Journal lingqi's Journal: December 25, 2002 - Is it christmas in the US yet? 2
December 25, 2002 (6:00pm)
Merry Christmas.
(I was going to just leave it at that - but figured that it might be kind of boring)
Some neat tidbits:
*) In Gyoda station (near which I live), when you go past the ticket-taking machines, and before turning to go downstairs, there is a big mirror (like a dressing mirror). I have never paid much attention to it before, but my girlfriend pointed it out to me and asked if it's for people to mend their appearance as they busily went to catch trains.
This morning, I paid a little more heed of the mirror, and sure enough women were taking turns standing in front of it, fixes the skirt / hair / whatever for a moment before heading down to the train platform.
The mirror actually seemed to serve no other purpose - being tilted slighly upwards and completely flat, it would make an awful candidate as a observation mirror for the station attendant. Talk about taking care of the customers!
*) As a christmas-eve dinner, we went out to eat at a restaurant. I am not sure if I mentioned this already, or if it's easily perceptable from this now two month some journal - but that the service at restaurants are almost always exceptional. In this restaurant, seeing that we did not speak (much) Japanese, they made / copied a set of english menu for us. We started discussing that it is peculiar when the service is actually much better here when there is no custom of tipping, while in the US the services are more often than not horrible.
Both myself and my girlfriend had previously worked in a japanese restaurant in the US. We have always noticed that many japanese tips below average. It was always a subject of complaint before, but now the matter comes under an entirely different light - I am very positive that I too would now feel reluctant to pay extra for inferior service (in fact, this thought had occured to me in my last visit to the US).
*) In Japan, turkey (the thanksgiving stable) is called "shichimencho (äféé¥/ããfãfãfãfãfã¦)." Literally translated, it means "seven faced bird" or "sever sided bird," which have absolutely no meaning whatsoever - nobody seem to know why it's called something like that either. A related note is that in chinese it's called the "fire chicken" (literal translation), but I believe it has to do with the red pouchy thingys that dangle on it - which makes a bit more sense.
*) While looking for food, we browsed some nearby car dealers. One of the dealers had a Ford Escort (1988?) for 30,000yen. That's 240 dollars folks! And it's clean! And it runs! And it has something like 6,000 miles (no I did not type it wrong, six thousand) on it.
It's a shame that registration and all that will cost a thousand minimum.
On the subject of cars - I suppose most of us know now that Japan has rigorous auto-inspections, right? new cars are inspected at the three year mark, and thereafter ever two years. Dealers take these opportunities to change out every component that's remotely failing (and charges you a lot of cash for doing so). A conspiracy theory says that such a mandatory inspection is really only meant for stimulating car sales (as used cars becomes more and more costly to maintain) because otherwise there is no way for Japan to support such a large *domestic* auto industry. The upside is that in general cars are almost always in excellent shape. Tradeoffs either way, of course.
Now onto the next part on the apartment finding:
--- Part IV ---
One thing to watch out for is that as with Japanese rooms, they always comes japanese closets. This has a lot to do with lifestyle, of course. As diligent people that packs up their bed (futon - åfå£/è'å£) every morning - western closets are not very convenient. Japanese closets are divided horizontally across the middle - I am guessing to accomodate more futons. Consequentially there is no bar and if you want to hang any clothes, there is a strip of metal / plastic / something on the wall where you can hang them.
Western closet is very, very hard to come by. Out of about the dozen apartments I visited, only two had western style closets. Unfortunately people usually don't list this on the sheets, so you will actually go and see for yourself what kind of closets they have. Again - remember that your cloth hangers are worth nothing unless you find a real closet.
Japanese closet goes by the name of "oshi-ire (æS¼å...¥ãOE)," and western closet is called "closet" in katakana, as an distinction.
Similarly, western doors are called "dou-a (ãfã)" while the japanese ones (sliding) are called differently "to (æ)/ tobira (æ)/ etc."
Merry Christmas to you too! (Score:2)
Christmas in NH when I was little was a very big deal. For one thing, we didn't have a lot of toys, so getting one new fire engine or doll at Christmas was very exciting. There were all kinds of special things about the season--for example, getting out the ornaments for the tree and talking about the story behind each one. My great-aunt had a super-tiny creche set of enameled wood. When I slept over at her house, I would take the baby lambs and the baby Jesus to bed with me so they wouldn't be cold.
We 4 kids were not supposed to wake our folks up until the streetlights went off, 7 a.m., that was hard to wait for. Fortunately, we got to open our stockings during the time between 4 a.m. when we woke up full of anticipation and the time we could all go climb into their bed with them. Anyway, there are some Christmas memories in exchange for the fun of experiencing Japan with you.
Another wish of a merry Christmas (Score:1)