In the morning, I rode my bike to the store and got some money for boat fare. I was in a hurry, so I left the bike at the store and took a taxi to the harbor. On the way, the taxi driver picked my brain about living with a family in Japan, learning Japanese, and Arnold Schwarzenneger.
I got to the port and waited for the 10:30 AM high-speed boat bound for Yuge island. When the boat arrived, I waited to board while the six-foot loading ramp lowered and a bunch of old grannies emerged from the boat and slowly descended behind their Walking Stecky walkers, their torsos parallel to the ground. Once the boat was empty, I walked up the ramp, sat down on the back row of the boat, pulled out my Nintendo DS, and began to review kanji characters. I looked up from the screen after what seemed like a few minutes and realized that we had already arrived at Yuge.
I got off the boat and called Kuroda-san, the band leader, since nobody was there waiting for me. He said that they were waiting around the corner, and I mentioned that I was going to go grab some lunch. He told me that they were making preparations, so it was okay if I didn't buy lunch right then. What kind of preparation? Lunch arrangements? Equipment preparations? I assumed he meant that they'd set up lunch already and that I needn't buy anything.
I walked over to the area where they were setting everything up, and they cheered when they saw me. We plugged all the stuff in and did a quick sound check, and then walked over to the fire station, where they had set aside a room for us on the second floor. They had bought 800 yen bento lunches with a little bit of everything, which we sat down to eat while chatting.
In the bento: A bite of spaghetti, a shooter marble-sized meatball, a bunch of rice, an overly salty chunk of fish, some pickled veggies, a few small pieces of fresh cucumber, some konyaku noodles, a rubbery pink-and-white tofu thing, a salty egg block, a small piece of crab, some shredded cabbage, and a single pork gyoza.
Pretty good, all in all.
Here's a quick band member profile:
Eiichi Kuroda
The leader Uoshima'X, Kuroda-san's a 45ish year-old municipal worker from nearby Yuge island who plays a mean electric guitar. When he was young, he had an accident in his spine that messes with his equilibrium and can do serious damage if he consumes any alcohol. He's my Pepsi-drinking buddy at all the band functions. He loves American and British rock-n-roll guitar from the 'sixties and 'seventies. He's been on Uoshima for at least three years, so he'll most likely have a transfer next year, which will probably dissolve the band.
Tomomi Teshima
Teshima-san is a 40 year-old lady who moved with her husband to Uoshima to fish for a living. She is the lead vocalist for most of the Japanese songs and backup vocalist on most others, and played the keyboard during the beginning for songs like Brick, Highway Star, and Smoke on the Water. She loves Ben Folds and Coldplay. She was one of three people who came to English conversation classes when I lived on the island.
Saiki Kazue
Saiki speaks a bit of English, so I call her by her first name. She was placed on Uoshima as a kindergarten teacher about eight or nine years ago. She was wooed by one of the local fishermen, and they married and started a family. When Kaisei, the oldest of their two kids, got into kindergarten, Saiki had to look for a new job. Now 34, she works as a receptionist at the island medical clinic. A month or two before I left the island, she joined the band and took over as keyboardist, but also provides lead vocals for one song and backup vocals on others.
Masa
I don't even know his full name, but Masa is our drummer. He's good at bass guitar and can play rhythm guitar as well, but we don't have any other options on the drums. He's about 30 years old, and is married and has a boy named Takumi who's just a little younger than Kelsey. During the week, he works on the New Uoshima 2, the town's high-speed ferry.
Yaa-san
I don't know his full name either. Yaa-san is our bass player, though I use the term lightly. He's a nice guy, but he struggles with keeping a beat. He often lags behind the band or rushes his parts, and he hyperventilates in front of larger crowds. He works during the week at the garbage treatment plant with his brother, who has Down Syndrome. I think that Yaa-san might have some mental disabilities as well. I'm pretty sure that he's a native of Uoshima, and I think he's 35 years old.
Reiko Abe
Abe-Sensei teaches first and second grade at the elementary school on Uoshima. At 28 years old, she's the baby of the band, and is the latest to join. She cracks me up with all the onomatopoeia that she uses. I'm not sure where she's from, but she provides backup vocals and can play the keyboard, and she looks a little like the crazy villain from Bloodsport.
After lunch, we went down and rehearsed all the songs. Highway star was very uneven. I listened to the other songs from the audience area and the guitars were slightly off-key. Vocals were shaky. Yaa-san wandered aimlessly on the bass. Despite having the feeling that we were going to tank, I wasn't nervous at all. We were going to play for the Shimanami Yacht Club welcome party, not some huge audience.
