Arcade Adventures

Japanese arcades are not quite as glamorous as US nerds might imagine. They're loud, smoky, and at a certain point you get get a little bored with "shoot the gun at the screen as fast as you can" games. Occasionally, however, you find a game or two that makes enduring sensory overload worth it. First, I give you "The Typing of the Dead." Like many games, the object is to kill zombies. Instead of a gun, however, you are armed only with a keyboard. When the zombie uprising eventually occurs, I can only hope that they way to defeat them will be rapidly typing the Japanese words for panda and kettle.

They say that video games allow you to experience the adventures you've dreamed about since childhood. Well who hasn't dreamed of being a frustrated, under-appreciated Salaryman? In this game you play a balding company man who sits down to a well deserved rest at dinner with his family. Only your children have decided they'd rather talk on their cell phones and play with their Gameboys than show you their appreciation. What's a father to do? FLIP THE DINNER TABLE!

Yes, that's it. You flip a little table up and get points for how much damage you cause. Brilliant.

Maybe "Height-Impaired II" would've been a bit more sensitive

Japan is famous for its small, boxy cars, but inside they're generally not all that different from an American compact or subcompact.

On the other hand, this model, which I spotted on a car lot here in Kanazawa, takes the cake for space and size efficiency (if not style or sleekness):


What kind of name could this car have? What pithy noun or adjective could sum up this lime green... thing? Maybe something bland along the lines of Corolla, or possibly some kind of pun on the small size and higher efficiency of this kind of tiny, single-occupant vehicle?



Midget II. Yeah. Makes you wonder what Midget I looked like, or even if there was one; given the profound lack of disregard for coherency in English names and labels here, I wouldn't be surprised if Midget II was actually the first and only.

Pika Pika Kanazawa

Excerpts from a neat long exposure flashlight animation project filmed in our city a couple years ago.

Konnichiwa. Ron Howard desu.

Greg managed to get two days off in a row for once, so we took a trip to San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.

The journey was hardly epic. In our continuing quest to see garish American culture through the eyes of the Japanese we ended up at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. They had a whole mini San Francisco land that had the various signs and outward appearences of San Francisco landmarks but none of the substance. Or the homeless people. Here's "The Haight." I guess the Japanese think hippies are half sea horse?

They did however have a mega-sized Mel's Diner. The menu was limited to basic burger, fries, and a shake combos, although they were all scaled down to a quarter of the size of their American counterparts. I think my Dad would have cried at the sight of the size-of-a-redbull-can milkshakes. Not to mention that the combos were going for $17. Ahhh, Japan.

I think Universal Studios Japan just inherited rides that were no longer popular in America and dubbed them into Japanese. What's hilarious about this was how manly they made everybodyl seem. Ron Howard sounded like he would kick your ass in a dark alley. The only exception was the Terminator 2 ride. Arnold sounded more human than ever.

I'm not a pervert. I'm just a person who can understand your shirt.

Japanese camera phones have the unfortunate feature that you can't turn off the extremely loud fake camera shutter sound effect. I say this is unfortunate not because I want perverts to take up-skirt shots of me on the train (which is why the feature is required), but because it prevents me from serendipitously photographing the amazing t-shirts I see on a daily basis. My recent favorite was a teenage girl at summer camp whose shirt boldly declared "Let's be hippies! MARIJUANA," but this was replaced today by a woman's shirt bearing the words "Now that the kids are older, let's talk about duilding a new addition onto the house" in the spot American girls reserve for tramp stamps. Yes, I know that's a d.

Let's understanding

After you've been at the English teaching game in this country for a while, a certain cynicism inevitably sets in. Whether it's bored, unmotivated students, unhelpful co-workers, or burnout from teaching dozens of different classes the same old thing every week, grousing about respective work situations is a frequent topic of conversation whenever ALTs and/or eikaiwa folk get together.

Beyond that, though, I think a lot of people would agree that the worst aspect of teaching English in Japan is often the teaching materials you're supplied with. It's filled with ridiculous, cheesy songs and completely unrealistic spoken dialogue sequences, often with bizarre, non-standard English that no native speaker could even dream up. I mean, I remember dumb stuff like this when I took French in high school, but the Japanese have practically turned it into an art form, all the while not noticing how completely ineffective it is, not to mention despised by teachers and students alike.

