Well here we are the month of October nearly over and we have posted a grand total of, well I guess this makes four times... yeah, that was our bad. In by way of an apology let me offer you this embarrassing little story. Rewind with me if you will a few weeks back to the little seaside twon of Beppu. You remember Beppu right? It's hot, the air is something you practically have to swim through, pockets of steam are rising out of the street and the rise and fall of the ocean is booming off in one ear. We are off to a little traditional sushi restaurant we discovered in a back alley a few nights before which had, quite honestly, the best sushi any of us had ever tasted, the people were also really nice and we had had an awesome interaction with them the last time we were there.
Since it was our last night in town we decided to splurge and get the most expensive thing on the menu. You should probably know the menu is in Japanese with no pictures and no one at this restaurant speaks English. Anyway when we point to the item in question the lady kind of raises an eyebrow but leaves and gets it anyway. It turns out to be a plate of sushi with a decorative shrimp head on it. We were thought it a bit odd but hey whatever it's something new. Anyway I'm just reaching out for a piece when Nate says, “Um guys. I think that thing is moving.”
We're all like, “What no way.” But in the spirit of adventure I reach out an poke it with a chopstick. Sure enough moves and we're all like, “Holy shit!” (pardon the language please.)
Anyway, we decide to eat other things and leave the poor thing to die in peace. We were just reaching for other stuff on the table when suddenly the head just freaks the hell out. If you've ever seen the movie Alien it was kind of like that. It opened it's mouth and shot out these prong-fan things that were opening and closing spasmodically.
If you've ever wanted to see four grown men jump that would have been the moment to be there. Nate nearly flipped the table over on Ian. Anyway we were all so wigged out by it we ended up covering the head with an empty bowl and all drinking water for the majority of the rest of the meal. Apparently the the actual piece of sushi that was the other end of the head was really tasty, only Nate and Ian tried it though so I can't really say.
Later we discovered this strange and emasculating dish is called "dancing shrimp" and is considered somewhat of a delicacy. Apparently we were supposed to tear the meat off it's head an eat that, they say it's delicious. Knowing this I can only imagine what the poor serving lady must have thought finding the most sumptuous part the meal carefully tucked away from sight after we left. I hope she got a kick out it.
As always semper fi.
S.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Probability That We Are Dead
So. It's been, what, 18 days since you've heard from us? Wondering if we are still alive? We can answer that question.
The probability that we were dead, just before you read this post, was 0.0049%, or 49/10,000ths of a percent.
Wondering how we got that number?
Fairly simple.
Swivel.com has a data set of the yearly mortality rate for every age. The average mortality rate for our age group (18-25) is 25 per 100,000.
25/100,000 = .00025
Divide by 365 to get the daily mortality rate.
.00025/365 = .0000006849
Add 1 and raise to the power of the number of days we have been out of contact.
1.0000006849^18 = 1.000012328 - 1 = 0.000012328
Multiply by four of us, and you get (approx):
.000049 or 0.0049%
Pretty good odds that we are still alive.
Anyway. What have we done since October 2nd? Here goes.
We went back up to Utsunomiya to visit the nurses' school. They asked us to come to their school festival, and what could we do but accept?
Friday night we arrived in Utsunomiya, went to Mike's place and crashed. Thanks a ton to Mike for letting us use his apartment, and thanks to Joey for providing sleeping bags and pads.
Saturday morning, we woke up at 9:30, figuring that it would take us a little over a half an hour to get to the school. Google maps had provided us with a path, and at 10:30, we set out, hoofing it in the general direction of the eisei-fukushi-daigakkou, or the Hygiene Welfare College. In Japanese, that's 衛生福祉大学校, which you may not be able to read. Don't worry, I can't either.
Anyway, 30 minute walk, right? WRONG. Two and a half hours later, and two hours late, we arrived at what we thought Google maps was pointing to. A middle school. Crying inside, we went to a Denny's (yes, a Denny's) and ate lunch, and then hobbled our way back to Mike's apartment, where I promptly fell asleep. We decided that, in the interests of not offending the girls too badly, we should take a taxi the next day. Thankfully it was a two day festival.
