Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Godzilla: Oh where have you gone?
First things - Godzilla was not a mean monster. He simply came ashore to meet some Japanese friends - could not find a place to step since the entire island is covered in small buildings(and small people but more on that later), powerlines, and advertisements - and got a sharp tiled roof stuck in his foot which then caused the rampaging, fire breathing, and building destroying sonic screams.
From what I saw of Japan there are three things: rice paddies, buildings/man-made structures, and some trees. The rivers in most places have been diverted into concrete channels. The hills are even held in place to prevent erosion and landslides. I'm sure there are more natural areas but as I was on a business trip most of what I saw was near cities or the train corridor.
I believe my last installment (when I thought the G-man would actually make an appearance) left off just before I went out to dinner on the first night. Dinner that night was sushi and it was amazing. People at another table actually ran out of the room thinking Godzirra was in the restaurant because I was eating so much sushi. My first surprise was joking around in my limited Japanese that I wanted O-toro (prime tuna cuts) and having it arrive seconds later in huge 1/2" sashimi slices. After this, more and more and more food was ordered. (I later learned that it might have been with my southern manners as I always try to clean my plate but to the Japanese this might have meant I was still hungry - so the vicious sushi circle kept going). Scallops, squid, yellowfin, salmon, tuna rolls, salmon roe, shrimp tempura, scallop tempura. The waitress kept showing up with her little menu calculator and my boss kept ordering food. And then came the sake. And I had to describe which one I preferred the best of the 3 types at the table which required moving slightly and almost falling over (I'd been sitting on my legs until this point). I shouldn't have been worried as after the sake came rounds of Shochu - Japanese rice liquor. My boss was switching between Japanese and English thinking I understood both, everyone is falling over laughing and I'm trying to figure out how much more of this stuff they're going to make me drink. Thank God my boss was picking this meal up on the Hitachi credit card.
Here's a quote I found online:
"When the missionary Francis Xavier visited Kagoshima Prefecture in 1549, he recorded that ' the Japanese drink [liquor] made from rice [...] but I have not seen a single drunkard. That is because once inebriated they immediately lie down and go to sleep.' "
Horse Crap
After drinking the Japanese want to go hang out in a convenience store and pick out things for David-san to buy. I ended up with anti-hangover pills(I think), Grapefruit beer, and a Japanese musical rubber ducky. One of the Hitachi guys was a design engineer who rode his bicycle to dinner. After dinner he couldn't even have drawn a straight line much less ride a bicycle in one but he certainly tried. It was a very very interesting night.
2nd Day
Woke up and felt great. The rice must have soaked up all of the alcohol. Just a quick shower and then off to work. Wait a second - someone shrunk the shower during the middle of the night! It was straight out of 'Lost in Translation.' Had to turn sideways and scrunch down just to get my head wet.
Work went smoothly (with lots of coffee breaks at the ubiquitous Japanese vending machines) and dinner that night was a very good Unagi(river eel) and rice dish. Before dinner my boss had to shop for his wife and from the looks of his list it seemed she sent him 7000 miles to pick up groceries.
3rd Day-5th Day
Bullet Train to Akita in the north to tour a Hitachi factory. Still no sign of any radioactive monsters. As we got farther North, the snow started to pick up. Usually in Akita there's about 4-5 ft everywhere but luckily this winter had been unusually tame so only about 6" - 12". In Akita we had planned to see the kamakoura snow igloos(attached pic) and winter festival but my boss got very exited when he saw a poster in the train station advertising Taki-uchi for the next night. Taki-uchi roughly translates as Japanese villagers get drunk on sake and beat each other over the head with 20ft bamboo sticks. So, snow igloos out, bamboo fighting in.
Here's how it worked:
Contestants show up after work and get kamikazi'd on sake. After copious amounts have been consumed, the
North side of town villagers and south-siders line up across from each other on a field with their bamboo sticks and hard hats/helmets for protection. At the sound of a bell, all charge in and attack. Bell signals end of the round and all retreat. The wounded are removed. Repeat for second round. Before 3rd round, light bonfire of prayer flags in center of field so that hot ashes blow into the fighters and crowd. Ring bell again and declare a winner - and I have no clue how they decide this. The side that wins is predicted to have the better rice crop for the year. This area is known for having excellent rice and thus excellent sake. I would agree that they might even like to drink it as well.
The morning after Taki-uchi we had to be in a cab at 5:45am to catch a local train for the bullet train to get all the way back to Tokyo. If you've read this entire email then you're probably as tired as I was that morning. I was even happier when I had to go knock on my boss's door at 5:40 to wake him up so we wouldn't miss our cab->train->flight home. In the end we made it in time and somehow I slept through some of the 12 hour return flight.
Thats about all I can right now and most of you probably stopped reading long ago (some of you I'm not sure ever learned...) In summary: Japanese food - excellent. Sake and beer - excellent. Not Meeting A City Destroying Monster - the only disappointment of the trip.
From what I saw of Japan there are three things: rice paddies, buildings/man-made structures, and some trees. The rivers in most places have been diverted into concrete channels. The hills are even held in place to prevent erosion and landslides. I'm sure there are more natural areas but as I was on a business trip most of what I saw was near cities or the train corridor.
