Wanna Take You to a Snack Bar

The City That Sleeps on the Subway.

While we waited for our Chinese visas to process, we went to go see a performance by our old friend and bandmate, Satino Satio.  Since we'd left town and Raku 3 was no more, he had since formed a new band with another friend of ours, and since they were unfortunately unable to join us at the Pasar Music Festival (our next stop), we were thrilled at the chance to see Sa-chan in action.

Sa-chan is one of our oldest friends in Japan.  He's an excellent guitarist, the most ripped vegan I've ever met, and a stone classic Japanese hippie (our favorite kind of person!).  We met him through a couple of vegan friends of ours -- he happened to run a vegan cafe, and he was just so darn charming that we kept going back, week after week.  One day, out of the blue, he sent us a text message saying that he wanted to perform a show with the two of us; I hadn't performed a thing since band class in 7th grade, but having fooled around a little on the ukulele, we took him up on his offer.  We called ourselves Raku 3, after Sa-chan's (ultimately doomed) cafe, and playing with Raku 3 opened the door to countless unforgettable experiences.  Sa-chan took us to places in Osaka that we would never have found (let alone visited) as a couple of clueless honkies, and he introduced us to dozens of people who had lived fascinating lives.  In short, Sa-chan is probably the main reason we have such strong ties to Japan.

"Where is your performance?" we asked him via Facebook.

"I don't know yet, I haven't been there.  Just meet me at the south entrance of Daimaru Department Store at 6:50 and we'll go together."

We had no idea what to expect from this turn of events.  Sa-chan had taken us to perform at numerous venues throughout Osaka, and all of these fell into two distinct categories: hippie cafes, featuring all the standard accoutrements (incense, organic Fair Trade coffee, handmade jewelry, drum circles); or dive bars packed with day laborers drinking cheap beer.  Daimaru, on the other hand, is right in the middle of one of Osaka's more upscale shopping districts, flanked by Louis Vuitton and Coach stores that seem to contain very little merchandise in a shockingly large space (which, as in the rest of Japan, is prohibitively expensive in Osaka).  What strange new experience were we in for?

We turned up outside Daimaru at 6:55 (early for us, really), where we shared a warm reunion with Sa-chan.  His companion, the owner of the venue ("manajaa," he corrected us with a laugh) led us through Shinsaibashi's warren of side streets and alleys while Sa-chan caught us up on his life.  It seems he had decided to leave his current job, the fifth or sixth job he's had since we've known him; apparently the boss wouldn't stop pressuring him to eat meat despite his strict vegan diet (it should be mentioned that this was a job working as a chef at a barbecue restaurant).

Before we knew it, we were outside one of Shinsaibashi's thousand identical buildings, strung up in neon signs advertising food, drink, karaoke, and other services unknowable to the illiterate foreigner.  We chained up our bikes and followed the party into a tiny room on the third floor.  It was decorated like a reasonably cheap hotel room but windowless, airless.  We were greeted by a scarecrow-thin woman with a great deal of plastic surgery and the make-up and clothes of a much younger woman.  "Please, come in!" she beckoned to us in a cigarettey voice.  An enormous cockroach scuttled up the wall and behind a came-with-the-frame painting.  After some initial introductions, the hostess and another woman called Mama began to pour glasses of whiskey from a variety of expensive-looking bottles while the boss ("manajaa," he insisted with a laugh once again) sat and traded unintelligible jibes with the women.  There were no other customers yet.

"Oh my god," Jenn whispered to me, smiling, eyes agog, "this is a snack.  We're in a snack."

Snack bars (スナク) enjoy a great amount of mystery in gaijin circles.  No westerner we've known has ever been into one, and no local friend of ours has confessed to going, but they're everywhere in Japanese cities big and small.  We've always been a little unclear as to their exact purpose.  Maybe they're the same as a hostess bar, where customers pay obscene hourly rates just to flirt with the waitresses?  Or are they closer to soaplands and other almost-prostitution services you can find throughout Japan?  Late, late at night on the streets of Shinsaibashi, we've seen teams of kimono-wearing ladies bid farewell to very drunk salarymen and assumed this had something to do with snack bars.  As it happens, they are closest to hostesses: the proprietors keep your glass full, keep you talking, flirt with you, then slip you the bill when it's time to go home.  The whole institution hearkens back to the geisha tradition of paying for someone to keep you company and entertain you for an evening, at least as I understand it.

