(no subject)
Sunday morning I spent some time working on an essay for Japanese class while Jeff went out to Myoudani again to look for something. His host mother served us ramen for lunch, which was really good. She even flavored mine with miso and his with something else because she knows he doesn't like miso. Apparently, while he'd been gone, he'd been corresponding with Dekkan by email and had made plans to meet him later. Somehow those plans expanded to include both of us hanging out with him for a while and then going to dinner at his house. He lives about ten minutes away by car from Ikawadani, which is just the next station over on the subway line from Seishin-minami, so it's pretty easy to meet him.
We met him at Ikawadani about 2:15 and decided to go to some places near Sannomiya, starting with the Motomachi area. We actually left the train at Kenchou-mae because that station seems like it is a little closer to Motomachi than Sannomiya itself is. Dekkan was, to our surprise, a good tour guide, telling us things about some of the nearby buildings. When we went along that street with Jeff's host mother the week before, she hadn't said anything aside from briefly mentioning the prefectural office building (Kenchou-mae literally means "before/in front of the prefectural office"), but Dekkan commented on a couple of European-looking buildings, a nearby hotel, and probably another couple buildings that I've since forgotten about, as well as pointing out the prefectural offices.
On the weekends there tend to be a lot of street performances in various places around Sannomiya; one of those places is the Motomachi shopping road. So as we were walking along, we ended up listening to an acapella group for a few songs. They were pretty talented; one guy was good at making percussion sounds with his voice, so it didn't really sound acapella. While we were standing there, a big protest group against "free sex" with signs and everything came through. I was rather amused by it. I guess they were protesting sex before marriage and that sort of thing. Nice sentiment; I'm not sure what walking around with signs is going to do though; it's not like they were protesting a government decision or something like that, which the right people could take action to change, given enough public support. I mean, what they were protesting was people's individual choice. Not that I'm for sex before marriage; I'm just not sure what the point of the march was.
Eventually, we ran across the denshi-jisho (electronic dictionary) shop we keep seeing there. It's a nice shop; Dekkan called it an "outlet," which doesn't seem to mean the same thing in Japan. I don't really know how to explain what it would mean in America, but in Japan, it seems to mean a shop that sells older models of goods. So they aren't new in the sense that they were just produced, but they aren't used or old in the sense that someone has already used them. It's possible that they are refurbished items, like if someone returned them without using them very much, although from what Dekkan said, that isn't usually what they are. Instead, they're usually items that may have had tiny glitches or scratches or something right after production, so they couldn't be sold for full price. Nothing that would affect their usability, but perhaps small aesthetic problems.
In any case, we were looking at one particular model whose price had been reduced by 74%, so it was a very attractive deal. It was (barely) less than 10,000 yen now, which, when good denshi-jisho can often cost 25,000 yen or more, is an excellent price. And this model seemed to have quite good functionality, with extensive dictionary capabilities in both directions, plus a phrase dictionary and some other things. The most useful trick is its jump ability, where it can directly search for a word used in a displayed definition. So if you're looking up an English word and all you get back is kanji equivalents, you can directly jump to those words to find their pronunciation and such without having to try to look them up manually. Since it was a really good deal, Jeff decided to buy it. I helped convince him because I was thinking about buying it myself.
After that we went to a camping store where Dekkan needed to buy something for his camping club. It was actually pretty interesting. I'm normally not too interested in sports/outdoor activities type stores, but this one had a rock wall and was giving spot lessons in rock climbing, which Jeff and I watched for a bit while Dekkan was paying for a sleeping bag (which was apparently fairly expensive). After he bought that, he had to go get money, so we stopped by a post office. He said he uses a post office account because there's no charge for withdrawing money at any time. Jeff once withdrew money on a weekend and got charged more than 100 yen for it (about a dollar worth, but still). I think we can manage our money well enough to withdraw money only within acceptable times though.
By that time, it was getting fairly late, so we started heading back toward the station. On the way back, we stopped by a department store that had a sign advertising a special fair for Hokkaido goods. There was a lot of food and stuff, and I got a taste of some sort of cheesecake, but we didn't actually buy anything. Somehow, before we got all the way back to the station, the conversation turned to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Jeff mentioned that there was a KFC at Myoudani. So Dekkan was all excited to go there and get some chicken for some reason. I guess he wanted to supplement dinner, although he'd already said there was going to be curry.
So we went there. Dekkan got some chicken (which was definitely more expensive than it would have been in America, but all the American fast food places are like that to varying degrees). Jeff and I went to a grocery store and bought drinks because we were really thirsty. Dekkan bought a 1.5 liter drink as well. It was kind of crazy, actually. Jeff and I speculated later that his family might be pretty well off, because he withdrew a lot of money at the bank, and he seemed to buy the chicken almost on a whim, even though it was like 1300 yen. And he didn't seem fazed about buying the sleeping bag, either.
At any rate, we agreed to wait at Myoudani for a bit so that he could go to Ikawadani first, return home on his motorcycle, and come back in his car so he could pick us up. He said his place was about ten minutes from the station by car, so he'd just drive us to make things easier. So we waited at Myoudani for fifteen minutes or so and then followed him to Ikawadani.
