EARTHQUAKE!!!

Breaking News....I was about 75% asleep, and a pretty big earthquake just hit of the coast of Japan, about 100 miles away. It was 6.2 on the Richter scale, pretty darn big. That's a 4 on the Japan scale. From what I can figure out, that felt like a 2 here in Utsunomiya. I could hear it, which I didn't expect. Just a low, groaning noise. Messes with a half awake mind. I have a feeling if I was standing or sitting or doing anything but trying to fall asleep, I might not have felt it at all. As it is, I had to check with the authorities before I posted this, in case I dreamed it.

From the USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php

And from Japan's equivalent: http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/

I'm going to try to go back to sleep, but I can't stop thinking about what I'm supposed to do if a bigger one hits. I'm on the 5th floor. I guess if I hear screaming I'll run towards it, assuming it's people who are trying to get my attention.

Anyway, everything's fine here, nothing fell down, I still have all my plates and liquor on the high shelf is still in it's bottles.

Home Sweet Home

I know you've all been dying to see what my apartment looks like with stuff in it. It took me this long to get all the stuff I need and take some pictures. They aren't all great pictures, but they work. First, the view. When you look straight down from my East windows, you see this nice little dirt park. They don't seem to want to spend time caring for grass, so the parks are mostly this kitty litter dirt. Still, it's nice. There's a public restroom in the park, but they don't have the same reputation here. If you look up from the park, you see this weird European churchy-looking building. I didn't know what it was for a while, and if I had it may have influenced my apartment choice. It's some sort of giant wedding chapel. I'm thinking of trying to crash some of the parties. I think I'll blend in.

My apartment is what they call a 1LDK. That's one bedroom, and another room that covers living room, dining room, and kitchen. Here's some pics of the LDK. Yeah, that's grandma's afghan and a family picture.

The LDK has sliding doors that open it up into the bedroom. Makes for one big room, but since there's no central heating or insulation, you keep doors closed and only heat the room you're in. I didn't make the bed, sorry, but I did pick out the curtain. There's no carpet, so it automatically matches the curtains. Also, I forget which day is cardboard garbage day, so there's still a bunch of boxes in there.

I've also got a walk-in closet that's bigger than I expected my apartment to be. Notice the convenient poles. They only go up about 6 feet, but girls are short here.

Besides the entry and the shoe closet, there's 2 more rooms. One is the combination laundry room, bath/shower room. The shower head doesn't actually go in the tub, you just stand in the middle of the room and wash up. The tub fills itself up automatically, if you know how to set it. I don't, and don't know when I would learn.

The shower is off the laundry room, where they have one 100v/50hz ungrounded outlet for the washer and dryer. Seems safe. Takes forever to dry clothes, but everyone hangs their stuff out.Finally, there's the room I affectionately call the shitbox. It's just a little room with a toilet. The toilet does everything you think it would. I'll get into that another day.

Otherwise, things are going good. I finally got my car and I'm happily zipping around town. It's not really fun to drive, but I laugh every time I walk up to it. Partly because I walk up to the wrong door, but mostly because it's ridiculously small.

This past weekend, some of the guys at work invited me to a "Bowling Convention". I don't know what word he was looking for, but convention wasn't it. I told them I wasn't any good (the truth) and then went out and won the first game by 20 pins. Must have something to do with not having a beer in the other hand. I got back to my normal skill level after that. Also did a lot of shopping. Anything in these pictures that could be called a shelf, I bought on Friday. I think the people at the store must have laughed their asses off after I left. They played charades with me for 40 minutes until I got everything I wanted, and the were really good sports about it.

Pics from the Tokyo Motor Show

Two weekends ago, I went to Tokyo for the big Tokyo Motor Show. The place was packed. We couldn't even get close the the crazy concept cars. The first thing I saw when we walked in was a brand-new, 2008 1980 Honda 750. They still had all the old dies and things, and people still want them, so they started making them again.

We kept moving and saw all the crazy cars and bikes and scooters, and I took pictures of them.

There was a crazy crowd in front of every booth, and I think 2 people looking at every car. There was a huge paparazzi frenzy in front of every girl. I couldn't help getting caught up in it. Finally, after taking all those pictures for Adrian, I stopped and took a picture for Dad at the Dodge booth.

Back in the Blogosphere

After a week or so of no internet, I finally got it hooked in my apartment. I know you missed me.