We went back to our room after rehearsing and had some ice cream. Masa's ice cream had beans in it.
Another band started rehearsing, and we went to the window to watch. The band, Guitar Pants, was very good. They're from Matsuyama, and play 'seventies Santana-style groove rock. All of the musicians are technically exceptional. I prayed that we'd get to play before them.
The show started at 6PM. A news reporter from one of the local stations was the guest emcee, and all the band members wanted to have pictures taken with her. She had all the makings of a Japanese reporter--tall (for a Japanese person) and slender, hair that must've taken hours to do, and really brown teeth. Yeah, I'm shallow.
We were the first band to play, while Guitar Pants played second. A jazz/blues guitar duo followed, and a local acoustic guitar group with bongo accompaniment and a muddy steel string sound played last.
When our turn came around, I was pretty relaxed. The other members were nervous. Yaa-san might have been crying from the pressure. There were about three or four hundred people at the show, but most of them were old, darkened sailors who knew boats and traditional Japanese music much more than they knew English or rock-n-roll. I worried most about what I was going to say before my song, which was the last of our three-song set. Teshima-san opened with Yuugure, a Japanese pop song from the 'nineties. After that, Saiki followed a long speech by singing Diamonds, by PrincessPrincess. It's a Japanese pop song that resembles some the most cliched themes from early Nintendo games. Japanese pop music is consistently about fifteen to twenty years behind American music.
After Diamonds, I walked up to the mic and shouted, in Japanese, "Good evening! I suck at Japanese. We're Uoshima'X!" Then I yelled something in English and counted off to start Highway Star. I confidently danced around the stage, putting all I had into the vocals. I thanked the crowd and we walked off the stage as they cheered. As rough as our rehearsal was, our actual performance was pretty solid. Yaa-san even played a few correct notes. People came up to me to tell me how skilled of a singer I am. Good old Japanese flattery.
I stayed to watch Guitar Pants, but had to leave at 8PM to catch a ferry with Saiki to Habu, where her husband was waiting with their car to drive back to Imabari. We took the Shamanami bridge, a really long series of suspension bridges that connect mainland Honshu to Mainland Shikoku. In the car, we talked about all sorts of subjects, from family to Filipina prostitutes on Habu. Our soundtrack was 80's American pop music that all sounded like the Pet Shop Boys. The dashboard of the car looked like something from a flight simulator.
We drove by a huge fireworks show that was going on over the water next to the bridges. Lines of Japanese cars stopped on the highway to watch.
When we approached a tunnel, I held my breath and made a wish like I used to back home. I wished that I would, for the sake of this blog, remember the name of the Yoshifumi tunnel, through which I successfully held my breath. See, wishes do come true.
They dropped me off at home, and I went in to see Stef. I had forgotten to pick up trash bags, so I walked back to the store amidst a chorus of cicadas and frogs. The bike was still there from earlier that morning.
I don't know why this cracks me up so much. Actually, I do. In video games, the Japanese often like to take a common monosyllabic English noun and make it the main character's first name. The last name is usually a polysyllabic, two-morpheme offering. Thus, Stick Breitling, Squall Leonhart, Flint Ricman.
Beetles for sale by the video games:
Now Mommy can enjoy baby's head cold, too!
Yeah, this is a guy. And he's about 45.
Shirts with stuff that they think is English:
God Bress:
Video fish:
My new patient application from my hospital visit:
(Chuckle)
Decisions, decisions:
Toilets have a sink on the top so that you can reuse the water you use to wash your hands:
Japanese toilet control panel:
I want to float on the top of a water spout, but sadly, that function's reserved for armless, footless women or men with road cycling helmets:
I just came from an assembly at one of my junior high schools in Japan. It's the last day of the semester before a 45 day summer break for the kids, so they held an assembly to give awards, sit, stand, bow, sit, stand, bow, and sit.
We watched a fifteen minute video presentation about bike safety that was the epitome of a bad Japanese drama. You know--exaggerated movements, overdramatic pauses, awesomely bad music in the background. The first part had accidents staged by a stunt crew. As a guy on a bike approaches a car, the driver-side door swings open, and the guy on the bike not only has time to look at the door and shout in a comical tone, but also ditch the bike while flipping over the door onto the ground.
Stunningly--nobody at the assembly laughs. Cheesy staged accident after cheesy staged accident, I suppress belly laughter as the 462 kids and their 30 or so teachers sit silently serious on the gym floor, lined up in perfect rows like a rice field. Back in America, the whole congregation would be rolling with laughter.
