And Sometimes Why

Category: Japan

  • ATM Lottery

    I took this picture at my bank while waiting in the lobby.

    This poster explains how the bank’s ATM lottery works. Instead of cash, you’re basically using the funds in your account to withdraw lottery tickets, which pop out of the same slot.

    I’m not sure if this would be illegal in the US (Can banks get a gambling license? There’s a scary thought.), but even if they could I can’t imagine a bank ever doing it because at best the gambling association would seem in especially bad taste after the recent financial sector turmoil.

    At worst, I could see people getting the idea that their money isn’t safe in a bank that likes to promote gambling.

    I haven’t noticed the bank gambling away my money, though perhaps that’s why Japanese banks don’t pay interest on deposits. 😉

  • Unsliced Sashimi

    It may seem obvious, but unsliced sashimi is available from every supermarket in Japan.

    On the left is tuna (maguro) and on the right is salmon (sake).

  • Secretarial Certificate

    This is Yuko’s administrative assistant certificate (and accompanying wallet card) that she earned when she worked in the office of the president of Matsuyama University. It’s officially the 秘書検定, and is the Japanese equivalent of the CPS exam (which I didn’t even know existed until today).

    It tests a variety of theoretical and practical skills useful to administrative assistants, including the stylized manner of serving tea that should be used when receiving high-ranked guests.

  • Honey Nut Crunch

    Breakfast cereal isn’t consumed in Japan the same way it’s consumed in the States. Most Japanese people prefer a traditional Japanese breakfast including rice, fish, vegetable pickles, raw egg, and/or miso soup, with hurried professionals and college students recently starting to eat dry toast (by itself), but the drink is always green tea.

    Because of this, the variety of breakfast cereal available here is very small, consisting mostly of corn flakes (in plain, frosted, and chocolate varieties) and a few varieties of granola, which is what I usually eat for breakfast.

    You can get boxes of stuff like this in a few places around town, but it’s really expensive. This box was about $4.50, and is barely big enough for two days’ breakfast. You can see my cell phone there for size.

  • Chocolate dog heads

    Chocolate dog heads make great gifts in Japan.

    I received these little treats from a student who was leaving the school where I worked.

    They tasted quite good, very rich if that’s your thing, but the real artistry was in how they looked; crafted as you can see into three very distinct dogs’ heads.

    Canines never tasted so good.

  • Moving typhoon

    “Don’t they all move?” you may ask. Yes, but I mean “move” as in “Let’s go rent a truck for half a day and move this stuff in weather that’s so crazy all the schools are closed and the trains stopped running.” I helped Joe move his scooter, bicycle, and some miscellaneous stuff from Sakurai (a small town about 45 minutes away) to Matsuyama in gale force winds and driving rain. We actually had to take the panes off the second story window to lower the bed on a rope. Awesome.

    I barely made it to work on time, and all our classes were cancelled today, leaving all the teachers doing administrative work in the office. Not so bad, but a little slow.

    In any event, let’s hope this storm blows over like the last one did.

  • Christmas Eve

    Yuko and I just had a great Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas Eve is a big date night in Japan, even more so than Valentine’s Day as the occasion for a romantic evening.

    I didn’t get the memo until it was almost too late, literally only a few days ago. By that time, it was too late to be sly about figuring out where she wanted to go and making a reservation. We ended up eating in a Japanese restaurant on top of the tallest department store in town, after I made a deal with Yuko that if she made a reservation anywhere she wanted, I’d pay for dinner.

    After dinner, we went to “Betty Crocker’s,” a dessert cafe near the center of town, where they happened to have a live jazz duet performing jazz standards and jazzed up Christmas tunes. I was a little disappointed the staff wouldn’t let us sit closer because those tables were for larger parties, but I understood.

    It was nice to relax in the ambiance the live music created, and if I go back it will be for the music, certainly not the paltry selection of sweets and basic coffee and teas they have.

  • What Were You Thinking?

    I don’t even know what to say to this, really. Other than intentionally choosing a name that would drive away English-speaking customers, the only possible explanation for this shoe’s phenomenally bad name is that no one checked what the name actually meant in English.

    If you find yourself questioning how a nationwide chain of shoe stores like ABC Mart might do something like that, feel free to browse through Engrish.com a bit.

  • Water shortage

    Those of you who live in Matsuyama will know that I’m not writing about this season, so I’ll start by saying that I took this picture last year.

    This was at the height of water shortage fears, with rolling water shutoffs scheduled to start in only a few days’ time. I took this picture in a convenience store near my apartment, where they were selling these twenty liter water tanks (empty) and two liter water bottles (full) at a brisk pace.

    This scene really struck me because Matsuyama is not a dry place. We regularly get rain here, and as a result things just grow out of the ground on their own. This is an astonishing fact for someone from Las Vegas, where everything not made of stone needs artificial irrigation. We’ve quite literally made an art form out of low/zero water use landscaping, called xeriscaping.

    The thing is, Matsuyama city draws its water from a nearby dammed river storing rainfall, and if the rainfall level stays below the consumption level for long enough, the city just shuts off water, like rolling blackouts in times of power shortages.

    Contrast this with the seemingly-interminable hemming and hawing over water controls we’ve had in Las Vegas since I moved there in the early eighties, while Lake Mead drops lower and lower every year. There’s never been enough water to support the population and growth rate, and yet we now have about two dozen full size golf courses.

    If water in Las Vegas were priced according to its scarcity and replacability, no one would be able to live there. If, however, they just raised the price of tapwater a few percent, people might think twice about running the tap while they brush their teeth.

    Anyway, to bring it back around, I’m occasionally startled by the clarity and efficiency of things in Japan. Enough so to share it with y’all.

  • Mini Henro

    There’s a religious pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku called the Shikoku Henro (Pilgrimage). There are 88 temples scattered across the island, connected by 1200 kilometers (~750 miles) of road, originally traveled on foot (still the preferred method of making the pilgrimage, though slowly losing ground to modern transport).

    I’d like to make the pilgrimage by bicycle at some point, not out of any sort of religious dedication (which would be obvious if you know me), but for the sense of accomplishment and the opportunity to see many out of the way places in this part of Japan that most foreigners don’t see.

    That being the case, I was delighted when the local international affairs office set up a “mini Henro” walk connecting three of the temples in the Matsuyama area: Jodo-ji to the southeast, Hanta-ji to the east, and (the mac daddy of the area) Ishite-ji in the eastern part of Matsuyama.

    Alissa, Sam, and I were the only foreigners out of the group of 20(?) people that went walking that day. We covered just over five kilometers (a little over three miles) wearing our official pilgrim vests and carrying our official pilgrim staves.

    It was a fun day out, walking under beautifully blue skies just after a refreshing rain, and we even got to be in the prefectural newspaper in a picture with some of Sam’s students we just happened to run into. Good times. =)