Japandamonium!!!

Konnichiwa!
Onee-chan here--that's big sister for the folks at home--guest blogging, since I am VISITING JOSH in JAPAN! It has been a whirlwind few days, one of the technological highlights of which has been getting Josh's computer up and running again, thus enabling me to report on our doings. So. Let's see.

First I traveled for about two days, all told--first a short flight to Dallas, then a long flight to Osaka seated next to a cute but not very bright 21-year-old girl who told me that her "sugar daddy," I kid you not, had paid for not only her airfare to Japan but also her laptop, ipod, and her very first real not-a-Canal-Street-knockoff Prada bag (she dangled it up for my perusal). I thought, why do I not have me one of these here sugar daddies? And then I remembered it was because I still have my self-respect. Anyway we disembarked in Osaka, where I killed a few hours at the airport by purchasing an absolutely delicious can/bottle of grapefruit juice (it tasted FRESH SQUEEZED, people), surfing internet in 10-minute intervals, calling Josh on the phone, and playing my ukulele quietly to myself while waiting for the bus ("bahs") to take me to the ferry port ("ferry poruto") where I boarded the Orange Ferry.

This is an overnight ferry that is sort of like a floating hostel--inside are small co-ed dorm rooms where you draw the curtain to your little bunk and put on the yukata robe waiting there for you, and then take yourself to the baths, where many unself-consciously naked women and girls sit on little stools soaping and scrubbing, then rinsing and soaking in the hot water pool. It is wonderful to relax and feel clean after the long flight. I am the only gaijin aboard as far as I can tell, but luckily Josh has briefed me on the proper procedure and I know to buy my little towels at the shop on the first level before going to bathe. Early morning, the ferry arrives in Toyo on the island of Shikoku, and I board a bus bound for Imabari. My gigantic suitcase blocks the aisle for everyone else and I get to practice saying "sumimasen": excuse me.

A Note on Toilets

So far in my experience, toilets in Japan have been either rather primitive--squat-style glorified holes in the floor--or bewilderingly sophisticated, with heated seats (why don't we do this?) and an array of buttons. The toilet in Cafe Verdure, where we enjoyed a lovely breakfast yesterday, featured several different buttons that each, when pressed, prompted a stream of water directed at my bottom. There must have been some subtle differences in the stream depending on the button, but Lord, for the life of me I could not tell you what they were, even after repeated testing.

So after the 2 planes, and the bus, and the ferry, and the other bus, I finally arrive at Imabari Station, where Josh appears to meet me. Yay!

Since then, numerous delicious things have ensued, which I shall try to enumerate.

1. Udon at what basically amounts to a fast-food place, but there are dried bonito flakes and fresh minced ginger as condiments, and as much green tea (o-cha) as we can drink.

2. Surprise dinner party with Japanese friends of Josh my first night, with sushi and drinks including chu-hai, a sweet girly fizzy alcoholic beverage that tastes like lychee. I want to bring this stuff home to drink for the rest of my life but I'm not sure how well it will travel. Also, I suspect this is the Japanese equivalent of Zima.

3. Breakfasts at the aforementioned Cafe Verdure and the cafe at the train station, where we ordered Viking bread, which means you can pillage the bread station as much as you want. Many croissants and strange sandwiches are eaten.

4. Mekons! Japanese clementines, small with delicate papery skin that comes off in little pieces that are now all over Josh's apartment. The man who works in one of the local Hello Kitty paraphanalia stores gave Josh two giant plastic shopping bags filled with the little oranges a few days ago, so we have been eating them constantly. Pretty much any activity is accompanied by mekon eating. Scurvy is no longer a concern.

5. Ome-rice. Imagine a fast food joint whose specialty is a cross between an omelet and rice. Ketchup might be involved. Also chicken.

6. Muscat soda! Tastes like green grapes.

7. Last night we went out to dinner with Murakami-san, one of Josh's aikido friends, and his wife and 15-year-old daughter at a really fancy nice restaurant. Murakami doesn't speak a lot of English, but he does a lot with a little. "Your wife is very nice," says Josh as Murakami is driving us to the restaurant. Murakami thinks for a moment. "Dangerous," he corrects Josh. "Does she do aikido also?" I ask. "No," says Murakami, and grins. At the restaurant we eat more food than I think is possible for me to eat in a sitting, first fried dry fish bones and little pickled things, and then delicious fresh sushi, and then the best tempura I have ever, ever tasted, and miso soup with bonito in it, and tai meshi, which is fish and rice cooked together in a little hot pot, and tall Asahi beers, and hot sake, which you have to pour for everyone else but not yourself because someone else will pour yours. Somehow the conversation is relaxed and fun and wonderful in spite of being effortful due to the language barrier--Josh is the only person at the table who is really conversant in both English and Japanese--and by the end of the meal, when Asaka, the daughter, is trying out her English a little more, it feels like we are all participating in a real moment of genuine cultural exchange. Oh, and we did some origami. I'm serious.

8. For lunch today Josh took me to to the Kaiten sushi near his house, which has plates of sushi going by on little boats in front of you, and you take what looks good, which is pretty much everything, pure white silky looking squid and squared-off pieces of buttery-textured salmon and fresh fresh shrimp, and order other things off the menu like fish eggs that pop in your mouth, and Josh is friendly with the staff who are all running around trying to fill New Year's orders because it is New Year's Eve tonight and they are busy. The wasabi is fresh and coarsely ground and penetratingly pungent; there are hot water faucets in front of every other seat at the counter so you can drink all the o-cha you want, the teabags in plastic canisters labeled "canister" though it's hard to imagine anyone's English vocab including the word, semiotics with no meaning, and there are also canisters of pickled ginger, not labeled anything at all. At the end you pay by the plate, and it comes to about $10 each for 16 plates of sushi between us and an order of edamame.

It's a good thing I like Japanese food so much, because it makes me the perfect guest. Other reasons why I am the perfect guest: I have absolutely no agenda of my own here. I love riding bikes, which is the way to get around here; it's flat and there are bike parking areas in every parking lot, which makes me happy. Oh and I did Josh's dishes. There was quite a buildup. The hot water for the dishes comes out of a box on the wall like a miniature boiler--turn it on and a flame goes on, water goes through, presto, hot water. The shower is a similar arrangement but more complicated, with a switch to turn on the gas and then a burner that goes on and a CRANK and then you can actually turn on the water. Thankfully the hot water is therefore plentiful, a blessing in an apartment that is colder than outside, more or less. I am writing this entry from beneath Josh's kotatsu table though so I'm okay.

Oh and I forgot to mention JOSH'S RADIO SHOW. Which was hilariously fun. The radio station people are super cool, and Josh and I rocked two separate segments, one at 10:30 and then one at 4 in the afternoon. My brother seems to know his way around all the equipment, which is kind of impressive, and he gets to do pretty much whatever he wants for his show. Which, this week, included making me play two Magnetic Fields songs on the ukulele, and convincing me for a few minutes that Carlos Santana was actually Japanese. "He was born in a Japanese internment camp," Josh says, deadpan, on the air, when I say, "Santana, huh? Is that a Japanese name?" We play a lot of Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, and both "Peaches and Cream" by Beck and "Cream" by Prince.

Right now Josh is putting away some laundry, and then we are going to go to the store so we can cook dinner. Later we'll end up at Imabari-Jo, the castle, to ring in the new year with everyone else in town, practically all of whom seem to know Josh. We will drink beer. It will be festive.

Yoii o toshio!
Ellie