Perhaps more disconcerting is the last segment of the video, in which a young woman living with her mother goes out on her bike at night without turning on the safety light. When a little boy runs out in front of her, she swerves to miss him and crashes into an old lady passing on a bike. When a stern Japanese policeman scolds her and says that she was at fault for the accident, the young woman makes the excuse that the little boy ran in front of her. It doesn't matter, says the cop, because she didn't have her light on. What, lady? It's your fault? How embarrassing! Never mind the fact that you almost killed a granny.
Back at home, she sits at the table, eating, when her mom gets a phone call notifying her of the accident. Oh, the shame of having your parents know that you were in an accident!
In Japan, if you get in an accident, you're expected to visit the other person in the hospital with flowers and give a formal apology. It's probably not a bad idea, but it's much different than in America, where insurance companies take over and you often never see or hear from the person you almost killed.
Anyway, the woman goes with her mom and some flowers to the hospital to visit the old lady, but the lady's husband snaps at her, saying that the granny doesn't want to see her. The young woman hangs her head in shame and the camera pans out, showing the woman and her mom in a dark, empty hospital. The screen fades to black.
What really blew my mind was that the video focused more on the shame that this young woman felt than the fact that she almost killed someone. I mean, really--what's worse: having your feelings hurt because you did something stupid and have to pay the social and financial consequences, or actually physically hurting someone? Here in Japan, shame is quite a big deal. And that's a shame.
The other day, I woke up a different person. Or, the same person, but a better same person.
Lately, Stef and I have been watching a TV show called How I Met Your Mother. The show's about a group of friends in their late 20's and early 30's, and their career and social exploits in Manhattan. One of the characters, Marshall, is just like me. He's tall, he's monogamous, he loves Star Wars, he's very passionate about silly things--he's basically me. With each new episode that we watch, we learn of another aspect in which Marshall and I are exactly alike. Other than the fact that he's a lawyer who passed the bar exam, we're basically the same person.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer. My mother and uncles are attorneys, and my cousins soon will be. Even though I had little to no direction before my mission, and even though I studied both music and computer science, I still hoped to one day become a lawyer. After my mission, my direction changed. I knew that I loved learning languages. It's something I'm good at, and there's something extremely rewarding about cracking the codes that other cultures use to communicate. I got my BA in Linguistics at BYU, and moved out to Japan to study Japanese.
In the 11 months that I've been here, I've stressed about future plans, unsure whether a four-year degree in a non-techical field plus fluency in two other languages would be enough to land me a good job upon returning to the 'States. Stef has stood by my side, trying to be patient while I continue on without a concrete idea of what awaits us in a year or two.
Watching Marshall on How I Met Your Mother has awakened a desire to have a plan. When I woke up the other day, I started thinking about law school. I know I'd be capable of completing law school and passing the bar. I have the mental capacity and I can have the drive if it's what I really desire. As I researched the bar exam, I suddenly felt regret for not having studied calculous. My degree didn't require any math classes, so I didn't take any. Out of the blue, I had a strong desire to learn calculous. I want to learn it so that I can understand how the wind blows, how the planets orbit, and how the world around me works.
I want to learn more languages. I want to learn programming languages like C++, Perl, and various server-side scripting languages. I want to get in shape. I want to practice piano and write music. There's so much that I want to do that it's overwhelming. I'm not comfortable with the idea of returning home to the U.S. and working retail for the rest of my life. I decided that I need to go back to school.
I'm not yet sure exactly what I want to study. I love teaching, and I love the idea of having time and opportunities to research and learn for the rest of my life. As of now, my plan is to try to get into the linguistics Master's program at BYU, with the eventual goal of getting a doctorate in something so that I can teach at the university or community college level. This gives me a goal to work toward--something that will push me and force me to grow.
Ever since I graduated, I told myself that I didn't want to go back to school. I hated having to juggle a full-time job with school and a family, while many of the kids I was competing with academically had none of those cares. I doubt my ability to get into a Master's program with a 3.28 GPA. My biggest fear, however, has been the idea of going into debt for school. My bank job paid for my undergraduate tuition, so I left college debt-free. I hate the idea of going into debt for something that may not end up being my career. I might not work as a linguist.
Fear, however, can't be the reason I don't pursue more education. If I have a concrete plan to become a professor, there's no reason why I can't achieve it. I know that the job market is crummy right now. But I'm confident in my ability to learn and grow and make myself into an ideal candidate for teaching positions. I don't care if it's a cliche; I'm capable of anything I want to accomplish.
