the solution to the soggy sushi issue

Yes, that's right. You know what I'm talking about. Sushi from your local supermarket, cafe, convenience store, whatever. You know it's been sitting there all day, refrigerated. The nori (seaweed) is probably all soggy from sitting wrapped around the rice. It's probably not going to be very good. Not unlike what this sushi roll looks like:



You know, some cucumber, some imitation crab, and some mayo, knowing how the Japanese love to put mayo in everything. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing too appetizing.


Wrong! Open up the packaging and you discover...



...the nori is packaged separately from the rest of the roll!!

Thus, ensuring its awesome crispyness.

Just peel back one side to expose some nori...



..which is exactly the amount required to stick to one side of the rice roll, if you roll it over.

Then, slowly, keep rolling the nori around the rice, all the while extracting the rest of the nori from is plastic packaging.





Voila! Crispy, crunchy nori-wrapped sushi roll. One of the yummiest ever! What a difference it makes. Ingenious!

the post office

The other day, I had to go to the post office to mail home some forms. I didn't have the right postage for overseas mail, so I figured I'd just go in and get it dealt with. I'd been procrastinating all week, because the thought of bureaucratic errands makes me cringe, and usually, leaves me pretty frustrated.

Every time I've had to go to the post office at home (in the US) the wait has been, on a good day, 10-15 minutes, and on a bad day, up to an hour of standing in line. I know that postal workers are busy, underpaid, etc. but they just don't seem to be in any extraordinary hurry to do anything. Between serving each person, they inexplicably disappear for a few extra minutes. Though at each post office I've been to, the counter has had room for 5 clerks or even 7 or 10, I've almost never seen more than two clerks out at a time, even when the line bends around twice.

So imagine my pleasant, bewildered surprise when I walk into a post office and a clerk is immediately available to help me. There's no line. I mail my letter. I'm done. In less than 5 minutes flat, I'm on my bike again. It doesn't even register until I've gone a good ways how painless that was, and how comparatively amazing. I feel stupid for having put it off all week.

Let's not forget how quickly domestic shipping itself takes. I've mailed and received letters, merchandise, etc. I live on Shikoku, which is the smallest and most "rural" and out of the way of the four major islands, in some ways. Plenty of Japanese people have never set foot on Shikoku. And yet, mailing a letter or package within Japan STILL takes only one business day to arrive (Okinawa excepted, because they really are far away). Granted, Japan is the size of California, but even if I mailed a letter/package from San Francisco to San Diego, I guarantee it will not arrive the next day. Probably not the day after, either. And the one time I used a private shipping service (takkyuubin) to ship my oversized, overweight luggage from the Narita Airport to Shikoku, it still got there overnight for a reasonable fee.

Why? Whyy is the Japanese post office so quick? (Okay, to be honest this letter mailing episode isn't my first time dealing with them. It was the first time it dawned on me how different the system works from the US though. So I think it's fair to say they're mostly quick.) For starters, there are zillions more Japanese post office branches, I think. I can think of 4 different ones I've been to in this city, off the top of my head, and I know there are more. In contrast, I can only think of two post office branches in my much more populous and sprawling suburban city at home, and they are a good drive apart from each other, as opposed to a short bike ride distance apart.

The Japanese use their postal system as a kind of bank too; they can open savings accounts and deposit money in them. This money can then be withdrawn at any post office branch or post office atm machine in the country, which is a distinct advantage to the mostly local and regional "real" banks that dominate the banking system here. For example, for my upcoming trip to Tokyo, I have to withdraw all the cash I plan to be using in advance, because there are no branches of my bank outside my prefecture. (I mean, I suppose I could try to withdraw money from other atms? I don't know if this is possible? I definitely would have to pay an extra fee. And I'd rather not risk being cashless in Tokyo.) So anyways, digression on banking aside, the Japanese use their postal system for more purposes than mailing letters, so it stands to reason that there are more branches. More branches = fewer people at each branch at any given time = less of a wait. Though, that cannot be the full reason because their "real" banking services do seem to be slow. I've always had to wait, and sometimes pretty long times, in order to do business with my bank. And there are always a waiting room full of people, despite having even more branches than the post office. Perhaps people have to do business with their bank way more than with the post office, who knows? And shutting down at 3pm can't possibly help matters much.

