What an earthquake feels like...

Our couch seems to be quite sensitive to earthquakes. When we are sitting on it, we can often feel the shaking before we hear it or feel it when standing up. There are even times when my own heartbeat seems to make the couch shimmy a little, making me look up and listen for the telltale jingling of kitchen utensils hanging on the rack. A truck passing by will do the same.

Last night, while I was on the couch, catching up on some Japanese study, I started to feel the telltale shaking. Joan was canning marmalade in the kitchen about 12 feet away.

"Earthquake," I said loudly, getting to my feet. Joan stopped and turned toward me, both of us waiting, listening. Would it stop? Was it getting stronger?

It got stronger.

Joan cried out, "Richard!" "It's ok," I replied, trying to keep my voice calm.

The shaking got even stronger, with things starting to rattle on the shelves. Joan turned off the gas to the stove. I grabbed the cell phone, and we dashed down the hall to the bedroom. We paused next to the desk, waiting to see if it would calm down like it usually does. It didn't.

There was a stronger jolt, and both of us ducked under the desk, crowding the small space. We crouched there, swaying back and forth as the building did the same.

Joan kept imploring the earthquake, "Please, stop. Please, stop. Please, stop." I put my arm around Joan's shoulders and held her close. "It'll be ok. It'll be ok. It'll be ok," I answered.

Eventually, it did stop. There was a long pause, the whole city holding its breath. Then we could hear doors opening and people talking, checking in with each other.

We quickly got on the Internet, reading the twitter stream as reports poured in. Our usual Japanese language earthquake website was jammed up with traffic. It was a big one in the north. Poor bastards up there can't get a break.

Tsunami warning.  We both started to cry.

However, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  The tsunami was quite small. Initial reports were only five people were injured. Eventually, everyone and everything settled down and got back to normal.

We  love living in Japan, but these damn earthquakes really suck

Information on Tokyo sumo tournament and tickets (Updated 2017)

Updated as of 2017!

We are huge sumo fans and have gone many times. As sumo is becoming more and more popular, especially with foreigners who can know order tickets online, the tournaments in Tokyo often sell out very quickly.  Don't worry, though!  There are 350 discount tickets available everyday on a first come, first serve basis. The cost is 2,200 yen. I believe the next cheapest tickets are 3,600 yen. These tickets are for the seats at the very top of the stadium. The view is really not that bad, and if you go on a non-busy day (not Day1, 8 or 15 [last]), you can usually move lower down. We have learned a lot about buying discount tickets and the schedule of the tournament.

We'd like to share that information so other people can have an enjoyable and stress-free experience. See the notes at the end for useful advice.

This information is only based on our experiences with the Tokyo tournament - we don't know if it is the same for the other locations in Japan.

Buying Discount tickets

The discount tickets go on sale at 7:45 AM.  However, people start to line up much earlier! Recently, I went to the stadium on a Wednesday morning for the January 2017 tournament and arrived at 7:15. I was 185th in line at that point. One weekends or really important match days, there may be even more people.  The later you are, the greater the chance you won't get a ticket.

To buy the 'day of' tickets, you will need to arrive early. Once you have the tickets, what do you do with the rest of the day?  Here is our recommended plan:

1. Buy the tickets
2. Have late Japanese breakfast at Japanese fast food place - we recommend this place (menu with photos).
3. Go get a coffee and relax.
4. Go to the Edo Tokyo Museum next to sumo stadium.  It is one of the best in Tokyo and highly recommended! You can arragne a free guide in your language, but you must do it in advance. At a minimum, visit the museum gift shop.  It has many wonderful and beautiful gifts - some of the best in Japan.
5. Go have chanko nabe (traditional sumo food) for lunch - we recommend the 1050 yen lunch special at this restaurant.  Chanko is a very famous sumo wrestler dish - a big, hot, soupy bowl of meat and veggies - delicious!  We've have had it twice and enjoyed it both times.
6. Either walk around or go back to museum for awhile.
7. Go to convenience store to stock on on food and drink - you can take your own into the stadium. You can leave the stadium one time after you enter and then return if you need to restock supplies or run an errand.  If you wait to buy food and drink at the stadium during the breaks, there will be very long lines.
8. Go to sumo tournament around 2:45 pm if you want to see the opening ceremony for the senior division.  The last matches with the yokozuna (top position) end around 5:50 pm.  Watch and enjoy. 9. Afterwards, go to Popeye's nearby, a bar with one of the largest selection of draft beers in all of Japan.  It is expensive (about 1000 yen a beer), but you can try some Japanese craft beers you will find no where else.

