I’ve noticed a lot of search results for self-storage Tokyo. I wrote a blog post a few months ago about a company called Terrada Trunk Room.
A word of advice… DON’T USE THEM!
They’re not shady or anything, but despite their website advertising that you could store something as simple as a few CDs, Terrada is definitely not for personal self-storage.
After stupidly lugging my +50 lb. suitcase to their location in Takadanobaba, Tokyo, only to discover it wasn’t an office but merely a storage area with key card access, I dragged the bag to Shinagawa where they do have an office.
It took two hours to sign a contract. Yes, a contract. We had to pay in advance for three months, even though we only need three weeks’ worth of storage. When I explained this to the woman (who did speak English), she looked at me like I was insane. The leaflets they had on location next to a mock-up storage room detailed company discounts and their top-of-the-line wine storage facilities. We also had to set a pick-up time for our items, to the exact day and hour.
Do yourself a favor: if you’re planning on moving to Japan or traveling for an extended period of time, pack light. Be like the Japanese.
If you absolute must store something, there are of course the station lockers. If you need more than a day or two worth of storage (As far as I understand, most stations will move your belongings to the lost and found if you leave them in a locker for more than three days.), try Narita Airport’s storage. Other than that… I’m not quite sure.
In a skyscraper named Sunshine City in the Ikebukuro section of Tokyo lies Namjatown, a mini theme park sponsored by Namco® and home to Ice Cream City, Gyoza Town, a few rides, cosplayers, and a horror floor.
Our friend Koji had fond childhood memories of the place and offered to take us. There’re small lockers outside to store your shopping bags (Sunshine City is home to many stores and restaurants), coat, purse, children…
Entrance for one adult for the day was ¥300 ($3.64 at the time of writing).
Even though we live near Utsunomiya, a place famous for gyoza (small dumplings filled with pork, cabbage, and spices), we decided to check out the gyoza section. Much to our surprise, there was a shop that’s actually in Utsunomiya Station.
Sorry, there are no pictures of the gyoza. It was actually quite dark in the place.
After eating we checked out the horror section. As you can imagine, it was dark here, too, so the videos I took didn’t come out.
Iron chef is REAL!!!
With a name like Ice Cream City, how could I not visit? I was a huge fan of Iron Chef on the Food Network when I was a kid. The dubbing is hilarious, and I thought it was perfectly insane that the chefs would make ice cream out of savory foodstuffs.
Sorry the video’s a bit blurry. I’ve no clue what my camera was focusing on.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to confirm that Iron Chef is real. Here is a lovely video of some of the more out there flavors:
Every Friday I take the Ryomo Line from Oyama west 40 minutes to Ashikaga. If Oyama is borderline country, Ashikaga is the sticks. Fittingly, the train that services this area is old. The train’s seats are perpendicular rather than parallel to the windows, and the seats face one another.
Being a very local train, you get to recognize the people who take it with you. Well, there’s one man I’ll never forget now.
Each week I walk to the end of the train to be in the car closest to the stairs at my destination. As usual, the two young Indian men were in the car along with the junior high students and business man who always seems to get a phone call at 2:25. I noticed a travel mug and bag in the seat diagonal from me and wondered if they belonged to him.
As I put my tea and snack up on the small shelf adjacent to the window, I noticed a man on the track taking photos of the train.
“Oh, he must be from Tokyo and thinks this old train is interesting,” I thought.
Then he sat in the seat diagonal from me.
I took off my coat and settled in. Kindle in my lap, iPhone in hand, I was about to take a picture of my cute tea bottle when I heard a shutter noise.
Then another.
I waited a minute, thinking I was mistaken.
“He could just be taking pictures of a sign above my head. No need to freak out,” I thought.
And click. I looked over. He turned away quickly and put the camera down. No mistaking it, this man was taking photos of me. I left my gaze on him, hoping he would feel the fury radiating off of me. He didn’t look up.
Anger rising, I pondered what I should do. I could say, “みせて,” misete, which means “show me.” I could walk over and shove my camera in his face.
Aware that he might reply in Japanese I didn’t know, I decided not to say anything. He could be also be crazy, so I shouldn’t go over to him.
Just as I was thinking, “He’s probably just surprised to see a foreigner,” and let it slide, I noticed he was looking through the pictures on his camera.
Boiling with rage, I started to text Mike. No fucking way was this happening. I voiced my suggestions to him and —
Click. More pictures.
It took all the composure I possess to not scream at the top of my lungs and rip the camera out of his hands. I glared at him and he put the camera away, where it stayed for the rest of the train ride.
My stop was next, and I was now seething with anger that I hadn’t confronted him.
I spent the two hours I had to teach angry. Even being around my students who usually put me in a good mood didn’t help.
For the eight minute walk to the station to my train home I vented to Mike. By the time I had walked to the end of the track, I had gotten myself quite worked up.
Ten minutes of waiting in the cold and a junior high student standing in my personal space only exacerbated the situation. Two people were waiting in front of me and it looked like all the seats were full as the train pulled in.
They took the seats at the sides of the door (The best because you can get off quickly. Oyama is the last stop and the train is packed by then). I noticed an empty one, pulled a New York move and blocked someone out, and dashed to the seat.
I took off my gloves and was about to settle in when I looked up and noticed, in the seat diagonal from me, the same man from the afternoon.
I bolted right out of the seat, stormed off toward the door, and stood with my back to him, prepared to unleash a string of curses to make my truck-driving, sailor, mechanic father proud should anything happen.
I stood for 40 minutes near the door, in the way at each station as people crowded in, too full of anger to care that I was inconveniencing them.
We arrived at Oyama, and I was the first person off the train as planned. I wove through the station, knocking into two people along the way (again with little regard – very unlike me). Chest heaving from nearly running, I galloped down the stairs into the dark evening. I checked that the man was nowhere in sight and strode off to my bike on which I sped home.
I need to find a self-storage place to stash one of my suitcases while I’m traveling for four weeks before I head home to New York. I’m leaving Tochigi for the south, but will be in Tokyo for my last week in Japan. Air Canada allows two checked bags from Japan for FREE, so there’s no way I’m shipping home things that’ll fit into the suitcase.
Google Translate is your friend!
After checking a thread on gaijinpot.com, I was lucky enough to find this: Terrada Trunk Room. You can translate the website into English using Google Translate. You can also go to http://translate.google.com/translate_tools, scroll to the bottom, and drag a button right into your web browser; it’s essentially 1-click translate But, for shorthand, Terrada’s cheapest storage unit costs ¥3950 for a month (according to the site).
I haven’t contacted the company yet, but when I do I’ll update this with a description of their customer service.
There’s also Private Box with facilities from ¥3000 and many other companies. Google results show トランクルーム (trunk room) as a popular wasai-eigo term for self-storage. Keep an eye out for that.
*You may also want to note that almost every train station has lockers, so if you just need to store something for a few hours that should be fine. They’re typically ¥300 for small size (a large purse or some shopping bags) and ¥600 for a medium or large suitcase. I don’t know if you can use them for an extended period, though. I suggest you call the station and ask.
If anyone has used one of these services or can recommend a good one in Tokyo I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Like many things in Japan, dressing in a kimono is a thoughtful, artistic process. Composed of many layers of cloth, there are a multitude of options when it comes to tying the individual pieces. The 帯 obi (sash-like piece around the waist), in particular, may take on a variety of designs depending on who’s dressing you.
Kimonos today
Although kimonos are reserved, for the most part, for special occasions, many Japanese people still wear them. In ceremonies to celebrate age milestones for children, getting married, graduating, at historic places (especially shrines). The majority of the people I’ve seen wearing kimonos are either at festivals and shrines or during sakura season (early spring).