Anyways, the speed of the Japanese post office is a miraculous, mysterious phenomenon that I will cherish and dearly miss when I return home.

dance video, finally uploaded somewhere

After being rejected by all sorts of video-sharing tools, I finally got it up. It's big, be forewarned. Somehow my video converter wouldn't process more than a second of it.

Right-click save-as to download.


Gion Kouta video

Gion Kouta dance performance

Whew! I'm exhausted. The dance performance was nearly 5 hours long. It was also set up in a way unlike any other performance I've been to. It was billed as a "maezomekai," which basically means "first dance gathering of the year." All the students sat at two long tables in front of the stage, facing each other. At the beginning there was quite a ceremony with the teacher on stage toasting all the students below with a little plate of sake. Then the teacher handed out new fans to all the students. I asked her what it meant, and she said the idea was that her students would try extra hard and dance this next year with their new fans. She picked me to help her with this ceremony! I carried her sake to her, and handed her the fans to hand to her students. Even my friend, Tomoko, was surprised. "She treated you like a princess!!" It's that obvious, huh? My teacher really does favor me, doing all sorts of things for me. I think I must be her first (and only) foreign student, probably, and she wants me to get the fullest experience possible. Hence, the fantabulous furisode (long-sleeved kimono) that she lent me, and doing my hair all fancy, and letting me participate in the opening ceremonies. Heehee! I'm glad I haven't managed to disappoint her yet. But, I was ridiculously nervous. With all those people fussing about me, I was afraid I would screw up badly (like drop my fan or something) and disappoint them all!

I've uploaded a video that my friend took of my performance. It should be on facebook soon...in about 4 hrs, if the upload progress bar is correct. I haven't watched it yet, because I'm too afraid too. I'd rather bask in the illusory glow of all the praise that various little old ladies have showered on me, than to watch the video and face the truth that I am, after all, just a beginner (although a fabulously costumed beginner). One lady even told me that she was so moved that she cried! Maybe it was something about seeing a foreigner do something so traditionally Japanese. But then again, I think that the fact that I look Asian has facilitated my acceptance by the group. The little old lady who did my makeup (she's 81! looks not a day over 60, at most) commented casually that she expected I would be like one of those tall foreigners, but instead I'm so cute. HA! There were lots of "ooh ahh you're so cute" and "you look so good in your kimono/hair/etc." going around. Clearly, looking Japanese helps.

A lot of people came! Tomoko came, of course, but so did my host family with their new baby in tow. I handed out a few fliers to my Japanese culture class, and two of those students came (total surprise!). Also, Mrs. Yano and her daughter came--them being the family that I spent New Year's with. They even brought me some chocolate truffles. I must have been the single most represented dancer there! I was overwhelmed with everyone's kindness.




And finally, there was a ridiculously cute little 5 year old girl who danced before me. Sadly, I was backstage so I couldn't see her dance, but I did exchange some words with her backstage, and later in the audience we were sitting close to each other due to the show order. Well, apparently she took a liking to me! By the time of intermission, she was loudly broadcasting to everybody that she's "become Sophia-san's friend!" She dragged me into pictures with her family (a mother, older sister, and older brother, all performing that day) and held onto my leg, and played with my hair. She even took my cell phone from me and took pictures with it (preventing me from taking pictures of her family's amazing performances too, while she was at it *sigh*). But she was so adorable. Japanese kids are so adorable.

Yesterday I was at the children's classroom, I was lightly berated by another young Japanese girl for "sitting like a boy." I had just changed out of my kimono and was sitting cross-legged on the floor. I was so startled by her comment! I told her that this is how we are taught to sit, even from a very early age in kindergarten. I asked her how Japanese girls sit, and she demonstrated for me (basically, legs tucked under and off to one side, or another uncomfortable and hard to describe position. I call it W-sit, because the legs are shaped like a W). Ah. Right. I tried to explain to her that Japanese girls probably have to sit that way because they are always wearing a skirt uniform in school, so sitting cross-legged would be difficult, whereas very few American students wear uniforms, so most girls wear pants to school and thus sit cross-legged like everyone else. She was so surprised, I think a lot by the fact that I could manage to explain that in Japanese! Ah, cultural exchange. Gotta love it. Then she and her sister were so impressed when I said that "tai-iku" is "physical education" in English. Impressed and surprised like, ::gasp:: with mouth agape and eyes wide open. So cute!

electronic writing

Emoticons! Don't get me started on Japanese emoticons. There's already plenty of websites on them out there already, because there are a staggering number of them. For example, this page lists only emoticons that mean I'm sorry! I stumbled on it because my advisor put the following emoticon into an email: m(__)m

I was so stumped. I figured it didn't make any sense, so it must be an emoticon. At first I thought--an angel with wings? Then I figured out that it's roughly supposed to mean "sumimasen" (the equivalent of sorry, excuse me, etc.) But I still couldn't understand what it was supposed to depict. Then, finally...AHA! It's a picture of a person bowing! The m's are the shoulders, the (__) is the top of the person's head, which you can see because he's bent over bowing. AHA! So, this emoticon also means "yoroshiku onegaishimasu", roughly meaning in my context "thank you in advance for taking care of that thing for me." Amazing.

I thought that was the end of that. Japanese emoticons are a sophisticated language, I get it. But tonight, Tomoko showed me some of the notebooks of her sixth grade students. Some of the girl's notebooks were very colorful and covered with little red hearts, pink flowers, etc.--something one might expect for a girly notebook at that age. But what really struck me was that there were those really sophisticated emoticons!! In handwritten notes! I was floored.

I couldn't imagine using an American emoticon in my handwritten notes. This is perhaps because American emoticons are mostly meant to be read sideways, like <3 and :-). So, if I wanted to convey the feeling of the emoticon in a handwritten note, I'd just draw a right-side-up heart or smiley face or something like that. No way would I draw less-than sign and a 3 to stand for a heart, or a colon and a parentheses to stand for a smiley face. These girls, though, were mimicking the punctuation marks down to the letter. So, I literally saw marks like these ヾ(＠⌒▽⌒＠)ﾉ (=^^=) etc. drawn into the lines of their notebooks.

It's almost as though the symbols themselves have become a universal language that has taken on its own meaning. Our happy face or tongue-stick-out face :-P is merely representative of the feeling. It was created out of the limitations of the typed word. When those limitations are removed (i.e. handwriting) we can just draw the relevant smiley to convey the feeling better. But ヾ(＠⌒▽⌒＠)ﾉ doesn't just represent "I'm super happy," that particular combinations of symbols is actually invested with some meaning, such that even when expressing the feeling in handwriting, one uses those symbols in that combination (and some variants, of course). It's like spelling--emotions now have spellings and words and vocabulary to be used in correct, acceptable, recognizable combinations, except that they aren't words, they are collections of symbols that create emoticons.

Or this could all just be b.s., and Japanese girls just draw out the symbols because their emoticons are so sophisticated, and it's tough to do better with a freehand drawing. I can't imagine hand writing （ToT）instead of *cries* or ::cries::, or m(__)m instead of *bows* or ::bows:: though. That bowing one is a pretty non-intuitive emoticon to me.

Hmm...I don't think I've done a good job of conveying what I feel is intuitively different about Japanese vs American emoticons, and why Japanese ones are used in handwriting. Maybe I'll think on it some more.

On a related note, some will recall that novels written, sold, and read entirely on cell phones have become quite popular. Many authors are young teenage girls. I'm willing to bet that those novels are rife with emoticons.

the to do list

...is empty. A couple months ago I had extensive to do lists on each of my projects. But somehow, I've hit a wall. Or drawn a blank. Because the pages of my notebook/calendar are notably blank.

I've been wishing for a few months for a more solid block of time away from classes to spend at the research office just working. Well, now the schoolyear is over. Classes are done until the new year starts in April, and oddly enough, I have no clear idea of what to do! It's a bit cold to travel, still. I want to go to Nara but I'm wondering if I should wait until April to go for the cherry blossoms. So, here I am at work on Thursday for the first time, blogging and twiddling my thumbs. The initial draft of a paper is done, the survey is on hold being revised into workable Japanese by my very busy host family, and I'm not sure what to do about all the other stuff. I guess I should try to write up my other work too, even though it doesn't stand a chance of being published? At the very least, Fulbright will get a copy even if they don't read it. It's good practice? That's not very motivating.