Rental radio

You can rent a radio set from the stadium for 100 yen with a 2000 yen deposit.  With it, you can listen to an English language commentary which really helps you understand what you are seeing.  We recommend it highly.

Sumo schedule

The juniors ceremonial entrance is at 2:20 PM or so, where they wear their ceremonial kesho-mawashi (aprons). Their matches begin soon after.

The senior division has their ceremonial entrance around 3:45 PM.  They begin sometime after 4 PM.  Unless you are a die hard fan and want to watch four hours of sumo, we might recommend going for just the senior division around 3:45 PM.

More details can be found at www.sumo.or.jp/eng/index.html

Sumo on Youtube - this Youtube channel has all the matches available for the day.

If you have any questions, please post a comment!

Long time, no write, ne?

Wow, I realize it's been a really long time since I last write on this blog. Sorry about that.

The main reason is that I have been working a lot on a new project related to my teaching. This year have introduced a spaced repetition flash card program into my classes. Based on user feedback about how well a card is known, the program adjusts the time interval until the next review. In this way, you see the card again just before you are likely to forget it. You only study what you NEED to study WHEN you need to study it. We use it to study Japanese every day. The name of the program is Anki.

So, I am qtr ying to get my students to use it in and out of class, with some successes but mostly failures. I've been busy writing a paper about my first semester's experience for publication in our university's in-house journal. I also started a blog as a venue to shares ideas and information with other teachers:

Www.teachingwithanki.blogspot.com

And to find more people out there doing similar things, I actually started a twitter account... It's all bee rather exciting but it me consuming. My Japanese studying is definitely suffering!

So, that's anut all that's new. We are going to Hokkaido for snow and cold weather for the new years holiday. We also bought tickets to come home for a visit in February. Hopefully we will see you then!

Volunteering in Ishinomaki

This weekend we went to the orientation meeting for the volunteer trip next week up to Ishinomaki in Tohoku (northern Japan) during our week's vacation from the university. Ishinomaki was greatly damaged by the earthquake and subsequent tsumani. Approximately 20% of the population was killed. Some of the more dramatic tsunami video footage you may have seen came from Ishinomaki. Even more than six months later, the recovery, restoration and rebuilding efforts are still ongoing and desperately needed.

We are going with Peace Boat and their "Emergency Relief Operation" and will spend a week with many other volunteers, international and Japanese, helping as best we can. Our friend, Chris (another Asia University teacher) participated in the same program in September and gave it a rousing endorsement

Peace Boat's work is focused on three main areas: general clean up (drainage ditches along the sides of roads, flooded homes, etc.), construction of temporary housing, and helping the fishing industry (salvaging equipment, cleaning up the shore, etc.). At this point, we don't know which one we will be helping with.

The group will take a night bus from Tokyo on Friday evening. On Saturday, we start work. Our shared accommodations will be a large, unheated room on the second floor of a now defunct cleaning business. Basically, we will be camping and need sleeping bags, sleeping pads, etc. Peace Boat will provide a brown bag lunch and a bento box dinner; we are responsible for breakfasts and miscellaneous snacks. There is a convenience store ten minutes away by foot, but they encouraged us to bring everything we might need or want. There should be access to showers (an onsen?) every other day, but it will be dirty work with no access to laundry facilities.

We are a little nervous but excited about this trip and are really grateful for the chance to help. Even though we can only do a little bit, it is important that people affected by this disaster know they are not forgotten and that people still want to help.

Stay tuned for photos and info (although we may have limited access to electricity and won't do much with the Internet).

Relaxin' in Hokkaido...

For the past two summers, we have traveled to Hokkaido for various adventures. The first summer was backpacking in the northern portion of the Daisetzuan national park and then exploring the Abashiri in the northeast corner of the island. We also met Toby and Maiko, who were building a rice straw bale house in Higashikawa. The second summer, we stayed with them in their new house and then ventured to the southern side of Daisetzuan.

This summer, we flew to Hokkaido to house sit for Toby and Maiko while they are traveling,

enjoying the cool breezes and some down time to catch up on Japanese study, reading and writing. One of the real joys of staying here are the three cats. It has been wonderful to hang out with friendly animals - and torment them with feathers and other flappy objects.

We will be here for about a week before taking off for Kushiro in the southeast corner of Hokkaido for bike touring along the coast and couchsurfing with Japanese hosts.

