My host mom bought me chocolate on chocolate cream Pocky! :D It’s so fluffy and delicious! It’s funny because instead of saying チョコレート (chokoreto) or チョコ(choko) like chocolate things normally do in Japan, it says ショコラ (shokora). I guess it’s trying to be pseudo-classy, like chocolat or something.
Is that even how you’d spell that? “Chocolate” doesn’t look like a word anymore.
This is bad, now I’m just going to eat all this Pocky! Why are there only three sticks per package?!!
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This has been quite an interesting week, and it’s only Wednesday!
On Monday, we had class as normal, but my research methods professor, who studies gender in festivals, wanted us to come, if we could, to a festival in Imaike, a few subway stops away from school, after class with him.
Imaike is an interesting place because, if I’m remembering the history he told us right, it used to be outside the borders of Nagoya. It was where a train line ended, so a lot of people got off there and it boomed as a result of that. Lots of drinking establishments popped up, and the area is very multi-ethnic, with a lot of Chinese and Korean immigrants. When the subways were put in people stopped getting off there and going into the neighborhood, so it fell into some decline. In particular after World War II it became known as a big cabaret area, kind-of seedy. Today there are still a ton of bars and pachinko parlors. Anyway, this festival is actually run by the store owners’ association, to try to draw people there. There are the traditional Japanese festival booths selling food and games for children and stuff, but there’s also like, the Lion’s Club doing a yard sale, and advertisements for the supermarket, and booths for info about community organizations.
When I told my host mom, who is a woman in her early 60s, that I was going to Imaike, she had an interesting reaction. She said it was full of bars and pachinko parlors, but if I was going with my teacher and my class it would be okay. “Just stick with your teacher!!”
My professor laughed when I told him about this. He’s an Australian guy in his 40s who’s been living in Japan since he was in his 20s who still acts quite a bit younger. (He insists we call him by his first name, sometimes takes his shoes off when he’s teaching, and on this day he was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt with the communist sickle and hammer symbol on it.) He said something to the extent of “That’s one of the things I like about this part of town!”
Well, as you may remember, we’re on typhoon 15 of the season here, and as of Tuesday it started coming Nagoya-ward in earnest. The rain started in the afternoon. It let up for a bit when we left our class at 5:30, and was okay when we got to the festival around 6:30. “If it rains too hard we can always go to an izakaya,” our professor told us. (An izakaya is the Japanese version of a pub. I’m coming to really love them.) We decided we’d all split up and explore a bit and reconvene in an hour, at which point we’d decide if we wanted to do dinner together, or what.
Well the rain didn’t hold off for very long. I had just long enough to buy a stick of mitarashi dango (kind-of like dumplings, I guess? The sauce is kind-of sweet, like a soy sauce + sugar taste. When they’re hot and fresh they’re delicious!) before it started pouring on us! Me and Michael, one of my classmates who’d wandered the same direction as me, ducked under a stand for cover, where I took the only pictures I was able to take on my camera. Which is a real shame, because I couldn’t capture the size of the festival, or the colorful lights. We got a phone call from our professor, and decided to all meet back and then make a run for somewhere to eat.
We made a mad dash for an izakaya up the street that our professor knew, and ducked in for food and drinks.
Izakaya are Japanese pubs. You typically take off your shoes and step up onto a raised platform. Depending on the set up, you’re either sitting/kneeling on the floor on cushions, or the floor is sunk deeper under the table so you’re still sitting on cushions on the floor, but you can sit normally with your feet under the table. There’s food (good traditional Japanese food!) and there’s drinks, and there’s often a 飲み放題 (nomihodai), or all-you-can-drink, option where you pay a set rate for unlimited drinks that usually also includes some kind of food dishes. The table next to us was full of very drunk Japanese men.