The problem that remains is my ambition. Part of me still wonders about law school. Part of me wonders if I should try for an MBA. I was a very valuable employee at the bank, and I think I might do well in the business world. But would that allow me to continue my education for the rest of my life?
In How I Met Your Mother, Marshall's largest dilemma is the fact that his dream job is to be an attorney fighting for the conservation of wildlife, but has to settle as a lawyer for Goliath National Bank, where his friend works. It offers a much higher salary and allows him to pay off his debt.
Yeah, I admit it's a little silly that my ambition is springing from my love of a character in a TV sitcom. Silly or not, it's nice to have some goals to work toward--even if I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do. Hopefully, that knowledge will come later.
Tuesday morning, I got up, got ready, and biked over to the ferry bound for Okamura, where my island schools are. I was feeling fine until I got to the island. I wasn't sure if it was due to the boat ride, but I suddenly felt queasy. I taught two junior high school classes and started eating lunch, when the teachers in the staff room noticed that I wasn't looking too hot. I didn't have much of an appetite, though it didn't help that lunch was a bunch of small fried fish, with pickled vegetables and fish-filled rice on the side.
They let me leave on the 1PM ferry without teaching my afternoon classes at the elementary school. When I got home, I rested in hopes that I just had motion sickness from the boat. It didn't go away.
Later that night, Stef started to feel sick to her stomach. I had a headache and was feeling nauseous, but Stef actually got it worse. I don't know why, but for some reason, I never throw up. Stef is a different story. She usually disappears into the bathroom and comes out feeling a lot better. I rarely have to deal with the unpleasantness of throwing up, but then I have to endure an upset stomach for a longer period.
When I woke up the next day, I felt even worse. The headache was just as strong and my stomach felt worse, so I called in sick. In Japan, you have to see a doctor when you miss any work, or else you lose vacation time. In fairness, most employers in America will make you use your vacation time or go without pay for the days that you miss. However, paid sick leave is written into my contract here, and I was genuinely sick. Since I chose not to use my vacation time, I had to see a doctor. It seemed like a good idea, since we had been traveling in Osaka, where there have been a few cases of the swine flu. Might as well make sure that my I'm not dying.
I biked over to a hospital about two minutes from our apartment, and told them that I needed to see a doctor. They gave me the standard new patient forms, and I sat down to fill them out. They were in kanji, the complex characters borrowed from Chinese that you must have specifically studied in order to understand. There was a little hiragana (Japanese phonetic alphabet) here and there, but overall, the form was daunting. As I studied the sheet, I realized that I recognized over half of the characters. Even if I didn't know how to pronounce all of them, I understood the primitive meaning of most. I filled the sheet out and turned it in, asking for help with the readings of just two of the characters.
It was a small victory for me. It's quite intimidating to face a wall of kanji standing in the way of you and something you need. In the beginning of my stay here in Japan, I might have asked for someone to translate. I don't even know if anybody could have translated. It's nice to know that it didn't even matter.
I sat and stared at the fish tank, waiting for my name to be called. A closer look at the tank revealed that it wasn't a fish tank at all, but a TV screen in a glass casing filled with water. I'd imagine that video fish are a lot easier to care for than real fish. They called everybody in the standard Japanese way, last name first. I was curious to see how they'd call me.
“Jesse-sama! Kochira, douzo (Mister Jesse, right this way)!”
Just my first name. I wonder if they thought it was my last name.
I followed the lady through some doors and she guided me into the room where the doctor was waiting. When Kelsey had pink eye and we took her to a doctor, the nurses manhandled her. They pushed her down and held her against her will. It was quite upsetting. She would have cooperated had they let us hold her. When I went to see the doctor, the nurses did the same thing to me. I walked in and explained what I was feeling to the doctor. Our whole conversation was in Japanese.
“Please lift up your shirt,” said the doctor. “Please lift up your shirt,” repeated the nurse in a high-pitched, nasal tone.
I went to lift up my shirt, and the nurse lifted it for me and held it up.
“Please take a deep breath,” the doctor requested, stethoscope ready. “Please take a deep breath,” parroted the nurse.
“Now, exhale,” said the doctor. “Now, exhale,” the nurse mimicked.
“Take another deep breath.” “Take another deep breath.”
“And… exhale.” “Exhale.”
“Okay, now pull your shirt back down.” “Pull your shirt back down.”
I went to pull my shirt down, but the nurse did it for me.
