Returning to Kansai

 

View from Umeda Sky Garden (with the Gate Tower Building in the background!)

After quite a few long years away, I just came back from my first trip to West Japan in about six years. This was the first time I'd been to the Kansai Region in a long time, and my first time there with family. My fam didn't come visit me for the years I was living in Osaka - my mom is the very definition of a nervous traveller. It took a lot of convincing to finally get her to go, but now that both of my parents are retired, we'd been urging them to travel while they were still relatively healthy. And so, I planned and executed as perfect a 2-week Japan vacation as I could manage, starting in Osaka, of course.

It was so satisfying showing them all the things I love about the Kansai area. I was a little selfish in cutting Tokyo time SO short that they barely saw any of it at all (1 day in Atami, 3 days in Tokyo), but there's so much to see and do just in Osaka and Kyoto alone (never mind all the great places I would have loved to take them in Nara, Wakayama, Shiga, Kobe, et al) that even the week and a half spent there wasn't enough.

Not much had changed, in the places we went, except of course for the extreme number of tourists. On one level, I hate contributing to the overtourism problem. We skipped most places like Kinkakuji, Gion and Kyomizudera that would have been staples to take guests to ten years ago, in the pre-Instagram world. I tried to go off the beaten path when I could. When I saw the chaos of people at Fushimi Inari (when I lived there, there was never any significant number of people on the hiking trails, no matter what time of day we visited), I had tried to prepare myself for the fact that it had become one of the #1 destinations in Kyoto, but it was still mind-boggling to see. The days of using Fushimi Inari's trails as a way to get your daily exercise in (yes, I tried this in 2008 or so, since Keihan Fushimi was just a hop, skip and a jump away from my home station) are long gone. I did get up at 7 AM and hit the trail for old time's sake, and I mostly avoided the crowds, but I had to turn back at the pond, since we were due to move on to our next destination that morning. On that same day, I encountered my first extreme shinkansen delay - the eastbound Tokaido was 30 minutes late leaving Kyoto. Couldn't believe that happened on the day of my parents' very first and only shinkansen trip.

I have a lot to say about the trip, but not enough space to say it all in one post, so I'll divide it into a few entries. I hope you'll enjoy them.

Edokko

 Yikes, it's been a while! I'm so sorry not to have much to share these last few months - or rather, I have tons, but have been so caught up I haven't written any of it!

Last Monday, my second novel launched in paperback and as a Kindle Unlimited exclusive.

I began working on Edokko when I was newly back in Canada and truly felt the sting of leaving Japan behind. It's a joy to see it finally in print, and the publishing process brought me back to those early days (don't miss the cameo of the Japan Foundation's Japanese-Language Institute Kansai, where incoming Osaka JETs gathered for language lessons when we first arrived!) and the ups and downs of expat life. I still miss it very much.

Available now in paperback and ebook format

 

Lily Jennings is Going. To. Japan.

Sixteen and on top of the world, she's beyond excited to be setting off for an entire year as an exchange student in Tokyo. Fashion and fun are foremost on her mind as she arrives ready to meet her new host family and embark on a grand adventure, livestreaming all the way.

What Lily isn't expecting, however, is for her urban host family to cancel at the last moment and leave her hanging with nowhere to live. She's shipped off to the small town of Ajimu (sorry, where!?), a billion miles from anywhere cool and exciting, with a neurotic host sister, no chances for romance, straight-up-vile classmates and a microscopic community watching over her every move.

Too bad for the people of this small town—nothing's going to hold Lily back when she wants something!

Find it on Amazon or your favourite retailer via http://edokko.lorengreene.com!

Pandemic Melon Pan

An acceptable substitute, given the situation

Hello blog, it’s been awhile!

Like most of you, I’ve had little chance to be out and about in town recently, even though I’ve heard about new Japanese restaurants opening up, places closing down, changing hours, etc.

One thing I have noticed, in my neighbourhood at least, is the plethora of options for Japanese food available via delivery services that I had absolutely no idea existed. Normally I’m a bit meh on these apps, because I know a lot of them don’t give a fair cut to the restaurants, and when possible I want to support the restaurant directly. However, in the time of COVID, that’s harder than it used to be. Especially here in Toronto, where we’re under a state of emergency and all dine in options are completely closed.

I want to hope that the restaurants getting on board with DD or UE is helping spread the word that those restaurants exist and therefore are doing them at least a bit of service. I know I’ve found a couple new options in the neighbourhood and beyond that I never knew were even here.

Which brings me to the focus of today’s post!

A couple of weeks ago I started having intense cravings for melon pan. It’s been quite a while since I could get back to my regular source (....Japan), but my baking attempts in the past have also failed. I really just wanted to buy some and be done with it. I used up all my creative cooking/baking karma with the Dalgona phase (and subsequently a lot of Vietnamese egg coffees, steam milks and Thai iced tea batches) back at the beginning of the pandemic.

Muahaha, bring those tasty baked goods right to my door

In Toronto, traditional melon pan is harder to come by, and the only place I could think of that had it was Nakamura Bakery at J-Town in Markham. I thought to myself, well, I’m not willing to drive an hour for melon pan; not today, anyway. But surely something else more local must have popped up in the last 5 years!? Surely someone is making melon pan closer to downtown by this point!?

So I turned to the food delivery apps.

I did a couple of searches for Japanese food, and a couple of searches for melon pan, and I didn’t really find the traditional type that I was looking for, but I found something else of interest. Not too long ago in Baldwin Village (and two other locations), a new shop called Hattendo appeared selling cream pan, originally from Hiroshima. I’d seen their shop in Japan a couple of times; I used to walk by one when I was passing through Yokohama station. But I’d never actually tried their bread. I thought, well, they have cream pan with a melon pan top on it, and black sesame lattes, and they deliver to my house, so let’s give it a go. Ooh! Seasonal flavours!!

Turns out they don't really photograph too well, though

Hattendo’s “melon pan” is a pretty distant cousin of traditional melon pan - what I was really getting was cream pan with a melon pan top, so the interior was unlike melon pan at all. However, it did scratch that itch a little for me. And it definitely opened my eyes to the fact that there are a lot of good Japanese options that have surfaced in Toronto over the past few years.

