Beer on the mountain

Japan has wonderfully adopted the concept of beer garden. This all-you-can-drink summertime event, which has somehow escaped widescale abuse thus far, is a great way to spend a humid Saturday afternoon. Usually found on the rooves of department stores (in Tokyo anyway), these are very popular and you can expect to line up for up to a few hours if you haven't reserved or arrived early. Typical price is ¥3000 to ¥6000, depending on where you go.

I've been once this year, last Saturday. Seeing as how beer gardens close at the end of September, I wanted to make sure my one visit was something special, so I packed my Kuriko up and headed over to Mount Takao.

Admission was ¥3300 for me, ¥3000 for Kuri, and included unlimited food and drink for two hours (and ¥500 for every half hour thereafter). Good deal if you ask me. However, there's a catch:

Now for us this line moved a bit quicker than what it looks like. We made it in within 30 minutes of opening time. Sadly, many others did not.

Once in, we parked ourselves at the edge of the balcony and gave 'er. All-you-can-drink/eat isn't the drunken gong show that it would be if you tried this in Canada. I think I saw the party beside us get up twice for refills. This is saying a lot, given that you can get Heineken on tap. Don't get me wrong; it was loud and roudy, but not so much that it stopped people from bringing their kids there.

And check out this nifty little invention:

The rain really added to the experience. Every look at a forested mountain in the clouds and wonder what it's like up there? It's wet. And awesome. I sat there eating raw octopus and watching the fog roll in and out. Good feeling for someone whose Vancouver upbringing conditioned him to like rain more than sun.

You can view the entire album here. Can't wait until next year.

Adventures in dentist visits

[Edit, 2011-09-20: Sorry, I forgot to publish this post last week. I wrote the thing but it didn't go online until now.]

It's no little-known fact about me that my jaw doesn't shut properly. Or maybe you didn't know that. Regardless, this has been an irritation of mine for at least the better part of the last decade... up until this week when I finally did the right thing and had my teeth ground down to a more bite-friendly size.

There are characteristics of Tokyo dentists that are perfectly in line with the eccentricities of the rest of this city. I want to say that I saw them coming but I really didn't. Most of what I witness was quite a pleasant surprise.

Since arriving here I've been to two dentists: one for a cleaning and the other for the aforementioned grind work. The first thing to say is that offices look nothing like those back home. They're more like day spas. The first guy I went to had an office with huge windows overlooking Roppongi Hills; the second featured soothing wallpaper music, real artwork, and a little water fountain. Made me feel quite important.

Don't ever pay for an x-ray again, especially a two-dimensional one. I got my head strapped into a contraption normally used to immobilise Hannibal Lecter while laser beams triangulated the coordinates of my teeth. Then a two-pronged x-ray probe circled my head, gathering every dirty little detail of my mouth. All this time For Elise by Beethoven was playing. A three-dimensional model of my teeth was ready within five minutes. I kid you not.

The actual treatment was dandy. The quality of a dentist differs from one person's opinion to another's. What I like is that in both instances, I had explained to me exactly what was happening and, more importantly, how much it would cost. This actually differs greatly from most other aspects of professional services in Japan, which are typically full of hidden costs.

Speaking of cost, none of this costs much as it is covered by public health insurance. Yes, that's right: I said public insurance (not extended). Cleaning: ¥1600; bite adjustment: ¥5000.

So I guess the lesson of this week is thumbs up for Japanese dentistry.

Awaodori

Okay, everyone here knows Obon, right? Not really? Well learn it. Anyway, there's a festival at the end of Obon called "Awaodori". As far as I can tell it only happens in two places: Tokushima and Koenji. Fortunately for me, the latter location is an area of Tokyo less than 30 minutes from my doorstep.

Kuri had her way in bringing me to the festival (right after having her way in buying a smartphone, by the way). I'm glad she did because it was pretty awesome. (The smartphone is also awesome.) At the heart of it, the festival is a series of short, intense dance parades performed by almost 200 groups, totalling about 12,000 dancers, across 20 routes. Dancers are divided into men, women, and kids, and are accompanied by live music, including taiko drums, flutes, stringed instuments.

The beautiful thing about Awaodori is how chaotic it is. According to Wikipedia, the dance evolved from people being drunk (hence it's association with foolishness). I'm pretty sure this was the inspiration for the parade scene in Paparika, a movie which was in turn the inspiration for the movie Inception. It's coordinated but the sparatic movements and flailing body gestures stay true to the alcohol-induced origins. The music is equally as in-your-face, with old salarimen venting years of frustration from the office on tiny little clanging symbols.

It is, in other words, in every sense the epitome of a gong show. Check it out Youtube. See also the pictures I took from my mobile phone.

Up and atom!

I didn't really think many people read this blog until I went back to Canada and everyone started asking me why there have been no updates. Now I feel kind of bad. So here we go, starting up the blog again. Let's hope I remember to keep it up this time.

First off, like I mentioned on Facebook, it was really great seeing everyone! My trip to Vancouver, despite being incredibly short, was nothing short of incredible (just like Kuriko - snap!). Seeing old friends, doing brunch, attending home group... good stuff.

Also, it was all the differences from Tokyo that made it good, like humidity being under 90% and not travelling around in a sardine can. And the inconvenience of not being able to speak Cantonese in a restaurant was a welcome change from not being able to speak Japanese.

Now I'm back in Tokyo and back into the routine of work. Some big changes are coming up. Up until this point, the only thing I've been doing is trying to get candidates to come in, then hope they will like the jobs we are working on. Starting next week I'm actually going to start working clients. One issue: we're so established in pharmaceuticals as a company that it will be very difficult to go in as a generalist. I'll have to specialise right from the start.

Having been an English teacher taught me that specialising from the start can be a good thing and having worked in travel insurance taught me that being a big fish in a small pond isn't so bad. In pharmaceuticals, it could go either way. Around here, people like working at prestigious companies/jobs, and niches aren't always prestigious. I've got to choose carefully or I could waste a lot of time. More on this as it develops.

By the way, to anyone considering seeing Tree of Life: don't. For Kuri and I this was the first time we've been to a theatre in a long time and it was like watching a screensaver.

暑い!

That character in the post title means "hot". It's freaking hot here! Tokyo summers are nortorious for being hot, muggy, and uncomfortable, and this year is apparently exceptional.

At breakfast today I asked Kurumi (Kuri's sister), "去年と今年は同じ暑いですか？" (which means, "Last year and this year are together same hot?"). It took her a few seconds, but she replied, "もっともっと暑い！" (which means "much, much more!").

So what's a summer like here? I suppose it's just a really intense version of any other day. For example, take the typical rush hour train commute and imagine that everyone who is in that train just stepped out of a sauna. It's not uncommon to be covered in someone else's sweat by the time you step off. Add to this the fact that Tokyo is still saving energy due to the Fukushima power plant incident. Kuriko's office shuts down the air conditioning after 5:00pm and on weekends (in fact, she's there right now and it's Saturday!).

The weekends are pretty good, though. If you can take the heat, summer is actually a pretty lively time to visit Tokyo. There are a lot of events, especially around Obon. People take advantage of open spaces like parks and you can sometimes catch markets or watch performances. If my wife wasn't at the office I would probably have taken her to the horse racing track. Come to think of it, we've got a nice breeze today. Makes me think why I'm blogging on a Saturday morning.

Alright, I'm out of here...

Sigh...

I haven't posted in a long, long while. I was considering for a while whether to keep this blog active or not. But occasionally something so stupid, so insane happens that I have to respond to it.

The Stanley Cup riot (which now has its own Wikipedia article) caused me no shortage of grief at work. The fiasco had hit the news by early afternoon Japan time. I spent the rest of that day and the first half of the next listening to cracks about Canada and references to the South Park movie - even from other Canadians (there are four of us on my floor).

Now I realise that the slander directed at me is nothing compared to the scope of the riot, but think of it this way: I work with mostly Australians, Japanese, and a few other nationalities. None of them pay any particular attention to Canada, much less to hockey; however, in less than the span of one day everyone knew what happened and had given some face-on-palm reaction. So yeah, this is how bad Vancouver looks. I wonder how much flak I'm getting at church tomorrow...

In other news, work is taking off. Sort of. It's still a grind and will continue to be, but the people I'm meeting these days are very good candidates, some of whom recognise the benefit of what I'm offering them. The general feeling is that a breakthrough is just around the corner.

Oh yeah, and I'm coming to Vancouver in August! Probably most people know this already. I'll be there from the 5th to the 12th.

My Gifu trip

Finally got Blogger to work again. Something wrong with the post editor.

Golden Week was a bit of a mix. The first thing to understand is that I spent a good deal of it on painkillers. I had gone to the gym on Friday and done something very stupid. Won't go into details of what I did, but it resulted in upper back pains and a massive headache. At first I thought it was related to an already existing pinched nerve in the other end of my back but it wasn't. It was so intense I couldn't swollow properly.

After pumping myself full of chems I actually started to enjoy the time off. Didn't end up seeing that art show (it was a too otaku for me). The highlight of last week was my trip to Takayama and Shirokawa in the Gifu prefecture. I've got some pictures up on the travel map (the link's actually above the map, not on it).

If you like old, pre-industrial style towns, I highly recommend Shirokawa. A few hours there is fine, or if you're really into this kind of thing you can stay over one night. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site which, unlike many other old-style towns, does a good job at avoiding cheese. This is due to the fact that the town is still used for its original purpose by the locals: rice farming. This isn't to say that there is a lot of farming going on or that it isn't there at least in part for show, but the place does have an authentic feel to it. The thatched-roof houses (which are used to define the town's status with UNESCO) are nifty, being massive, utilitarian, and highly flamable. Almost every structure in the village have thatched rooves, including some storage sheds. Kuri learned a valuable wife skill while we were there: how to make soba from scratch. I will be expecting much from her in the future.

Takayama is also pretty cool. The most noteworthy part of the city is a stretch of the Old Town, which features houses and stores from 400+ years ago. Now this part is a true tourist trap. From frozen pineapple snacks to rickshaw tours, there is no store too crowded, no souvineer to cheesy, no price too inflated to be withheld. Tourists flow through the streets like the water in the open ditches to each side it (one of which Kuriko fell into, by the way). It was actually kind of cool and I highly recommend it. Note that one sake store features a self-serve sampling counter.

I think the hotel was the other highlight. I had never been to a Japanese-style hotel before. You've got to take off your shoes at the lobby and most people walk around in socks or bare feet. Most of the flooring is tatami mat and you sleep on the ground on a large futon (which is great for your back, especially for those of us who had neck problems at the time). Onsen is located on the roof, where you have a beautiful viewof the city (and the city has a beautiful view of you - naked). Dinner is provided with the room, and so is breakfast. Most of the time, this would imply a very bad meal you wouldn't even want to show up for. Not so at this place. Five course dinner, everything made in the local style. Would probably cost ¥3000 per person in Tokyo. If you want to make yourself jealous of me, I took a few pictures of the food.

But alas, it's back to work now. Today wasn't so bad for a first day back but I was dragging significantly. *Yawn* Got to get up early because I slacked on my phone calls today.