more random thoughts/observations from our trip...

Hi! So we've finally posted our pics of our trip onto Picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ponophobic

Making captions for all the photos is hard and time consuming, especially since I can't remember what some of the buildings are, which explains why some of the captions only say "another building on the temple grounds." Anyway, take a look at them and leave comments if you feel compelled to.

So back to what this post is supposed to be about--more stuff about our trip:

1) Melons are expensive. Ok, so I guess melons might not be that easy to grow in Japan because the prices for them are insane. There was this small watermelon at a grocery store that was selling for around $9. And if you thought that was expensive, there is this one variety of melon that is insanely pricey, the Yubari Melon. So we're not sure what's so special about this melon, but everywhere we go, we always see them selling for at least 10,000 Yen (roughly $85-90). And then there was this one store that was selling a pair of them for 41,000 Yen. What's even crazier is this article. Seriously, 2 million yen?!?!? We were tempted to buy one just to see what the fuss was about, but we resisted.

2) Vending machines are awesome! So yeah, Japan has tons of vending machines, and there are some bizarre ones out there. Unfortunately, we just saw a lot of drink vending machines, sometimes a cigarette machine as well, but that was about it. But the most interesting one that we encountered was on the Ramen floor of the Kyoto Station (yes, they have a ramen floor). We wandered around the floor from one ramen place to another, and when we were ready to go in and order, we wondered why each store had a vending maching near their entrance. We realized that to order food, you actually used the vending machine! So each button on the vending maching corresponds to a menu item, and the menu was a display of plastic versions of the dish. The place that we went to went a step further and actually numbered each item in the display so that each button corresponded to the display number, so that people who couldn't really read Japanese could still order based on what the food looked like. After you pressed the buttons for your order, the machine would print out a ticket for each item, and then you'd take all of them and hand them over to someone who was standing by the entrance...and that was it. We sooooo appreciated the ease of ordering there.

3) Kyoto taxi drivers. So we decided to take a taxi from our hotel in Kyoto to Kyoto station. This would be our first taxi ride, and we didn't know what to expect. First of all, many of the cars in Japan are small, including the taxis, and the reason for this became obvious very quickly...the roads in Kyoto are narrow!!! Our driver decided to avoid main streets in order to get to the station, so this basically meant that we would be travelling on streets that would be considered a one lane road, but was actually a two lane road. The driver wasn't worried that at one point, there were two poles on either side of the street, and in order to avoid them, he needed to slalom...no, he just kept his 30 km/h speed down the road. If a car was coming at him...just keep going and swerve to the side if absolutely necessary. We probably shouldn't complain too much about it since he did get us to the station in a short amount of time, but really, it was crazy and impressive at the same time.

4) The MTV Japan Music Awards. We happened to be in Japan during this, and we happened to catch a piece of it on Japanese TV. The one moment that we remember very vividly is this one male celebrity, most likely a singer, come out on stage and greet the crowd in English with, "Are you exciting?!?!" He was very ecstatic about this...and he continued with "I'm so exciting!!!!" And that was your piece of Engrish for the day :)

I think there's more to talk about, but I'll stop here for now.

Jerry Liu

Field Trip!

So, while we were visiting some castles and temples in Kyoto and Osaka, we kept running into huge groups of school children. Our first stop was Nijo-jo, one of the oldest and biggest Shogun temples in Japan. We were walking to the entrance of the temple when three middle school girls came running up from behind us to ask "Excuse me, do you speak English?" And when we said yes, they were incredibly excited. They proceeded to tell us that for their English assignment, they needed to find people from other countries and ask them some questions. Their first question was "what do you like about Japan?" to which we answered "the food." There were many other things as well, but we decided to keep things simple. They stumbled a bit when trying to ask "what kind of Japanese food do you like?" but eventually we figured it out. Their last couple of quesitons were about where we were from and which city...and that was it--quick and very amusing.

Later that day, we made our way to sanjyusangendo, which is famous for housing 1001 nearly identical buddha statues. When walking to the area where we needed to take off our shoes, another group of middle school girls approached us and asked a very similar first question to the previous group of girls (something along the lines of "Excuse me, do you speak English?"). After we said "yes," they immediately started asking their questions, which were slightly different from the first interview we did. However, we were very puzzled with one of the questions: "How many seasons do you have?" We answered "four" very tentatively since we weren't sure if that was really what they were trying to ask, and judging by how confused they were when we gave them our answer, we were pretty sure that they weren't trying to ask about seasons, but probably something else. They also asked "do you like Japan?" and of course we had to say "yes," which was genuine, but really...was anyone really going to say "no" to them? When the interview was over, they took a picture with us, and in order for Nick to actually be in the picture, he needed to squat really, really low...it was amusing.

The next day, we made our way over to Osaka Castle, which is pretty much the only thing to see in Osaka. As we were exiting the castle, we decided to sit down on a nearby bench to read the travel guide and figure out if there really was nothing else noteworthy to see there. While looking through the Osaka section of the guide, a large group of elementary school children surrounded us while we were on the bench and in unison said "Excuse me, do you speak English?" (We were starting to wonder if this was the canonical introductory sentence to say to foreigners). They introduced themselves to us as students in the 3rd grade class of Osaka Elementary School. We knew that they taught English as part of the Japanese educational curriculum, but we were amazed that they started that early.

Anyway, they asked us many general questions about where we're from and our trip to Japan. At the end of the interview, they sang us a Japanese children's song...it was cute, and a bit long. We sort of smiled throughout the entire song 'cuz we couldn't understand the song, but that wasn't really the point of why they were singing. Then they asked us if we could sing a children's song from our country, so we sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (and by "we" I mean "I" since Nick apparently doesn't know his children's songs). Before they left, they gave us a sheet of paper with their names on it as well as an origami piece as a thank you gift. It was all incredibly sweet and they were so full of joy and happiness that it made the interview really fun.

...and after that group of children left, we were approached by a second group of children from the same 3rd grade class. We tried to explain to them that we already were interviewed by another group, but to no avail since they started to ask us the same questions. They sang a different children's song, so we sang "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (and once again, I was doing most of the singing...).

After we finished talking to them, we decided that we needed to leave the castle area because we knew we would be approached by another group of children, and sure enough, as we were leaving, another group came up to us and asked us the same questions. It was then that we realized that having to come up with children's songs on the spot is hard, especially if you haven't had any reason to sing them recently. We were struggling to think of a different song that I was quite tempted to sing "Happy Birthday to You," but we were able to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

...and then we left as quickly as possible.

But all throughout our trips to Kyoto and Osaka, we kept running into groups of school children. An amazing number of buses came and went when we were visiting the various landmarks. Even as we were boarding the train to Tokyo at Kyoto station, we saw large numbers of school children who just arrived and downstairs at the loading area, we saw an equal number of school children in rows getting ready to board their train to return home.

Personally, I never had any field trips like that when I was in middle school...

Jerry Liu