Since melon pan day, we’ve also ordered in from Little Pebbles, a Japanese bakery in Kensington market, and I have several tasty looking izakaya dinner options marked for the next time we order in. There’s also a new ramen shop in the west end (an area that is sorely lacking in ramen at this point) called Musoshin, and they make shokupan! haven’t tried it yet, but looking forward to getting out there sometime and checking them out. Must be tough to open during this pandemic, so they probably need all the props they can get.

So the next time you’re craving Japanese food in Toronto, even if you want to go pick it up yourself to support the businesses, the delivery apps are actually excellent resources to find out what’s new around town.

In fact, I just discovered that I can get mochi donuts delivered to my house. Be right back...

Hachiko Paperback Is Coming

Well, it's been a tumultuous 8 months, and with the absolute tanking of my industry, yours truly is back at her computer full-time. 

Doing what? Well...I've decided to turn all my attention to my writing, going forward. 

I never expected this, after more than a decade away from my freelancing career, but in that decade I happen to have completed or partially-written 4 novels (two of them Japan-centric), so it felt like the universe was giving me a boost. A boost in which I am stuck in my apartment with 800+ COVID cases popping up in Ontario daily, no job, and the very helpful support of my partner telling me he'd rather I not be working in any job where I have to leave the house. So here's a trial period; for the next eight months, working on these novels is my job. Taking them from unfinished to finished, and doing all the necessary polishing and marketing, is my main focus right now, starting with Meet You By Hachiko. 

So what's new? Well, after 8 months on the Kindle Store, Hachiko is finally getting a paperback copy!

There were definitely points in time when I honestly didn't think this book would ever be on anyone's bookshelf. It was originally a project in my free time leading up to Christmas 2009. I thought that a story about two teen girls, Canadian and Japanese, bonding over their interest in early-2000s Harajuku street style was a touch too niche for most mainstream North American publishers, and teen fiction is well out of the usual scope for the Japan-centric publishers. 

Thanks to progress, though, of the kind I never could have imagined in 2009, here we finally are! Within the next six weeks, the paperback will be on Amazon. After that, who knows what's next!? You can find it on Amazon Canada, or Amazon.com. 

 Expect this blog to be coming back in some capacity as well, when I need a break from the editing drudgery. 

 It's a tough time to be missing Japan (when I was last there, in no way did I ever think I would be away from it this long!) and blogging about that probably isn't going to help much, but maybe I can make it a little easier on those of you who are missing it, too. 

 Thanks for sticking with me!

It Finally Happened

Something was holding me back for a long time, but you know what? I decided, a ridiculous ten years later, that I was going to put this out there.

Thanks all, for your support!

The Young and the Chariotless

When I landed back on Canadian soil in August of 2010, the first thing I did was purchase a bicycle. Having a new bike right away, I hoped, would take away the sting of leaving behind my mama-chari in Osaka, at the very last minute, as I hastily dropped the keys with a Post-It note on my co-worker's desk on the final day. I needed the bike right up until that day, and I didn't have time to deal with boxing it up for transport across the Pacific. I thought that at least if I left it at school, it would be used by someone, and perhaps someday I would see it again. I took the second key home with me, just in case.

The first week home, I bought a cheap Wal-Mart bicycle. I needed to get to work, and I'd become accustomed to the independence of travelling by bike. I also bought a helmet, because unlike in Japan, I was significantly more concerned about being hit by a car. It was a Raleigh five-speed cruiser, and not an expensive one; it did have a partial chain guard, which was the main thing I was missing about my mama-chari at the time, as I remembered ripping up a few pairs of jeans on my mountain bike as a youth. It also had the curved handlebars I liked on cruisers. 

I have to assume the Japanese adapted their bicycles from European ones, as they were trading with the Netherlands as early as the 1600s; Japanese bikes bear strong similarities to Dutch ones. The covered chain guard and skirt guard are very uncommon in North America. Fender mudflaps and rear racks occasionally show up on American-made bikes, but are considered standard in Japan, along with the rear wheel lock and ubiquitous front basket. I would have liked to go for a bike with all the trimmings, but I had to settle for what Wal-Mart had in their inventory at the time. In retrospect, I was actually lucky to get a bike that had two out of the six features I wanted. I installed a rear rack and basket myself.

Eventually, as all Wal-Mart bikes are wont to do, my bike began losing steam in its 4th year, and during a particularly rough trip down into the Nordheimer Ravine one autumn, my jacket bounced out of my rear basket and twirled itself around the derailleur, which fortunately did not end in my dying in the ravine. The bike was never particularly good at switching gears again.

Dutch in action at Casa Loma

But we're going off on a tangent now. As I searched for a replacement to my bike (I had taken that cheap Wal-Mart bike with me on the plane to Toronto, wrapped in a tarp - can you believe it?) I decided that it had to be Dutch or nothing. I wanted a skirt guard; I wanted a proper rear rack. I wanted a mama-chari. I walked down Bloor Street taking photos of bikes I liked and jotting down their make and model to Google later. I never walked by a bike without giving it a once-over. To my surprise, the premium to get such luxuries as full chain guards required paying CAD $600+ for the bike. As I looked at bike shop after bike shop, almost buying a Giant-brand Liv Simple, I realized that I would never be able to tick all the boxes affordably. I finally settled for a step-through Beater Bike, with a partial chain, and a rear rack. What I hadn't bargained on was how much less hill-friendly the Beater was going to be compared to my Raleigh, with its fat tires and five speeds. The Beater, gorgeous though it was, was useless on hills, and the tires were the perfect size for getting caught in streetcar tracks. Riding it was exhausting. So I went back to the drawing board, formulating a plan for my trip to Japan in February to just buy a cheap mama-chari, have them box it up right in the shop, walk it to the post office and pay to have it sent home. I figured I'd be out $150 for the bike, $50 for domestic, $100 for the international shipping. Maybe a bit from customs on the other side. That sounded a lot better than the $600-ish I was pricing for Dutch-style bikes with gears in Toronto.

I think you guys already know this is going to go downhill.

I left the job of actually buying one until the last moments of our trip. I looked at bikes at Asahi Cycle in Rinku Town and Tokyo, but I never spotted one close to a post office (an essential for this plan to work). Eventually, when I was on my own in Tokyo with just one day left in the trip, I realized this wasn't going to work. I went on Rakuten and found a seller that did international shipping for Daiwa bikes, and I bought a cute pink Nana+ bike. No need to drag anything to the post office myself! They shipped to Canada!

...except that they only shipped to Canada through their proxy service. I had used Tenso before, but not in a few years, and the hoops they had me jump through just to get the bike shipped anywhere were out of this world. I waited two weeks without seeing my item appear on the "my page" section, even though the domestic shipping said it'd been delivered. I emailed them, and had no response for days. I started to worry that maybe this company was less reputable than I originally thought. I sent a third help request, which got a response at last, and was informed since it was oversized, they hadn't yet connected the purchase to my account, oh, and also it was too oversized to be shipped abroad. It had arrived fully assembled. I learned later that this is the standard for bike shops in Japan. Tenso said they were unable to downsize it for me by removing the pedals/turning the handlebars, as they weren't trained to do so.

From there we began the lengthy process of finding a solution, any solution. Tenso offered to ship it elsewhere in Japan for me, but in order to do that, I had to verify my address in Canada. Mind you, I'd already done that when I bought things through Tenso in the past, but it had to be done again, including scans of my driver's license and the receipt of a postcard at my mailing address in Canada. That's right, I had to wait for a physical postcard to arrive by postal mail at my apartment. Only when they were satisfied that I really did live at my address in Toronto would they allow me to redirect the bike somewhere else, but obviously, not to Toronto! They urged me to let them courier it to a friend.

I don't have tons of friends in Japan whom I'd be comfortable asking for a favour so large as "can you receive this bike in the mail, bring it to a bike shop to take it apart, and put it back in the mail?" and even fewer that I wouldn't mind being laughed at by. (As genuinely fond as I am of my co-workers at 〇〇 High School, and as much as they already knew I was quirky, I prefer not to be remembered as "that one that asked me to ship a bike to her".) In the end, I asked my friend Nicole, of Irish Chocolate fame. She returned to Japan after leaving 〇〇 University and is now an English teacher in Chiba. She saved me from a separate mishap involving buying Mister Donut cups on Yahoo! Auctions, and so I thought she might be able to intervene again. Luckily for me, Nicole agreed, and some time later my bike appeared, fully formed, at her apartment.

Nicole, bless her, bought a bike-sized cardboard box online and wheeled it all down to her local shop, where they took it apart and packed it up. Then she brought it back to her place (how!?!?) and called Japan Post for an at-home pickup. Except...now it didn't fall within Japan Post's size guidelines. The JP Post guys returned to Nicole's apartment two hours later with the box in tow. It was too big! She told me it would have to be done via a commercial shipping company like FedEx. Now we were getting way, way too expensive, and I wasn't sure what to do next. I'd already sunk more money into the box and the domestic shipping to Nicole, and the losses were too big for me to cut now. We decided to Frankenstein the box to make it smaller, since that approach worked for Emily when she sent her kotatsu home, but after some measuring, it literally needed to be half the size. Nicole promised to look up some options when she got home from her vacation in Europe.

I decided to take a different tactic. My roommate, M, made plans to go to Japan for a concert in October. I decided to ask her if she'd check the bike as her second piece of luggage (oversized). She agreed without too much protest, to my relief, and so I asked Nicole to have the bike couriered to Narita Airport instead. Surprise - the luggage shipping company that we usually use for the airport, doesn't accept bikes. Nothing about the size, never mind that it was in a cardboard box and disassembled, they just don't do bicycles. Nicole had to call JAL ABC, because apparently Sagawa thought we were asking them to ship some expensive French racing bike worth $8,000 and not the little steel mama-chari I bought at Daiwa Cycle for under two hundred bucks. Luckily JAL ABC agreed to take it (after warning me about a COD fee) and it was delivered to Narita on the day M was scheduled to return to Canada.

Ah, but it's not over yet! As I gallivanted through Montreal on a rainy Saturday night, just before midnight, my cell phone alarm went off, reminding me that "M Is At The Airport Right Now." And then there's an email in my inbox dated 30 minutes prior, saying "Does your bike have suspension? Because if it does, I can't take it with me." Followed by, "If you don't answer soon, I have to leave." Oh noooooooo--

I emailed back as quickly as my thumbs would function, NO, NO SUSPENSION

ALSO PLEASE DON'T LEAVE

After all, what was the next step if the bike got stranded at the airport? Call ABC and try to convince them to ship it back to Nicole (I really wanted to stop bugging her) or to another friend? Jes kindly agreed to receive it when I sent a desperate-sounding email asking for her address, but I didn't want to face the phone call where I explained that I, an uninvolved third party, wanted to use a foreign credit card to have this package sent not back to the sender or recipient but to someone else altogether. Also, what was Jes going to do when she got it? It was just too big!

Luckily, M hadn't checked in for her flight just yet, and decided to forge ahead. Air Canada, bless them, accepted the box without complaint, and it was successfully on its way to Canada at last. I waited until 2:30 AM for the inevitable email about something going wrong, before finally dropping off to sleep. In the morning I called for an airport van cab, and then I called The Bike Joint down on Harbord Street to arrange assembly, and then I recruited a friend with a car to drive it down there with me. BIKE BIKE BIKE BIKE BIKE.

It wasn't until she arrived in Calgary and they opened the box for inspection that M realized the extent to which I had thrown her under the bus.

I found this note written on the whiteboard when I got home, after M was safely sleeping off the jet lag:

...but at least I have my bike.

VHS Tape Bonanza

A box of tapes on their way out of the library

The Japan Foundation Toronto is moving, and though that means a lot of changes and adjustments for those of us who found Bloor and Avenue pretty convenient, the upside is that the library is overhauling, which means clearing out old items, which means VHS TAPE GIVEAWAYS.

You might have guessed from my persistent interest in all things retro, that I have just a teensy bit of nostalgia for decades past, with the 80s/90s (my formative years) entrenched firmly at the top. That means I don't just treasure the memories of taping my favourite shows on the family VCR - I still own the family VCR. I actually received a VCR-DVD combo unit for Christmas of 2013! However, 99% of my tape collection is at my parents' house, so I left it there to begin the long project of dubbing dozens of old favourites onto DVD whenever I visit them for the holidays.

So, when the Japan Foundation Toronto decided to get rid of most of its videotape collection to save space...well, needless to say, the airport x-ray techs probably got a kick out of my suitcase as it went through the scanner on my most recent trip back home. It was so hard to resist! I found some fabulous Tokyo-in-the-late-80s-early-90s snapshots with videos like Neighborhood Tokyo, Tokyo Date, NHK The News 1985 and Norimono Ippai. Lots of glamour shots of the Yurikamome Line, pre-extension, in that last one. I also scored the Ichikawa classic Tokyo Olympiad, and four out of a set of Japanese recent-history programs covering events like the Hanshin earthquake, the marriage of the crown Prince (now Emperor), and the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which was actually just in the newspaper here, as the 30th anniversary was yesterday.

All in all, a pretty impressive bounty of pre-millennial pop culture. I'm sad that these tapes can't be borrowed from the JFT library anymore, but on the other hand, it was good timing for me, because I was able to take the time to watch and enjoy them all, and they won't end up in a landfill, either. I was happy to see how quickly the rest of the tapes (there were at least 500 given away over two days) were picked up by other patrons to take home.

Looks like at least a few others out there still have VCRs!

Hobonichi Techo Life

In 2008 while living in Japan, I was finally able to play MOTHER 3, a recent (at the time) sequel to a cult hit video game that I loved as a teenager. My brothers and I owned a Super Nintendo and a copy of EarthBound, by far the house's "preferred game." Released in 1994, it was a role-playing game set in rural America, starring four "normal" kids (or as normal as spunky psychics, princes and genius teenagers can get, anyway). Years later, the sequel MOTHER 3 got a Japan-only release.

For me, it was perfect timing. Uncertain how to make Japanese-speaking friends, I had been hanging out mostly with fellow JETs and exchange students from the nearby university. I spent a lot of time in my apartment chatting online with people back home and listening to Internet radio. And as it happened, that was where I had the good fortune to meet my first real Japanese friends - not in Japan, but on the Internet.

This could turn into a much longer story (and my social life isn't actually what the post is about!) so to keep it short, I'll just say that I got involved with a certain well-known EarthBound community and encountered a Japanese fan of the game within it, Mana. She was about my age and lived in Gunma-ken, a prefecture north of Tokyo. The two of us arranged a meeting during one of my visits to Tokyo and hit it off, and from then on, whenever I was in the area, I made an effort to see her and her friends that I had gotten to know. All were fans of the MOTHER series, so I went from a fairly small amount of fandom involvement to quite a lot, very quickly. 

Japan was a good place to be at the time for fans of this 20-year-old series - aside from MOTHER 3's relatively recent release, there had actually been brand-new merchandise released in arcades (Game Centers), The King of Games was selling official t-shirts out of a shop in Kyoto's Teramachi, thirty minutes from my apartment, and you could still buy the special MOTHER 3 Game Boy Micro in stores - I still regret not owning one of these! I struggled through reading the blog of MOTHER creator and copywriter Itoi Shigesato, and I went to LOFT on not one but two separate Januarys to buy his well-known Hobonichi Techo, a day planner with customizable covers and thoughtful quotes. I did not make the purchase on either occasion - after all, every year CLAIR sent us a compact, designed-for-JETs planner in the mail that I was quite fond of, and I also received a small calendar book from my school. While I wanted a techo because of the Itoi connection, I couldn't validate the expense when CLAIR's version was smaller, printed in English, and had subway maps and unit conversions on the back pages. None of the covers interested me enough to drop ¥3,500 on one, so I settled for simply looking them over whenever I visited Kyoto. There were other ways to show my MOTHER love, like this fancy colour-changing Ultimate Chimera shirt that cost an absolutely astronomical amount of money at the time.

At one point Mana-chan and friends, myself included, attended a MOTHER event in Tokyo where I even ran into into two other English-speaking members of that community, one of whom was an expat JET like me - though a CIR, not an ALT - from a few prefectures away. We hadn't really known each other at the time, certainly not enough for me to recognize them offhand, but I was completely gobsmacked to spot someone in the subway station wearing a Ness t-shirt, and rushed up to them immediately to say hello.

It's been some years since that event, and though MOTHER influences my life to this day, my active involvement has waned pretty considerably since leaving Japan. Not so of the JET I met at the event in Tokyo, Lindsay - she now translates and localizes for the company belonging to the creator of the MOTHER series, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun!

I can't tell you how awesome it is to see a fan succeed not only at entering the industry professionally, but to have the incredible good fortune (not to mention the moxie to go after it in the first place!) to work with Itoi himself. So when word got out that Hobonichi was releasing an English version of the techo, translated and localized by Lindsay, I decided it was finally my year, despite having converted over pretty thoroughly to Android's convenient Google Calendar access.

Typically, I have never been great with keeping up planners. Not since high school have I used an agenda on a regular basis. But my techo's design and ease of use (can't bring my phone into company meetings!) and stylishness and POCKETS has driven it home.

(No, I don't always save my TTC transfers!)

I use it for writing fiction ideas, dates and times and details for stories, copying the office calendar down so I can see it at home, collecting movie and concert ticket stubs, noting what foods I liked at restaurants and how much I spent, and more recently tracking Bitcoin gains and losses. I also get to use stickers I brought home from Japan and my immense Muji pen collection, and imagine my surprise when I discovered that two of the other staff in my office also have Hobonichi techos!

It's been a bit tough carrying around a book all the time when I cart around plenty of heavy things in my purse, not to mention switching from digital back to analogue again, but I'm already dreaming about putting my techo on the shelf at the end of the year and having this record of 2014 to flip through again someday...it's much more personal than reading back through Twitter logs!

I guess I can't possibly be shocked that MOTHER continues to exert that subtle influence over my days. I might even have to pull out the big guns and use some of my carefully hoarded Mr. Saturn stickers.

What are you waiting for!? Start your techo life!

Writing About Tokyo

Commemorating the 1964 Olympics at Jingu Bashi

I don't think I've ever mentioned on Tadaimatte before that I had written a novel - it's true! 

