Adrift in Japan

Lost in Translation, Redux

The Oscars are coming up, and although Scarlet Johannsen wasn't nominated for an Oscar, there's still plenty of buzz about Lost in Translation, which I talked about a couple of months ago after seeing it back in the States.

The buzz in the expat community in Japan is finally making the Western press.

I can see where the critics are coming from. The film does go out of its way to highlight the strange aspects of life in Japan, as well as stereotypes. All the same, through living here, I have experienced those very things in a way that leads me to the question: when is a stereotype a stereotype, and when is it just a true statement about the way things are?

Is it cruel to say that Japanese people have trouble saying "r" verses "l" when it's true they don't have either the "r" or "l" sound in Japanese, and I have several times had communication problems because I couldn't understand what word someone meant? I don't think so, especially when I point out that I can't say their combination "rl" sound very effectively. In fact, last night when we had friends over for dinner and I tried to say "ryori" (cooking, or style of cooking), they had no idea what I was saying for quite a while, and I couldn't hear the difference when they finally got it and repeated it back to me.

Are there stereotypes about Japanese TV? Or is the movie creating them? Quoting from the article,

... it's almost invariably weird: an aerobics instructor leading a troupe of women dressed in police outfits with plastic miniskirts; an effeminate talk show host who guffaws and prances around in a pink and blue patterned suit.

which implies it's somehow wrong to show Japanese TV in that light. It is, however, my experience that when the TV isn't showing news, it's very likely to have on some sort of game show where the objective is not immediately obvious and which features people pointing and laughing and performing strange stunts, such as eating only cake for 5 days while being stalked by a camera and seeing how much weight one has gained while people guess.

The article also highlights things the movie shows as "the bizarre and unfamiliar" which I consider a part of daily life in Japan, such as a Japanese person continuing to prattle on in Japanese despite an obvious lack of understanding on my part, or vans driving by with political slogans being shouted constantly. In fact, I wonder, where were the salespeople yelling "Irashaimase!" or the people on the street corners handing out free packs of tissue paper?

I'm sure I can now be accused of perpetuating Japanese stereotypes on my blog, but I'm just reporting about the things I encounter when I leave my front door every morning. However, even though I think Coppola may simply have been showing realistic elements of Japanese life, I do understand the feeling of Japanese people and expats who have written elsewhere on the web and in print criticizing the film. (Also see Joi Ito's blog) It's not particularly enlightening, and it makes little effort to show the wonderful beauty of Japan (although it does show Charlotte being unable to appreciate said beauty). The movie's depth is not from its depiction of Japan - rather, it from its ability to show a snapshot of a few days in the lives of some displaced Americans. It's more a picture of where they are in their lives and in their own minds than any statement of the reality of life in Japan. Perhaps the depiction of Japan didn't bother me because I thought of it as Japan through the eyes of two unfortunately and tremendously depressed individuals who wouldn't have been comfortable in any place, not as a serious depiction of life in Japan. To think of American viewers of this movie leaving the theatre thinking - "ahh, so that's Japan, it's exactly what I imagined" - that's truly sad.

The film was interesting, it was entertaining, and I could absorb the cinematography and empathize with the characters. But do I think it deserves all the raves it's been getting? Not really. It was simply a little movie, a little snippet, in some ways a beautiful little snippet, but one that's like a little candy that melts in your mouth and leaves behind a strangely astringent aftertaste. Not the film of the year. There goes my buzz... Striking? Yes. Touching? Maybe. Oscar winner for Best Picture? I hope not.

Kushi-ya

When we went to Toppi, we saw there were quite a few other good looking restaurants up there, so last night Matt and I decided to try another restaurant in ESTA's 10th floor "Gourmet Town."

We peered in through the windows of the restaurants and chose one that looked relatively busy (we avoid empty restaurants, assuming they're empty for a reason) and where you cook in your table. After we walked in, we quickly established that the language barrier was going to be something of a problem. It turned out to be an all-you-can eat style restaurant with several different plans, but we couldn't determine what the plans were. I asked the waitress in Japanese if she could speak English and she clearly couldn't. Eventually, she told us to wait and went to the back, returning with an apparently Chinese-Japanese man who proceeded to ask us, in Japanese, if I spoke Chinese. Um, no, that's why I asked if she spoke English, not Chinese.