I believe my last installment (when I thought the G-man would actually make an appearance) left off just before I went out to dinner on the first night. Dinner that night was sushi and it was amazing. People at another table actually ran out of the room thinking Godzirra was in the restaurant because I was eating so much sushi. My first surprise was joking around in my limited Japanese that I wanted O-toro (prime tuna cuts) and having it arrive seconds later in huge 1/2" sashimi slices. After this, more and more and more food was ordered. (I later learned that it might have been with my southern manners as I always try to clean my plate but to the Japanese this might have meant I was still hungry - so the vicious sushi circle kept going). Scallops, squid, yellowfin, salmon, tuna rolls, salmon roe, shrimp tempura, scallop tempura. The waitress kept showing up with her little menu calculator and my boss kept ordering food. And then came the sake. And I had to describe which one I preferred the best of the 3 types at the table which required moving slightly and almost falling over (I'd been sitting on my legs until this point). I shouldn't have been worried as after the sake came rounds of Shochu - Japanese rice liquor. My boss was switching between Japanese and English thinking I understood both, everyone is falling over laughing and I'm trying to figure out how much more of this stuff they're going to make me drink. Thank God my boss was picking this meal up on the Hitachi credit card.
Here's a quote I found online:
"When the missionary Francis Xavier visited Kagoshima Prefecture in 1549, he recorded that ' the Japanese drink [liquor] made from rice [...] but I have not seen a single drunkard. That is because once inebriated they immediately lie down and go to sleep.' "
Horse Crap
After drinking the Japanese want to go hang out in a convenience store and pick out things for David-san to buy. I ended up with anti-hangover pills(I think), Grapefruit beer, and a Japanese musical rubber ducky. One of the Hitachi guys was a design engineer who rode his bicycle to dinner. After dinner he couldn't even have drawn a straight line much less ride a bicycle in one but he certainly tried. It was a very very interesting night.
2nd Day
Woke up and felt great. The rice must have soaked up all of the alcohol. Just a quick shower and then off to work. Wait a second - someone shrunk the shower during the middle of the night! It was straight out of 'Lost in Translation.' Had to turn sideways and scrunch down just to get my head wet.
Work went smoothly (with lots of coffee breaks at the ubiquitous Japanese vending machines) and dinner that night was a very good Unagi(river eel) and rice dish. Before dinner my boss had to shop for his wife and from the looks of his list it seemed she sent him 7000 miles to pick up groceries.
3rd Day-5th Day
Bullet Train to Akita in the north to tour a Hitachi factory. Still no sign of any radioactive monsters. As we got farther North, the snow started to pick up. Usually in Akita there's about 4-5 ft everywhere but luckily this winter had been unusually tame so only about 6" - 12". In Akita we had planned to see the kamakoura snow igloos(attached pic) and winter festival but my boss got very exited when he saw a poster in the train station advertising Taki-uchi for the next night. Taki-uchi roughly translates as Japanese villagers get drunk on sake and beat each other over the head with 20ft bamboo sticks. So, snow igloos out, bamboo fighting in.
Here's how it worked:
Contestants show up after work and get kamikazi'd on sake. After copious amounts have been consumed, the
North side of town villagers and south-siders line up across from each other on a field with their bamboo sticks and hard hats/helmets for protection. At the sound of a bell, all charge in and attack. Bell signals end of the round and all retreat. The wounded are removed. Repeat for second round. Before 3rd round, light bonfire of prayer flags in center of field so that hot ashes blow into the fighters and crowd. Ring bell again and declare a winner - and I have no clue how they decide this. The side that wins is predicted to have the better rice crop for the year. This area is known for having excellent rice and thus excellent sake. I would agree that they might even like to drink it as well.
The morning after Taki-uchi we had to be in a cab at 5:45am to catch a local train for the bullet train to get all the way back to Tokyo. If you've read this entire email then you're probably as tired as I was that morning. I was even happier when I had to go knock on my boss's door at 5:40 to wake him up so we wouldn't miss our cab->train->flight home. In the end we made it in time and somehow I slept through some of the 12 hour return flight.
Thats about all I can right now and most of you probably stopped reading long ago (some of you I'm not sure ever learned...) In summary: Japanese food - excellent. Sake and beer - excellent. Not Meeting A City Destroying Monster - the only disappointment of the trip.
Gozilla: The Search is On
Plane Ride - I have never seen more people do calisthenics on a flight. Japanese husband and wife teams doing leg lifts and hamstring stetches together, lots of strange deep knee bend aisle walkers and even the toddlers were getting in to it. I thought I was in 'Gung Ho.' Besides that entertainment, the Check-in Agent was kind enough to switch me to the Holy Grail of International Seats(as far as Coach Seats go...ahem) - the Window Exit row seat. Where I have enough room to stretch out my lanky legs and don't have to worry about waking up drooling on the Japanese guy next to me if I was in the middle. This seat is second only to the extremely rare empty center row but I don't think there was a single empty seat on the flight. With this window exit row seat the flight wasn't actually that bad. Decent food and about 45 minutes of total sleep.
Atsugi and Hotel - We're staying in Atsugi tonight so we can go evaluate the machine tomorrow at the Hitachi Tool Dept (it is a business trip). The hotel rooms is of course small with some crazy things inside. The bed is about 4.5' long, there's a flashlight next to it, slippers by the wall, and the bathroom is unreal. The shower is controlled by the sink valves and the toilet has a strange bidee' looking contraption that I'm still a little nervous of.
Arrival - after disembarking I quickly realized that while I thought I had a pretty good idea of what my boss looks like, apparently he has a million clones over here. And they're all exactly his height. After a small fright, I eventually found him at the luggage conveyor and we were off to a blitzkrieg of train rides across Tokyo. From what I could see from the train windows it seems the reason they are all so small over here is so they can fit more people into the city. Ads are on everything and there's a cool mix of the old tiled roof buildings with modern skyscrapers.
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