As you might have guessed, story writing is an outlet for me, and in 2008 while living in Osaka, I devoted quite a lot of effort to penning my first book. At the time, I was enamoured with Tokyo, and deeply interested in studying the evolution of popular culture in The Big Mikan. I went to the library in Hikarigaoka and thumbed through photos of the area from the 60s, I penned thoughtful poems about umbrellas and imagined the lives of the people bobbing through Hachiko Square, watched Rockabilly dancers in Yoyogi Park, traced the steps of Shiki and Beat and Neku from The World Ends With You, read vintage Tezuka manga, attended Comiket, visited all the shops Shigesato Itoi recommended in interviews about MOTHER, sat on the bridge at Harajuku, visited Tokyo 1964 Olympic sites, trolled Jimbocho bookstores in hopes of finding the original 1983 English translation of The Rose of Versailles, and generally fell in love with the way the city had been depicted in works of fiction. I used words like hokoten (short for hokousha tengoku) and expected people around me to actually know what they meant.

In reality, Tokyo - particularly the long trip I took alone in 2008 - was a fairly private experience, simply because I didn't know anyone else who got excited over things like Olympic plaques, croquette rolls and showa retro. I spent something like twelve days wandering the city mostly alone, with no plan, eating curry and rice balls and occasionally having only the vaguest idea of where I was going to spend the night (!). I visited Yokohama and Hakone during this memorable vacation, but spent most of it in Shibuya and Odaiba, having real "down time" in Tokyo for the first time.

One post couldn't possibly sum up how I feel about the capital...but I suppose that's why I wrote a book. I sent it around to just a couple of publishers, as it was such a specialized topic that I couldn't imagine a big company picking it up. I've sat on it long enough now, though, that I've begun to think that self-publishing is the way to go - as intimidating as that is!

So, over the next weeks and months, I'll be continuing to work on this project with the help of my good friend Zippo, and maybe soon you'll be able to download the book right here!

*edit*

And now, you can! Whoa! Check out Meet You By Hachiko on Amazon!

Thinking

The backstreets of Gojo, Kyoto

Sometimes I will think back to some incredibly insignificant detail of my life in Osaka and just be completely floored by how strong a reaction those memories elicit. Nothing is immune - today, glimpsing a photo of Ebisuchō Station on the Sakaisuji subway line, a filthy hovel at best and an unpleasant place to visit even in daylight, caused the wind to just go out of me, remembering those nights I spent wandering Den Den Town. 

Of course, that's what I created this blog for. I really hope that at times other expats and ex-expats see my posts and find a little bit of themselves in them, too. Even though the sad nostalgia can be draining at times, it's better to remember well now so that we can continue to remember fondly, later.

Nengajou

These traditional mailboxes can still be found around Japan

I've mentioned before how fun and interesting it is to take part in holiday traditions in Japan. During my first year in Osaka, as winter set in and Christmas decorations began to appear, so too did New Year's (oshougatsu) paraphernalia. For those unaware, New Year's is the biggest holiday in the nation, and loaded with customs very interesting to a visitor. Each New Year's, I took in a different type of celebration - once I did it traditionally, with ozouni and a shrine visit on January 1st, once in Tokyo at Aqua City Odaiba's shrine and osechi, and once in my own town with toshikoshi soba, watching the shrine next door burn its old offerings. 

Every year, though, I sent the customary New Year's postcards, called nengajou (年賀状). These cards are mailed to friends, family and co-workers, and as long as you pop them in the mailbox by December 25th, they will arrive in mailboxes everywhere on exactly January 1st. There are markings on the cards signalling to postal workers to hold them until New Year's; in fact, in my city, in December most mailboxes had one of their slots (usually there is a 'domestic' and an 'other' slot) entirely converted into nengajou drop-offs. I bumbled through my first year with some awkward store-bought cards, then moved onto making my own cards with special New Year's stamps.

Before leaving for Japan, I did a Christmas card list, and it was a tedious venture with the amount of friends I included at the time. After moving back to Canada, though, I continued sending nengajou rather than switching back to Christmas cards. I tend to forget about keeping up with communication when you take Facebook and Twitter out of the equation, but I can at least make a commitment during the holidays to remind people I've fallen out of touch with that I'm thinking of them, and sending cards for New Year's is a little more unique than sending Christmas cards...plus, nobody wants to receive a Christmas card after December 25th, but New Year's cards can trickle in a little late with no repercussions during a rough holiday season. It helps when you're sending cards all over the world - my biggest batches go out to the U.S. and Canada, and some to Japan where they'll be held until January 1st as long as I get them in the mail early, but some also go out to the Netherlands, Venezuela, Germany and points beyond, where I can't control when they'll arrive. The time flexibility there is definitely great.

Store-bought nengajou have lottery numbers on them which you can use (if you live in Japan) to win prizes. I never quite caught on to this when I lived abroad (admittedly, I sent far more cards than I ever received) but it's a great concept. Even homemade cards are often made using blanks from the post office with all the lottery information pre-printed. I feel a little bad that the cards I now send to Japanese friends have no lottery opportunities, but living in Canada restricts my opportunities to buy cards. Instead, I pick five or six of the free "make-your-own" templates Japan Post offers every year in November, and I have them printed up with my address and the 年賀 mark on the back, in the more traditional landscape-style design that we see on Western postcards. Looking over the designs each year is a joy and writing out my messages and addresses for Japanese friends is a good way to practice handwriting skills.

My first batch of template cards, in 2011.
Not great examples of my handwriting, but this year's batch looks much better!

Spreading this little bit of Japanese culture that many living outside the country wouldn't normally get to experience is great fun, and I love receiving postcards from my friends in Japan. I also like to think that when my co-workers back in Osaka receive a card from me, they feel a little better about the sort of revolving-door situation that is the unfortunate reality of ALTs in Japan, and know that I am still thinking of them, even years on. 

Snackoos

My friend and former co-worker recently sent me this box of sweets from Japan. I was absolutely thrilled to open it - it was like Christmas had come early! Blendy Matcha Milk, Meltykisses, karintou, Koala cookies and more - there were even traditional Kyoto wagashi, sweets I took to tea ceremony and properly enjoyed, of course!

I missed Canadian candy severely when I was abroad, but Japanese snacks are just as exciting now that I'm home...!

Mister Donut

A few months ago, I was driving through Vaughan, north of Toronto, on my way to IKEA, when I passed something that took me completely by surprise. It was a sign that had once said 'Master Donut,' in exactly the same font as in the photo here. Seems like that building was once a MisDo location that changed the name and kept most of the sign lettering, and a little thrill went through me to see it.

Mister Donut is by far the most popular donut chain in Japan. Krispy Kreme and Doughnut Plant have given MisDo a little competition in Tokyo, but with over 1,000 stores nationwide, it's unlikely that it's much for them to worry about!

I really liked Mister Donut - as a Canadian, my loyalties do lie with Tim Horton's, but it's hard to argue with an Angel Cream.

Of course, Canada no longer has Mister Donut restaurants, despite Wikipedia's claims - in fact, I haven't had any luck with them outside of Japan, even if I truly expected (and I don't) to find them anything like their branches in Asia. Though the chain was founded in the United States, most of the locations turned into Dunkin' Donuts in the early 90s. (The two franchises were actually created by brothers-in-law who broke off their partnership to begin their own chains of coffee and doughnut shops.)

In Pennsylvania and Ohio, many Mister Donut stores became known as Donut Connection, serving the same menu as Mister Donut once did (and my attempt to visit one of these on the way back to Toronto from Columbus last year failed, too!), and the Godfrey, Illinois location is supposedly still in business under the Mister Donut name, but it is the only one left.

It's a shame, because I found Mister Donut donuts a great deal lighter, fluffier and less greasy/heavy than others, plus I love iconic brands. I collected the MisDo point cards and had traded them in for a bunch of the special coloured coffee cups before I left. I hoped to obtain all six colours. As it turns out, disaster struck my cups one day, and now I only have two remaining!

On a future trip to Japan, I'm hoping to pick those up somehow. I don't think I could possibly eat the hundreds of donuts necessary to get all four via points, but I'll give it my best try, especially since to me, these donuts are head and shoulders above Tim's. Jam-filled and Bavarian cream are not my thing - but give me green tea, dark chocolate pudding, Pon du Lion or sugary, fluffy whip, and I could most certainly make a good effort toward my cups on a month-long trip!

Mister Donut, I miss you! Come back to Canada someday!

From Demachiyanagi | 出町柳から

On the topic of the Okeihan change over - I just found out that the Keihan Line actually has its own image song. That's so fantastic!

This track, released in 2003, is called "From Demachiyanagi."

I can't get over these lyrics! Maybe I'll translate them for a study project sometime?

出町柳(でまちやなぎ)から　電車は走る
ああ2人を乗せて　愛の2階だて
ダブルデッカー　(そうでっかー)

三条から乗客が　ふえだします
四条からは　買い物帰り
おしゃれな人々
七条やがて地上へ　そして丹波橋
中書島(ちゅうしょじま)から　補助席が使えます
夕日をあびた酒蔵(さかぐら)の街
まるで影絵のよう
左には競馬場
まるでどこかのフリーウェイ
まもなく車掌もくる

(セリフ)ご用の方はこざいませんでしょうか

出町柳(でまちやなぎ)から　電車は走る
ああ2人を乗せて　愛の2階だて
出町柳(でまちやなぎ)から　電車は走る
ああ2人を乗せて　愛の2階だて
轉載來自魔鏡歌詞網
ダブルデッカー　(そうでっかー)

この電車は　京橋までとまりません
枚方(ひらかた)市には
平日朝ラッシュ時の
淀屋橋行きのみ停車です
テレビカーなら
着くまでテレビが見れます
そのうちに京橋の街のあかり

天満橋(てんまばし)からまた地下へもぐります
次は北浜　そして終点は淀屋橋
淀屋橋が終点

(セリフ)ご乗車ありがとうございます

出町柳(でまちやなぎ)から　電車は走る
ああ2人を乗せて　愛の2階だて
出町柳(でまちやなぎ)から　電車は走る
ああ2人を乗せて　愛の2階だて
ダブルデッカー　(そうでっかー)

Japanese Pizza

Last weekend, in a fit of weakness (spent the entire day practicing either yosakoi or tea ceremony), I ordered myself a pizza. I came home exhausted at 8 PM after three missed meals - I suppose you could count a cookie and a single Scotch Dark from Ambiance as at least 1/8 of one meal, but in general I was pretty close to starving. I had another commitment to attend to right away at home and wouldn't be able to cook anything, and I generally avoid keeping processed food in my kitchen, so there was quite literally nothing to eat.

I broke. I got on Pizza Pizza's website and ordered myself a buffalo chicken pizza, and, I'm ashamed to say, polished off most of it without even offering my long-suffering roommate a slice. Since I'm not a huge fan of pizza in general, and this particular chain is one of two that I'll willingly eat, I later lamented to some friends what I had just done. Who promptly reminded me, "But you used to do that in Japan."

Ah, Japan. It's true - the other chain I enjoy is Pizza Hut, though you won't find me ordering a Super Supreme here anytime soon. It is Pizza Hut Japan that I yearn for. I gave Domino's Japan a try, but they didn't satisfy me. Unless we're talking about pasta bowls - I ordered a few of them - but that isn't pizza.

Many people who have at least a passing familiarity with Japanese culture are aware of the fundamental differences - and some might say, travesties - separating Western-style pizza with what you might find abroad. 

Just a few examples of Pizza Hut's fabulous Japan-only menu.
When I talk about Japanese pizza, I always mention the "Idaho Special" - parsley, mayonnaise,
black pepper, corn, diced potatos, bacon and onion.

Personally, as a non-fan of the Western version, I took to Japanese pizza right away, especially when our local Pizza Hut plied me with all those flyers in my mailbox. I looked forward to Pizza Hut's monthly, eager to see what they might try next. The first few times, I called them myself (and you know it's serious if I willingly undertake a phone conversation in Japanese with a stranger!), but sometime around 2008 they set up a wonderful online ordering system that became my go-to method. I didn't buy often, because pizza in Japan is an investment - even a medium pie was in the ¥2,000 range, and if you wanted something fancy, you were looking at ¥2,500, which at today's ridiculous exchange rate is $31. $31! For a single medium pizza! You can get a medium "base" for ¥1,100, but the toppings are ¥300 yen each - hardly cheap. It's notable that prices include the delivery charge (you cannot eat in at most pizza places, including Pizza Hut in Japan) and you'll have your price adjusted if you pick it up yourself.