One nice side story: on Saturday afternoon, when we were riding around the town, checking things out, when we saw a group of people bustling about with tents and tables in a parking lot. We couldn't tell if they were setting up or taking down. So later that evening, at the end of a long bike ride out into the rice fields, we swung by to see what was going on. There was a small crowd with meat on the grill, onigiri being made by hand, and a keg of beer. We stopped and asked what was going on, everyone turning to see the foreigners. It turned out to be a "tanabata" block party - a Japanese star festival that usually happens on July 7th where the deities, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who are lovers, are able to meet once a year across the Milky Way that separates them.

"Oh. Ok. Thanks," we said and started to keep on riding. There was a flurry of conversation

behind us, and a voice called out, "Oh-ni-san, mat'te kudasai!" (Older brother, please wait!) We turned back, and not surprisingly, they invited us to join their party. We had a wonderful time eating yaki-niku (grilled meat), the handmade onigiri, and cold draft beer. We sat with a younger couple and their baby (Keisuke, Keiko, and Taise), talking in a mixture of Japanese and English. Many elders, in various states of inebriation, stopped by to welcome us and ask questions. Looking around, it quickly became apparent that the four of us

(not counting Taise, who was three) were the only "young" people there by 20 to 30 years.

At the end of the festival, we exchanged emails with our new friends and made plans to get together during the week. We rode home in the dark, full of that happy glow (and beer and grilled meat) that makes Japan so awesome!

Dangerous ground...

As many of you know, I go to a local izakaya (bar) on Monday nights to practice my Japanese, with Hiroyuki, the friendly insurance salesman who befriended me on my first visit.

Well, last week, we met again, along with a different Japanese friend of mine, who shall remain nameless. The night took an interesting turn, which is why I must protect his identity... Let's call him “Mr. X.”

So, Hiroyuki was a little tired that night and left the izakaya early. Mr. X turned to me and said, “Ri-chi-san, I want to take you to Kichijoji. To the dangerous part...” Well, it was a Monday night with an early class on Tuesday, but it was only 7:30.

We headed to the nearby train station; on the platform, I bought a bottle of sports drink from the vending machine and quickly drained it. I didn't know how this night was going to go.

At Kichijoji station, we headed northeast toward the “dangerous” part of town. There are clubs, hostess bars, snack bars, strip clubs, and, I think, an infamous “Soapland.” I think you can guess what happens there. Now, I don't really know how “dangerous” these places are; this is Japan after all. Yet, I was still kind of nervous because I didn't want Mr. X to put me in “harm's way,” if you know what I mean...

Dodging past all the slickly dressed touts dressed as yakuza wann-bees, Mr. X stopped in front of Club Spacia and definitely declared this was the place. It was a “kaba-kura” - katakana English for “cabaret club.” Next to the stairs was a display case with large photos of overly makeup-ed, beautiful young Japanese women. The doors opened into a large bar/club area with lots of lights and mirrors. We were escorted to our seats and a waiter explained the costs per hour and what it entailed. Luckily Mr. X seems to be independently weather and insisted on paying. Let's just say it wasn't cheap.

Soon, two young women were escorted over and sat down between us.

Now, for the official record, it was all quite tame and nothing inappropriate happened. Also, as much as I enjoyed the cultural aspect of this part of Japanese society, it still felt really weird and kind of creepy, similar to strip clubs in America (not that I've been to any; I'm just well-read...).

They very carefully put ice in our glasses and filled them with whiskey and soda. Using small towels, they delicately wiped the condensation from the glasses before handing them to us. It was a very much part of the show, a modern geisha thing. We engaged in small talk – where are you from, how long have you been here, what is your favorite Japanese food? It was excellent Japanese practice. After 15 minutes or so, a man appear and dramatically gestured for them to stand and leave. They quickly scribbled their names with little hearts, gave them to us and said goodbye.

Soon, two more young women were escorted over and sat down next two us.

Of the three sets of young women that we met that night, I don't remember who was from Aomori, who was 23, or who spoke the best English, but they were all very nice. Mr. X got the last laugh when he suddenly leaned over mid-conversation with his partner, “Ri-chi-san, she is Asia University student!” My heart sank. “Joke! Joke!” he continued. We had a good, hearty laugh. He'll pay. My revenge will be cold and sweet...