His place was pretty nice (what we saw of it, anyway), but the dinner was an absolute feast. It started out with chicken, and there was also a dish of various small things like meatballs and Japanese dumplings and such (which were very good). At first we were confused because he'd mentioned curry and there wasn't any to begin with, but then his mother brought it out after we'd been eating for a few minutes. It was pretty good, although a little spicier than I'm used to. We saw that Dekkan's mother wasn't eating with us, and asked if she'd already eaten, but apparently she'd decided to eat after we finished. That seemed kind of odd to us, but I guess most American hosts wouldn't hesitate to eat with their guests. She didn't have to worry about entertaining us afterward though since we left pretty soon after we finished eating.
The part of the dinner that was the most problematic (other than the quantity, although obviously we weren't expected to eat everything) was the salad, which had stuff like octopus on it. Then, I thought I was being flexible when she asked us if we could eat meat and I said yes, but I didn't realize at the time that she took that to mean that we would like to eat the salad with some other meat on it instead of octopus, so she took it away and brought it back with some (normal-looking) meat on it. We didn't even end up eating any of it because we were already full with the curry and chicken, so I felt a little bad about that, but I'm sure they can use it for leftovers. She was pretty hard to understand though; it's kind of interesting given that Dekkan's so easy to understand. I think it's mostly that his pronunciation is clear and he's good at explaining around words we don't know.
Anyway, the next time she asked if we could eat something, I had a better answer by saying that we could, but not at the moment because we were already full. So then she didn't produce anything else except dessert, which I wasn't expecting. It was some sort of cake-like thing though; I wasn't sure exactly what mine was (there were three different pieces, one for each of us - I'm sure they were purchased as separate pieces at a dessert shop) except there were pieces of what seemed like peach on top, and the cake part was chocolate. It was pretty good, but I hope we don't get invited to eat at other people's homes too often because I'm sure I ate too much. Not to the point of getting sick or anything, but more than I needed.
There was one amusing part where I started to use my napkin to wipe off my mouth, and Jeff whispered to me, "Don't use that on your mouth!" Then, like two seconds later, Dekkan used his own napkin on his mouth, so it was probably okay. I couldn't keep myself from laughing a bit after that, but thankfully I didn't really have to explain myself. To explain this, I should first say that these aren't the dry paper or cloth sort of things that you normally think of as napkins; they're damp cloths that you use at the beginning of a meal to clean off your hands. Normally they're perfectly fine for use during the meal as well to clean your hands or face, but apparently, at Jeff's place, the napkins are only intended for your hands (I don't remember why). So he thought it was like that at Dekkan's place too and tried to warn me since there's no rule like that at my place. But given the example, I guess it was fine.
I hope tomorrow night I'll have time to write about this week, which was actually pretty exciting, including three tests, a presentation, a cold, and a typhoon!
We met him at Ikawadani about 2:15 and decided to go to some places near Sannomiya, starting with the Motomachi area. We actually left the train at Kenchou-mae because that station seems like it is a little closer to Motomachi than Sannomiya itself is. Dekkan was, to our surprise, a good tour guide, telling us things about some of the nearby buildings. When we went along that street with Jeff's host mother the week before, she hadn't said anything aside from briefly mentioning the prefectural office building (Kenchou-mae literally means "before/in front of the prefectural office"), but Dekkan commented on a couple of European-looking buildings, a nearby hotel, and probably another couple buildings that I've since forgotten about, as well as pointing out the prefectural offices.
On the weekends there tend to be a lot of street performances in various places around Sannomiya; one of those places is the Motomachi shopping road. So as we were walking along, we ended up listening to an acapella group for a few songs. They were pretty talented; one guy was good at making percussion sounds with his voice, so it didn't really sound acapella. While we were standing there, a big protest group against "free sex" with signs and everything came through. I was rather amused by it. I guess they were protesting sex before marriage and that sort of thing. Nice sentiment; I'm not sure what walking around with signs is going to do though; it's not like they were protesting a government decision or something like that, which the right people could take action to change, given enough public support. I mean, what they were protesting was people's individual choice. Not that I'm for sex before marriage; I'm just not sure what the point of the march was.
Eventually, we ran across the denshi-jisho (electronic dictionary) shop we keep seeing there. It's a nice shop; Dekkan called it an "outlet," which doesn't seem to mean the same thing in Japan. I don't really know how to explain what it would mean in America, but in Japan, it seems to mean a shop that sells older models of goods. So they aren't new in the sense that they were just produced, but they aren't used or old in the sense that someone has already used them. It's possible that they are refurbished items, like if someone returned them without using them very much, although from what Dekkan said, that isn't usually what they are. Instead, they're usually items that may have had tiny glitches or scratches or something right after production, so they couldn't be sold for full price. Nothing that would affect their usability, but perhaps small aesthetic problems.
