Updated!

As I assure my parents in my daily emails, I am not dead.  I merely got caught up in work and a glorious, very, very snow-rainy weekend I spent traveling for 12 hours a day.  So you're going to get the shortened version of a few things, starting with Yokohama. 

Yokohama:
I'm about as far away from Yokohama as I am from Tokyo, and although it's far easier to get to Yokohama (straight line, 1 train line), Yokohama's station makes up for it by being the least transfer-friendly thing I've ever encountered.  I like the ones where you literally have to cross the tracks to get to the other platform far better than the 15-minute jog through multiple levels, empty hallways, and determined businessmen that is the Sotetsu line to the JR lines entrance.  Yokohama city itself, on the other hand, is very nice.  I could tell you about the very important part the seaside place plays in Japanese-European history, the giant ship that still sits in harbor by a beautiful dog park that promises terraces of roses once the weather warms up, or the raised walkways that look out to the theme park with its giant ferris wheel.  I could talk about the red brick warehouses dating back to the beginning of foreign contact in the 1800s and which now house rows of tiny shops selling everything from the best of Japanese teas and cakes to chopsticks shaped like lightning bolts, to pork buns and Pepsi, to the Uniqlo Home store taking up half of the top of one warehouse (http://store.uniqlo.com/jp/store/home/index.jsp).  But nope.  I'm going to talk about this guy:

 

Yes; that's a real sword.  And he's eating the apple as he cuts it with a knife, both of which he's juggling.  The flaming piece of wood is chopped off in this pic.  He's also on a 12-foot tall unicycle and speaking the entire time.  Good god.  Anyway, I found this guy doing a show in the main park in Yokohama, Yamashita Koen, which is featured right along the main piers (the one with the roses).  The first time around, I caught the very end, which involved this and having a guy toss him flaming sticks from the ground.  I then wandered elsewhere, and came back four hours later to see him maybe a quarter of the way into his next show.  This time, I got a good viewpoint.  This guy was hilarious.    He did a comedy act/various circus-type skills like these.   The guy tossing flaming sticks, it turns out, was someone he randomly picked from the audience and referred to as his younger brother throughout the act, convincing him to do random things, like hold one end of a string of national flags while he talked about how much he wants peace for the world, or you know, chuck flaming things at his head.  As a reward, volunteer-guy was given a miniature version of the performer's guitar case, which has a face painted on it. Sadly, few of his jokes translate cultures (including the brother ones).  At one point, for example, playing on the Japanese obsession with cleanliness, he picked up a tiny broom and dustpan to clean up every last bit of the apple he was eating while juggling (not much actually stays in his mouth since he was speaking the entire time about how delicious it was and would his brother like a piece).  He also balanced flaming sticks on his nose, rolled them over his back, etc..., played the most dramatic music ever to psyche everyone up for his awesome somersault, did pithy magic for the kids in the front rows, and entirely encouraged them when they kept shouting 'gambatte!' (go for it/good luck) while he pretended to not know how to put together his unicycle.  This was definitely the best hour I spent in Yokohama, and I only understood about 70% of what this guy was saying and was standing in front of two businessmen who clearly thought the foreigner couldn't understand them until they noticed my Sophia bag.  Hahaha! Best non-direct apology ever goes to business #1 for beginning to talk about how smart the foreigner was for understanding the street performer, by the way. 

 

 

Up next should be the 日本民家園 (Nihon Minkaen), the Japanese Folk Museum.  http://www.city.kawasaki.jp/88/88minka/home/minka_e.htm It's in Mukougaoka-yuen, right on the Odakyu line and so pretty convenient from just about anywhere near Tokyo.
Honestly, this thing deserves its own post, and I'll try to do it justice soon.  For now, though, the basics.  I decided to go on the second-worst day of weather in Kanagawa all year.  I'm awesome that way.  It was snow-raining the whole time and maybe 33 degrees out.  It's an open-air museum built in a mountain park on steep hills, with wood and dirt paths leading everywhere.  Wonderful in the summer, I'm sure.  That day, however, it just meant that everything was slippery, cold, and trying actively to kill me while I attempted to reach each house, most of which shoes must be taken off before entering.  There were advantages, though.  There was hardly anyone there, so I could wander, gape, and take pictures without people in them to my heart's content.  Every person stationed in each house was also more than happy to talk to me as well, although I gather that's more of an everyday occurrence at this museum. 

In many, they had people sitting by the (lit) cooking fires to tell you about the house and keep people from frostbite, assumably, so I stopped by one where a bunch of people were grouped around the fire. It was four workers, only kinda working, and two college kids visiting from Kobe.  They made tea over the fire in one of the old-fashioned kettles (mmm....matcha!) and we all had some, after the guy making the tea managed to melt two of the paper cups while dipping them in the water.  They found a ladle after that.  The house we were in (the Misawa house) used to be a family home/pharmacy, so there were rooms for the medicine to be stored and a shop area built in the house by the kitchen.  It's over 180 years old, very waterproof, an official national treasure, and from Nagano prefecture in Kanagawa (all the houses were moved to the museum, like Genneseo).  The guy who was supposed to be there, since the other workers were definitely supposed to be working elsewhere, likely outside, told us all this over tea and jokes. I understood about 70% of it without girl from Kobe's help or the one worker translating things with his electronic book.  He was very proud of that book, so he translated things that didn't really need it, such as 'medicine' and 'earthquake', but he was so proud of it and that he could pronounce the English words that I just let him go at it, even though he didn't actually translate anything helpful (like the random questions thrown my way. 'homesick' would have been a good word to translate, guy).  We also talked about why America doesn't use the victory/peace sign for pictures when we are "number 1" ---seriously; the guy said that.----baseball (the Yankees are better than the Mets in NYC, by general decision/Godzilla-san playing for the Yankees), earthquakes in Kobe, the crappy weather, and why Kobe-girl and her friend were just friends and going out together on Valentine's weekend.  The sign for gay was thrown out during that conversation (pinky finger up rest of the hand in a lose fist), which then created a conversation about American signs for gay after poor Kobe-guy and Kobe-girl strongly refuted that insinuation (and the immediately following one of them both cheating on their respective significant others).  The closest I could come up with was flinging a hand back the way I was taught NEVER to hold my violin.  Are there any? I'm not even sure there are...

 Picture courtesy of Kobe-boy.  The guy sitting next to me is the worker for the house, who had a wonderful sense of humor.  The cups on the right were later inadvertently used to flavor the tea after they fell in that kettle you see over the fire.  Behind us is a bedroom and we're in the kitchen/pharmacy/living room/main guests room.  I don't know how it manages to be sunny while raining so hard; it's Japan.

In any case, I had a good 45 minutes of warm toes, feeling in my hands, and amusing conversation before heading back into the cold and checking out all the other houses.  Folk houses are amazing; it's hard to believe that something made out of mud, straw, and a few hundred-year-old trees (some of which were still alive and serving as main support structures when they were scheduled to be moved, posing a problem) can last hundreds of years in earthquake central, then survive a move cross-country in some cases.  Ok; they're not exactly the best-insulated (doors would be nice in some of them) and I feel bad for those who were still cooking in their living rooms in the 60's since that's where the stream was.  But they are beautiful and few things feel better under the feet than tatami matting.  Plus, the whole museum is located inside Ikuta Ryukuchi, a large park that has some mountain trails I'd really like to get to when hiking them isn't likely to end in me broken at the bottom of a steep case of steps.  There's also a planetarium and art museum in the park, that I saw, and a college I didn't see.  For the Y300 student fee, the museum is definitely worth the trip.

 

Plus, you get to see these: old Japanese kid's books!  They were literally the only piece of decoration inside one of the houses, excepting a table.  Oh, Japan. 

And, a few of the houses house what is apparently one of Japan's best 雛人形, (hina ningyo) collections: 

 

 Check out those 五人囃子 (gonin-bayashi)! Well, 三人 since I didn't catch the other two...They also apparently have special celebrations for 雛祭り (hina-matsuri), the girl's day/doll festival, on March third (that's a Wednesday this year, sadly for me).

Now for the kicker: this place is literally 1 stop away from Ikuta and I didn't know about it before now.  I could have spent so much time in the park and the museum de-stressing from how bad I was (and am) at Japanese but I didn't.  And it would have been summer and super-pretty.  Plus, they have neat summer programs.  Instead, I haunted far-flung Yoyogi (ok...it was close to school).  


That's it for all.  I'll try to get to Kamakura and Kitakamakura, as well as work life, soon!

Catch-up time!

Catch-up time!
Two weekends ago, I decided to explore my immediate area, on the good side of the tracks.  There was rumored to be a bathhouse very close to the station.  There was a bathhouse; it's just a thirty minute walk from the station and hid behind one of the multi-tier parking lots used to save space.