This, then, was a snack bar.  Eventually more customers filed in.  Each of them looked to us first with surprise, then a weird embarrassed smile.  The ladies found some way to shove a few of the velour-lined chairs into the far corner to make room for the performers, who rifled through their sheet music and talked quietly, clearly as surprised to be in such a place as we were.  The other customers occasionally tried to make conversation with us...or rather, each of them attempted the same conversation with us in turn (where we're from, how long we've been in Japan, and so on, petering out as our Japanese eventually fails us).

Meanwhile, the proprietors continued to make jokes at one another's expense and pour glass after glass of whiskey.  Except for Scarecrow Woman, who just kept adding ice to everyone's glasses.  The customers made conversation with one another and with the hostesses; maybe they were flirting, which I'm increasingly convinced is the actual nature of snack bars.  I guess I did expect that the hostesses of snack bars would be...well, younger?  The hostesses were all at least in their fifties, heavily made up and wearing the clothes of twenty-somethings.  The "manager," too, a man at least in his sixties, kept pawing at his employees good-naturedly while they batted his hand away and berated him.  I got the feeling that this team had been going through this same schtick for the last twenty years at least.

Then it was time for the show!  Sachimisachi took the stage (or...corner of the table) and played a lovely set of jazz standards and oldies.  They even played a few of Raku 3's old songs!  By which I mean, jazz standards and oldies that Raku 3 also covered.

Sadly, the audience was less than reverent during the show.  Sachimisachi's singer, Misa, has a lovely voice, but in the absence of a mic stand, it got rather lost among the conversation.  Most of the patrons seemed more interested in talking with one another than with listening to the show.

When the band took a break between sets, Sa-chan invited us to play a song with him for old time's sake.  We tried to see what songs we still remembered, then settled on "Chocolate Jesus" by Tom Waits.  We launched into it and the crowd went silent.  This could be because Jenn has a voice so powerful that it can knock over small children, but whatever it was, the audience was extremely appreciative.

After Sachimisachi's next set began, the trouble started.  A mustache and glasses in a white shirt, at the end of the first number, loudly demanded to know when Jenn was going to sing again.  Before the applause had ended after the second song, once again he let the room know that he had a request for Jenn.  We sank into our stained, overstuffed chairs and tried to politely turn the attention back to the featured artist, but that did little to pacify Jenn's newest fan.

We did take the stage after Sachimisachi's first encore (save for us, there was precious little enthusiasm for a second one), and, naturally, we turned it out, but it was a very sheepish triumph.  Afterwards, during karaoke time, we apologized profusely to Misa for showing her up, but she wouldn't hear of it.

"Hey, we should all play together sometime, the five of us," I suggested.

"That's a great idea!" Misa said.  Sa-chan and their flutist agreed, excited.  "So when you come back to live in Osaka, we can play shows together!"

Jenn and I exchanged a look.  God, it would be so easy to do that, wouldn't it?  Just come back to Osaka, play more shows, study more Japanese, see all of our friends whenever we wanted (the ones who haven't left, anyway).  We really were happy in Osaka.  Why the hell did we leave in the first place?

We pushed the thoughts out of our minds and tried to focus on the most important things: first, that Sa-chan had once again introduced us to a facet of Japanese culture that we would never have discovered on our own...

...And second, the rising suspicion that we were most certainly going to be hit with an enormous bill for the privilege.

Japan Recap Part 1: Osaka

It could be that I've been so terribly pleased with Osaka because of confirmation bias.  When we first moved here, I easily cobbled together a caricature of this city (nickname suggestion #1: The Big Pancake) from the few stereotypes and rumors I'd heard on the Internet and from otakus back home: it's loud, it's crass, it's dirty, it's tacky, the people are rude and overly concerned with money, it's where gangsters and comedians come from.  Basically, despite its second city status, in my mind I'd always built it up not as Chicago but as Jersey.

To recap: when we first moved to Japan, we were placed in an apartment right by Jenn's school, out in Tondabayashi City -- basically the Chesterfield, MO of Japan (or, in keeping with my earlier analogies, if Osaka is Chicago, Tondabayashi is Aurora or possibly Deerfield).  It seems like a fine place for people with children, dogs, and/or cars, but it was a bit sleepy for our tastes, so as soon as I found a job, we moved into the city proper.  Our apartment here is in Namba, certainly the happening-est part of one of the two most happening wards in Osaka, which means we got to be right in the heart of the big city (nickname suggestion #2: The Big 'Saka).  Despite having an hour-long commute each morning and evening, we haven't regretted moving to Namba at all.  We're a ten-minute walk from any of Osaka's best bars, restaurants, karaoke boxes, and gaijin hangouts...we want for nothing.  Truly, it is, as the Japanese say, la dolce vita.  Plus, the commute has given Jenn a chance to hone her sleeping-on-train skills to an almost Japanese level of expertise.

I guess, all said, I haven't learned much about the character of Osaka beyond those initial stereotypes, largely because I haven't lived anywhere else in Japan.  By Japanese standards, I guess it's dirty, but it's still Japan; people here sweep up the street in front of their businesses and wash the trash cans every day, tasks that no amount of money would persuade an American to do.  I suppose Osaka is dirtier than Kyoto, but then, Kyoto is so clean I'd be comfortable getting open heart surgery in the Kyoto subway.

Though there is the occasional fish head by the American consulate.  Ominous!

Some people are loud and crass, sure, but...yeah, again, Japan.  This is the country, if you'll remember, where you can get in trouble for demonstrating an insufficiently apologetic bow.  Crass for Japan is still more polite than any given...hm.  Well, I was going to give an example of something notoriously polite or helpful in America, but I find myself at a loss for examples.  More polite than a Minnesota wedding?

For instance, this man in Den-Den Town was nice enough to pause for a photo.  He said something about having plenty of...time.

Side note: I'd hoped that by studying Japanese here in Osaka, I'd learn to speak Osaka-ben, the brash, slangly Osaka dialect favored by Yakuza.  Thus, whenever I encountered a Japanese person outside Osaka, I would impress and intimidate them with my tough-guy way of speaking.   Unfortunately, having worked in a kindergarten for more than two years, I've been told that I speak more like a three-year old than a gangster.  *Sigh*

The toughest gang in town.

On the few occasions when we've gone to Tokyo, we were able to see what weirdness is native only to Osaka, and not to Japan as a whole.  Tokyo felt pretty boring, actually; everyone was wearing conservative clothes in conservatives colors (and let me just say as a word of warning to friends and family in America, I've gotten very used to dressing ridiculously).  Ultimately, I would say, Tokyo is much, much more ghettoized than Osaka, which makes the city feel...well, boring.  Everyone dresses the same because the freaks with the punk haircuts and the Lolitas with their boyfriends don't ride the same trains as the sarariimen going to work -- they stay in their ghettos in Akihabara or Harajuku with their own kind.  There's no Tokyo pride, no Tokyo Strut, as far as I can tell, because there's pride or a sense of identity within the smaller communities that sprinkle the megalopolis.

I gather that this is what makes Osaka so special within Japan, this sense of regional pride: rich or poor, old or young, all of Osaka comes together to take pride in their fried foods, their garish lit-up streets, and their terrifyingly powerful old women (Osakaobachan are described in guidebooks as "vigorous," "robust," and many other euphemisms for "loud, obnoxious to the point of violence, and generally badass").  After only three years here, I have more pride than I've had in anywhere else I've lived, though that may be due to St. Louis and Kirksville not putting up the stiffest competition.  I'm gonna miss this place, for sure.

To close, I'd like to share a couple of videos that capture the spirit of Osaka.  First, the outsider's perspective on our fascinating city, summed up beautifully by one of the best travelers out there (do watch part 2, as well, if you have time):

Osaka viewed from the vantage point of a boozy, coarse, sweaty old man.  Pretty much spot on!

...And then, the ultimate Osaka-poi video, full of plenty of Osaka dialect, food, and of course, the ridiculous clothes and hair that Osaka is famous for.  Most of this is set about 5 minutes from our house!  Sadly, the version with English subtitles has been taken down by some evil bastard, but trust me when I say that this song is as awesomely, authentically Osakan as it is impossible to sing at karaoke.  Ladies and gentlemen...zis izu Osaka Sutoratto!

I want that coat!

Karaoke Spotting

Sorry, another short one today.  This is the view from Kama Sutra, (formerly) one of our favorite bars in Osaka.  It's generally known as a gaijin bar, meaning it's typically frequented by foreigners and those who enjoy hanging out with foreigners and/or singing songs in English.  Kama Sutra is about the size of a standard American SUV (or, say, one and a half times the size of our apartment), which makes it nice and cozy.  It's here that we spotted this gentleman, a real-life Drunken Japanese Man Belting ZZ Top Songs Incomprehensibly, in the wild.  Enjoy this uncensored, brutally honest look at the Osaka nightlife fauna:

Before, after, and during his song, this guy claimed to be a music producer. As far as I know, he's still there, hogging the mike for all time.

Korea Part 1: In Which Harry and Jenn Eat Bugs

Hey, belated Happy New Year!  Also, belated Merry Christmas, belated Happy Hanukkah, belated Happy Boxing Day, etc. etc.  Also, sorry it's taken so long to get this blog post up.

So.

Three days ago Six days ago Last week we got back from our winter vacation to Korea, and we're still recovering from it.  I'd say that we got enough blogworthy material to give up the Japan game altogether and just post about our trip for all of 2012.  To spare everyone the most boring of vacation recaps (a chronological recounting of where we went), this time we'll switch things up and group our trip by theme.  Today, the most interesting of any trip: the food!

Korea and Japan, despite being so (relatively) close to one another, are very different places.  Everyone with me so far?  Cool.  I think the differences between Japanese and Korean cultures are most obvious in their cuisine.  Japanese food, in general, makes use of very little spice or seasoning, making use of fresh ingredients to highlight the taste of each component with great subtlety.  In other words, it can be bland as fuck, especially after eating it for 2 1/2 years.  Korean food is the yang to Japan's yin, or, alternatively, the Evil Mirror Universe Spock to Japan's Regular Spock.  90% of the Korean food we ate was slathered in chili sauce and raw garlic, which made for 10 days of tasty times (and uncomfortable trips to the bathroom).

We dined out for pretty much every meal during our vacation, a habit enabled by the dizzying strength of the yen, which made it seem that the whole country was having a half-off sale; we would regularly eat enormous, delicious dinners for about $6.  We tasted many delicacies, none of which I can name.  TANGENT ALERT: the time that it takes the human brain to begin to comprehend the syllables of a foreign language can be represented by the formula t+1, where t=how long you'll be in the country.  As such, every dish, neighborhood, or person's name I heard entered my ear and traveled to my brain, where my brain promptly squinted, shrugged, and forgot it entirely.  END TANGENT ALERT.

After 8 days of deliciousness, the Puritan genes that lay dormant in our American brains began to flare up and demand some form of penance, which we found in one of Korea's less well-advertised specialties: silkworm larvae.

Yep.  Bugs.  We ate just a big ol' cuppa bugs.  One of our Couchsurfing hosts assured us that the smell was far worse than the taste.  This provided some small comfort, as they smelled like wet socks.

Screwing our courage to the sticking places (which, we found, was located right in our stomach lining), we asked this nice lady for "one."  Sadly, "one" unit of stewed larva means about 100 individual bugs.

You may ask, "Why?"  We certainly did.  The short and easy answer: because it was there.  The longer answer: because eating weird, scary foods is something we can be proud of, something that we can say we've done.  Most of all, "eating bugs" can provide a comfortable worse-than scenario for any crappy day, a point that we exploited often for the rest of our trip.  Ex.: "Hey, climbing this mountain totally sucks.  But you know what it's better than?  Eating bugs."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but beondegi (as I have since learned that the dish is called) smells and looks nasty, and it tastes about as bad.

Here, Harry can be seen wondering if he now has eggs in his brain.

As with most foods, however, stewed bugs taste considerably better when washed down with good old American Coca-Cola.  Though it must be said that Silkworm Larva Belches are a nauseating experience in their own right.

Again, we can see Our Heroes quickly undergo the transformation from Seasoned Globetrotter, Ready for Exotic Experiences...

...to Weary, Cynical Traveler Who No Longer Thinks Such Bad Things About Wendy's.

And if you look really close (not recommended), you can even see the horrible little things' shriveled-up faces.

Having eaten enough of the paper cup's contents to consider ourselves sufficiently cool (I'd estimate 10% of the serving, or exactly Too Many bugs), we chucked the rest.  Culinary Rubicon crossed.  Y'know the great thing about Rubicons?  You only have to cross them once.

After a couple of days, we had stopped belching up thoraxes long enough to remember that we had unfinished business in Busan: on our first day in Korea, when we were literally fresh off the boat, we were looking for something to eat in the Jagalchi fish market, a beautifully gross area with tanks full of live sea creatures directly from our nightmares.  Seasick, sleep-deprived, and intimidated by our ignorance of the Korean language, we stumbled past a few restaurants, hoping to find something edible.  A lady yelled to us from the doorway of one of the restaurants: "Hello!  Sashimi?"  Though it wasn't quite as adventurous as we were hoping for, at least it sounded reliably delicious.

Our lunch was tasty if difficult: more yellowtail than we had ever seen in Japan accompanied by a collection of unrecognizable sauces and condiments, as well as several cloves of raw garlic and a plate of lettuce leaves.  Not knowing quite what else to do, we spread a little of everything on the leaves, wrapped it around some fish, and made little tacos.  We ate quickly and furtively, hoping to avoid offending anyone too badly (as it turns out, our table manners were correct if messy).

When we had finished, Jenn pointed out that everyone else in the restaurant was eating the same dish, and it was one vastly different from our tame plate of raw fish: drenched in sauce, grilled right on the table, it contained some pinkish fish that horrifically writhed through piles of onions as it cooked before their eyes.  It quickly became apparent why the proprietor lured us in with the promise of sashimi: if this dish were put in front of an average confused-looking American, the reaction might be one of fright and disgust (my thoughts went to Temple of Doom as soon as I saw it).  Jenn, however, realized that we were sitting on a golden opportunity that might pass us by forever if we didn't jump on it.  So, for our last meal in Korea, we returned to the little restaurant for what the menu called "grilled hagfish."  Hagfish is described by Wikipedia as "Lovecraftian" and "exud[ing] copious quantities of a slime or mucus of unusual composition."  Bon appetit!

Roof Off-Tearing

From the Raku Three's concert last Saturday night. Our audience, though small, was enthusiastic, and I think we played better than we ever had before. Apologies for the feedback in the second and third numbers; we couldn't get the mike quite right again after our guest vocalist finished her songs. Enjoy!

Robo-Boogie

It is the distant future: the year 2011. There are times where having the opportunity to write about life in Japan is a precious gift. This is absolutely one of those times.

The other day, Osaka hosted the world's first bipedal robot marathon. I'll just repeat that: Osaka was home to the first-ever 26.2 mile race of bipedal robots. If your reaction to this is anything like mine, you are expecting news of the successful launch of Skynet any day now.

The proud winner of this year's marathon. Look at that charming smile!

So yeah, it's pretty much "I for one welcome our cruel robot overlords" time. Except, of course, for the fact that these robots are adorably tiny. Please enjoy these highlights from the race.

It's even better if you imagine "Yakkity Sax" playing from 0:17.

The blog post containing actual information about this race is here. A chilling vision of what could one day come to pass is here. Please write your congressman today and demand that robo-American relations are represented in the government.

Everybody bok bok

My kindergarten just held its nth annual recital, an affair treated with the same level of planning and ritual as the Academy Awards or a presidential visit. Teacher movements were calculated down to the minute, meetings went on long into the night, all to ensure that the annual taking-photos-of-three-year-olds-yelling-and-wetting-their-pants went off without a hitch. And it did! I guess!

Please enjoy the fruits of 4 years of English education, the crowning achievement of my teaching career (seriously, I can't think of anything more satisfying), as performed by Rainbow Class at the 2011 Happyokai:



And, as an illustration of how early education is different in Japan, how many times did you do this in music class? How much do you wish you could have?



Mind you, these kids aren't particularly amazing or disciplined outside of this activity; this class is one of the more unruly ones at the school. Maybe it's just because this is awesome and everybody loves to do it.

Christmas Comes to Osaka

This is what I did last night (click to play, double-click to make it bigger):



Please ignore the out-of-tune cello playing. We'll be Stateside from December 17th, so if you're around the KC or StL areas for the next few weeks, give us a shout! Oh, and Merry Christmas.