In any case, we were looking at one particular model whose price had been reduced by 74%, so it was a very attractive deal. It was (barely) less than 10,000 yen now, which, when good denshi-jisho can often cost 25,000 yen or more, is an excellent price. And this model seemed to have quite good functionality, with extensive dictionary capabilities in both directions, plus a phrase dictionary and some other things. The most useful trick is its jump ability, where it can directly search for a word used in a displayed definition. So if you're looking up an English word and all you get back is kanji equivalents, you can directly jump to those words to find their pronunciation and such without having to try to look them up manually. Since it was a really good deal, Jeff decided to buy it. I helped convince him because I was thinking about buying it myself.
After that we went to a camping store where Dekkan needed to buy something for his camping club. It was actually pretty interesting. I'm normally not too interested in sports/outdoor activities type stores, but this one had a rock wall and was giving spot lessons in rock climbing, which Jeff and I watched for a bit while Dekkan was paying for a sleeping bag (which was apparently fairly expensive). After he bought that, he had to go get money, so we stopped by a post office. He said he uses a post office account because there's no charge for withdrawing money at any time. Jeff once withdrew money on a weekend and got charged more than 100 yen for it (about a dollar worth, but still). I think we can manage our money well enough to withdraw money only within acceptable times though.
By that time, it was getting fairly late, so we started heading back toward the station. On the way back, we stopped by a department store that had a sign advertising a special fair for Hokkaido goods. There was a lot of food and stuff, and I got a taste of some sort of cheesecake, but we didn't actually buy anything. Somehow, before we got all the way back to the station, the conversation turned to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Jeff mentioned that there was a KFC at Myoudani. So Dekkan was all excited to go there and get some chicken for some reason. I guess he wanted to supplement dinner, although he'd already said there was going to be curry.
So we went there. Dekkan got some chicken (which was definitely more expensive than it would have been in America, but all the American fast food places are like that to varying degrees). Jeff and I went to a grocery store and bought drinks because we were really thirsty. Dekkan bought a 1.5 liter drink as well. It was kind of crazy, actually. Jeff and I speculated later that his family might be pretty well off, because he withdrew a lot of money at the bank, and he seemed to buy the chicken almost on a whim, even though it was like 1300 yen. And he didn't seem fazed about buying the sleeping bag, either.
At any rate, we agreed to wait at Myoudani for a bit so that he could go to Ikawadani first, return home on his motorcycle, and come back in his car so he could pick us up. He said his place was about ten minutes from the station by car, so he'd just drive us to make things easier. So we waited at Myoudani for fifteen minutes or so and then followed him to Ikawadani.
His place was pretty nice (what we saw of it, anyway), but the dinner was an absolute feast. It started out with chicken, and there was also a dish of various small things like meatballs and Japanese dumplings and such (which were very good). At first we were confused because he'd mentioned curry and there wasn't any to begin with, but then his mother brought it out after we'd been eating for a few minutes. It was pretty good, although a little spicier than I'm used to. We saw that Dekkan's mother wasn't eating with us, and asked if she'd already eaten, but apparently she'd decided to eat after we finished. That seemed kind of odd to us, but I guess most American hosts wouldn't hesitate to eat with their guests. She didn't have to worry about entertaining us afterward though since we left pretty soon after we finished eating.
The part of the dinner that was the most problematic (other than the quantity, although obviously we weren't expected to eat everything) was the salad, which had stuff like octopus on it. Then, I thought I was being flexible when she asked us if we could eat meat and I said yes, but I didn't realize at the time that she took that to mean that we would like to eat the salad with some other meat on it instead of octopus, so she took it away and brought it back with some (normal-looking) meat on it. We didn't even end up eating any of it because we were already full with the curry and chicken, so I felt a little bad about that, but I'm sure they can use it for leftovers. She was pretty hard to understand though; it's kind of interesting given that Dekkan's so easy to understand. I think it's mostly that his pronunciation is clear and he's good at explaining around words we don't know.
Anyway, the next time she asked if we could eat something, I had a better answer by saying that we could, but not at the moment because we were already full. So then she didn't produce anything else except dessert, which I wasn't expecting. It was some sort of cake-like thing though; I wasn't sure exactly what mine was (there were three different pieces, one for each of us - I'm sure they were purchased as separate pieces at a dessert shop) except there were pieces of what seemed like peach on top, and the cake part was chocolate. It was pretty good, but I hope we don't get invited to eat at other people's homes too often because I'm sure I ate too much. Not to the point of getting sick or anything, but more than I needed.
There was one amusing part where I started to use my napkin to wipe off my mouth, and Jeff whispered to me, "Don't use that on your mouth!" Then, like two seconds later, Dekkan used his own napkin on his mouth, so it was probably okay. I couldn't keep myself from laughing a bit after that, but thankfully I didn't really have to explain myself. To explain this, I should first say that these aren't the dry paper or cloth sort of things that you normally think of as napkins; they're damp cloths that you use at the beginning of a meal to clean off your hands. Normally they're perfectly fine for use during the meal as well to clean your hands or face, but apparently, at Jeff's place, the napkins are only intended for your hands (I don't remember why). So he thought it was like that at Dekkan's place too and tried to warn me since there's no rule like that at my place. But given the example, I guess it was fine.
I hope tomorrow night I'll have time to write about this week, which was actually pretty exciting, including three tests, a presentation, a cold, and a typhoon!