Sunday dawned bright, and we were up by 9:00 and out of the house. Several of the nurses we know were performing a dance at 10:00, or so we thought. We walked down the street, flagged a taxi, and I showed him the address of the school. He paused for a moment, and then with much miming managed to ask me what the name of the place was. I said eisei-fukushi-daigakku, and he grinned and nodded, and we were off.
After a few minutes of silence, he suddenly asked me a question, and when I motioned that I spoke no Japanese, he repeated one word several times.
"Noburu, noburu, noburu. "
What is noburu...?
Then he said:
"Obama."
Bing! Light bulb! The Japanese have no "l" sound, so noburu meant Nobel! I said "Hai, hai!" (Yes, yes!). Awesome taxi driver.
Then the bottom of my stomach dropped out. We were following the same route that we walked the day before. Oh no! My mind went crazy, thinking that perhaps we had the wrong directions... Augh! Lesson to be learned, if you ever travel in Japan:
TRUST THE TAXI DRIVERS.
They know what they are doing. Turns out, so does Google maps. I had misinterpreted the map and the middle school we thought Google maps was pointing to? Just a few blocks away from the Nursing school.
Damn it.
Anyway, the festival was awesome. A band played a few numbers, and quite well. Then the girls got on stage and did three choreographed dance numbers, set to pop music, all of which were really well done.
After the dance numbers, the girls showed us around the school a little, and then we sat and talked for a few hours. One of the friends of the girls had brought her son, who must have been 2 or so. I believe his name was Coco (Coco-chan, in Japanese, the chan essentially means little). Soooo cute. The girls got several pictures, which may or may not be arriving by email eventually.
After a couple of hours of talking, we finally ran out of conversation, and made our way back. Turns out it's about a 45 minute walk. Bleh.
That night, after Ian and Shan napped for a good four hours, we went to Joey's place, where he hosted a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. We were joined by Joel, a friend of Joey's who is also into D&D.
EIGHT HOURS LATER, we had slain several harpies, some skeletons, a succubus and her summoned Vroc (giant bird), and a Lich with wicked amounts of health, and an insanely irritating spell called Disintegrate that hits for 2d6/level. Joey was rolling 22 six sided dice to figure out the damage. Ian nearly died.
Anyway, at about 3:30am we headed back to Mike's apartment and crashed.
That's pretty much the extent of our adventures in Utsunomiya. Next post will cover Yokohama, and the tallest building in Japan!
Until next time,
Dane
The probability that we were dead, just before you read this post, was 0.0049%, or 49/10,000ths of a percent.
Wondering how we got that number?
Fairly simple.
Swivel.com has a data set of the yearly mortality rate for every age. The average mortality rate for our age group (18-25) is 25 per 100,000.
25/100,000 = .00025
Divide by 365 to get the daily mortality rate.
.00025/365 = .0000006849
Add 1 and raise to the power of the number of days we have been out of contact.
1.0000006849^18 = 1.000012328 - 1 = 0.000012328
Multiply by four of us, and you get (approx):
.000049 or 0.0049%
Pretty good odds that we are still alive.
Anyway. What have we done since October 2nd? Here goes.
We went back up to Utsunomiya to visit the nurses' school. They asked us to come to their school festival, and what could we do but accept?
Friday night we arrived in Utsunomiya, went to Mike's place and crashed. Thanks a ton to Mike for letting us use his apartment, and thanks to Joey for providing sleeping bags and pads.
Saturday morning, we woke up at 9:30, figuring that it would take us a little over a half an hour to get to the school. Google maps had provided us with a path, and at 10:30, we set out, hoofing it in the general direction of the eisei-fukushi-daigakkou, or the Hygiene Welfare College. In Japanese, that's 衛生福祉大学校, which you may not be able to read. Don't worry, I can't either.