My friend Nicole invited me to an event partnered with the Tochigi Kuranomachi Museum of Art in nearby Tochigi City yesterday to be dressed in a kimono. One of the Japanese teachers she works with at school comes from a family that sells second-hand kimonos for a few hundred dollars. A full kimono brand new can cost thousands of dollars. There are, of course, places that sell them new for just a few hundred dollars, but the quality differs tremendously.
From the top! (Hover over the images for more info.)
After about 15 minutes of assembly and 16 different parts, I was dressed!
A kimono definitely improves your posture. In the front of the obi there was a stiff oval piece that helps to keep its shape. Nicole likened it to a corset, but neither of us thought it was uncomfortable. Each time a layer was added, the lady would ask if it was too tight or if it hurt. She had to pull quite a bit for some of the pieces, and I actually stumbled over a few times. That’s just because I have bad balance, though.
I always wondered if kimonos were cold. Yesterday it was cloudy and cold (3°C, 37.4°F) following a day of rain. With all those layers, my midsection and legs were fine, but my arms were cold.
After this, we went into the museum. It had a lot of paintings from the late 1800s as well as some jewelry boxes, bowls, and makeup from the period. There were also some cool posters from the 20th century.
We were photographed three times by the museum staff and complimented twice inside for our kimonos.
Then we ate lunch:
We walked around a bit and visited the local shops. After being in one store for about 10 minutes (they had so many cute things), the shop owner offered us some free coffee.
My cup had the cutest design! The parts with the lady bugs is actually a little bump. I would’ve bought it, but I can’t even count how many mugs we’ve got.
I bought some calligraphy paper with beautiful sakura on it, Nicole got her sakura mug, and we went back to Oyama.
I made this scarf for my fashionable friend Christina for Christmas.
As you can see, it is a navy scarf. This piece is 18 cm wide (~7 in.) and 162 cm long (~5’4″). It was knit with US size 7 needles and some kind of acrylic yarn. I live in Japan, so forgive me but I don’t know the specifications of the yarn as I cannot read the label. I know I used four skeins.
The pattern is “Mom’s Sophisticated Scarf” from Debbie Stoller’s excellent book, Stitch N’ Bitch Nation. Available at Amazon, probably your local book store, or free from the New York Public Library. If you’re more of a visual person, check out knitting tutorials on YouTube.
It is a basketweave that requires careful attention at first, but once you get into the rhythm of the pattern it’s a breeze. I’d categorize myself as a beginner, so as long as you can knit, purl, and know how to count it shouldn’t be a problem! I’m too lazy and cheap to buy a knit counter so I just kept a tally on a little piece of paper to keep track of the pattern.
My friend actually said it reminded her of a French boy, which I much prefer to a sophisticated mom when thinking of fashion.
The reverse side of the pattern is shown on the yellow scarf.
Here is an alternate view, along with a mustard yellow scarf of the same pattern I knit for myself last year (Photo of it as a work in progress here). You may notice that the detail of the pattern does not show up well with the darker yarn. It’s also incredibly difficult to photograph.
Funnily enough, Tokyo Disney is located on the outskirts of Tokyo and is actually a bit annoying to get to. The Disney hotel was absurdly overpriced (even with the sweet advantage of knowing someone with a timeshare), so we elected to stay at K’s House Tokyo Oasis in Asakusa, Tokyo. Mike and I stayed at K’s house once before in Kyoto, so we were inclined to try it again. Our room was nice and clean, but the walls were paper-thin and it was quite noisy.
Getting There
Mike was lucky to have a five-day weekend so he headed into Tokyo Saturday afternoon. I had work, so I caught the 9:41 p.m. train from Oyama and arrived in Asakusa at about 11:30.
We woke up bright and early Sunday to make the ~40 minute commute to Maihama Station (Tokyo Disney’s train station). Descending the stairs to the subway, I experienced that haunting feeling of being the only person in the city early in the morning. I quite like the desolation, the creepiness of it. Well, that was quickly broken when the subway arrived full of people. It was 8:30 a.m. on Sunday. Only in a metropolis…. but more on that in a future post.
