Just Say No!

Hi guys! I went to Harajuku on Halloween. You all know Harajuku, right? Japan doesn’t really do the dressing-up-on-Halloween thing (but their Halloween decorations are so cute! See my Halloween post). But I thought if anywhere would give me a taste of how Halloween’s done back in the US, it’d be Harajuku.

Once I got there, though, everyone was dressed normal! I went into some amazing costume stores where I was tempted by some sparkly Vegas outfits, but no one was actually wearing a costume. However, I tore myself away from the costume stores and bought some other “normal” clothes. I was so thrilled with them that I had to make a video revolving around my purchases! You can interrogate my level of taste later. But reserve your harshest comments for never ok! 😉

I’m such a liar! “I might come back for it…” And yeah, buy it with money I don’t have! Don’t say America never taught me anything! Hehe. But in all fairness, my Japanese language teacher did tell us that when expressing negative sentiments or declining in Japanese, you do it in the most roundabout way possible. There’s this young guy from France in my class and he just cracks me up. He just doesn’t get it (but I’m right there with him most of the time!). He asked the teacher in his gloriously thick French accent, “But if I’m at the store, how do I say, ‘I don’t like both of these! Take them away I don’t want them! I’m going to the other store!'”

The teacher looked taken aback and said, “…Ahhh, hmm. Well in that case you would say, ‘Sumimasen…dochira mo…chotto…'” Which translates as, “I’m sooo sorry…both of them are just….too….just…” while you make your voice trail away in a farewell sigh of regret. So yes, trying on expensive stuff in the store is a big deal. You can’t just say NO when they help zip you up into the jacket that’s too tiny for you anyway, and you can’t just say NO after they’ve watched you admire yourself in the jacket you will not be able to afford until you win the lottery. In general I’ve always had to work on being better at saying NO! But in Japan it’s hard to say NO because of the roundabout language thing, AND when I take into consideration the fact that the biggest ad campaign in the subway system revolves around not safety, but politeness. Sorry for the glare on these pictures but I will type out their message.

"Please be aware that applying make-up on the train may be bothersome to others."

"Please be careful not to lean against the person sitting next to you should you fall asleep."

"Please be considerate of passengers around you when using your mobile phone."

And note how they convey their message not with some overbearing authority figure, but benign cute little animals. Every time I hop on or off the subway I am greeted by the kitty, the parakeets, or the guinea pig. They all want you to have good manners! But even that message was expressed in the most roundabout/polite way possible — cute animals to blunt the bossiness! Something I took away from all this emphasis on manners was (among other things, but Imma focus on the positive here) that asserting oneself need not be a strident declaration; it can be a delicate persuasion. If only I knew Japanese better.

But in any case, I’m glad I told MYSELF “No” on spending $2000 on a leather jacket that would be too small on me one and a half pounds later. Nothing but real talk with me (this can be read two ways I think; one of them is like me talking to myself GET IT!?). I did however spend $15 on delicious special udon; food is something that’s always worth the money in my opinion. Here are the OGFSss!

the nabeyaki udon was served boiling hot in this stone pot! i couldn't even get a proper picture at first the lens steamed up! SO worth burning my tongue for.

now this is when it cooled off and i messed it around. SO. GOOD.

I love you YES I do for reading this! x Oh, and P.S. When I got back from Harajuku, I went to the gym. And on my way back from the gym, I saw all these men dressed up as cavemen and they were running a marathon led by a man dressed up as a referee. Or maybe he was a referee? And he was training them? And then these salary-men guffawed at them while they exchanged Laffy Taffys. Halloween in Japan. Somehow that seems about right.

“How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.”

Thanks a lot, Thoreau. Here I am sitting down to write, getting to Living (with a capital “L”!), one mundane step at a time. As a lot of my fellow recent-grads know, getting settled into a new phase of life/place inevitably includes a bunch of mundane steps. Some of which I’ll detail here. I hope you enjoy it and if you don’t you can just skip ahead to the pictures of delicious food at the end. No judgement, thanks for visiting!

1. Gym Membership: Even though there’s a ton of walking all day every day in Tokyo, I still crave that endorphin high! I run kind of thick when I don’t work out (especially with all this food) so it’s just healthier for me. I convinced myself that whatever the price, it would be worth it. But the god of small favors really likes me and out of the thousands of gyms in Tokyo, I got one that’s in the midst of a special promotion! My first two months are 50% off and since a friend referred me, it was an extra 50 bucks off. Love it. The gym is a five minute walk from my apartment and has everything I need. The man who registered me gave me a tour and showed me where to key myself in. There’s a camera that sees it’s you and only you coming in, he emphasized to me. Why was I not surprised? I smiled for the camera.

