My new Xbox...and high tea with friends

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan had a fundraiser with a raffle and all kinds of prizes. I showed up 2 hours late because I had to work late, bought one raffle ticket...and won the grand prize! An Xbox 360...whatever that is. Seriously, I'm not entirely sure what it does. But it was fun to win something!

Pictures of my friends Tomoko, Hitomi, and Yukari and me having high tea at the new Penninsula Hotel...The wait to get into this place was insane. Tomoko got there early and waited in line for 2 hours. It was good, but geez, it was really that herd mentality at work. "There's a crowd! It must be amazing. Let's spend all day waiting for over-priced tea, too!"

My birthday with Bobby...

It was a great 29th birthday!!! Bobby arrived on Thursday and we went straight to feast on shabu-shabu (a Bobby Ennis favorite). When he was almost falling asleep in the hot pot because of the jet lag, we went home and hit the sake I bought in Hiroshima...yummy. The next day we headed on the Romance Car to Hakone and stayed at an amazing boutique hotel called Kinnotake. It only has about seven rooms and all of them are different. Ours was three stories and had bamboo everywhere, even the floors were made of bamboo, and a view of a private lake and bamboo forest. My favorite touch was the outdoor toilet, with a view! I got a divine massage and if it wasn't for the insane price, I would've thought I was in Thailand or Bali. We got the typical meal, about 10 courses, served to us in the room. The presentation was beautiful but after three hours we really just wanted to go to sleep, since we were sitting on the floor it was hard to resist just keeling over on the ground...but we resisted. We did, however, drink quite a bit of champagne (after all, it was my b-day). That explains the last picture with my cute cards and presents from my mom stuck on my face...cute. On Saturday night (my real b-day) we went out to dinner at Kyubey, the best sushi restaurant in Tokyo, making it the best sushi restaurant in the world. We had an absolutely amazing meal...and such great atmosphere at the sushi bar. We got the head chef. There was this creepy yakuza (Japanese mafia) guy at the end of the table with his young girlfriend. The chef gave us each a free piece of horsemeat sashimi for my b-day...not exactly the chocolate cake a la mode I had hoped for, but a memorable delicacy nonetheless!

Tokyo Disneyland

Aside from Mickey Mouse speaking Japanese and over-priced ramen restaurants instead of hot dogs, it's good to know the Magical Kingdom is exactly the same on the other side of the world...Yukari and I had a fun day there riding the teacups and other things from the halcyon days of my youth...before I became a cynic and realized it's all one big ugly marketing machine to get people to buy things they don't need. Still, a fun day!!!

Learning Japanese

This is my Japanese teacher, Masako Nagase. As you can see, she comes up to my kneecaps. Keep in mind that I'm 5-foot-3. She is SOOOOOOOOOOOO sweet and I am SUCH a bad student. She came to my office all the way from Yokohama once or twice a week to tutor me, always leaving me with hand-made worksheets and very well thought out homework assignments. I think I maybe did two of them...and looked at a few. But the vast majority, I have to say, I didn't even glance at. I just said "arigato gozaimasu" and then didn't think about Nagase-sama until our next class, at which I would some times be a brat if I was A) Busy, B) Tire, C) Bored, D) (and the most common reason) Just not in the mood for Japanese. But she was always so patient with me. And believe it or not, I've learned a lot of Japanese! (At least considering what a bad student I was.) I feel good about how much I've learned. I could've studied grammar and the various alphabets and vocabulary more, but all in all, I can get around a million times better than when I landed here only knowing the word for "I'm sorry" (sumimasen), which is still the most important. I had my last lesson two weeks ago, and I have to say...I miss Japanese lessons! Nagase-sama would never believe it.

Here's some hysterical ramblings about learning Japanesee I found on a Japanese major's blog...and they're right on the money. This is one hard language.

I don't care how many anime tapes you've watched, how many Japanese girlfriends you've had or books you've read, You Don't Know Japanese. Not only that, studying that god-forsaken language is NOT fun or even remotely sensible. Iraqi war prisoners are often forced to major in Japanese. The term "Holocaust" comes from the Latin roots "Holi" and "Causm", meaning "to major in Japanese". You get the idea.

Japanese is NOT simple, easy, or rational (Japanese vocabulary is determined by throwing tiny pieces of sushi at a dart board with several random numbers attatched to it. The numbers are then fed into a machine. The machine is then destroyed). The Japanese spread these rumours to draw foolish Gaijin into their efficient clutches. Not only is it not simple, it's probably one of the hardest language you could ever want to learn. With THREE completely different written languages (none of which make sense), a multitude of useless, confusing politeness levels, and an absolutely insane grammatical structure, Japanese has been crushing the souls of the pathetic Gaijin since the very first Jesuit priests washed ashore there on a raft made of bibles.

Let's go over some of the elements mentioned above so you can get a better idea of what I mean.The Japanese writing system is broken down into three separate, autonomous, insane parts: Hiragana ("those squiggily letters"), Katakana ("those boxy letters") and Kanji ("roughly 4 million embodiments of your worst nightmares").

Politeness Levels

Depending on who you are speaking to, your politeness level will be very different. The correct level of politeness depends on the age of the speaker, age of the person being spoken to, time of day, astrological sign, blood type, sex, whether they are Grass or Rock Pokemon type, color of pants, and so on. For an example of Politness Levels in action, see the example below.

Japanese Teacher: Good morning, Harry.

Harry: Good Morning.

Japanese Classmates: (gasps of horror and shock)

The above would most likely be followed by violent retching. The bottom line is that Politeness Levels are completely beyond your understanding, so don't even try. Just resign yourself to talking like a little girl for the rest of your life and hope to God that no one beats you up.