Train stations in Japan play music to alert passengers of a train’s impending departure.
In Maihama Station, they play Disney music. It’s corny, of course, but it certainly got me psyched.
Arriving at Disney by train was an odd experience. In Florida, Disney is so expansive and set apart that you really feel as though you’re traveling into Disney World. In Anaheim California, Disneyland is a bit more right-off-the-street. In Maihama, you walk down a flight of stairs and you’re there.
Well… not exactly. you walk up a little hill into Disney’s own station (Flanked, of course, by gift-shops and small eateries.) which stops at Disney Sea (no, it’s not a water park), the hotel, and Disneyland.
The train, as you can see, is very cute. Sweet colors and Mickey-shaped windows and train straps (No clue what to call those… If you have a better description PLEASE tell me. It’s really been bugging me.)
The entrance to Tokyo Disney Sea isn’t as impressive as the other Disney parks I’ve been to. There was a cute fountain with a large Mickey Fantasia hat, but none of the vast displays at other parks. I kind of missed it.
Disney Sea
The park itself was certainly impressive, though. It’s named Disney Sea because (1) It’s on the sea, and (2) because the sea snakes through the park. As opposed to Epcot where there’s a giant lake in the middle, water connects the whole park. Similar to Epcot, this is where they stage their nightly shows and even some of the parades. It’s quite cool.
What was really amazing was getting to the edges of the park and looking out over to the actually ocean, seemingly endless. It was really beautiful.
Mike and I were waiting for friends to join us, so we did some strolling around and found this adorable New York Deli. Sadly, time didn’t permit us to try some of the food there, but I got a great big belly laugh out of the mural.
After one of our friends and her younger sister arrived, we headed over to an area named Mermaid’s Lagoon to meet up with some more friends.
Mermaids: I love ’em
Mom, you can skip this part.
I *love* the Little Mermaid. The movie came out when I was just a year old, and I was obsessed. I had Little Mermaid barbies and clothes. Funnily, I don’t remember the first time I saw the film. I don’t even know if I went to the theater. (Okay, Mom, since you’re probably reading this part anyway, where did I see it?) For my 18th birthday, I got the Little Mermaid on DVD along with one of those kiddie-bowls and a coloring book (a joke present from my cousin). For my 19th birthday I had a Little Mermaid birthday cake. When I was 20 I went to Disney World and made Mike wait with me in the heat for two hours to take a picture with “Ariel.”
Well, when a friend of mine visited Japan a few winters ago he snapped a photo of the Mermaid’s Lagoon and I’ve been eager to go ever since.
After a quick snack of “Sausage” Pizza (read: hot dog & corn), we went on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I’d never been on the one in Florida, so Mike insisted we go. Though I have nothing to compare it to, it was pretty cool. On Saturday night I relayed this story to Yousuke, one of my students. He said, “That ride is very scary.” A bit bewildered, I probed him for details. Apparently, there was a malfunction while he was riding it. Disney stopped the ride and he had to walk out of the dark, underground area. Poor kid.
By this time it was about 1 o’clock, so we wanted to get the fast passes our friend Saori separated from the group to go fetch. Unfortunately, the fast past was finished for the day. That’s right. At 1 p.m. Japanese people don’t mess around. When they say, “I love Disney,” they mean it.
Most of the waits for rides were quite long, so we decided to just stroll around the park until using our fast pass for Raging Spirits, a roller coaster with a full loop. I loved it, naturally. Then we high-tailed it across the park in a mere 10 minutes to catch the end of our fast pass for the Tower of Terror.
Allow me to tell you a little story of real terror on that ride.
Tower of Terror: …could I have fallen out?
When I was 11 years old, my family took a vacation to Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida for the first time in my life. Back when it was still MGM, we all elected to go on the Tower of Terror. I’m a thrill seeker, and I love rides like that. My mom? Not so much…
“Don’t worry, Laura. You’ll be fine! Look! There’s little kids waiting on line. C’mon, you can do this,” my uncle reassured her as we waited.