After an hour, we escaped that den of iniquity, our morals intact. I later asked a different Japanese friend, well versed in these matters, how this experience ranked on the grand scale of things, “If staying home with your wife and kids is a '1' and Soapland is a '10,' what does a 'kaba-kura' rate in Japan?”

My friend sucked air past his teeth, a quintessential Japanese thing to do, “Well, I'd say a '6...'” He paused, “Maybe a '7.'”

Once on the street with pure, wholesome, fresh air in our lungs, I hoped for a quick retreat. It wasn't yet late and there was hope for a happy, productive morning. Nope. Not to be. Next was off to a famous ramen shop for a large, wonderful bowl of sesame ramen with tender, delicious slices of pork.

Ok, now, maybe we are going home? Nope.

“Ri-chi-san, I want to take you to a different club. Don't worry; this one is safe!”

Off we went to a small establishment, maybe a “hostess bar.” It was much smaller and more sophisticated: no bright lights and loud music. The “mama” of the bar, maybe in her 50's, welcomed us and escorted us to our table. In the other corner, some salary men lustily sang away at karaoke while two women in their 30's refilled the glasses. Soon, we had our own drinking partner, curiously inquiring about our lives. It turns out she spoke almost flawless English from years of self study and was a born and bred native of Kichijoji. She entertained us with stories of Kichijoji before it became extremely popular and how the changes have affected it.

However, like all good things, it came to an end, and it was time to go home. We bid our farewells and wobbled to the train station. I'm sure our swaying on the train looked like just like everyone else's.

At the north exit of the Musashisakai station, where we parted ways, Mr. X admonished me, “Ri-chi-san, don't tell Joan-san. She will be verrrrrrrry angry...” Promising full confidentially, I pinballed home where I promptly confessed my “sins” to Joan. She laughed at me and tucked me into bed. It really unfortunate that the next day was one of the hottest so far and perhaps the busiest of the semester. However, the night was totally worth it. Not sure I'll do it again soon, though...

Lending a helping hand

To find some relief on a very hot and windy day, I dragged myself out of the apartment and up the street to Saizeriya, an Italian chain restaurant. One of the best things about it, besides the air conditioning, is the 270 yen “do-ri-n-ku-baa” or “drink bar” - all the teas, coffee, juices, and sodas you can consume.

Even with the increasing temperatures and humidity, we have stubbornly resisted turning on

the air conditioning. With the projected power shortages coming due to the loss of Dai-ichi “gen-patsu,” the nuclear power plant damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, we are trying to help in our small way. However, when walking past a store with the front doors open and frigid air pouring out to entice customers inside, one quickly realizes that there is still so much waste and inefficiency built into modern society. Right after the disaster, everyone in Japan was so energized and enthusiastic to help and to make difficult changes/choices, but sadly, like in many other situations, that resolve has faded somewhat.

However, I did not start this blog post to rant and rave about the coming energy problems.

Related to the disaster up north, I had an interesting experience last week I wanted to share.

A Japanese friend of ours is involved with a nonprofit organization that is helping with relief efforts up north, providing direct aid and resources to people and communities, separate from the government and all the restrictions of bureaucracy. There are disturbing stories of people still in difficult situations up north while huge amounts of money and resources are tied up in red tape.

A local, large onsen/spa had gone out of business and is to be torn down. I don't know the details, but our friend's group had one day to salvage as much as possible. The plan was to fill a very large semi-trailer truck with things that could be used for reconstruction efforts or to bring some relief and pleasure to people who are still suffering.

With classes later that morning, I only had a short time to help but still wanted to show my support. Ten of us met at eight o'clock and received a whirlwind tour of the cavernous, multi-story building. Basically everything was still in place: sheets and towels on the racks, reclining chairs waiting for tired bathers, beer mugs, menus on the tables, even the cook's clogs waiting just inside the kitchen door. All of it was up for grabs, and it quickly became obvious there was no way it would all fit in the truck. So some quick prioritizing got us started on the tatami –

traditional, Japanese-style floor mats.

From the first room alone, we pulled up and stacked over 70 tatami near the front door. There

were many more rooms to go. With no electricity in the onsen, we relied on headlamps and flashlights to find our way into deeper rooms.

Quickly, I ran out of time and had to bid farewell, leaving them to a long and sweaty day of hauling and loading. Joan was able to stop by later that afternoon to see for herself and gather

information for a potential article. The truck was already loaded and gone, but she was able to meet some of the people and see the shell of the onsen itself. Hopefully, she will be able to meet the director of the organization and learn the whole story. Stay tuned for more details...