Pizza Hut warns you to be environmentally-conscious!

So, when I did buy pizza, it was usually with the expectation that I would stretch it over at least three meals. With Pizza Hut, I would almost always get the Mayo Q; barbecued chicken, mayonnaise, corn, mushrooms, onion and strips of nori. It came with little packets of green chili pepper sauce and maple syrup for dipping your crust in. Perhaps it was the off-the-beaten path combo of ingredients that made me a fan of the Mayo Q, but the reaction I usually get is "Ewww! Mayo!?" (Note: Japanese mayo is fantastic, especially when it is served warm, à la okonomiyaki.)

I do think that the reason I like Toronto's Pizza Pizza chain so much as well is because it's also a departure from the traditional - dare I say it, cheap and simple - pizza of my childhood. My brothers, both pizza lovers, frequently pushed for takeout on Fridays, and would get pepperoni, slathered in the cheap Italian seasoning-heavy tomato sauce that I hated from our local pizza place. I'm generally a fan of anything tomato, but it turns out that when it comes to pizza, you can just about leave off the sauce - it's the toppings that make it for me!

Bottom line - no matter how alarming it might seem, if you're in Japan or heading there soon, you really need to think about trying pizza there. I promise having sweet corn on your pizza is a mystical experience, even though the opinions I've gotten about it have been highly polarized. Pizza Hut's a good starting point - the online ordering system has made it a snap, especially with the Hut's very useful English ordering guide. Don't forget to get the cheese-stuffed crust. Try it at least once - it's an experience!

Keihan-chan

Keihan-chan (Keiko Morishoji) showcasing the goods of Higashiyama

In a PiTaPa ad

In 2000, the Keihan train line launched an advertising campaign called おかいはん (okeihan) to promote themselves using young, fashionable spokeswomen photographed around the Osaka-Kyoto area, seeing the sights and culture available in towns and cities along the train line. This campaign was still running when I lived in Osaka, and the current Okeihan girl was Keiko Morishoji (the idea being that she lived near Morishoji Station!), the third-generation Okeihan character, who started in 2006. Keiko (played by actress Jinno Sachi) was born into a musical family and was a Conservatory of Music student at the "Duck River Academy of Music." She was the face of the campaign until 2009, and I thought she was the cutest thing on this earth. Her clothes were bright, stylish and just the sort of things I liked to wear, and she was always doing something that looked interesting to me. I started to take photos of her ads when I saw them, and downloaded a bunch of Okeihan desktop wallpapers.

Emily often teased me about my enthusiasm for Keiko, whom I called "Keihan-chan," not knowing her name at the time. We travelled on that line pretty much daily, and often together, so whenever a new poster came out (and that was fairly frequently!) I was all over it. I professed my love for Keihan-chan every time I guided someone new through the Keihan train system. And then...then, they retired my Keihan-chan and replaced her with a new girl, Keiko Kuzuha!

Kuzuha was cute enough, but I never expected Keihan-chan to vanish so suddenly, so I was quite disappointed. At the time, I didn't realize that there were two other Okeihan spokesgirls prior to my arrival in Japan - Keiko Yodoya and Keiko Kyobashi. Well. 

As it turns out, the Keihan line is launching their newest girl to stardom very shortly - voting starts this Monday, October 15th, for the brand-new Okeihan campaign.

Yodoya, Kyobashi, Morishoji (♥) and Kuzuha

Well! I guess it's my civic duty, then, if we MUST have a new Keihan-chan, to make sure the proper one gets picked! Be sure to pop by Keihan's website tomorrow and cast a vote!

Kotatsu

I have been waiting to make this post.

I am an enormous fan of the Japanese furnishing known as a kotatsu. I own two - one big, one small; one is sort of formal and classy-looking for guests, and the other is pink-topped with a big fluffy polka-dot blanket, just the way I like 'em!

There is no possibility that I overdid it on the pink. None.

My fascination for kotatsu started well before I actually arrived in Japan, though I can't quite remember where from. (Possibly Ouran?) I have poor circulation, so I'm literally cold All. The. Time. I fell in love with the idea of kotatsu long before I had ever laid eyes on a real one - and no surprise, when I finally had one of my own, I was hooked. 

So just what is a kotatsu? 

The underside of a kotatsu

A kotatsu is a table that has a small electric heater built into the underside, and a removable tabletop. Cheaper kotatsu are often made of plastic and are light and easy to store, but classic wooden ones are still very popular. A square blanket - often two of them - is placed between the frame and the tabletop. A person then sits on the floor or on a cushion with their legs under the table. Originally, the intent was that the heat would enter through the bottom of traditional Japanese robes and exit at the neck to effectively heat the entire body - since Japanese houses depend largely on space heating and most are not insulated effectively (if at all!), a kotatsu is a cheaper way to stay warm in an inadequately-heated room. It has come to be symbolic of family life and domesticity, as families still gather around the kotatsu on winter evenings, and is a comfortable spot to read, eat, or nap on a cold day. In the summer, the blanket and electrical cords are removed, and the kotatsu becomes a normal coffee table. 

Kotatsu have their origins in the Motomachi period, the 14th century. The cooking hearth, irori, was used for heating as well as cooking and fuelled by charcoal. Over time, the irori was adapted to have a seating platform, and eventually, a quilt, which trapped the heat coming from the burner. This was called a hori-gotatsu. In the Edo period, the concept was adapted into a square shape with the wooden platform encircling it. 

The easiest way to sit at a kotatsu is with
a zaisu; a legless chair. Cushions also work!

The visual style of the kotatsu we know now came about with the use of tatami mats in homes. The charcoals were kept in a earthen pot on top of the tatami - this style is known as the oki-gotatsu. Electricity eventually replaced charcoal as the primary heating source, and the electric heaters came to be attached to the underside of the table. This is the type of kotatsu used in modern Japan today, and I doubt I would be exaggerating much to say that just about every household has at least one - in fact, we even had one at my school, in the resting room, and on the cold winter days when the students were off for New Year's break, I sometimes chose to spend the day there rather than at my desk by the (open!) window.

My apartment also came with a kotatsu, courtesy of my predecessor - it was actually I really nice one; solid wood and in fantastic shape. Unfortunately, it was a bit too tall to be comfortable for me to sit at, so I put it into storage and later gave it to a friend, who shipped it back to the U.S. (That was exciting - if you've ever pondered the logistics of packing up a twenty-pound solid wood table, well, it's something we expats need to think of at times!) I bought a brand-new one and spared no expense at this very exciting purchase - I must have checked out every major department store from September on, waiting to find my "perfect" one. Finally, I saw it at last, at LOFT in Shinsaibashi, decked out for Halloween:

This display caused me to throw excessive amounts of money at the Shinsaibashi LOFT

That was my kotatsu, I decided. I bought the one on the left, choosing a pink lacquer tabletop. The glass top was so inviting, but I knew I would be shipping the table home at the end of my contract in Japan, so I decided not to take chances. (Good thing - my table actually suffered shipping damage obvious enough that a glass top never would have survived!) I had a fleece blanket like the ones above, but later got a more traditional square one with a removable, washable cover, with the intent being that someday when I furnished a living room that wasn't entirely pink, I could sew a new cover for the blanket and make a new table-cover in a more vanilla sort of colour. As it turned out, upon arriving back in Toronto, I was lucky enough to be able to buy a bigger (double the above size), chestnut-coloured wooden kotatsu from a family selling theirs on Kijiji. It's the perfect size for guests, and I improvised with a twin-sized kakebuton for the blanket. I've watched Kijiji since, with an alert on the word kotatsu, but I've only seen two pop up in the year since I've been in Toronto.

That does mean that having your own kotatsu isn't necessarily going to be easy - the cost of importing even a cheap one is rather steep. I've seen guides to building your own online, which may be a good bet if you have the woodworking skills and the confidence to work with the heating element. (The heating elements themselves can be bought online as well!) A word of caution, though: I asked at the electronics shops in DenDen Town what needed to be done to take my kotatsu home to Canada with me, and he recommended a step-down transformer (it weighs at least 10 lbs!) for safety and to prolong my kotatsu's life, since using any appliance on the wrong voltage will wear it out faster. It was actually pretty tough to find the correct adapter, even in DenDen Town, because most Japanese appliances will work in Canada/the U.S. just fine. In the case of a heater, though, you want to be safe rather than sorry! I've seen these transformers for sale at Mits here in Toronto, or you could probably pick one up online.

Image via Wikimedia Commons
In case you were wondering what
a non-pink kotatsu looked like!

You can also buy yourself a kotatsu and the accessories online, of course. J-Life is based in the U.S. and they sell elegant, classic tables. Rakuten, on the other hand, is a little harder to purchase from (watch out for that shipping!) but they have colourful, modern kotatsu and kotatsu-gake. Personally, I like all types - the classic wooden style, the colourful tabletops and blankets with a ton of "pop," and even the lightweight retro plastic ones like the table we had at school. It was very 80s, like the rest of the room, and that was one of the things I loved about it.

So, are you ready to settle down for a cold winter under the kotatsu? I've found my perfect method: a puzzle mat (for comfy sitting and laying down) with a nice fuzzy rug laid over it. 100x100cm table with adjustable height extenders. Downy, fluffy kotatsu-gake blanket with a washable futon cover so I can change out the patterns and colours as I want them. Heat turned on a nice medium-low, and a small zaisu legless chair with padding on the back. A cup of tea. Earl grey - hot. Maybe a nice pot of sukiyaki, too!

I hate winter, but my kotatsu makes it bearable. ♥

Game Center CX

Cover of the Retro Game Master/Game Centre
CX DVD collection

I am so, so excited for the English-subtitled DVD release of Game Center CX (Retro Game Master), which ships out to pre-orderers on Amazon tomorrow! (Or, if you're in Canada, Amazon.ca is actually carrying it for $10 cheaper, to my surprise!)

This amazing television show was a big thing for me during my last year in Japan. It's been running for almost ten years, but I actually didn't hear about it until it was in its eleventh season! Comedian Arino Shinya, one-half of the famous Osakan team Yoiko, is the host and star of Arino's Challenge, what was once a small segment but quickly grew into a one-hour television show about retro video games. Arino, a fan of games of all types, looks like your typical middle-aged salaryman and while he struggles often to get through even easy games, is incredibly tenacious - this man somehow beat Ninja Gaiden, but took hundreds of lives while playing Super Mario 3. 

I originally caught wind of this show on YouTube and though I didn't have the channel that it aired on, I rented the DVDs, one by one. It's a very popular show - our nearest Tsutaya had gaps in its library every time I went. (I had to bike 35 minutes away that first time just to get Volume 1!) And when I was sure that I was going to watch regularly, I went ahead and got FujiTV One, FujiTV Two and FujiTV NEXT on my beloved SkyPerfect satellite dish. 

It's funny to look at it that way now, but leaving behind the brand-new episodes of Game Center CX was a heartbreaker when I left Japan! There are ways to see some of these, of course, thanks to the Internet, but there was something special about sitting down on Thursday nights to see a brand-new episode right when it aired. My friends and I would watch the raw episodes over Skype as a group, with me providing scant real-time translations while Arino provided the laughs. Many times I would come home from work and head straight to Skype to pick out an episode with the others to watch that day. This was three years ago - well before GCCX was known by many English-speakers.

Luckily for me, since coming home, the series has gained a little more popularity in the west. The Nintendo DS game didn't make much of a splash when it was localized, unfortunately, but I feel that was the timing - if the show had come out in North America first, maybe it would have been different. Gaming website Kotaku even aired 12 episodes on their website in 2011 under the title of “Retro Game Master,” though for me these were a massive disappointment - the episodes had everything except the main game challenge taken out, and the dubbing was terrible. The translations were dubious at best and many details left out. 

However...what Kotaku did do was bring a lot of attention to the show, and that's why we're now getting those episodes, overhauled, on DVD by Discotek Media and translated with subtitles by a fan with genuine passion for the series!

Sadly, the show still can't be released intact - it doesn't contain many segments due to licensing issues, though the Japanese DVD releases omitted these as well. Still, even if it can't be perfect, I am so ready to support this release, just to bring more Game Center CX fans to the world and encourage more DVDs down the line. GCCX will always be a nostalgic reminder of my hobbies in Japan!

So get out there and buy it! If you're a fan of video games at all, you don't want to live even another week without seeing this show!