I'm pretty well settled in at my apartment. I thought I'd tell you about it, take pictures and stuff, but I realized I may run out of things to say, so I'l do it one step at a time and take longer. So I'll just describe where it is. I'm about 0.8 km South of the train station on the East side, as if that means anything to you. I guess the important stuff is I'm about 12 minutes walking to the station, about 4 minutes from 2 supermarkets (in Japanese, it's called a "suu-paa-). About 4 minutes from the hyaku-en-shoppu (100 yen shop). It's amazing how important the dollar store is here. That's where you buy just about everything. The quality seems better, and 100 yen is only 85 cents. They must save on shipping from China. Guess where I'm doing my Christmas shopping?

Last weekend, I had 2 nomikai (drinking party) to go to. I was introduced to the term nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) and tabehoudai (lots of food). They set a time limit, usually 2 hours, and keep bringing the beer/sake/shochu and about 8 courses of dinner. My plans on getting skinny in Japan are taking a hit.

Friday was with my group at work at a chunko-nabe restaurant. That's sumo weight gain stew, and it's really good. If you retire from sumo and don't go into coaching, you open one of these joints. They fed me more than I could eat (including a big prawn that you have to clean yourself) and as much as I wanted to drink, which I kept in check knowing I had to do it again the next day. I didn't eat this that night, but a few weeks ago I ate the other one that was in the bowl before I took the picture. Mmmm, raw baby squid. Looks bigger in the picture than it actually was.

Saturday night was a going away party for one of the OAPs who's going back. I suppose I should define my terms better. OAP is Honda-speak for "Overseas Assignment Program". Anyway, he's a little older and had 2 kids, but still wanted to go to Roppongi for the night. That's the foreigner (and girls looking for foreigners) packed bar/nightclub area of Tokyo. One of the guys arranged the tabehoudai/nomihoudai at T.G.I. Friday's, which nobody thought existed. Best damn potato skins I ever tasted. Beer flowed freely. There were only 4 of us there, and we estimated (since we couldn't count) about 8-10 pitchers. I learned the phrase "itsu-mo futatsu kudasai", which means "always 2, please", and there were always 2 pitchers on the table. It was a hard night of drinking (in western style bars for a change), some dancing, and learning my way around. We dropped the older guys one by one (there were 2 of them) until me and the other younger guy called it a night around 3. Went to a conveniently located hotel that gave a discount to Honda employees and passed out until we rushed to catch the 10 AM shinkansen back for a OSU-Mich party.

Oh, and I bought some curtains.

Busy, Busy

I had a really busy day yesterday. Got a lot done, but it was really hectic. Our HR OAP girl and one of out teachers picked us up at the hotel at 8: 30, and I didn't get back for more than 5 minutes until about 1 AM.

First we went to open bank accounts, which we could only do at the branch that Honda does it's payroll through, which was 30 minutes away. It took forever, since we only had one translator for the 3 of us. Actually, took about 2 hours, but they were long hours.

Next stop was Yamada Denki for cell phones. That took another couple of hours, and we had to run out of there to get to the next stop before we were even finished. First we had to figure out how the system works here. In the US they give you a free phone and charge you monthly for the airtime. Here, it's sort of opposite. We pay monthly for the phone, and then the service is on top of that. So I have a minimum of 2200 a month to pay at least, but if I use more than about 20 anytime minutes, it goes up from there. At least that's how I understand it, I may be wrong.

I got a crazy phone. It's got a 3.2 MP camera, GPS, and a TV. A little 3 inch TV. It only gets Japanese channels, but it's a cell phone with a TV. I don't have a clue what else it does. I didn't even know about the GPS until after I checked out.

Anyway, we had to run out at about 1:30 to go through the McDonalds drivethru before Driver's Ed at 2. It was just like high school, but on the other side. Drove around the school's little course for 15 minutes with the teacher up front (with the auxiliary brake) and the translator in back. Then we headed out on the roads. The teacher and translator pointed me towards my apartment. We drove from there to work, with the teacher telling me to slow down, and then back to the school.

After we finished there, we went back to Yamada Denki to pick up our phones. I was thinking it would take 5 minutes, and then they started to try and sell us Internet access. It took about an hour to figure out how it works here, and then another hour for the lead singer of a Japanese reggae band to sell us all the package and schedule installation.

I had just enough time to get back to the hotel and drop things off before we went to a party they had set up for us. I only had the energy to go to stage 2 before I called it a night. I hear it went to stage 3, but I didn't have the energy.