Anyway, the food is good, and unlike bars in the US or pubs in the UK, it’s not revolving around sports and like, going out with the boys, so the atmosphere is much better. I’m sure it gets rowdy and smoky late (Japan doesn’t really restrict smoking in restaurants the same way as in the US. Carolyn and I were in a restaurant last weekend and a woman came in as we were finishing up. After she said something to the waitress, the waitress asked the other patron who was eating there if she was okay with smoking. She said she was, and then the woman proceeded to smoke her cigarette as she was deciding what to order.). Anyway, I’m sure the izakaya get rowdy and smoky as the night goes on, but it also seems like an excellent place to develop some camaraderie with local people. If I were living in Japan, trying to learn Japanese, I would absolutely go to an izakaya and just try to start talking to people. Societal rules are laxer in places like these. When some of my friends and I went out one night, I had to leave early to catch the train home, but apparently later they started playing a drinking game with some Nanzan University athletes who were sitting a table over! I myself got into a conversation with a woman while waiting in line for the bathroom.
So, anyway, we went to the izakaya and our professor started explaining the menu to us and asking us what we wanted to try. He took our drink orders and ordered a salad and a handful of small plates: grilled things on skewers. One was chicken and leek, one was grilled tomato wrapped in what I think was bacon. There was something else I’m forgetting about, but the most interesting food item, which of course I forgot the name of, involved half-cooked chicken! It was chicken on a skewer, but raw on the inside, with a line of tart but kind-of sweet plum sauce, and sliced shiso leaves on top. Shiso is a Japanese leafy vegetable that seems to be in everything. It’s green (though there’s also a purple variety -- not sure if this is an age thing or a different species), and I can’t really describe the taste, but I’m starting to really like it. I have shiso salad dressing on my salads every night. The chicken-plum-shiso skewers were delicious!
After that we had ochatsuke, a bowl of rice with some kind of flavoring or topping, with ocha, or green tea, poured over the top. Apparently it’s traditional to order and eat that last, after you’ve done all your eating and drinking. It did seem very palate-calming. I had ume (pickled plum - very sour!) flavored ochatsuke.
Our professor treated us all to the izakaya meal!!
After hanging out and chatting and eating and drinking, the rain seemed to have let up, so we went to try to check out the festival again. There was still a bit of a concert going on, and we found someone spinning fire, but most everyone had packed up their stalls.
(At this point my camera also ran out of battery.)
Our professor told us he wanted to show us some more stuff. We walked by a big pachinko parlor, and he asked us if we’d done that yet. We said no, so he said “Okay let’s just do a 10 minute look-see shall we?” We went in the door from outside and then through a second automatic door. As soon as that second automatic door opened, the noise was just INCREDIBLE. The whole place was full of the clattering of pachinko balls and the whir of the game machines. No one was saying anything. They were all staring at the screens, pushing their buttons, and puffing away on their cigarettes. Still, the sound was almost deafening! Some people had huge stacks of baskets and baskets full of balls that they’d one!
It’s gambling, but it’s officially a game for prizes. Apparently if you take your balls out back to a shady counter behind the shop, though, they cash it out for you. There’s no real secret about that, either.
After pachinko, Alisha and I decided we’d better take the train home soon. It was already approaching 9 and I had a quiz the next morning. Our professor walked us to the nearest JR station, but first we stopped by another thing he wanted to show us: a gomen nasai jizo (I’m sorry statue). It was a little statue in an alcove along one of the streets. The sign explained that if you hurt someone's feelings you write it on a little card and apologize to the statue and then you’re forgiven. There were tons of little cards hanging in the little alcove. We also walked by a shrine where there was apparently a statue of a boar or a bull or something and if you rub it’s nose you’ll do well in school. Maybe we all need to go back there.
At the train station, our professor dropped Alisha and I off and we got on what we expected to be the 8:38 train. I texted my host mom as normal, telling her I was on my way home.
Except the train didn’t move.
And then it still didn’t move.
There were all these announcements in Japanese, but I couldn’t really understand them, and everyone just seemed to be sitting on the train waiting.
I got that there was something about heavy rain, and told my host mom this, and she just said to text back when it actually start moving again.
We ended up waiting on that train for almost two hours! So my normal hour commute home took me 3 hours.
Oiii.
But that wasn’t to be the end of my typhoon adventures! Oh no.
Stay tuned for Typhoon Advenutres: Part 2, coming soon to a blog near you!
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