Given, it was the bathhouse's parking lot, but still, it made it much harder to actually find the place.  The view you see, by the way is from a pedestrian bridge nearby.   Now, for those of you who can't figure out why I was walking all the way out to a public bath when I have my own, perfectly good, bath in the hotel, let me explain a few things.  Japan loves baths.  A lot.  They also love hot springs, but there are none around here.  So, in places like this, public baths are created which mock some of the aspects of hot springs.  Some, like this one, import water from a famous spring and use that in some of the baths.  Others just have a large bath with very hot water in it.  In all cases, you take off your shoes, go into the office after putting your shoes into a cubby, buy a locker, then go to the locker room.  There's an area for bathing before you take your baths, since it's really disgusting to be dirty when you go into a bath; it's shared water.  Usually, soap and shampoo is supplied, but it's a good idea to bring your own just in case.  After, bath time! In this case, there were 9 different baths and a sauna to chose from; I picked everything.  The expectation is that you'll stay for several hours, which is not all that hard to do, really, with things like baths with bubbles using salted water, a sauna with TV (watching a rock star's commentary on the news with 15 naked old ladies....not awkward at all....), or individual baths meant to massage your back.  My favorite was the flower bath even though it was an odd opaque yellow color and the hottest of all the baths.  There was also one with water from...well, I'm blind without my glasses, so somewhere in Japan with mountains.  That leaves a lot of options open, but the water was very nice.  Most baths fit multiple people; the one with the flower water had over 20 people in it at one point of time, to give you an idea.  It's quite possibly the best way to relax in Japan, and the 3 and a half hours there were the best of my weekend.  Hence why I signed up to a 'tour' (read: trip) to a famous bath house (no; not Spa World; I could only wish) in a few weeks with the Navy tour thing.  I am a bit worried, since it's bathing suit friendly, but I assume I can lose all the clingy navy wives somewhere in the mile or so of baths...

By the bathhouse was a large bookstore. I was good, but I did find a few things that merited pictures:  

Coraline!  

And, just for Leslie....

The Twilight Series, complete with pictures from the movies.  Even the final books had movie pictures on them for no apparent reason.  Maybe they figured people wouldn't know what they were without random pictures of pretty actors.  Don't you also like how they split the book into two books to make them easier to carry and read on trains?  Also featured in the foreign books section were Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies, Percy Jackson, and, wait for it, Spongebob.  In the adult section.  Yea, Japan! 

All around the area are houses with gardens and I noticed something odd: Cacti.

It may be 'warm' over here, but it's not warm enough in my mind to have cacti growing outside in January.  I mean, it snowed this week and the snow's still here as it hasn't warmed up enough to melt it.  It was cold enough that I actually saw Fuji-sama from the library's window.  So I really have no clue how all these plants survive...I feel bad for this sad cactus; he doesn't look so well, unlike someone's garden, which looked like it belonged in Arizona.

Which brings me to a library update, naturally.  We are moving to a new cataloging system in a few months, at which point of time all the circulation procedures will change....I was supposed to write a manual on them but now I'll have to leave large gaps for the new processes of checking in and out things.  I can still write about photocopies, circulation rules, rules for new members, when to check the outside book drop, and all such others, but I won't be able to have the screenshots and system-specific directions I wanted unless I magically can stay beyond April.  Or I could hope the system goes up early.  We're also getting a color printer, which is great and exciting.  

In the realm of YA lit, I ordered a ton of new books, filling up a few gaps in the series we have, or at least, as much as the company we use for the loan service would let us.  I also used the new YALSA lists to get some new good stuff.  Then, for the younger ones, I continued to fix records!  I kinda hate Disney now, for refusing to list authors for most of their stuff.  Yes, Disney, I know that you own the rights to this, but I would like to know who wrote it, illustrated it, and published it.  Walt Disney is dead; I cannot list him.  At least the records will be clean when they move to the new system.  I also got to create a display for Black History Month, which was fun, and work more storyhour.  Far more kids showed up than were supposed to, but I became some kid's hero for finding his Sesame Street book about Leonardo the Horrible Monster.  And, later, I made myself five new friends by going through a book for them and explaining all the fish's names since I could read.  They were sooo...cute.  "And what's this fish's name?  He looks scary.  What's this fish's name?  And this one?  Are they the same fish or are they brother fish?...What's the name of this book?  That's an octopus!  And so's he, but he looks weird...Octopus taste good.  Will someone eat him?"  Their mom was in signing up for the family's card, so they took that book home, along with Angelina Ballerina, since that was the one little girl's favorite, according to her.  That exchange was well-worth the time lost for cataloging. 

Up next, Yokohama, mini-weiner dogs in sweaters, and street performers!