Now that my Japanese classes are over, ironically, I've been studying Japanese out of my textbook. I'm on lesson 5! (Nearly halfway!) It's quite satisfying, even without me diligently trying to commit vocabulary and grammar to memory. Simply working through the exercises and reading the lessons is interesting, mainly because the lesson texts are taken from newspapers and other such "real" sources and are often very educational (in a good way). So that's what I'll do today, probably. After all, there is a clear to-do list kind of direction there: work through the lessons.

three against two, useful taxi services

I don't know why I always feel compelled to blog after my dance lessons. Maybe because they're so exciting to me? Honestly, each time I really do learn so much, either in terms of fixing my dance posture, or background of the dance, or principles of Japanese dance in general.

For example(s):
One principle of dance goes something like "Through lies, one can see the truth." This discussion came up when I was trying to do a move where I hide behind my sleeve. I'm supposed to be too embarrassed or depressed to see the people, so I hide. But, the teacher instructed me only to raise my sleeve a little bit. She told me, "Of
course when you want to hide you hunch over and shrink totally behind the sleeve. But that's not pretty, so we only do it halfway, like this, with erect posture. It's much more beautiful that way. It suggests the truth; the audience can see the truth through the lie in your posture."

In the new dance I am learning, there is a constant drum thud sound in the background. Because the rhythm didn't seem to have anything to do with the music, at first I thought it was the neighboring construction! I asked my teacher what it was, and she said that the constant thud usually represents waves (like of the ocean). I thought that was really interesting because usually we think of waves as being sort of continuous and whooshy, but the drumming brought out a kind of ominous relentless aspect of it. Then I listened more carefully and realized that it DID have a recognizably rhythm, namely, three against two! AhA! After practicing how to do that on the piano for so many years, I would have thought I'd recognize it anywhere. Now every time I hear the drums I just keep thinking about how perfect the three against two rhythm is, and how interesting to dance to it.

There is another saying in dance, something like "Return to where your heart was first." My teacher was exhorting me to dance bigger, spread out wider, draw bigger arcs in the air with my fan. She said that as one becomes used to performing a certain dance, the movements become smaller. I was actually surprised by that at first--why smaller, when one becomes more confident in remembering the moves? She said that when we first learn, simply to remember what comes next we exaggerate our moves so as to fix them in our memories. Once we remember and become used to them, we unconsciously get lazier and shrink the moves. So, she told me, return to where your heart was first--remember how it felt at the beginning, when you were just learning the moves and had to dance big.

Enough of the dance stuff.

Last week my host family invited me and Tomoko over for dinner. We had oysters! cooked every which way--boiled, steamed, smoked, and in rice. Soo delicious! And, fresh spinach grown from my host dad's brother's garden. Their baby has grown immensely. It's almost unrecognizable from the last time I saw him. His cheeks have puffed up hugely! He looks like the huge baby in Spirited Away. My host mom says she's always hungry and eats a ton, but it doesn't matter because she can't gain any weight. I guess all of it is going into feeding and fattening her son!

I also saw a pretty weird contraption they have. It's an oil heater? It's round, about waist high, made of metal with some bars running up and down. It burns oil to make heat? I think? It was hard to explain it, so I didn't quite get it. It doubles as a lamp because it's so bright, and as a stove because it's so hot. The oysters were steamed on top of the heater! Interesting...

I was complaining lightly about my electric bills and how I'm now freezing in my room. Voila! My host family lent me a space heater they weren't using. My host mom said she used it in her working days in Nara, and now she doesn't need it because there are plenty of space heaters scattered around the house (there really are, because they have no central heating). Wheee!! It's so awesome. It has an on/off timer, it humidifies if I so desire (need to fill up the attached canister of water), it apparently deionizes the air (whatever that does), AND it's pink!! She says it's more energy efficient than my air conditioner. Well, this month's electric bill will tell, I guess. Meanwhile I'm basking in its warmth :-D

We all had a bit to drink, of course, including Tomoko who had driven us to their house. In Japan, the drunk driving laws are extremely severe. You can't drive even if you've had a drop to drink. In fact, their breathalyzers are so sensitive that they can even pick up alcohol you've had the day before! So, driving home was out of the question. Instead, we called a special taxi service just for solving these sorts of problems. Call one taxi and TWO drivers appear: one to drive you and your car home, the other to follow in the taxi (for obvious reasons). So convenient! So quick! And, all told the trip home took about $18. I don't know if that's the regular taxi rate, or if that's double the taxi rate to account for calling two drivers, but either way I don't think it's very expensive. Of course it would be totally, extremely, more worth it if one were really drunk and in no shape to drive home. Mmmm if only such services were as cheap and as widely available in the US.