Anyway, 30 minute walk, right? WRONG. Two and a half hours later, and two hours late, we arrived at what we thought Google maps was pointing to. A middle school. Crying inside, we went to a Denny's (yes, a Denny's) and ate lunch, and then hobbled our way back to Mike's apartment, where I promptly fell asleep. We decided that, in the interests of not offending the girls too badly, we should take a taxi the next day. Thankfully it was a two day festival.
Sunday dawned bright, and we were up by 9:00 and out of the house. Several of the nurses we know were performing a dance at 10:00, or so we thought. We walked down the street, flagged a taxi, and I showed him the address of the school. He paused for a moment, and then with much miming managed to ask me what the name of the place was. I said eisei-fukushi-daigakku, and he grinned and nodded, and we were off.
After a few minutes of silence, he suddenly asked me a question, and when I motioned that I spoke no Japanese, he repeated one word several times.
"Noburu, noburu, noburu. "
What is noburu...?
Then he said:
"Obama."
Bing! Light bulb! The Japanese have no "l" sound, so noburu meant Nobel! I said "Hai, hai!" (Yes, yes!). Awesome taxi driver.
Then the bottom of my stomach dropped out. We were following the same route that we walked the day before. Oh no! My mind went crazy, thinking that perhaps we had the wrong directions... Augh! Lesson to be learned, if you ever travel in Japan:
TRUST THE TAXI DRIVERS.
They know what they are doing. Turns out, so does Google maps. I had misinterpreted the map and the middle school we thought Google maps was pointing to? Just a few blocks away from the Nursing school.
Damn it.
Anyway, the festival was awesome. A band played a few numbers, and quite well. Then the girls got on stage and did three choreographed dance numbers, set to pop music, all of which were really well done.
After the dance numbers, the girls showed us around the school a little, and then we sat and talked for a few hours. One of the friends of the girls had brought her son, who must have been 2 or so. I believe his name was Coco (Coco-chan, in Japanese, the chan essentially means little). Soooo cute. The girls got several pictures, which may or may not be arriving by email eventually.
After a couple of hours of talking, we finally ran out of conversation, and made our way back. Turns out it's about a 45 minute walk. Bleh.
That night, after Ian and Shan napped for a good four hours, we went to Joey's place, where he hosted a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. We were joined by Joel, a friend of Joey's who is also into D&D.
EIGHT HOURS LATER, we had slain several harpies, some skeletons, a succubus and her summoned Vroc (giant bird), and a Lich with wicked amounts of health, and an insanely irritating spell called Disintegrate that hits for 2d6/level. Joey was rolling 22 six sided dice to figure out the damage. Ian nearly died.
Anyway, at about 3:30am we headed back to Mike's apartment and crashed.
That's pretty much the extent of our adventures in Utsunomiya. Next post will cover Yokohama, and the tallest building in Japan!
Until next time,
Dane
Friday, October 2, 2009
The Next Stage
Hello all,
If you've been following the chronology of this blog you'll notice there's a chunk of a couple days missing between getting to Hiroshima and Beppu. That post about Hiroshima will show up, but we left it in Nate's hands and he asked for a little more time to write about it. Rest assured, it's coming.
We left Beppu on the 28th and stayed another wonderful night with Joey, Ton, and Luke in Utsunomiya. The next day we left for Tokyo to meet with the gaijin house agency so we could move into our apartments. We got into the city at 6:00, couldn't find any of the landmarks on our map, realized we had confused Tokyo Station with Shinjuku Station, took another train, ran through Shinjuku, and burst into the agency's office at 7:59, just before they closed at 8:00. Fortunately we were able to sign our lease agreements and move into our apartments that evening. That's where we've been these last few days.
