ein Hund für die Catherine

My daughter Catherine is a linguaphile living in Germany, so this post is for her.

In America, it's quite rare that foreign words or phrases turn up on signs.  I can think of a few exceptions, but by and large we are a country that does not bother to learn other languages.  It's remarkable to me how much English there is on the streets of Tokyo.

In America, use of a foreign phrase usually signals an appeal to a more educated, sophisticated (read, rich) crowd. That's true here, too.  Last night I saw a store called "Classics The Small Luxury" which sold nothing but handkerchiefs, starting at $25 apiece.  But today I saw "SALE! 30-50% off" on a discount store, too.

Japanese products are famous for their idiosyncratic use of English, like the "Fruity salad" juice I've been drinking for breakfast and the "Everyer girl" body lotion in the bathroom.  But give them credit for getting it right more often than wrong.

Here's a sign I saw in a camera store.  No corresponding warnings in English or Japanese, as far as I could tell.

Maybe it's a German shepherd?

(Loosely translated:  Beware of the loose dog.  If the dog jumps, you're on your own--lots of luck!)

A cemetery for KK

My daughter-in-law Kristina studies bones, and funerary customs, and grave goods.  When she travels, she seeks out cemeteries.  Here's one I stumbled on in Tokyo.

I can't read the inscriptions, of course, so I have no idea whether these monuments represent one person or a whole clan.  What struck me is how densely populated the place is.  It's also completely paved over.  There's no lawn to tend, nothing to tidy up.

Each monument has a couple of vases, and some have flowers.  In the corner, I found a tap and a group of charming wooden pails with dippers for watering the flowers.

Oh, man: omen.

The instructions are clear.  After you get your fortune, you are to TAKE IT HOME.  Why they tell you this, I don't know, because there are racks all over that people tie their fortunes to.  The instructions also tell you it costs 100 Yen (about a buck) to get a fortune, but I didn't see anyone but me following that instruction either.

Here's how it works.  You "politely shake" the container to jostle the sticks inside, and then let one stick come through the hole.  Each stick has a number, and you match it to a drawer.  (This is much simpler to do if you know Japanese, because the numbers are in Japanese characters.)  Inside the drawer is your fortune.

They are not fooling around here.  I got a terrible fortune!  Not "life is full of challenges" or any of the vaguely bad news you might imagine.  Request not granted, won't get better, bad for marriage, trips, job--a total sad sack life, not one ray of hope here.

Not on my birthday, you don't.  I opened another box at random and pulled out a second fortune.  Mostly for comparison--I couldn't believe how harsh #70 Bad fortune was--but also because I believe you can choose to change your life, so why not your fortune?

I like this one a lot better, happier like a ship sails before the wind.

I also find the parallels interesting.  Do they all talk about getting well and tearing down houses?  And waiting for people?

I also see it as significant that the good fortune is more nuanced.  Still won't find the lost or heal the sick, still waiting for that person.

Now I want to go back and get a few more, just to see what variety there is.  But that might be pushing it.  Rules are rules.

Tokyo Time

A day that starts with an earthquake and ends with a birthday party:  stay flexible and enjoy what comes your way!

I slept through the earthquake, and so did Yoshiko, but it woke Kaji up.  According to the earthquake tracker, it was a 5.1 magnitude quake north of here.  Welcome to the Pacific Rim.  

My first night, Yoshiko planned a schedule for each of my days here, in each case sticking to one subway or train line so that I can use a one-day pass for unlimited travel.  Tokyo has lots of lines which connect, but you have to pay separately for each.  Residents have the equivalent of the US EZ Pass, which lets them swipe their way through the gates.  The single day pass works much the same way.

Today was my Hibiya day.  Parks, shopping, temples and lots of walking.  Armed with a tourist booklet, Yoshiko's game plan, and a map of the system, I set off.  First stop, Tsujiki.  The plan was for the fish market, but I stopped off at a Buddhist temple on the way.  This incarnation of it was built in the 1930s, after the original was lost to fire and the replacement to earthquake.  It looks like the land , which was reclaimed from the sea, has now been reclaimed as a parking lot.  There were several tour buses there, but not enough people to fill them.

At the fish market, I wandered through the general market area for quite a while, finding out later that I had missed the fish market entirely.  By the time I figured out where it was, everyone was packing up for the day.  I couldn't figure out what was samples and what was food for bulk purchase, and did not see people helping themselves to samples, so much of the food remains a mystery to me.  One helpful vendor saw me looking at light brown, dried tablets and told me what they were, but I heard "scarabs" instead of "scallops."  I was ready to believe either one, but they were pretty clearly scallops.

I am very challenged in my sense of direction, the wrong way when I leave a store, so I had a happy time wandering the alleyways with only a vague idea of where I was.  Fortunately, Tokyo has a lot of city maps in the areas tourists frequent, so you can readjust and find a subway fairly easily.

After the fish market, I made stops by Hibiya Park, the government buildings, the Imperial Palace, the Tokyo Sky Tower, and a high end shopping mall/residence area.  I ran into three different groups from Semester at Sea, so I guess I was hitting the high points of Tokyo.

I found this statue in Hibiya Park, which is Tokyo's first "western style" park.  I guess that's why Romulus and Remus are making an appearance.

It looked like a lotto game to me.

My challenge for the day was getting some food.  Yoshiko left so much for breakfast that I wound up eating some of it for lunch, but I was determined to eat dinner out.  Yoshiko recommended Ueno, so I took the subway there.  Lots of restaurants have picture menus, and some even have plastic models of the food.  It is still pretty hard to tell what you're getting, but I am not a fussy eater.  So I picked out a restaurant and I picked out a dish, but I failed to notice that you have to first buy a ticket for your meal.  There's a vending machine at the front of the restaurant, where you choose and pay for your food.  Then you give your ticket to the proprietor, and he brings your food.  The table has hot stuff and hotter stuff on it, as well as water.  (Pickled ginger--it looked like carrots, but it was labeled ginger--and something that just had a skull and crossbones on the label.  I think the ginger was the hotter of the two.)

What I ate

I came home around 7, and the subway was packed with people.  I shoved myself in and spent the whole ride wedged between the crowd and the door.  I don't know how anyone could have gotten through the crowd to get off, and I don't think anyone did until the major transfer point.  Even then, the local was standing room only.

After you are about 6, it's bad form to tell people it's your birthday, so I wouldn't have mentioned it to Yoshiko and Kaji.  But when Kaji made my reservation for the bus, he had to give my age, so the word was out.  Because of this, Yoshiko arranged a party for my birthday eve.  She found a birthday hat with candles, and the bought a cake.  She and Kaji sang happy birthday and gave me a present of a wallet for my travels.  It was lovely to be remembered!  Then Kaji posted the pictures to my Facebook page, so all my friends back home had ample warning to send their hood wishes as well.  Happy birthday to me, my first one celebrated outside of the US.