I told the doctor that I had been having headaches almost every morning for the last month or two, and he told me to lie down on the table. The nurse, of course, also asked me to lie down on the table. When I did, I slipped and bumped the wall, since I was much too big. I made a joke about how I'm too big and the nurse cut me off and again asked me to lie down. The doctor felt my abdomen and then asked me a question that I don't remember. I told him that I wanted to make sure that I didn't have the swine flu. He said “OK,” and asked me to follow the nurse, who asked me to follow her.
I was in the doctor's room for, at most, ninety seconds. At the nurses' station, they stabbed me in the brain through my nostrils with a long cotton swab, which they then tested for influenza while I waited in a separate waiting area. Thirty minutes later, the nurse called me back in to see the doctor, who spent thirty seconds explaining that I didn't have influenza, but that I most likely had a stomach virus. I again waited in the lobby for them to call my name. About five minutes later, they called me up to the front desk and handed me three different types of medicine, asked for my money, and showed me the door.
The nicest thing I can say about my visit to the doctor is that it was quick. They basically have an assembly line system that doesn't leave you feeling like you have any sort of relationship with your doctor. He's just there to find out what kind of medicine they're going to sell you. I didn't really get to discuss my concerns or describe my nausea. You're in, you're out, and you're lucky if you ever find out what's ailing you.
The nurse is there to make sure that you don't spend even a millisecond too long in the hospital. If they're really so concerned with making everything fast, they should stop repeating everything the doctor says. And I can lift my own shirt, thank you very much. If she could have inhaled and exhaled for me, she would have. At the same time, it makes the manhandling of Kelsey seem much less personal. They don't care if you're a toddler or a grown man. They're going to do everything for you.
I still don't know what was wrong with me. I was sick the following two days as well, and part of Saturday. I'm better now, and it's nice to know that I didn't have the swine flu. Well, it's time to get ready for school lunch. I hear we're having video fish.
When you have a baby abroad, you have to get a report of birth abroad from the consulate or embassy in the birth country. In addition to the birth report, you need to apply for a passport and social security number. The baby and both parents all need to be present in order to do this.
Mia was born so tiny and underdeveloped that we had to wait almost four months for her to be healthy enough to leave the hospital. Since she's now strong and healthy, we got to go to Osaka to do all her paperwork. I took a couple days off and we turned it into our first mini-vacation in Japan.
We had planned on taking the Orange Ferry, a huge vessel that leaves the Toyo (a city close to Imabari) port in the evening and arrives in Osaka the next morning. The Orange Ferry offers public quarters, where a bunch of people cram into a room and sleep on the ground next to each other with a little blanket and a buckwheat pillow. Little kids often have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places, so we decided to look at other modes of transportation, just for the heck of it. We were going to pay about 12000 yen (about $120) per adult (kids under 3 are free) for round trip ferry tickets, but when we saw the prices of the express train, we realized that there was really no reason for us not to take the train. The train takes about three hours and cost only 8000 yen ($80 or so) more (total) than the communal boat. Sure, they offer private rooms on the boat, but they're more expensive than the train. We got to sleep at home--where the girls could actually get some rest--and only travel for a few hours.
We charged the laptop and put some Disney movies on the hard drive to keep Kelsey occupied. After a two-hour ride on an express train from Imabari to Okayama, we transferred to a bullet train bound for Osaka. I thought the express trains were fast; the bullet train blows away everything not flying thousands of feet in the air. The seats were big and cozy, and there was more than enough legroom for even me.
The first day, we took care of the paperwork at the consulate, and then went to find our hotel. We stayed at an old business hotel, which offered a Japanese-style tatami room with three Japanese futons, an AC unit, a fridge, and a TV. We had our own bathroom, but no bath. The first floor of the hotel had a Japanese-style communal bath with the first few hours of the evening reserved for men and the last few hours for women. We used the hotel as a hub and took the subway to various parts of town during our trip. The hotel was close enough to the subway station that we could go back for Kelsey's nap each day. If we were picky, we could have found reasons to complain. For the price (2000 yen per person, per night), it was great.
In the afternoon of the first day, we decided to look for a Mexican restaurant that we had read about online at an outdoor mall called Dotonbori. I should have remembered my own story about the mythical restaurant. We walked around for about three and a half hours, with half of that time spent just trying to find Dotonbori. I asked for directions at the hotel, and the front desk attendant gave us a map of Osaka and highlighted Dotonbori.