As living quarters go, we've seen worse. The apartments are in a suburb of Tokyo called Kosuge, which puts us about 30 minutes away from Shinjuku. We have one room that's 12 m^2 with a tiny table, a bed, and a futon on the first floor that Shan and I live in (I'm on the floor, because that's how dibs works), and a 9 m^2 apartment on the second floor with two futons for Nate and Dane. There's a communal bathroom and shower and a shared kitchen with basic uttensils. Apart from us, there's an Asian woman living in another apartment who doesn't seem to like us (she has yet to respond to inciting comments like "Good afternoon" and "How are you?") and a cockroach that I've dubbed Lewis.
My only real problem with this place is the garbage. It's not that we live in a filthy house. Quite the opposite. I just think it's a little overly complicated when you have four separate trash bins, each with it's own label for what should go in it, and you still think you're missing a bin. We're supposed to separate the trash into burnable, non-burnable, glass, PET (plastic) bottles, and plastic waste. This raises interesting questions, such as "At what temperature is something no longer considered burnable?" "If it melts but does not actually produce flame, is it burnable?" "Can you burn styrofoam?" The gaijin house agency showed us an eight-minute video about it that said one thing, the list on the fridge says another, and our housemate seems to sort trash in a way that completely contradicts the first two. The only thing we know for sure is that we're doing it wrong, since on our third day we found a post-it note politely asking us to sort the damn garbage properly.
Our day-to-day existence has been very laid back compared to our traveling of the first few weeks. We usually wake up between 11:00 and 1:30, have a leisurely breakfast-lunch, make an excursion to Tokyo or the nearby neighborhood, pick up dinner from the nearby 24-hour grocery store, cook, then hang around in the rooms browsing the internet or watching anime together. We usually make a food run to the grocery store around midnight, then crash at about 3:00 or 4:00. We'll probably get off our asses and go do stuff soon, but right now it feels really nice to just not do anything for a while. Anyway, with this post our blog is finally caught up and current (except for Nate's long-awaited Hiroshima post) and we'll do our best to keep it that way.
Peace,
ian
If you've been following the chronology of this blog you'll notice there's a chunk of a couple days missing between getting to Hiroshima and Beppu. That post about Hiroshima will show up, but we left it in Nate's hands and he asked for a little more time to write about it. Rest assured, it's coming.
We left Beppu on the 28th and stayed another wonderful night with Joey, Ton, and Luke in Utsunomiya. The next day we left for Tokyo to meet with the gaijin house agency so we could move into our apartments. We got into the city at 6:00, couldn't find any of the landmarks on our map, realized we had confused Tokyo Station with Shinjuku Station, took another train, ran through Shinjuku, and burst into the agency's office at 7:59, just before they closed at 8:00. Fortunately we were able to sign our lease agreements and move into our apartments that evening. That's where we've been these last few days.
As living quarters go, we've seen worse. The apartments are in a suburb of Tokyo called Kosuge, which puts us about 30 minutes away from Shinjuku. We have one room that's 12 m^2 with a tiny table, a bed, and a futon on the first floor that Shan and I live in (I'm on the floor, because that's how dibs works), and a 9 m^2 apartment on the second floor with two futons for Nate and Dane. There's a communal bathroom and shower and a shared kitchen with basic uttensils. Apart from us, there's an Asian woman living in another apartment who doesn't seem to like us (she has yet to respond to inciting comments like "Good afternoon" and "How are you?") and a cockroach that I've dubbed Lewis.
My only real problem with this place is the garbage. It's not that we live in a filthy house. Quite the opposite. I just think it's a little overly complicated when you have four separate trash bins, each with it's own label for what should go in it, and you still think you're missing a bin. We're supposed to separate the trash into burnable, non-burnable, glass, PET (plastic) bottles, and plastic waste. This raises interesting questions, such as "At what temperature is something no longer considered burnable?" "If it melts but does not actually produce flame, is it burnable?" "Can you burn styrofoam?" The gaijin house agency showed us an eight-minute video about it that said one thing, the list on the fridge says another, and our housemate seems to sort trash in a way that completely contradicts the first two. The only thing we know for sure is that we're doing it wrong, since on our third day we found a post-it note politely asking us to sort the damn garbage properly.
Our day-to-day existence has been very laid back compared to our traveling of the first few weeks. We usually wake up between 11:00 and 1:30, have a leisurely breakfast-lunch, make an excursion to Tokyo or the nearby neighborhood, pick up dinner from the nearby 24-hour grocery store, cook, then hang around in the rooms browsing the internet or watching anime together. We usually make a food run to the grocery store around midnight, then crash at about 3:00 or 4:00. We'll probably get off our asses and go do stuff soon, but right now it feels really nice to just not do anything for a while. Anyway, with this post our blog is finally caught up and current (except for Nate's long-awaited Hiroshima post) and we'll do our best to keep it that way.
Peace,
ian
Beppu and Humidity
Beppu is a comfortably medium size city on the southern end of Japan. It is nestled between heavily forested mountains and the pacific ocean.
Beppu is also situated in an area scattered with hotsprings, and thus it is Japan's official onsen (hot spring) town.
Because the onsen is a piece of Japanese tradition dating back thousands of years, it has certain rituals and customs associated with it. The onsen is probably the best indicator of Japanese attention to cleanliness. The onsen bath houses are split by gender, and swimsuits are not allowed in the pools. The only piece of cloth allowed into the bathing area is a small towel for each person. This can be used to cover one's self, but most people don't bother. To keep the pools clean, everyone must wash thorougly, with soap, at washing stations clustered along one wall. The nudity was a bit of a shock for us, at first, but we quickly became accustomed to it.
One thing to know is that there is no chlorine in the pools. Just mineral water. This may make some people hesitant, but let me tell you, the Japanese onsens are far cleaner than any American hot tub I have ever been in, and they have the added advantage of making you feel really good after you are done. You will never feel that dry itchy chlorinated awfulness that American pools bestow upon you.
Another thing to make note of: most onsens, including the really good ones, are cheap. The best one I went to in Beppu cost 100 yen. That's $1.11 according to Google. Our hostel had an onsen, that we were free to use at any time. On the 26th of each month, every onsen in Beppu costs 260 yen, even the most expensive ones.
Another thing about Beppu: the air itself is practically an onsen. It was unbelievably humid. The air was a warm soup. I sweated constantly.
We stayed for three nights, and had an awesome time. We lazed around in various mineral pools, played much Fire Emblem, ate cup ramen, and slept lots.
Beppu is also situated in an area scattered with hotsprings, and thus it is Japan's official onsen (hot spring) town.
Because the onsen is a piece of Japanese tradition dating back thousands of years, it has certain rituals and customs associated with it. The onsen is probably the best indicator of Japanese attention to cleanliness. The onsen bath houses are split by gender, and swimsuits are not allowed in the pools. The only piece of cloth allowed into the bathing area is a small towel for each person. This can be used to cover one's self, but most people don't bother. To keep the pools clean, everyone must wash thorougly, with soap, at washing stations clustered along one wall. The nudity was a bit of a shock for us, at first, but we quickly became accustomed to it.
One thing to know is that there is no chlorine in the pools. Just mineral water. This may make some people hesitant, but let me tell you, the Japanese onsens are far cleaner than any American hot tub I have ever been in, and they have the added advantage of making you feel really good after you are done. You will never feel that dry itchy chlorinated awfulness that American pools bestow upon you.
Another thing to make note of: most onsens, including the really good ones, are cheap. The best one I went to in Beppu cost 100 yen. That's $1.11 according to Google. Our hostel had an onsen, that we were free to use at any time. On the 26th of each month, every onsen in Beppu costs 260 yen, even the most expensive ones.
Another thing about Beppu: the air itself is practically an onsen. It was unbelievably humid. The air was a warm soup. I sweated constantly.
We stayed for three nights, and had an awesome time. We lazed around in various mineral pools, played much Fire Emblem, ate cup ramen, and slept lots.
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