After watching the Twilight Zone episode, we shuttled into the elevator. Mom, Dad, and I skuttled to our assigned seats in the back row. As we took our places and locked our security bar into place, Mom and I noticed something legitimately terrifying: the bar was half a foot away from me.
You see, my dad is about 200-250 pounds. I was 11, so I’ll guess I was about 100 pounds. Needless to say, once the ride started, my buttocks didn’t touch the seat. From all the up and down dropping, I was literally hanging in the area for the duration of the ride. I remember feeling my mother’s arms on my shoulders in the dark, wondering if at any moment I’d just fly out of the seat and splat onto the ceiling. I’m still not sure how the “cast members,” as Disney calls employees, didn’t notice the safety risk.
Luckily in a trip to Disney in 2010 I overcame my fear. They have individual seatbelts now. Go figure.
Tokyo vs. Florida: differences in the ride’s story
If you don’t know, the story for the Tower of Terror in Florida follows the Twilight Show episode: lightning strikes an elevator, causing it to drop. (Fun fact: There was a terrible storm the night we left MGM. I think my mom made us walk up the stairs.)
In Tokyo Disney Sea, the story, as far as I could glean from photos, was that an explorer had disturbed an ancient African spirit who then cursed him. For some copyright reasons, Tokyo Disney can’t use the original story.
Well, this time was scary, too, albeit for different reasons. As Mike pointed out, usually you have some kind of signal for when a ride is going to start. Since we were sitting in the dark and everything was in Japanese, we had no idea what was going on when we were catapulted up to the very top of the ride. Again, in contrast to Disney World, Tokyo Sea doesn’t build up the anticipation by dropping you several times first. They hoist you all the way to the top and open the doors straight away. My face in the photo (which, for ~$15, I didn’t buy) is one of pure surprise. I didn’t look scared, just open-mouthed dumb-founded. It was pretty funny.
After watching the beautiful closing show on the water we all went to dinner at the very fancy S.S. Columbia. Yes, I ate inside this giant ship:
The dinner was good. I ordered a bottle of red wine to share with everyone only find out that my Japanese gal pals don’t care much for wine. Much to my horror, the red wine was served chilled. This is very, very common in Japan. It breaks my heart every time.
My beautiful, sweet friend Saori was kind enough to orchestrate this part of the evening. She made the reservation weeks ahead of time, and somehow found the time while we were IN Disney, to buy a card, decorate it, have everyone sign it (even people who had just met me that day), and have a photo of a group picture of us at the park hours before DEVELOPED and put into the back of the card. To top it off, she said, “Please forgive me for my selfish action,” because the card was a secret. It’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. Saori, you are amazing. Thank you.
After we all said goodbye, Mike and I headed back to K’s House and passed out. We were exhausted.
Disneyland
After waking up bright and not-as-early as we wanted, Mike and I set out for Disney again, this time to visit Disneyland.
Captain E.O.
Since Disneyland in Japan houses rides no longer popular in America, I got my first opportunity to see Captain E.O. Mike and I are big fans of Tommorowland. Learning from the day before, we bolted to Space Mountain to grab fast passes (the only ones we’d be able to get for the day), and bolted off to Captain E.O. – 10 minute wait!
I had great fun laughing at the hairstyles and glasses in the 5 minute how-we-made-this pre show. It was really interesting to see all the work that went into a 5 minute show in the absence of computers, and also what George Lucas was capable of before them, but that’s a rant for another time!
So, we saw Captain E.O., ate some chocolate popcorn and tried to get a fast pass for Big Thunder Mountain. Again, in the early afternoon all the fast passes were finished. We walked back across the park towards the entrance and shared a black pepper cheese hot dog and fries before riding Space Mountain (Debbie and Rich, I didn’t cry this time! It was still scary, though).