We got off at the correct stop, and then got lost. This particular stop was connected to a huge underground shopping plaza. The directions we had received required that we go up to the surface level right when we got to our stop, but there were so many shops with things to look at that we wandered farther and farther away from the exit we needed to take. When we got up to the ground level, we tried to locate ourselves on the map so we could head to Dotonbori. Unfortunately, it was basically impossible to figure out where we were. Figuring we'd eventually recognize something from the map, we just started walking toward the place where we thought Dotonbori might be. After a good chunk of time walking and talking, we decided to ask somebody for directions. According to an old octopus-ball salesman with a karate-style headband, we had walked a considerable distance past Dotonbori. We needed to walk back in the direction from which we came and turn left.
We turned around and walked back the other way for a while, but still couldn't find Dotonbori. We turned left where we thought the old man had told us to, but it became clear that we weren't going to find it without asking another person for directions. I went inside the first building I saw and asked an office lady if she could point us in the right direction. She stepped outside and pointed to where we needed to go, then gushed over how cute Kelsey and Mia were. We thanked her and set out for Dotonbori, which we could finally see in the distance. We needed to keep going and then turn right, not left.
We walked over to the right place and started looking around for the Mexican restaurant, which was supposedly called Hermanos. None of the people we stopped to ask knew where this restaurant was. I was determined not to have another all-you-can-eat yakiniku experience. We were going to find this place. Up and down the street we walked, scanning the five and six story buildings' signs. It was starting to get late, we were starving, and I was starting to lose my mind.
I found an internet café and searched for the restaurant. I got an address, the name of the neighboring hotel, and a phone number, which I decided not to call. We asked the locals where the hotel was, or if they could point us in the direction of the hotel, and finally, we got a lead. Someone knew where the hotel was, but wasn't sure if there was a Mexican restaurant anywhere near. We darted (as well as a family with a kid in a stroller can dart) to the hotel, and then examined the surrounding buildings. Nothing.
Undeterred, I entered the hotel and asked the desk clerk if he knew where the Mexican restaurant was. Next came the verbal punch to the stomach—Hermanos had been gone for a while. Let's review what I wrote about the mythical "perfect restaurant":
1. The Holy Grail of Restaurants, no matter where you are, doesn't exist. Don't be stubborn. You will not find it. 2. Don't ask for directions in Japan. It doesn't matter how little Japanese people actually know about something: they'll go totally out of their way to help you, even if it actually ends up being more of a hindrance than a help. 3. Dang it, even in my nostalgic, partially-confabulated peak season, I was still a jerk. 4. You can never go wrong with okonomiyaki.
Number 1? Check. Except this time, I actually got confirmation that it doesn't exist. How could I have forgotten this lesson?
Number 2? Check. Though it was mostly our fault for not taking the first exit at the station, we were led astray by all but two of the seven or eight people we asked.
Number 3? Still a jerk. When we got confirmation that the place didn't exist, I murdered a koala started to lose my patience. I told Stef that I was willing to eat anything that wasn't okonomiyaki, since we always get that. We almost entered two or three restaurants, but Stef couldn't commit, and I just about lost it. I just wanted food. Now. Or, then, at least. Which brings us to:
Number 4: Yeah, we caved in and went to an okonomiyaki shop. As hunger vanquished my life force, I lost the will to fight the status quo and gave in to the delicious cliché that is the fried savory pancake. We ordered okonomiyaki, nigiyaki (like okonomiyaki, but with a bunch of green onions), and omusoba. The omusoba, an omelette filled with yakisoba (noodles cooked in a savory sauce), was the best thing we ate on the whole trip. Never forget rule number 4.
Sure, I hate that I didn't follow my own rules regarding the Holy Grail of Restaurants. But on the plus side, it only confirmed my previous theory. And it taught me rule number 5: always make sure the restaurant you're searching for exists (by phone, etc.), and get directions.
I learned another rule the next day, when we went to Americatown. You know how big cities have Chinatowns, Japantowns, Koreatowns and Little Italys (Italies?) in America? Here in Osaka, it's Americatown, or Amerika-mura. If you're not into drinking or buying overpriced clothing imported from America, there's not much to do in Ame-mura (the shortened Japanese version). Well, that's not entirely true. It's a great place to people watch. Some of the craziest, most outrageous clothing and hairstyles that we saw in Osaka were in Ame-mura.
Earlier that morning, we went to Kaiyukan, a huge aquarium in Osaka. The aquarium route begins after riding a huge escalator up five stories or so, and slowly winds down toward the bottom, the sloped spiral path surrounded on both sides by fish-filled tanks. At the top, there are penguins, sea lions and dolphins. At an above-water sea lion exhibit, Kelsey prostrated herself on the ground and looked through the five or six inches of glass that were under the water line, hoping to see what the sea lions were doing under the surface. As you descend to the ground level, you can actually see the same sea lions swimming around. At the same time, the fish you see come from deeper and deeper waters, becoming gradually more exotic as you work your way down. Children, however, gradually lose interest in the fish and, in the end, just want to run and yell.