Tomorrow I move into my apartment, and then there's another party to go to. It's supposed to be low key, which is good, because Saturday I'm going to the Tokyo Motor Show and then Roppongi (a big nightclub district)for the night.

Next weekend I have yet another party to go to. This one is for one of the current OAPs that's going home soon. Another guy found out that you can get nomihoudai and tabehoudai (all you can drink / eat) at TGI Friday's, so as a last Japanese hurrah, we're taking him there. Then another wild night in Roppongi.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to update this for a few weeks, so you won't get to hear about any of that. Japanese-Rasta-Internet-Salesman guy couldn't schedule installation until the 18th, so once I move out tomorrow, I'm incommunicado until then.

Insurance

Yesterday we had a meeting to go over our mandatory renters insurance and the other optional insurance policies we could get. They gave us a brochure full of cartoony pictures of various disasters you could claim. One picture in particular caught my eye. It was a guy golfing with a the ball going into the hole.

Apparently, it's traditional here for a guy who gets a hole-in-one to buy eveyone's round of golf, drinks for anyone he sees that day, and send gifts to everyone who was there. This could run into the thousands of dollars, so you can take out hole-in-one insurance. I asked, and it was only 200 yen a month for the lowest coverage, but you didn't get any sort of card to prove it, so I decided to take my chances. I considered doing it, getting someone to vouch for my good shot in exchange for free drinks, and throwing an insurance fraud party, but decided they'd take one look at my swing and catch me.

Tomorrow is the first of at least 2, maybe 3 welcome parties. This one is being set up by my old manager from Ohio, and I'm told it will include "3/4 potatoes". Not the real big guys, but pretty high up people. Which means it's likely to be expensive, since they'll be obliged to kick in a lot more money than us peons. Should come back with something to say.

Also tomorrow, I've got to set up a Japanese bank account. After that, I've got driver's ed. They want to make sure we understand the traffic laws here, so we go to a driving school for the afternoon. I doubt there's going to be anything very exciting there.

Weekend

It was a pretty restful weekend, other than a lot of walking. Got back Friday night and went with Mike (he's here on a business trip from my group back home) to a ramen place and then had some beers at the Lion's Head. It's an Irish style pub that's kind of a gai-jin hangout. I tried to order a black and tan, but couldn't get the point across until they handed me a menu. I figured out that that they called it a half and half.

Saturday, we decided to explore our new neighborhood. We needed to get lunch first. On the way to Lion's Head, I remembered seeing a sign for Genki Sushi, the sushi on a conveyor belt place. We walked that way until we found the sign, figured out it was on the 2nd floor of what looked like an office building, but that doesn't mean much here. We went up and there wasn't a restaurant in sight. Turns out we found the local corporate office of Genki Sushi.

Around the corner from there is a big temple, and when we went in that direction, we found a street festival of some kind going on. Turns out this weekend was the annual Miya Jazz Festival. We got some food from the stands set up and settled in to watch what was happening. There was a band playing, and I got to hear a Japanse woman sing "What's Goin' On". She did Marvin Gaye proud. While we were sitting there, a guy who apparently loved America came up to talk to us. He noticed one of us had a coke, pointed, and said "Coca-Cola!!!". Mike said "Pepsi-Cola!!!". He said "Dr. Pepper". They went on like that until the ran out of soft drinks, and the guy went away.

We went over to my apartment to look around the neighborhood. On our way there, we saw this sign encouraging you to clean up after your dog.

We walked around the neighborhood and went into a place that was sort of like Japanese Wal-Mart. I'm going to have to go back there once I move in to get my place set up. Also checked out a bike shop, a camping/outdoors shop, and Yamada Denki, an electronics place. We ate dinner at an Italian place, walked home, and about 5 miles after we started, I settled in to watch Resident Evil 2, since it was on TV in English.

Today, Joe and I went to check out the local mall, Bell Mall. Kind of an interesting place because it isn't really divided up as clearly as American Malls. There's no real entrance to the individual stores, just a couple of walls. You can easily wander out of one store and into another without noticing.

For dinner tonight, we went to a place 2 doors down from the hotel. The owner somehow figured out that we weren't from around here. He dragged 2 of the waitresses over to us and made them sit down and speak English. I think he realized that if word gets out to Honda in America that they speak English, it will improve business. Anyway, we had a nice chat with the 2 waitresses and a good dinner.