Grammatical Structure

The Japanese have what could be called an "interesting" grammatical structure, but could also be called "confusing", "random", "bogus" or "evil". To truly understand this, let's examine the differences between Japanese and English grammar.

English Sentence: Jane went to the school.

Same Sentence In Japanese: School Jane To Went Monkey Apple Carbeurator.

Japanese grammer is not for the faint of heart or weak of mind. What's more, the Japanese also do not have any words for "me", "them", "him, or "her" that anyone could use without being incredibly insulting (the Japanese word for "you", for example, when written in kanji, translates to "I hope a monkey scratches your face off"). Because of this, the sentence "He just killed her!" and "I just killed her!" sound exactly the same, meaning that most people in Japan have no idea what is going on around them at any given moment.

Hiroshima

A few weeks ago I took a quick weekend trip to the southern region of Japan. It took about 4.5 hours on the Noizumi Super Express train from Tokyo to Hiroshima...incredible! I think it's over 700 miles or something insane like that. You forget how long Japan is. I was so surprised at what a bustling and leafy city Hiroshima is. It really gives you great hope in the power of human survival and renewal. After the bomb dropped, the Japanese were told that a tree wouldn't grow there for 100 years because of all the radiation damage. But there are big beautiful trees everywhere and wide boulevards and a packed cable car. You'd never know this city suffered such a tragedy. The Atomic Bomb Museum was worth making the trip for. The temperature here rose 3,000 degrees for a split second and destroyed everything, except the "Atomic Dome" as it is now called. It was a European-style museum that had just been built in the late 1930s before the war. The Japanese were very proud of it and when the entire city was in ashes, the cement dome still stood. And here it is with a park around it, preserved. The interesting thing is, there doesn't seem to be any anti-American sentiment there or any bitterness. I have to give it to the Japanese for this. They're looking to the future, always. They don't harp on things that happened (they did some terrible things themselves, after all) and they don't bring politics up. They consider it rude and I'm beginning to agree after being attacked in so many countries just for my country or origin.

Aside from the bomb, which is all most Americans think of, Hiroshima is also famous for OKINOMIYAKI, aka a huge thick pancake stuffed with squid, vegetables, seaweed, bacon, scallops, fried oysters (another Hiroshima specialty) and just about anything else you can think of. I found a great little spot in "Okinomiyaki Corner" to get one. The atmosphere was great and I even managed to have a conversation with the cook in Japanese. The only problem: It didn't really taste very good, and there was A LOT of it. The cook would've been very insulted if I didn't finish it so I did my best. But my experience with food here in general, is that the excitement and presentation is always much better than the taste...sigh.

Miyajima is an island about an hour from Hiroshima. It's a sweet little leafy island with a gorgeous shrine built right on the water, called Itsukushima, known for this big orange gate in the middle of the water. I had a nice day exploring but the only problem with these places is that the Japanese are obsessed with kitschy souvenirs and there are stalls selling plastic Hello Kitty dolls and tiny models of the shrine and rice spoons with pictures of deer on them all over the place. It kind of ruins the atmosphere, but then again, so does tour groups of 300 Japanese people snapping photos obsessively.

Holy Matrimony!

The hardest thing about living in Japan isn't the language barrier or the cultural differences, it's being so far away from everyone you love. I've missed four weddings this summer alone. And what a variety of weddings they were! My sister was a bride's maid in an Indian wedding of her friend Eisha. My friend Emily from college got married in the wine fields in Napa Valley. Sara, my dear friend from my early days in Tokyo who I miss terribly, got married near the beach in Florida to Murrah, who she has been dating since she was 16! And my friend Jennie who I fondly know from our debaucherous days in Mexico has settled down with a very sweet guy who, most importantly, is not a womanizing Mexican named Maurizio or Ruben or Carlos or, you get the idea. They had a lovely Jewish wedding in Maryland. A few pics of this nuptial smorgasbord...

Meet the Ennis Family

Bobby's family is so nice! I loved meeting all of them. They're such sweet people...and how hot is his 16 year old sister? We've got to get her an agent in L.A. and turn her into the next (though much more sane) Brittany Spears. Everyone was gathered to give his "Nana" a surprise party for her 80th birthday. She was very surprised and cute...It made me kind of sad. I wish my Gummy was turning 80. That seems so young now that she's 91....sigh. A pleasant surprise is that unbeknownst to him, Bobby has a DOG! His name is Levi and he's a super cute cocker spaniel...always a bonus to any home visit.

Trim Castle, County Meath

I can't believe Bobby grew up in a place as pretty as Trim! The biggest castle in Ireland (Trim Castle) is a 5 minute walk from his house. As my mom said in response to this: "The dry cleaners is a 5 minutes walk from our house!" My sentiment exactly. We took a walk with Bobby's absolutely lovely family through the fields near his house to the Trim Castle. We then went on a surprisingly informative tour of the castle...Bobby now wants to leave his job and give tours of the Trim Castle, a pursuit I have urged him to reconsider until old age. But I understand why he'd want to. It's so pretty there! And the castle is fascinating. It was built around 1100 by Hugh de Lacy and is the largest Norman castle in Europe, and the biggest and one of the oldest in Ireland. It's also more popularly known as the castle where they filmed Braveheart. (But since Mel Gibson is a fanatic, psychopath, we'll conveniently forget this tidbit of Hollywood trivia.) The castle is situated on the foot of the Boyne river (also known as the river Bobby wished would turn to Coke when he was a kid) and is 30,000 square meters. Our charismatic tour guide pointed out some graffiti in the castle that is 300 years old! So, there's graffiti that is older than my country, go figure. They've built a cute little boutique hotel called the Trim Castle Hotel nearby, where we had a drink after the tour...