2. Good fences make good neighbors: Without knowing it, the woman I ran into a couple times leaving my apartment is the Syrian ambassador. She lives on the floor right below me. Whoa, we’re neighbors?! In the little exchanges we’ve had, she seems so warm and kind. My other neighbors/friends tell me she is an amazing cook. Maybe that’s why it always smells so good around dinnertime in my apartment every day! The whole neighbor situation reminded me of that Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall.”: “He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ / Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder / If I could put a notion in his head: / Why do they make good neighbors?” Especially with the “Spring is the mischief in me” line, I cannot help but think of Syria and The Arab Spring and how even though the world’s interconnected fates have no place for fences, we still don’t know how to trust each other without them.

3. Shopping: Some of the shopping for my place was done at different Hyakuen stores, or dollar stores. And some of my shopping was done at places like Tokyu Hands. There is no American equivalent to Tokyu Hands. It is part department store, part Target, part everything you ever wanted as a consumer who has burned with the fever of acquisitiveness (read: anyone part of a capitalistic society). It is sickening. And fun. Sick fun, a pretty apt description for capitalism,  wouldn’t you say, wa wa wee wah (Borat voice)! But I digress. There are different branches/locations of Tokyu Hands in Tokyo and Osaka. The one I went to in Ginza isn’t the largest one, but still has a niche in offering a large selection of more upscale products. There were five floors within a larger shopping complex: 5F: Wellness Beauty (makeup, fitness, sleep aids), 6F: Colorful Stationery, 7F: Ginza D.I.Y. (storage — kinda like a more awesome Container Store, tools, natural disaster aids i.e. anything from adhesive to keep your flatscreen TV safe in case of an earthquake to CPR kits and hard hats), 8F: Delicious Smile (kitchen stuff ahhhh my favorite floor), 9F: Hands Collection (travel supplies, business bags, disguises&party products, clocks).

Here is the Tokyu Hands motto! "Contemplating, more extensively and in more depth, the sense of satisfaction and happiness that things can bring...The quality of your own individual style is about to improve"

So, as you can see, Tokyu Hands takes “THINGS” and the satisfaction and happiness implicit within their magical THINGness very seriously. Shopping is mundane, but can also be glorious; like anything else in life, it all depends on your attitude. But the scary part was, that when I was in Tokyu Hands, I forgot why I would ever want to stand up to live when I could just curl up on this massage cushion:

Mmmmmm, shiny...

To link back to my whole “neighbors” spiel, what if nowadays, instead of using fences to demarcate between ourselves and others, we implement THINGS? As the motto says, it’s all about you and “your own individual style.” What if the most important relationship we have is between ourselves and our stuff? Perhaps the awesomeness of these products is in direct proportion to how much we’ve allowed them to compensate for real relationships. Our hearty reliance on THINGS for happiness and satisfaction sadly betrays the fact that we often relate to each other more through our ability to consume than our ability to give.

…But I bought such awesome stuff. Ugh. And now I’m starting to go into nerd overdrive. It’s a good thing I’ve started school (more on that later!). Here’s one last pic of Tokyu Hands and stay tuned for the OGFSsss DELICIOUS FOOD YAY!

the kitchen floor, nice segue into OGFSs. see how shiny and organized! such madness made neat.

Now for my OGFSssss, hope you don’t have an empty stomach! (or full, if you don’t like sashimi)

homemade Oden, one of my favorites!!

homemade onigiri (rice balls, some plain some with beans)

These next OGFSs were delicious too, but their enjoyment was a little compromised.

fussy omnivore's dilemma: in tsukiji they killed this fish right in front of me and i ate him. he was still moving and ahhhhhh i think he could hear me chewing. him. sorry fishy =(

delicious fried pork-ness (tonkatsu)

the man in the middle always amazes me. his arms and hands are really red. see the huge silver vats? the tonkatsu deep fries in there and as soon as they take it out, he slices it with his bare hands, no gloves or anything! itai! (ouch)

Ok, I have to wake up early tomorrow, so until next time! Ja ne! =)