Blue = Awesomeness of Fish Red = Child's Interest
We saw some manta rays (one as large as a small automobile), a couple of whale sharks, sea turtles, sun fish, arapaimas, giant crabs, jellyfish, eels, and countless other kinds of fish. It would have been nice if we could have really enjoyed the fish, but it was still fun to watch Kelsey squeal in delight as she ran to the glass to watch the dolphins zip around their tanks.
Toward the beginning of the aquarium, I saw one of the JETs from Imabari and said hi. I was surprised to see someone that I had met (albeit briefly) so far from Imabari, so I gave a big smile and said, "Hey, how's it going?" She clearly didn't remember me, so she averted her eyes as she passed and mumbled, "Good." I told Stef that she didn't seem friendly when I had met her before, and so she obviously didn't care enough to socialize. We ran into her later, and Stef, being the awesome woman that she is, decided to strike up a conversation instead of being bitter about the snub. She hadn't recognized me at all, but when we started talking, she was really friendly. I can see why she reacted the way she did, since I probably came across as The Creepy, Crazy, Overly-Friendly Guy Who Bugs You in Aquariums. You know, that guy. Anyway, she's been in Japan for five years and is going home in a couple weeks. Her sister is visiting in Japan before she heads back home.
Later that day, back in Ame-mura, Stef and I had been checking out some shops and scoping out potential restaurants for dinner. We saw a couple that appeared to serve things that we probably couldn't find in Imabari, and decided to eat at one of them after exploring the rest of Ame-mura. As we walked past a burger joint, we saw the Imabari JET with her sister, sitting and talking. We went over and sat down to chat a bit. We told her about our fruitless search for the Mexican restaurant, and how, other than the baby paperwork, all we really wanted to do in Osaka was eat Mexican food. We had been talking for a couple minutes, when suddenly I realized that Kelsey was grunting. Stef took her inside and helped her use the potty while I talked to the JET about a possible lead on a Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood. She drew us a crude map, explained how to get there. I knew that it was unlikely that we'd ever find it, so I thanked her and started thinking about where we were really going to eat.
Stef came out with Kelsey after a while, and we talked with the girls for a few more minutes. I told Stef about the restaurant, and she agreed to look for it for a few minutes—under the condition that if we didn't find it soon, we'd eat at one of the other places that we had already found. As we were wandering around, looking for the restaurant, a man named Rigby stopped and asked us if we needed help finding anything. I told him about the taco shop, and he told me that he not only knew where it was, but that he knew the owners and knew that it wouldn't be open for another 90 minutes or so. He gave us the owners' phone number and told us where to go. We had no trouble finding it.
We went to the lobby of a hotel to relax and pass the time while Stef fed Mia and Kelsey snacked on some pretzels. After a while, Kelsey got a little too restless, and we decided to go down and work our way back to the restaurant. We got there in time to meet one of the restaurant owners in the process of opening shop. We went up and sat down in what turned out to be a bar. Luckily, we got there before everybody showed up to drink. The bar served tacos, quesadillas, fajitas, and all sorts of other meals. The dimly lit bar was adorned with sombreros, ponchos, and other typical Mexican decorations, with salsa music booming in the background.
The owners didn't speak Spanish, but they sure knew how to cook Mexican food. We got some shredded chicken tacos, a shredded chicken quesadilla, some gourmet-style nachos, and a plate of eggs and chorizo with corn tortillas. We were forced to order one drink per adult (a sort of cover charge for the bar), so I got mango juice and Stef got some Jamaica drink. In all, the food cost over 5000 yen, but was worth every penny yen...ny (sorry). It was the perfect dinner for the perfect day with the fam. So, rule number 6, which I learned that day, is as follows: if you have followed rule number 1, and are okay with the idea of eating somewhere else (countering rule number 3, honoring the spirit of rule number 4), then you can implement rule number 5, provided that the person that you ask is not Japanese (rule number 2).
While it seems complicated, rule number 6 is quite simple: don't get your hopes up, make sure the place really exists, get directions from an English speaker, have a backup plan, and stay in a good mood, and you may just stumble across the Holy Grail of Restaurants.
We capped the night off with some ice cream, which we ate on the subway ride back to our hotel.
The third day, our only plans were to go to Costco and return to the hotel. We accomplished both goals. Costco was fantastic. After renewing my membership, we walked up and down the aisles, carefully making note of everything they were selling. We got two cases of Dad's Root Beer, some corn bread mix, a gigantic sack of tortilla chips, and a few other things. What we really wanted, though, was the food from the food court. Costco dogs. Pickle relish. Churros. Heaven.
Costco was packed—much more than any Costco I've ever seen in America. Stef saw some people complaining about the size of the shopping carts, which were the same size as the carts at Costco in America. They had no idea what to do with such a beast. In Japan, shopping carts are just a regular shopping basket that you put on a frame with wheels. One Costco shopping cart equals ten or twelve of the other shopping carts. This does not make it easy to navigate the store. Imagine the busiest subway station in Tokyo, with shoulder-to-shoulder foot traffic clogging the grounds. Now give each of those people their own hippopotamus-sized shopping cart and watch as nobody gets anywhere. At one point, my stomach dropped as I watched a family, only ten feet away, swoop in to grab the beef jerky samples, with me trapped in a sea of shopping carts. All I could do was slash their tires shake my fist and curse them. In my mind.
That evening, after a nice nap, we had no plans. We walked around a cool electronics district, where I bought some headphones. Well, one side of it was cool. The other side was littered with porn shops. The night before, I took Mia out for a walk, and explored a nearby restaurant district. I turned a corner and looked up, only to realize that I had stepped into the red light district. Humongous murals of naked women covered the facades of the buildings. I took my baby and promptly headed in the other direction. I can't believe the stuff that they show in public here. I guess there are places like that in most countries. I'm glad that they don't allow that in the U.S.
Back in the restaurant district, we looked for a place to eat. Employees from the myriad restaurants begged us to patronize their restaurants. When you walk through a restaurant district, you can, at any given time, have four or five different people shouting the praises of their restaurant at you. And it's not just the invasion of personal space that's annoying. Their voices are high-pitched, nasal bleats specifically designed to cripple your defenses. It's a verbal battle royale for your business.
"Please eat here, oh beloved guest! Please enjoy our delectable cornucopia of cuisine. It's really good, I promise!"
"No! Please, please, please come eat here! You'll love it! It's a veritable smorgasbord of cornucopias!"
"I won't cut myself with a samurai sword if you find it in your heart to give us the honor of enjoying your presence in our humble establishment!"
Stef and I really wanted to eat at one restaurant, but the street screamer was so annoying that we almost walked away just to spite him. I turned around to consult with Stef, and we vocalized that we were going to eat there because the food looked good, and not let the Gilbert Gottfried of Japanese restaurant employees stand in our way. I turned and walked away from the restaurant, signaling that we were heading in another direction. At the last second, I spun around and ducked inside the doors, after which the guy followed us in and shouted to the staff that they needed to prepare a table for four. It's okay. Let him think he convinced us. We were there for the food.
I saw something that looked like tacos, and I ordered it. They were curry-flavored tacos, and they weren't half bad. Stef, craving the omusoba that we ordered the first night, got some yakisoba. Kelsey had ginger for dinner (and some noodles). She eats pickled ginger plain. We have no idea how she does it, since it's such a strong flavor, and neither of us like it very much. That night, we watched Kelsey use chopsticks, successfully, for the first time. Her form needs some work, but it was still mighty impressive.
The next morning, we went to church at the Abeno Ward in Osaka. Finding the church proved to be quite the task. A few unanswered phone calls to missionaries and one useless taxi driver later, we found ourselves in the neighborhood of the church, with no idea which side of the city block it stood on. We found the church, but we had missed the Sacrament. The Abeno Ward was like a full-sized family ward in America. It was great to see so many people at church, including three sets of missionaries. Kelsey got a dolly from the nursery leader, who was excited to have someone to watch. Unfortunately, we had to leave. One family, the Kochis, gave us a ride to the station after Sacrament Meeting, saving us an hour or so in travel time. We took the trains and were home by about 4PM. Kelsey and Mia were great.
It was great to spend a few days in Osaka. We figured out how we like to do trips—it's best to plan about two things each day, and leave the rest of the time open for whatever else you want to do. You can relax or explore, and not feel like you have to run around to get a lot done. Riding the subway, while a bit expensive, is very convenient, and reminded me of our time in Matsuyama, where we rode the city trains all the time. We were also reminded how awesome it can be to be in a place with people and restaurants. Imabari's great, but there are so many more things to do in Osaka. It's nice to live in a laid-back place like Imabari, but it's important to experience city life every once in a while.