Since we were lacking Japanese friends to check the wait times for the rides, we ended up walking back and forth across the park a lot to check out rides. The Haunted Mansion was an hour wait, so we passed up that opportunity and decided to ride the Pirates of the Caribbean in the hopes that the Haunted Mansion (one of my favorite rides) would be less popular later in the night. Well, boy, was that a stupid idea. I don’t know if it’s attributable to the Halloween festivities, but by the time we got to the Haunted Mansion at about 4 p.m. the wait was nearly two hours.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean has also been altered in Japan to include Captain Jack Sparrow, but there’s still a huge difference between the original animatronics and Sparrow. There’s also the mist waterfall with the projection of Davey Jones, which I think is so cool. We were on the ride with a bunch of chattering school girls and, in between singing the Pirates theme, they punched and booed at Davey Jones when we passed the waterfall.
There’s a restaurant off the water of the ride and at the suggestion of my boss and many students, I had dinner there. While not off the charts, the food was good and the atmosphere was really nice.
Waiting… and waiting… and waiting
Since the Haunted Mansion was no longer an option, we decided to tough it out at Big Thunder Mountain, arguable the biggest thriller in Disneyland. The wait was an hour and a half and it was brutal. Between fast passes and going to Disney in early January, I nearly forgot what it was like to actually wait in line. The ride was fun, though, and surprised me by being a bit longer than I expected.
It was now about 6:30, so we made one more pass at Haunted Mansion (I told you! It’s my favorite!). The wait was so long I laughed. Quite nearby, It’s a Small World was only a five minute wait, essentially the time it takes you to walk the snaked waiting area, so we elected to go.
Since we were tired and had a long commute back to Oyama, we left Disney early and boarded the beautiful shinkansen home, where I promptly fell asleep.
Birthday at work? Awesome, if you have my students. I was treated to a lovely day at work on Tuesday, October 18 (aka my 23rd birthday). Unbeknownst to me, my boss’s wife put up a sign in the waiting area, so people were wishing me a happy birthday all week.
The day started off with well wishes and wine from my boss, followed by 5-year-old Tomohito fighting with his mom because he was embarrassed to say happy birthday. His classmate, 4-year-old Maiko, waltzed right into class and wished me happy birthday in Japanese and when class was finished she and her older brother, who I used to teach, gave me flowers:
My second class drew me this amazing picture (note the ghost & chicken!):
Dr. Terakado, whose hobby is singing opera, serenaded me with such volume I was sure Mike would hear him upstairs in our apartment.
And the festivities continued throughout the week!
On Wednesday, Yuka gave me this tea cup with some teas and a super cute card:
Sayaka wished me a happy birthday, and Ayaka wrote a message the week before:
And, on Saturday, I got a beautiful bag from Yuri, a card from Mayu, and a gift from Yousuke and his little brother, Shota (the chicken leg artist):
I should mention that my birthday extravaganza actually started with my boss’ daughters giving me this:
A super warm and soft blanket that buttons and has a hood with the face of a sleepy lamb.
I also got Kindle gift cards and Wyatt Cenac’s new comedy special!:
This museum was the single most intense experience of my life. The things I saw and read within will remain with me forever. Simply reviewing and uploading the videos has made me shaky and upset. I could barely bring myself to write the video descriptions.
Visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum opened by eyes. I’ve never been a proponent of war, but I am unequivocally opposed to nuclear weapons and I am certain that any person, regardless of background, would agree after seeing the museum’s many informational and emotional exhibits.
For my friends and family at home, I have a plethora of pamplets and books with priceless information about August 7, 1945. I will gladly share it all with you.
For anyone who has stumbled upon this, I strongly recommend the following:
– John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, interviews with survivors in 1946. (Available at Amazon or free from the NYPL.)
– Drawings by Survivors, a special museum exhibit. See the site here.
Watch all 8 videos in succession here, Hiroshima – YouTube playlist.
The A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan. The city of Hiroshima keeps the Dome in its exact state from 1945. The hypocenter for the attack was a few minutes’ walk from the Dome, one of the few buildings left standing in the city.
A view from the center of the park.
This section of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was constructed at the request of school children. A young girl named Sasaki Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia nearly 10 years after being exposed to the radiation from the atomic bomb as a toddler. While in the hospital, Sadako started to fold paper cranes. She believed that if she folded 1,000 she would get better. Sadako died on October 25, 1995.
“Memorial Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace (Memorial Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims) Erected 6 August 1952
Let all the souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat the evil.
This monument embodies the hope that Hiroshima, devastated on 6 August 1945 by the world’s first atomic bombing, will stand forever as a city of peace. The stone chamber in the center contains the Register of Deceased A-bomb Victims. The inscription on the front panel offers a prayer for the peaceful repose of the victims and a pledge on behalf of all humanity never to repeat the evil of war. It expresses the spirit of Hiroshima – enduring grief, transcending hatred, pursuing harmony and prosperity for all, and yearning for genuine, lasting world peace.” – text engraved at the stone at the foot of the cenotaph.
A recreation of destruction in the hallway on one of the upper floors of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, Japan.
Clothing remains of children killed by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and a full-scale recreation scene inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
“Tricycle and metal helmet, Donated by Nobuo Tetsutani, 1,500 m from the hypocenter, Higashi-hakushima-cho
Shinichi Tetsutani (then 3 years and 11 months) loved to ride his tricycle. That morning, he was riding in front of his house when, in a sudden flash, he and his tricycle were badly burned. He died that night. His fater felt he was too young to be buried in a lonely grave away from home, and thinking he could still play with the tricycle, he buried Shinichi with the tricycle in the backyard.
In the summer of 1985, forty years later, his father dug up Shinichi’s remains and transferred them to the family grave.
This tricycle and helmet, after sleeping for 40 years in the backyard with Shinichi, were donated to the Peace Memorial Museum.” – sign.
In Japanese there is no “s” as we understand it in English. The language uses moras, so in the S category you have sa, shi, su, se, and so.
Because of this, the Japanese accent can make some English words sound much different. Shinnamon (cinnamon), ex-shy-ting (exciting), and so on.
Well, last night in my adult class I asked Shino how his weekend was. I teach his two sons, 8-year-old Mahito and Yusei (6, soon to be 7).
“How was your weekend?” “We were going to Costco, but it rained. So we went to a clothes store and my wife shopped. A lot. Many hours.”
“Oh… I see. Did you have a good day?” “Mmmm, I had to babyshit Mahito and Yusei. Much energy.”
Luckily I teach them, so I passed my laughter off as an oh-you’re-telling-me! moment.
Shino’s not the only one to make such a mistake. In a recent e-mail to my replacement I wrote, “You shit on the floor and play with the kids.” Whoops.
On November 27, 2011, I attended the “Hand Bell Family Concert” hosted at Hakuoh University, the nearby college in Oyama.
A few weeks ago, the mother of two of my students (Haruna and Natsumi) handed me a flyer for this concert. She and the girls would be performing with hand bells and singing. I was delighted to attend! It was a really beautiful concert.
The girls were so sweet. After the concert, I got a huge hug from both of them and their grandmother, who sometimes brings them to class on Saturdays, thanked me for coming to see everyone.
They played “Do Re Mi”, “It’s a Small World”, the theme from My Neighbor Totoro, a Lion King medley, the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, tango music, Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro”, Pachelbel’s “Canon”, and “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson, among others.
Enjoy the show! Click YouTube to view them in HD. I apologize for any shaking. There was a child behind me kicking my seat. Akemi, my students’ mom, is on the far left for most of the videos.
There was also a cute game during the intermission where they played a small bit of a song and the kids tried to guess. If you won, they make a circle (the Japanese symbol for correct) and you win a gift card. As you’ll notice in the video where the child is wrong, they don’t outrightly say it. It’s more of a hesitation. “Eh…. try again!”
They’re also hosting a Christmas concert on December 23, but I have yet to decide if I will go to that.
garrulous gaijin 