At this point, the original woman reached into a folder and took out a sheet of paper that explained the restaurant in English. It seems to me this should have been her first instinct when we told her we spoke English, but maybe I'm being unreasonable. Or maybe not. At any rate, we finally figured it out, picked our plan, and were seated.

Even after that it was clear we were the center of attention. The Chinese guy who spoke a little English accompanied us and stood there next to the table while we read our English language instructions. He also asked me several more times if I was Chinese (I'm Chinese-American, which I told him) and whether I spoke Chinese. I answered in Japanese, "amari..." which essentially means, "not so much." I speak less Chinese than I do Japanese at this point, which isn't surprising considering I've lived here since August and I only studied Chinese for 9 weeks 6 years ago. He did ask me something like "susi?" which I didn't understand but turned out to mean he was asking if we wanted sushi. I just didn't catch the sound properly. He brought us a free plate of sushi, most likely because he thought we had never eaten sushi. It was a little uncomfortable at first being the focus of their attention, but finally more customers started showing up, the Chinese guy (a cook) retreated to the kitchen, and we could eat in peace.

About the Restaurant
I'm sorry I don't know the actual name of the restaurant. It's the kushi-ya on the 10th floor of Esta. In a kushi-ya, there is hot oil on your table. You take skewers of meat, vegetables, and seafood, dip them in a batter and then roll them in panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) and fry them in the oil for a few minutes before pulling them out , letting them cool slightly, and then dipping them in a sauce and biting in carefully. Here's a picture of Matt holding two skewers.

<sidebar>I'm not sure why, but Japan seems to have more different types of cooking-food-at-your-table than most other cultures -- shabu shabu, sukiyaki, genghis khan, kushi-age, etc. I'm curious how it evolved; maybe Japanese people just like to control their food.</sidebar>

All-you-can eat for 90 minutes was 1999 yen, and an additional 1000 yen for all-you-can-drink. All people at the table have to get the same plan, and since I wasn't going to drink, we skipped the drink option. Our money bought us unlimited trips up to the buffet, which included salads, edamame, steamed Chinese buns, eggrolls, and more, in additional to the skewers. The skewer selection was extensive, and included chicken, beef, squid, lotus, quail eggs (one of my favorites), small shrimp, octopus balls, egg omelettes, hamburger, green chiles (Matt's favorite), mushrooms, potatoes, gyoza (another favorite of mine), and more. There were also at least 6 different sauces, not including the flavored salts.

Between us, we ate 55 skewers, plus some smaller pre-cooked items from the buffet, and our free plate of sushi. And we only ate for an hour.

The verdict? We had this style of cuisine once before, in Kyoto. This was actually much better, probably because the oil was very hot which cooked the skewers very well. The oil was held in a built-in unit in the table and the built-in seemed to maintain the temperature well. Plus, the batter was very light and the panko gave a great crunchiness. All in all, thumbs up for a fun time. Definitely a great thing to do with a small group (small enough to fit around a table and share one cooker), if not the healthiest. We'll be back. Of course, at this rate we're identifying so many restaurants we like enough to go back to, we might not have time to go back to them all.

Toppi (とっぴ）

Sunday night, we dragged ourselves out of our apartment in the fabulous weather (see previous entry) to check out ideas for a dinner we're cooking tomorrow night for Kato-san and his wife Akiko-san who had us over two weeks ago for sukiyaki.. First we browsed through the imported food sections of Daimaru and Seibu, and then we coveted cameras at Bic Camera, before heading upstairs at Bic/Esta to the 10th floor "Gourmet Town."

The object of our food quest was the restaurant Toppi, which was recommended by someone in my Nihongo Salon class. It's a "conveyor belt" sushi place.

Sidebar: Before I moved to Japan, I thought conveyor belt sushi was a kitschy American idea. Of course, I thought that the yelling every time a customer came and went at Miyake's in Palo Alto was fakey too, and then I moved here. Now I know that everyone shouts in Japan, or, more correctly, all salespeople shout here. Cries of "Irashaimase!" (welcome) and "Ikagadesuka" (would you like...) and various other things bombard you whereever you walk. And every time you leave a store or a restaurant you hear, "Arigato gozaimashita!" (thank you). Turns out the Miyake's experience was fairly genuine. And now I know that conveyor belt sushi is very popular in Japan, if only because it's more affordable than going to any other kind of sushi restaurant.

If you don't know how conveyor belt sushi works, basically you sit down, and the sushi goes by in front of you on, yes, a kind of conveyor belt. It's convenient because even if you don't know the names of all of the types of sushi, you can still pick them up and eat them without the difficulty of trying to order. Of course, you sometimes have to watch that thing you've been waiting for get swiped just before it comes into your reach. You can also order directly from the sushi chefs if something you like isn't coming by, but we usually don't. After you're done, they count up your plates, usually color coded by price, and that's it. Toppi was actually the first one we've been to in Japan that provided us with an English menu of the sushi, although the seasonal specials weren't on it. Still, it was the most foreigner friendly of all the places, and even included an English-language "How to Eat Conveyor Belt Sushi" instruction sheet.

Of the three conveyor belt sushi places we've been to since we got here, Toppi is definitely the best. The fish was very fresh, and each piece of sushi had a very generously sized portion of fish. They have two different priced plates: 120 yen and 220 yen. Eaten at various points in the evening by the two of us: salmon, more expensive salmon, scallops, shrimps in mayonnaise, tuna, tuna with green onions, medium-fatty tuna, hamachi, salmon roe, a roll with tonkatsu inside, tamago, and various other things, include chawan mushi (egg custard, not raw). Also available were things like oysters, clams, crab, some other unidentifiable shellfish, and basics like french fries and desserts. We ate all we wanted, and in the end, including one Yebisu beer, it worked out to less than 3000 yen (less than 30 dollars). Not bad for such a good meal. We'll definitely be back.

Verdict: Tasty and affordable. Highly recommended.

Just Another Day

The past two days were snowy and blowy. Sunday featured heavy, wet snow that seemed to even shut down some of the trains, causing our train to be late coming in to Sapporo Station in the evening and leading us to slog home afterwards since there weren't many trains running. All day and all evening and all day the next day, heavy snow was falling off of the roof. Yesterday it was blowing so much that even when it wasn't snowing, it looked like it was. I went out to Starbucks and Jusco and found snow (both fresh and drifted) up to just below my knees in some places.

You might say that it wasn't spring-type weather. Certainly the snow was beautiful and white and fluffy... well, okay, not fluffy. More like fluffy, heavy bricks. But anyway, white. Not muddy. And it's true. It was lovely. But it just serves to extend springtime (see previous entry). More snow = takes more time to melt = yucky ugly part of spring is longer. Today it seems to be warmer. Snow continues to pour off the roof. Water drips. Mud gathers. Matt predicts I'll be grumpy about spring for months. We'll see. Wet soggy socks are never, ever fun. And sometimes they smell like wet dog. I don't want to deal with that smell until we actually have a dog.

Hello, My Name is Michelle

... and I hate Spring.

You heard me right. I hate Spring. There, I said it. Because so many people love spring and I'm always hearing people say, "Oooh! I love Spring!" stating my feelings so bluntly almost feels like becoming a charter member of "I Hate Springtime Anonymous."

It's wet. It's dreary. It's cloudy. The formerly beautiful white snow gradually turns to dirty brown mush and then to squishy messy mud. On the way it goes through the slush stage, which, at night, freezes again into slicks of ice. And then warms again the next day to turn to mush and sludge. Did I mention it's wet? And not at all pretty.

Maybe springtime in some places is nice. I remember not minding springtime in San Francisco. Of course, there there is no snow to melt into 6 feet wide pools in the middle of the street, or into a gigantic mud pond on the walk to the lab. Here, there's nothing but slush turning to ice turning to dirty water. Did I mention it's wet?

And now Sapporo seems to have settled into permanent springtime, or at least it seems like to be like this from mid-February to at least mid-April. It seems to have perfected staying in this icky state. Cold one day, with a little snow, warm and slushy the next, cold and icy afterwards followed by a dusting of snow and another couple of days of warmth. Aaargh.

That Infernal Noise

Last night, just after getting done in the bathroom and ready for bed, we heard a horrible sound coming from outside, which Matt was able to identify as the screeching sounds of our building's fire alarm. Of course, we were already in jammies and debated for a while whether we should bother to leave the building. Is it a drill? Do you smell smoke? Maybe we can wait to leave the building, since it's not like it would be tough to get out of the building. And so on.

But eventually I pulled on some jeans over my jama pants and a sweater over my jama shirt, and Matt put on some real clothes too, and we bundled up and headed outside to join the rest of the residents of our building milling around outside. It was only our building with an alarm going off, so none of the other international people were there. Everyone looked kind of lost and confused, wondering what was happening, and were either standing around in clumps or climbing into their cars to keep warm.

We were waiting and waiting for the fire truck to arrive. I have to say, we were not particularly impressed with their response time. It's not like we could see flames licking out of the building or anything so worrisome, but even if there had been, the truck certainly wouldn't have gotten there any faster.

When the truck finally did arrive, it (rather humorously) tried to enter the area through the nearest driveway, which is blocked by an enormous pile of snow. After hesitating, it went down the block to another driveway and then doubled back. I'm thinking they should notify the city or university and say, what's up with the big pile of snow preventing us from prompt emergency response?"

Once they finally got here, they scrambled out of their truck and ran around, and somehow thought they identified the apartment at fault. 006? they ran around asking residents where it was. Of course, there is no 006 in our building. Sorry. Doesn't exist. It took a while for the firemen to figure that out, but even figuring it out didn't stop them from scampering around like lost chickens as they searched for the source of the problem.

The best part of the whole thing was that none of the adult residents of out building could communicate with the firemen beyond nodding or saying (in Japanese), "I understand only a little Japanese." Only the kids who go to school here could speak enough to understand the firemen, so it was up to them to communicate. Unfortunately the kids didn't speak English either, so as the only native English speakers in the area we were pretty much out of luck on figuring out what was up.

Eventually they turned off the alarm and identified the apparently two culprits as our upstairs neighbors - directly above us and above across the way. They had to send a kid to fetch some of them back from someone else they were visiting and make some sort of signals and said some things about what had caused the alarm to go off.

Naturally Matt and I stared blankly back, and nodded. We still have no idea, but we think it's something our neighbors did to their apartment, or maybe to their smoke detector. After we went back into our apartment, the alarm went off again, just for a second, and it sounded like the firemen were demonstrating, see, this is what you did to make it go off. Now please don't do it again!

CAMCAM（カムカム）

People have perhaps been wondering when I'm going to stop talking about travel to other places and start talking about where to go and what to do in Sapporo. Ostensibly this blog could be a resource for other people moving here or living here - if we'd actually talk about places we go. So in light of that...

Yesterday, the masters degree students in Matt's lab presented their theses (the academic year is ending soon) and in the evening, we went out to celebrate. Let's forget the fact that I don't really know many people in the lab and that it's difficult for Matt and I to communicate even with the people who speak English the best and instead focus on how much fun it was!

We went to Cam Cam, which is at M's Space, S2, W7, Chuo-ku, close to the covered arcade between Odori and Susukino. It's a Southeast Asian-type restaurant with sort of thematic decor and a few small tables crowding the floor.

But, we didn't see much of the downstairs as we slipped directly into the upstairs - a loft type area with tables and a bar - that was reserved for our party, in total about 16 people. (I'll admit to feeling a little bad when we first came in. The students and post-docs had to look at each other to decide who was going to move to the third table and sit with us. Thanks to them for putting in the big effort to talk to us and letting us practice our limited Japanese.)

Cam Cam offers some different "party plans," which is a common offering at bars and restaurants in Japan. While my guidebook says Cam Cam's is all-you-can-drink for 2 hours for 1700 yen, last night's drink menu said all-you-can-drink for 2 hours for 1500 yen. Deflation? I'm not sure. But it seems like a good deal to me. On the list of included drinks was beer (Sapporo, of course), but also shouchu, some Chinese alcohols including plum wine, and a variety of cocktails from Gin Tonic to the ever-popular-here Moscow Mule. We drank beers, and some unidentifiable but refreshing lemon thing, and I finished up with a Malibu Milk, which, in my second try, I find is growing on me. At any rate, considering alcohol can be expensive here, the party plan was worth the money, and there was no shortage of drink options. And part of the fun is deciphering the katakana to figure out exactly what those options are.

We also got food - but while the food was good, the fact that their menu isn't in English means we might have trouble ordering when we go back. We weren't responsible for selecting the food this time. I liked almost everything we had, though, so hopefully just pointing and guessing will be alright. Things we liked:

• Salad - basically just a mixed salad, but with some meat we didn't really identify but that was tasty and tender. Westernized salads aren't that common here so this was a nice change.
• Siu Mai - big juicy ones
• Chicken Wings
• Rice Noodles - nicely seasoned
• Fried Rice

We also had two other dishes - a chicken dish with some sort of sauce, which I thought was pretty good but Matt didn't go for. The last dish looked like sweet and sour shrimp (not deep fried shrimp), but by the time it showed up I was too full to think about eating more.

All in all, a thumbs up for Cam Cam. I think we'll be back.

Sapporo Snow Festival

Today is the first official day of the Sapporo Snow Festival, the biggest event each year in Sapporo. Despite dire predictions that quality of sculptures would suffer this year due to the deployment of Japanese Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, the festival doesn't seem to be affected.

The festival may not have started till today but we spent the past few days visiting the sights so we could see everything before my aunt had to go back to Singapore today. We were able to see sculptures in both ice and snow under construction and completed, as well as see the giant snow sculptures with ice slides for kids at the Self Defense Forces base.

The sculptures are both beautiful and imposing. To say I'm impressed almost seems like understating it. I heard about the festival, but I had no idea it would be this grand (after being disappointed by White Illumination). The dinosaurs appear to be carved in their true-to-life dimensions. The building replicas are incredibly detailed. Info on the large sculptures says they were created by the combined efforts of between 2500 to 3000 people EACH. That doesn't count the smaller sculptures created by competing teams, such as the Uncle Sam from the US Navy guys from Massawa or the numerous Finding Nemo sculptures or Winnie-the-Pooh (Pu-san) renditions.

I posted a few photos of the ice festival already in our Adrift with a Camera [Phone] blog. Stay tuned for a bigger gallery when I download the photos from my dad's digital camera.

Club Med Sahoro (Review)

The most important thing when going on a Club Med vacation: understand what comes with your package. The second most important thing: go ready to relax, eat a lot of food, enjoy yourself and take advantage of everything available.

This season at Club Med Sahoro, your vacation includes your room, three meals a day including non-alcoholic beverages and house wines, your lift ticket for the skiing, and either ski or snow board lessons each day (doesn't include equipment rental). In fact, it included lift tickets for both our arrival and departure days too - for 8 days total - although we didn't ski on the last day because we left so early. It also includes participation in other activities, like fitness classes (stretching, water aerobics), and the built-in Club Med show each evening, where the Guest Officers (GOs) dance and sing to keep you entertained. Note, although Club Med is offering a program called "Total All-Inclusive" at some of their resorts, which means not just three meals a day but also all snacks and premium liquors etc, Sahoro is not offering that deal. In other words, to get a draft beer or a cocktail, you have to pony up the cash. We think it's because alcohol is expensive here and Japanese people can drink like fish. You can still buy an all-you-can-drink bracelet, but we went with the pay-as-you-go plan, and pretty much only drank things other than wine at the 2-for-1 cocktail happy hour.

Ahh, but enough about what's included, you say. How is the skiing? How is the food? Would I actually want to go there?

Skiing
Let's get to the most exciting part first. The skiing was great. We actually didn't get much fresh snow while we were there, but nearly every day we received at least a dusting which helped keep it fresh. The snowfall is fluffy and wonderfully powdery. The Japanese seem to enjoy skiing on groomed slopes, so there's a lot of groomed, but there's also a few more challenging ones left to develop some fun little moguls which were, at least on a couple of days, my favorite consistency, easy to kind of swish swish on through. Sahoro may not be a huge ski area, but it was big enough to keep us entertained for a week, and that's saying quite a bit.

Of course, part of that might have been the lessons. Mom, Dad, Damian, Matt and I each signed up for ski lessons about 5 out of 6 days. Matt and I were in the lesson group 3B, which is the second from the top (3A is the best) and felt like we fit in well. The primary difference between 3A and 3B appeared to be that 3As skied faster and were a little more dynamic... but we didn't really want to work that hard for our skiing. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were in 2A, which is the largest group, and split among a number of different teachers who took the best 2As (Dad's group) all the way down to the worst 2As. Anyway, they tried hard to hook us up with instructors who spoke English. Megumi, our very cool instructor, is Japanese but lives in Australia, so English was no problem for her. Only Mom faced any difficulties, where one day she had an instructor who struggled to express herself in English but Mom very gamely followed her gestures and tried to get the gist of her meaning. By the next day Mom had an English speaking instructor again.

Oh - lessons include twice a week racing, which Japanese people are apparently really, really excited about. The day before the race, there is race training, and then the next morning is spent racing. We only participated once, but it was fun, and Dad, Matt and I all won medals.

Auntie Hilda went snow-trekking twice to a nearby waterfall, which was a great alternative for those who didn't feel like skiing.

Food
The food was better than I expected. We had all-you-can-eat buffets for each meal, but the food was higher quality than at most other buffets I've been to. And they made an effort to include some variety, although they did offer some of the same things -- apparently to satisfy kids -- like chicken nuggets, spaghetti and hamburgers. Each meal included a "Japanese Corner" also, replete with things like deep-fried meats and miso soup. Once in a while they had local specialties like their own soba. Other items rotated through, including Indian food, Italian (at least one day of homemade pasta!), Korean... Desserts were yummy too... probably my mom's favorite part of the whole experience. The free wine was actually very drinkable, albeit very light, and available in white, rose and red. I will say that my parents said when they came to this club med years and years ago they found the food better then (there were two restaurants then, one a sit-down place), but all the same we all found the food perfectly enjoyable this time. And we love food.

Accomodations
Club Med Sahoro offers 2 different kinds of rooms - a combo room, which has both Tatami and Western room sections, and a straight up Western-style room. We had the western style rooms, which were three beds to a room. The rooms look like they haven't been updated in quite a while - maybe ever - but they are servicable and comfortable, and anyway I don't think you're encouraged to spend much time in your room. Each room does have a toilet as well as a shower/bath. However, the water pressure was so variable I nearly always chose to go to the Japanese public bath to wash up (see below).

The Bath
We also made use of the pool, the jacuzzi, the Canadian Bath (an outdoor hot tub), and the Ofuro and sauna. After a day of skiing, relaxing the muscles in a really hot environment was wonderful. And it may seem strange to leave one's room to take a shower but the combination of being able to use the sauna and the hot bath for soaking, with the great water pressure of the showers down there, kept bringing me back.

Entertainment
The GOs tried their best to provide entertainment -- and they succeeded. They all participate in the shows which fluctuate somewhere between good amateur and somewhat professional. There's a show or something every night, sometimes with an audience participation event. Shows ranged from magic to singing and dancing to lip-syncing. Once there was a mini-club show where guests' kids put on the show. At any rate, it was good to have something to do in the evening between dinner and "oh-god-I'm-so-tired". After the show, at the bar, there was always something more, but we pretty much missed that because we went up to bed.

The GOs are exceptionally friendly and fun to hang out with (sometimes they sit with you at meals). I mean, it's a part of their jobs, but you can tell that most of them genuinely enjoy being with the guests.

For Kids
We didn't take advantage of anything for kids, but we could tell they had great programs. Essentially you could drop your kid off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon after they had had a full day of skiing and activities and were presumably exhausted. Each night after dinner before the show they showed a cartoon movie. Once it was even in English (Ice Age). Anyway, the kids sure looked like they were having fun.

Wrap Up
In short, it was a fun time, and good value for the money. Maybe I wished I could have had free snacks but that's about it. We were able to kick back and relax and really had nothing to worry about because everything was taken care of. Would I go back? I would while I live here because it's close and not too expensive compared to everything else in Japan. I would recommend it to people who live in the Asia-Pacific region because it's a relatively short hop for them to Sahoro. For Americans, it's a little far to travel for what you get and considering the quality of skiing in the US (try Club Med Crested Butte and let me know how it is). But if you're coming to Japan for some other reason, it could be worth a trip. It certainly was for us!