to accommodate S. There were deep fried potato patties (like soft hash browns), deep fried chunks of battered cheese, french fries wrapped in bacon, salad (which S avoided), drinking yogurt (which she didn't want to try), tea, and a variety of precut crustless sandwiches. The sandwiches were purchased as a package and contained egg salad, tomato, and ham. The ham in the sandwiches was visible from the side but only penetrated about 1 cm into the construction. Our guess was this was a way of saving money because ham was expensive?

A sea captain told me: "Beware of shallow ham!"

Shopping for a dress at the Mitsukoshi department store

Mieko didn't like the dress S chose to wear for the wedding (because a blue flower patterned dress is only suitable for bridesmaids) so we decided to go shopping that day and pick out something more suitable. We walked to the small local train station and caught a confusing series of 3-4 trains to get to the 'largest department store in japan'. At each exchange we would jump out and run up stairs or escalators occasionally purchasing or passing our tickets through booths before jumping on the next train. It soon became evident that it would have been extremely difficult trying to organize our train runs with a larger group. If I had been separated from the group I would have been hopelessly lost and would have never been seen again. The number of people buzzing around in the larger stations was pretty crazy. I wanted to get a video but it was already hard enough avoiding attention as the only large foreigner in a sea of Asians.

Walking to the station

For some reason most public payphones looked like this

The department store was pretty big and was built around a large ornate painted statue. Behind the statue was a pipe organ and an organist playing classical music. Everything seemed very expensive. Here is a picture of a $10,000 kimono and a $1050 tie (celebrating the anniversary of Mozart's birthday). As we were gawking over the price of the ugly tie the saleswoman approached and asked if we wanted her to take it out of the case to see it closer. We refused.

For when you need to organize your toothpicks

These cats were moving their left paws forward and back like they were washing their head

There were a series of small vendors on the floor at the base of the statue

All the store workers wore identical uniforms - either aprons with handkerchiefs tied around their heads or with severe black dresses. There were too many of them. Another aspect of Japanese culture is that there seems to be an overpopulation of service workers. Most of the time we would see these store workers just standing around waiting to help someone. We once drove past a gas station where I saw at least 5 station attendants, (dressed in identical jumpsuits) directing a single car up to the station pump. Akira explained that the tendency isn't to provide more inexpensive goods but rather to provide better service. The cheapest haircut you could find in Japan is $40. But that haircut will include a scalp massage, shampoo, shave, and earwax cleaning - probably by someone dressed like a maid. Later while discussing the number of service workers A told a story about his mother accidentally leaving her purse on a train with $5000 in cash in it. She called the station and at the next stop they had a station worker posted at every door preventing people from leaving. The purse was recovered successfully.

Mieko walked directly to a small section of the store that sold formal dresses (where 6-7 women stood around waiting to help) and began browsing the dresses. Shamara poo-pooed most of the selections as too 'foofy' and was being annoyingly stubborn. After trying on several dresses, shawls, necklaces, and earrings Shamara very reluctantly decided that one of them was ok. I wanted to take pictures of the dress try-out process but she bitched at me every time I took out the camera. Here is the one picture I managed to take. Mieko wanted to buy a dress for S but was distressed by her reaction while trying them on. There was a long conference between M, A, and S discussing whether they should get the one that was semi-agreeable or try to go somewhere else. Shamara said she would wear it for the wedding but never again.

Eventually it was decided that M would buy the dress and keep it after S used it for the wedding. They sat us down at a table and served us tea while going through the process of packing it up and making the transaction. The final price for the dress and accoutrements was $700. This news caused S to make a funny bug-eyed face. Mieko paid with a bunch of gift certificates she had.

Electric Town

Afterwards we had a little time so we decided to do a quick run through the electronics district. It was impressive. The buildings were covered in advertisements, neon, and television screens and they loomed over the crowded streets. There were young women dressed as maids handing out promotional material; fans, pamphlets and small packages of facial tissue. We walked around the corner to the largest electronics store I've ever seen. It was 9 floors high and carried every possible electronic device you could imagine (with the exception of DS lites - they were sold out).

I priced a water-resistant digital camera I had seen online but found it was 20% more expensive than the price I had seen elsewhere. Most items at the store were more expensive than normal. Even so, the selection was so expansive I could have easily spent all day wandering around. I suspect my legs would have given out before my attention span and I would have had to use one of those electric scooters. Mieko soon grew tired and left us to go sit down.

On the floor with computer monitors they had a 32" flatscreen television connected to a digital microscope. The advertisement showed a guy holding the device to his scalp. I played with it awhile holding it against my shirt and wristwatch and then to the side of my face. There was a focus knob on the side and it took a little while to dial it in. When I finally managed to get it focused on the individual stubs of hair on my freshly shaved sideburns it was horrible. I practically threw the microscope away and ran off. I never want to see my face at that resolution ever again. It seriously looked like the scene from the human fly.

After consulting S's strict diet we had indian curry on the 9th floor and then went home. Mieko refused to let me pay for lunch. After all day travelling, we had spent about $12 on our local train cards. I don't know how much was spent on the other throwaway JR line tickets (I think it was $6.20 each).

The electronics store had a fenced off age 18+ section with sexual manga comic books. We didn't go in though I was curious.

I bought a small Gamera doll on the floor with collectible toys and merchandise

On one of the floors they had a bunch of miniatures of half-dressed anime characters and baby versions of aliens and predator. Some were pretty funny/interesting and I wanted to take a picture but I happened to pull out my camera just as a store guard was walking by. He spoke something then bowed while crossing the index fingers of both hands in front of him. It was a guesture that I couldn't do that.

We bought a 2GB ipod nano as a gift for M. It was expensive and I used up all my birthday japanese spending cash on it.

While going through the department store, we rode an elevator manned by a woman in an official looking suit. To indicate people should board the elevator she would stand just outside with a white gloved hand held up palm backwards. She absolutely crammed the elevator with people and then called out each floor as they approached. People would call out from various parts of the elevator which floor they were interested in and then muscle past when they reached the floor.

Shamara claimed that there some Japanese people staring and pointing at us as we walked around the store but I didn't notice.

Back home A continued working on translating for his mother on a IBM laptop running a Japanese version of WinXP. It also had a CD burner which meant we could take an effectively unlimited number of pictures. During our visit to the electronics store we bought a spindle of 50 cds (which was a good idea - we had filled 9CD's with pictures and movies by the end of the trip).

Watching TV at the house later we saw an ad for germanium enhanced underwear. Apparently a popular pseudo-science fad in Japan is to infuse products with the element germanium which is supposed to promote health. Among several other products we saw exercise mats meant to be spread over beds of germanium containing rocks.

More Japanese terms:

cho-cho = butterfly
gah! = moth
kinoko = mushroom
uma = horse
niwatori = chicken (house-bird)
chotto = a little

English Advertising

The Japanese consider english an elegant language and it's considered cool to put english phrases into songs and to use it to describe merchandise and shops. English is, however, a very hard language and isn't spoken regularily. We took hundreds of pictures of malformed english descriptions, instructions, and products. - We saw a pet shop called 'Vampire' - We saw many stores with names starting with the word 'hard', for some reason - 'hard-off', 'hard-book', 'hard-lock', and etc. Here are some of the advertisements we saw on the trip: