Japan: Ganbate!: Week five: This country is one big, never-ending mountain...

Hashiburi minnasan!

Here we are again, five weeks in. The weather here is still hot as the dickens (today had 85 high, humid, low of 65), but it can't be any worse than Florida is right now (if it is, don't tell me, I don't want to know), and everything is going good. I think I'm starting to get all vitamin-deficient, so I just invested in some multi-vites (difficult to find actually, and no gummy-vites, wahh), and am planning on buying a pack of spinach and some other vitamin-packed-but-not-outrageously-expensive things. Fingers crossed! My week went pretty well, and I've got lots of fun pictures. Hajimaru!

Lake Biwa

On Saturday my friend and I headed out to Lake Biwa in the Shiga prefecture. Biwa-ko is the largest body of freshwater in Japan, and the tip of it is just an hour away by train from Hirakata. It reminded me a lot of Lake Michigan, seemingly endless, more ocean-like than lake, and equally pretty (but not nearly as numbingly cold). My friends have visited other parts of the lake which are further away, and that seems really pretty too--more "beachy", with sand and places to lay out on the shoreline. The area we went to was still cityish, and it was more of a park surrounding the lake, but it was still really pretty.

Beer Garden, Kyoto Tower

Here in Japan they have seasonal beer gardens on the rooftops of various buildings around the country, and on Saturday night we went to one in the heart of Kyoto, on the Kyoto Tower. It was $30 for unlimited food and drinks, and it was pretty good--lots of chicken in different ways, salads, fried foods, desserts, and really good umeshu, or plum wine. Umeshu is truly delicious, and this is coming from someone who doesn't like wine or alcohol that much. So good! Good food, awesome atmosphere overlooking the city, and a good night. Definitely worth doing at least once.

Rockin' On: Japan Circuit Vol. 52!

On Sunday we went to Namba in Osaka, and went shopping before our concert later that night. Namba has lots of shopping districts, from kitchen and home supplies to cheap electronics (called denden town). I've been trying to stockpile on my sweaters slowly but surely, preparing for the cold that I know is going to come, and I love the new Snoopy sweater I bought from UniGlow (a branch of H&M). We shopped around the electronics district for awhile (scouting around past the millions of semi-sketchy maid cafe's we passed) and hit up a hardcore nerdy arcade before heading off to our concert at Namba Hatch.
There were six performers, predominately female rock bands, and it got pretty crazy. The hall was about as big as Hard Rock Live, and filled to the brim with people young and old. There was both moshing and crowd surfing (though not as much as at an American concert). What was odd? First of all, we didn't get our bags checked, something I've never had happen to me at any place, and they made us buy a $5.00 drink voucher the moment we walked in the door, no opt-out. There were barriers all over the standing-room floor, big metal poles that made section-like-walls, which I found to be unbelievably dangerous in a completely unlit floor area. Japanese people didn't sing out loud to the songs, even when they knew them, unless prompted by the artist. They all kind of just followed what the other fans were doing--when people raised on finger up and waved it to the music, all of them did (still not singing--SO WEIRD!). They didn't take out their phones or cameras to take pictures or recordings of the artist. No one talked between sets, or between songs (until some people got drunk and started yelling some things during one bands performance). The other band members would sometimes talk, but not very often, nor would they play rifts of music while the singer got ready for the next song, or anything, so you'd stand there between songs with enough silence to hear a pin drop. So odd.

I do a lot of walking. My month-old flip flop :(

Random thoughts: Japanese bathrooms are seriously slacking on the paper towels OR hand dryers. They kind of just want you to shake it off, or use your sweat rag (the rags they sell everywhere, called exactly that--sweat rags), or your handkerchief (who has one of those these days besides my dad?).

Manicures, pedicures, and haircuts are all really expensive in Japan--manicure can cost up to $60, pedicure can cost another $50 or more on top of that, and my friend gets her haircut "cheaply" for $35 (her hair is just touching her shoulder blades). Can I get some minorities up in this country please?

Found online--a picture of our local hospital. Kinda sketchy.

The doctor/medical system here is a socialized national healthcare program, and on that note, here are some major issues I've seen/heard about thus far: my friend from my university has been here since the beginning of August, and has been sick since then. She has what seems like thrush (the fungal infection of the mouth), with some pretty obvious symptoms pointing at this (her tongue is completely white!), and yet she's been to seven different doctors to no avail. No antibiotics, no medicine, no advice. She went to a regular doctor who pointed her to a throat doctor who pointed her to a dentist who pointed her to a different ENT who pointed her back to the dentist and so on and so forth. All the doctors looked at her and said she was fine with hardly another word--and this isn't because of a communication breakdown, because she had a Japanese person with her to translate. They simply won't do anything. She finally went to an American doctor this past weekend and was able to get some simple medicines, but nothing prescription still, so hopefully it works and that'll be that, but who knows.

Also, my other friend was cleaning early one morning and went to move a Seminar House blender aside, and without realizing it was still plugged in, promptly sliced his hand into sashimi. After running around, calmly speaking Japanese (though bleeding out profusely) and trying to get help, he was sent on the bus (yes, the bus, by himself) to our university, who then had to look up which hospital was open. Wait, did you get that? I'll say it again. Which hospital was open. Because...hospitals close here? Apparently, most hospitals in towns and smaller cities are only open Monday-Friday from 9-7, and are often not open on the weekend at all (but if they are, it's for very limited hours, like the bank). So he had to go to the hospital (luckily, on a Tuesday or whatever weekday it was, our local hospital was open) with an interpreter from our school, cash in hand (ha, ha) and wait for the hospital to open at 9. After he went in he had an all right time with everything, got eight stitches, tada, all done (though oddly enough, they weren't the dissolving stitches), 80 something yen later or something close to that (after his insurance kicked in). Yeah, and keep in mind you need cash to pay your hospital bills here, so be ready. I'll keep my "reasons why I don't want the government controlling my healthcare" points for another day...

Tampons aren't even an option here. Seriously. You can find some, after searching at several different shops, but there's one brand, and it looks kind of awful. Just a warning.

My bank booklet. Amount in my account is stamped inside every time I check/deposit money.

The banking system is a little weird--if you lose your pin number, you have to cut the card up and get a new one sent to you...something that after the original creation of the account took 4 weeks to accomplish. They make you come up with your own signature, and it isn't your name, it's just supposed to be something close to your name, but something that is uniquely yours, but not too hard to remember, but it has to be kept relatively short. My name is kind of long, especially by Japanese standards, at 26 letters (if they have a long first name, they usually seem to have a short last name, or vice versa), but this shortening does make it kind of confusing to remember that my signature isn't my signature..just a made up one. You have to keep this chunky bankbook (seen pictured) with you if you ever want to do deposits, even though you're also given a regular "cash card", essentially just a debit card. Of course, cards are taken practically nowhere, so you have to go to the ATM (the one with hours) to get your money out--and, if you visit an ATM, even your banks, after the inside bank is closed (even though the ATM is still open), you are charged a convenience fee. At YOUR bank. Today, I deposited what I had of my US dollars and my travelers checks into my new bank account at Sumitomo Mitsui Bank, and out of the $526 dollars I put in, they only took $20 for a currency conversion fee, which I guess might not be that bad. I don't know really. Oh well.

Japanese mosquitoes and their lack of screens. They've never heard of spraying for mosquitoes, just spraying yourself or using scented candles. And there are mosquitoes here like there are in Florida--if not worse (it might be worse here, truly). You can be out in the middle of the blazing hot afternoon and get bitten by several different mosquitoes. And, to make this worse, they don't have screens on the majority of their windows, so when the weather is nice, you can't have the windows open without inviting every bug in the world in, too. I just don't understand.

Finnish people all kind of look the same, is that racist? Seriously.

Women-only section

They have their fair share of homeless/drunk people here, too. And plenty of perverts. At the concert I attended, there was a (Japanese) guy who smashed up against my backside in the crowd (he was my height, too, so imagine how unpleasant that direct my-butt-to-his-groin contact was), grabbed my hips, and then grabbed my inner thigh after I tried getting him off of me. I promptly had to smack his hand as hard as I could (which wasn't very strong, considering I was in a tight crowd without the ability to really cock back my hand) and leave the crowd until the band left. Augh. And we've had several homeless/drunk people come up to us at the stations, muttering things in Japanese, yelling, pounding on the train doors, etc. Some trains and subway carts have women-only sections during certain hours to avoid all the perverts. Nowhere is perfect I guess.

My classes are good, I'm going to Peace Osaka (a WWII museum) this weekend with one of my classes. Japanese is good, but difficult to do at 9 and 10 in the morning when my brain is at a completely non-functioning level, period, but still good.

And with that, I think I'll call it a wrap.

Arigatou, ja ne!

RIP Uncle Miklos Bus. <3 Your unbelievably positive (especially for a Hungarian!) outlook, warm smile, and kind heart will be sorely missed by everyone. I'm so sad I wasn't able to see you or your family as often as I would have liked, but the moments we had together are things I will treasure forever. <3 Sayounara, à plus tard, amíg.