So it's with that in mind that I, and probably every other person who has taught English in Japan, found the following video completely hilarious. Someone took the audio CDs from Eigo Noto (English Note, the standard middle school English textbook) and created a video around them, which... well, just watch. You might not appreciate it as much as someone who's had to actually use materials like these, but it's funny nonetheless.

Kyoto, please

It was Obon in Japan, meaning Greg and I could easily get some time off. To reward myself for another exhausting and bug bite filled three days at the prefectural English summer camp, we decided to head down to Kyoto for a few days of food, walking, and monkeys.

This was taken at Cafe La Siesta, a tiny place that was essentially made for us because it has an extensive vegan menu and it's devoted to retro video games. The place had stacks upon stacks of Famicom games and little TVs scattered about on which to play them. Greg is enjoying a game of Puyo Puyo while we wait for our food. We also had excellent meals at Mumokuteki, Cafe Proverbs, and Falafel Garden, the closest falafel place we've managed to find yet is sadly more than two hours away.

We did a lot of walking and exploring on this trip, but it was difficult. A kind shop keeper explained to us that out of all the cities in this area of Japan Kyoto is the most humid. It made it a little easier to come back to Kanazawa where it takes a good twenty minute outside to be sweating buckets rather than Kyoto's three. One hike made difficult by the heat was the journey up to the Iwatayama Monkey Park in Arashiyama. Here's a little monkey action for you:

Kanazawa Hyakumangoku Festival

Roadside kitsch

This weekend was spent looking for some of the stranger local tourist attractions. First up we returned to Takayama, but this time we visited the Hikaru Museum, which is apparently run by some religious cult that thinks we get all of our feelings from light or something. They have a massive building that's eerily empty. We walked into the enormous lobby mid light/laser/music show, which was truly bizarre. Other exhibits included a dinosaur fossils, recreations of ancient works of art, and a giant room containing an enormous statue of the cult leader standing on a UFO. We also later visited their huge temple which contained a fish tank that stretched the entire length of the giant pulpit and they offered us free sake on the way out. Seemed a little too "try the Kool-aid!" to us so we declined.

On Sunday we decided to explore a little more of Ishikawa's Noto Peninsula. Our first stop was Hakui, Japan's UFO capital. They celebrate this status with a little museum. The girl selling tickets was very excited to repeat her speech encouraging us to take the "おもしろいエレベター”　(interesting elevator) all the way to the second floor. It consisted of a black light and some glowing stickers. Up top the exhibits were a little more impressive, consisting mostly of life-size models of various spacecraft. Also present were several UFO photos, and this adorable alien autopsy model:

Besides rubber aliens, Hakui is famous for a beach you can drive on. The novelty of driving on the beach wears off after approximately 50 feet.

Our friend's car is adorable. There's an all electric version and if I were forced to drive for some reason I'd probably get one.

Next we went to the Ganmon caves, but the stop after that was probably the most pleasant serendipitous discovery. I was under the impression that I had been made aware of all of the Noto's tourist attractions, but somehow I missed THE SINGLE GREATEST SIGHT IN ALL OF THE NOTO. Screw Senmaida. The Wajima morning market? Fuggidaboutit. This, my friends, is the longest bench in the world. It goes on forever. Marvel at its beauty.

Taiwan roundup

It's coming up on a week since we got back from Taiwan, and I still miss it a little. I don't miss the hotter-than-you'd-expect-for-May weather, but everything else was great. I thought I should mention a couple things we neglected to mention in earlier posts:

- We visited Taipei 101, the 2nd tallest building in the world.






- We went to Window on China, a kids' theme park that inexplicably focuses on scale dioramas of things like shipping containers and power plants (as well as some impressive historical displays. There's also an adjacent section, accessible only by minature train, that's more like a carnival/theme park, with decidedly less educational value.






- We took a very long and windy bus ride to Yehliu Geopark, a naturally occurring beachside of some of the most bizarre rock formations I've ever seen.









-We hit up no fewer than three all-vegetarian buffets.


At two of them, you pay by weight, so I ended up with this fairly large meal for about 3 US dollars:

(That vaguely brown-purple mass on the bottom was one big chunk of stinky tofu)


- And we went to the Taipei Zoo. Here's some video of both of their pandas:




One nice touch is that there are poo-related factoids in all of the bathrooms. This one reveals the heretofore unknown depths of kangaroos' depravity: