Urban Design – Erich

There must be people in every country who believe that their nation is the best one on Earth. It's only natural, right?

Certainly there are many in the United States who will insist that America is the best country of all, including many who have never been to any other country. And I will agree that America is pretty great. But you know what, so are a lot of places.

Japan, as an example, is one. We were in Osaka. And of course, that is only one of many cities in Japan. But some of the things we saw there showed the genius of the Japanese.

Their subway system is so well labeled (in both Japanese and Latin characters) that it would be hard to get lost. In addition to each station having a name, each has a number code. It starts with one letter that tells you which line you are on, and then has a two digit number. The numbers go in order from one station to the next.

There are electronic signs and recorded voices that tell you all the stations, and you can understand them! They aren't garbled. And here's one that will amaze you, not in it's audacity, but in a “how did no one else think of this before” way. You know the straps that strap hangers hang onto? In Japan, they make them at a variety of heights, so if you are too tall for this one, you just step one step down and get a higher one. (Or step the other way if you are too short.)

One more brilliant idea that is one of those, why didn't we think of this: As you are leaving a subway station in Japan, at any exit, there is a compass rose engraved or set in stone in the floor near the exit. So you know which direction is north as you are leaving the station. For those of us for whom north means something, it is a big help in getting your bearings.

In all the subway stations there is a long line of these textured yellow plastic tiles set into the floor. But they are not just in the stations. They run throughout the main districts of the city. You see them in the sidewalks. Different points along the sidewalks have different textures or raised patterns on them.

It's called tactile paving and apparently it is found throughout Japan. Know what it's for? It is to help blind people find their way. They can feel the different types of raised bumps with their canes or through the soles of their shoes and it tells them what is at this point.

You see it in a small measure in the U.S., for example, you might see it at the corner. But in Japan it is not limited to the corner. It runs the entire length of the sidewalk.

There is a great deal of traffic in Osaka, but considerably less than there could be. Why? Because of bicycles. Bicycles are immensely popular. You continually see people riding bikes. Mothers take their small children with them shopping on bikes with installed seats for the baby. But that's not the only installed devices.

Many bikes have a clamp attached to the handlebars to hold an umbrella. When it rains, you can still ride your bike and have both hands on the handlebars.

Parking your bike isn't the old kickstand. This kickstand is longer, on both sides of the bike and connected at the bottom. When you park your Japanese bike, the back wheel is lifted off the ground. Back to subway stations, some of them even have underground bicycle parking lots.

And finally, here's a mystery for you. In Osaka, we rarely saw garbage cans along the street. But we even more rarely saw garbage. They just don't litter, or if they do, there must be some amazing system of cleaning it up that I never saw.

Japan sure has a lot going in the right direction. I'm not sure if they believe that their country is the best in the world, but I can see why they might make that argument.

Eat Like the Japanese – Erich

Alrica asked me, “If you were a visitor to the United States, what would be that one American food that you had to try?”

I'll be honest. I was hard pressed to come up with one answer. In New York, you would have to try NY style pizza. Whereas in Chicago, it's the deep dish, baby. In Memphis or Kansas City or a variety of other places, there is barbecue. And the list goes on. I couldn't name the one quintessentially American food.

Well, I have a similar problem with Japan. There are so many amazing and authentically Japanese foods. So, the only thing to do is to try a bunch of them, right?

I've mentioned sushi in a previous post, my Public Sushi Announcement. Of course, we all associate that with Japan. And it is delicious too. There are so many varieties, cooked, raw, with fish, with shrimp, with other meats, with no meat, wrapped or unwrapped, and so on. You can have sushi day after day and probably not have the same roll twice.

We enjoyed noodle soup, which also comes in many varieties. The broth is either vegetable or chicken, but you can have different elements added. You may have a meat of some sort, you will get plenty of vegetables. Some are similar to vegetables we have in the States, onions or mushrooms. But some of the greens are the kind that we don't grow in the U.S. Still tastes great. And of course, noodles! Need I say more? (Though for we chopsticks novices, the noodles can be a bit hard to keep hold of.)

A beef bowl is probably what you think it is, but not if you think the bowl itself is made of beef. But it is a bowl of rice with toppings. Of course, one of these toppings is beef. But you might have a sauce like a curry or more sweet and sour. And you will get vegetables. And maybe even a mostly raw egg, cause, baby, that's how they roll around here!

But every once in a while, you want something deep fat fried, right? Well, have no fear, because Japan has tempura. They take shrimp and fish and other things and give them a flavored batter and drop them in the fryer. We had shrimp, cod, sand borer (which is another kind of fish), a vegetable that I am not sure I know what it is, and pumpkin! The pumpkin was cut into a big letter C shape and it was very sweet and delicious.

The good news is that more and more you can get pretty much any food in America. So you don't all have to rush to Japan to enjoy it. Maybe the answer to Alrica's question about what one food is the must have American food is this: Japanese food.

The Land of the Rising Fun – Erich

Japan started out stressful, but once we got past that, it has become an incredibly enjoyable (though expensive) place to be. We have been in many countries now, and all of them were in many ways foreign to our American ways of doing things. But Japan is thoroughly foreign, more so than many other places we have been.

Part of that is the lack of Latin letters, or even an alphabet that is similar to ours like Cyrillic or Greek. But that's not all of it. Japan just has a lot of differences in culture, foods, and society. I'd love to show you some of them, perhaps mundane in some cases, but all interesting.

Let's start at the grocery store. First, there are totally foreign foods to us. Sometimes we can figure out what they are, like these long white mushrooms. (We used them in dinner last night and they were delicious.)

I don't know what that speech balloon says, but I like to imagine it is "I'm a fun guy!"

Other things we have no idea what they are. I call this a melted wax cucumber, though I am not actually confident that inside of it is anything cucumberish. We have not tried this food.

This evolved in nature? Surely not for its aesthetic qualities.

We did try octopus and it turned out to be quite good. Though it is noteworthy that in Japan people seem to be less squeamish about their food looking like it did when it was alive.

You can still see part of the head, sucker!

Though we did try various greens that we don't have at home, I don't know what they are called, but they are good.

The way they package things is unusual to our way of doing things as well. For example, here you can package your own sliced salmon with the skin still on it.

Salmon, on the rocks

But your carrots are prepackaged individually. Each carrot is in its own plastic bag.

Now in the convenient wabbit size package

But even in a foreign far off land, there are tastes of other places. Note the American cherries. (They might actually be grown in the U.S.A. That seems likely.)

A stellar representative of our nation

But less likely is that this Italian Lime Fanta has anything to do with Italy. We certainly never saw it there.

After all, if it were Mongolian Lime, it wouldn't have the indefinable air to it, right?

Other shops are also very antithetical to our experience. For example this tiny, narrow store sells two kinds of products: men's shoes and cigarettes. What's the connection? I have no idea!

Maybe the idea is that you smoke while trying on the shoes

But if you want cigarettes and the men's shoe store is closed, don't worry. Osaka is filled with outdoor vending machines. They are everywhere. Including some that sell alcohol and others that sell cigarettes. (Perhaps there are no age limits here? If so, I'm not sure how they would be enforced.)

No, these aren't hard to find

Retail outlets and restaurants naturally need to get your attention to sell their wares. So what could be better than signs? Big signs? Signs in all kinds of shapes sticking in and out of your building?

This one has moving legs

I love how he goes through the building

I have no idea what the hand and brush store sells

That's not all you might find sticking out of a building. How about a rock climbing wall on the outside of your building and several stories above the ground?

For the high adventure lifestyle

The foods available at some of these restaurants are, as one might expect, not your standard American fare. Though sometimes it seems a bit too out there. I'm not sure what Horse Sashimi is, but I certainly hope it isn't what I think it is.

All opposed to horse sashimi, say neigh.

Even at a familiar restaurant like Burger King, you might see some more Japanese menu choices.

There was also an avocado burger

Like any big city, Osaka has the need to control water flow. They have storm drains, canals, and manholes. The canals move with a surprisingly swift current, and inside some of them you find turtles.

Soaking up the sun

As for the manhole covers, they are their own form of public art. Most of them have something interesting on them, and some are painted.

Sewer entrance decorated with a castle

Or honoring the fire department

Or maybe a pretty flower or two.

Finally, let me end with the Japanese love of costumes. We saw a Cosplay Cafe at one shopping center. We have seen several people, mostly women, dressed as anime characters. Generally, we don't recognize the specific character though. But perhaps best was while we were visiting Osaka Castle, we saw a castle man!

A castle on your head? Think he falls down a lot?

You gotta love Japan. The Far East is far out!

PSA, a Public Sushi Announcement – Erich

If you are considering a trip to Japan, I have no doubt that many people will advise you to try sushi while you are here. Of course, you can eat sushi in most any country these days, but still there is nothing like eating it in its native home. So advising you to try sushi is very good advice.

But I am going to do that advice one better. I am going to give you step by step directions and let you learn from my successes and mistakes.

You want to go to a place called Muten Kura Sushi. There are many locations throughout the cities of Japan, so I hope you can find one convenient for you. Why Muten Kura Sushi? Well, it is excellent food, at excellent prices, and the entire process is fun. Other than a few special dishes, each plate of sushi is 100 Yen, which is just under $1 (at the time of this writing. Don't I sound official?)

Let's assume you don't speak or read Japanese. Well, you might be a bit overwhelmed when you first enter. Have no fear, I am going to walk you through.

You enter and show, more or less by holding up a certain number of fingers, how many people are in your party. Then the hostess gives you a tiny clipboard with a number on it. This is the number of your table. If, instead of a table you prefer to sit at the “bar”, where you all sit facing the same direction, then each of you will get your own clipboard.

You can ask if they have an instruction card for their international guests. Some locations might. Others might not.

You go to the table shown on your clipboard. (There is most likely a map of the store on the clipboard too, but you need not fear. The numbers are identical to the ones you are used to.)

The conveyor belt

At the table you will see a conveyor belt going by with many dishes of different types of sushi. Each one is on a blue plate inside a plastic mechanism that sits on the conveyor. If you want one of the dishes that is moving past, you grab the plate. You do not grab the plastic mechanism. Then you lift slightly and the lid of the plastic mechanism opens. You take the plate and enjoy!

However, this is the sushi that has been going around for some time. You can do one better! You can custom order the sushi you want and it will be made fresh for you!

The touchscreen

Above the conveyor (or conveyors, we will get to that in a moment) there is a touchscreen. On this touchscreen, various dishes that you can order are shown. There are many “pages” and you can flip through the pages using two green buttons at the bottom.

The green buttons for changing pages

Here you can see all of the choices for sushi, beer, specialty drinks, and desserts. You can order any of these. But here is an important note! Learn from my experience. If you don't want a specialty drink or a beer, water is available. But you may not realize it when you first go. There is a dispenser along one of the walls of the store and there are cups nearby. The dispenser probably has a blue spigot. (This is important, because there are also dispensers that will dispense beer, and you will pay for beer. But you can get the water for free.)

Now you are ready to order from the touchscreen. So you press the picture of the item you want. That picture will appear on a screen with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 beside it, as well as two green buttons. First, you choose the number of these dishes that you want. Then you hit the leftmost green button (which is the shorter of the two Japanese words.) If you made a mistake and you want to cancel, you hit the rightmost green button (with the longer of the two Japanese words.)

Soon your custom order will arrive. It will come one of two ways, depending on which location you are visiting.

In some locations, there is only the one conveyor track. In this case, your dish will arrive with the blue plate on top of a large red bowl. Your touchscreen will ring at you just before your dish arrives. You grab it as it passes.

Upper Track with train receding

At other locations, there is a second track, this one above the conveyor. In these locations, a plastic train will slide out to your table and stop there. Your touchscreen will ring. And you take the blue dishes off of the plastic train. There is a green lit button that illuminates when this train arrives. Once you have all of your dishes from the train, you press that green button and the train returns to the kitchen.

The red button for when you are done

When you are done ordering and eating, there is a red button on your touchscreen. You touch this button. A ring happens in the restaurant and a hostess comes to your table.

She counts the number of plates you have and from that knows how much your total is. She inputs this in a handheld device. But you don't pay her.

In some locations, there is a slot for you to deposit your plates. This will also count up the plates. And on the touchscreen, you will see a cartoon of a martial arts battle. Depending on how many plates you enter, your human character either wins a fight or gets defeated by some sort of animal character. Plus, you may get a prize. There is some sort of dispenser that drops a ball like you might find in a gumball machine that gives you little toys.

(It's possible that they only turn on this feature if you are with children. I am unclear on this because I have only visited Muten Kura Sushi with children.)

Now you take your tiny clipboard to the cash register which is located near the main door to the restaurant. The cashier will input the number on the clipboard and your total will appear. You pay, and then you go! Note, you will probably have to pay in cash, as they will most likely not accept credit cards.

The whole process is a lot of fun, plus delectable. That's a win for the stomach and a win for the mind. (And I can only suppose a win for the restaurant as well.)

Thank you for your attention to this Public Sushi Announcement.

Call Me Sasquatch – Erich

Life must be hard for giants.

Sasquatch (which I am hoping is the plural of Sasquatch) are a North American legend about giant, hairy, forest dweller bipeds. So far as I know the legend says nothing about them swimming across the Pacific and landing in Japan. Which is where I am.

But the other name for Sasquatch (singular this time) is Bigfoot. I'm not sure if the plural of Bigfoot is Bigfoots or Bigfeet. Neither seems entirely satisfactory. This is just one more reason that their lives, if they even exist, must be hard. If they don't exist then their lives are beyond hard, they are impossible.

See, here's the thing. I need new shoes.

Yes, this is my first post since reaching Japan, and I am blathering about shoes and Sasquatch. You'd rather learn about Buddhist temples and amazing pagodas. I understand that, but how can you enjoy the sites if you aren't comfortable in your own shoes?

All my life, I have worn through shoes at an alarming rate. I generally need new shoes every four months or so. But before we left Pennsylvania, I bought some really good, high quality shoes meant for heavy duty walking and hiking.

I started wearing them in August and now it is June. That is ten months! Incredible for me. Great shoes. Or they were. But not any longer.

Now my shoes are worn down, ripped at the sides, and beginning to hurt my feet. Especially my left foot, poor left foot. Very sore.

This leads to my need for new shoes.

We arrived last night into Osaka, Japan. It was a long trip. It began in Bistritsa, Bulgaria. (Cue the wavy flashback effect.) We took a very affordable taxi ride from the house in Bistritsa to the Sofia Airport. The ride cost 19 Bulgarian Lev, which is about $9.50, and that included the tip. It was a pretty good distance, so that wasn't bad at all. Far less expensive than buses would have been for four people.

We flew from Sofia, Bulgaria to Doha, Qatar. Qatar Airlines is very nice. Great entertainment choices, tasty meals for an airplane, and friendly service.

The Hamad International Airport in Doha is probably the nicest, most complete and comfortable airport I have ever yet experienced. This was great because we had a nine hour layover.

But it wasn't too bad. There are indoor playgrounds/art that the kids could climb and slide on. There were plenty of good restaurant choices and for being in an airport, they weren't unbelievably expensive. There were round tables with chairs and good lighting where we played a variety of card games. There were quiet areas with this long leaning chairs, almost like leather lounge chairs, where people could sleep. (And in these quiet areas, the regular announcements like please don't leave your luggage unattended are not played. This is in contrast to Heathrow Airport in London where we began our trip last September with an eleven hour layover. In Heathrow the “quiet areas” are by no means quiet. They aren't even separated by walls and doors from the “loud areas”.) Hamad International Airport has internet stations with Macs available for surfing the internet. But the entire airport has free Wifi. And there are television stations with plush seats and a TV playing something. Plus there are enough outlets available that if one wanted to plug in a computer or device, one could. There is a lot they are doing right in Qatar.

The only strange thing was that they made all of the passengers who were transferring from one international flight to another go through a security checkpoint as we got off of the airplane. And they checked our passports again. No stamps this time, we weren't officially entering Qatar or anything. I'm not sure why we needed to do so. Still, we had plenty of time.

We flew out of Hamad International Airport at near 3 AM on another Qatar Airlines flight. This one was around nine hours long, had two meals served, and dimmed lights through most of the flight. But in addition to the nine hours, we moved forward in time zones six hours, from GMT +2 (with daylight savings time) to GMT +9 (without daylight savings time). So when we landed it was around 6 PM in Narita, Japan.

It took some time to get through passport control. On the plane they had given us forms, one for each of us, which would be needed to get through Japanese immigration. Each adult had to have both index fingers scanned and a picture of our face taken. The kids, on the other hand, are closer to being under the radar, though of course their passports were checked.

This was before we got our checked luggage. Then we went to customs, which was quick. We had to fill out one form for the whole family. We handed it to the Customs Officer and we were on our way.

Now we had a 22 hour layover. But Alrica had gotten us hotel reservations at a Hilton near the airport. We rode the shuttle bus, checked in, and slept! The next morning we enjoyed the “American” breakfast. I'm not entirely certain why it was American, though it did have offerings like scrambled eggs and pancakes and sausage. But there were other offerings like congee (sort of a rice porridge), boiled quail eggs, Chinese fried bread, three varieties of Japanese pickles, and miso soup.

The hotel pool was much more designed for lap swimming than kid playing, but it was nice. And we watched some TV. The CNN station was regular American CNN with the people on it speaking in English, and then some man audio dubbing over them in Japanese. Another station was showing syndicated episodes of NCIS in English with Japanese subtitles. (Here's what's cool. The subtitles are, of course, along the bottom, but centered left and right. However, during the opening credits of the show, this is exactly where the credits would be. So the subtitles move to the far right of the screen and go down the side vertically.)

The next day we took the shuttle bus back to the airport and checked in for our domestic flight to Osaka. We had extra time, and there is a shopping center in the airport. So we tried a new food. Takoyaki. These are dough balls made with octopus and egg and flour and Welsh onion. (This, is a strange name as the Welsh onion is native to China, not Wales.) They were very tasty and different. Some of them had mayonnaise on them, another nice addition.

We were most amused by one shop in the center that was selling toilet seats. First, who buys their toilet seat at the airport? Second, these toilet seats are so fancy! They have more buttons and dials on them than some TV remote controls. These toilet seats can serve as a bidet with temperature setting for water to spray your front and your back. They can warm the seat for you. They can make burbling water noises while you go so that you don't have to be overheard doing your “business.” (These were also on the seats in the airport. That burbling water noise is called the privacy setting.) And these toilet seats cost well over $1250. I guess the feeling is that if waste removal is a necessity of life, you may as well do it as richly as possible.

You could probably program it to steal your identity if you worked at it

I should mention, the bathrooms in the airport gave you your choice of Western toilets or Asian toilets (which are squatty potties.)

We arrived in Osaka after a quick flight and took the monorail from the airport to Kodoma-shi station. There we took a taxi to our Osaka home. This taxi was 1300 yen (which is roughly $13) with tip. It was for a much shorter distance. Taxis in Osaka are not so cost effective as they are in Sofia.

So that gets us through last night. Today I didn't wake until 11AM, and that was because Alrica woke me. So I have clearly not gotten over my jet lag yet. But our mission for the day was to find me some new shoes.

So far, we have not yet succeeded in that mission. Apparently, here in Japan, I have something in common with our North American legendary friends, the Sasquatch. I seem to be a giant. With big feet. There are not many pairs of shoes in the stores that go up to my size.

Note: I don't have gigantic feet. In America, my size shoe would be incredibly common. But in Japan, I am taller than most men, and my feet must be correspondingly bigger. So I need to do more hunting.

At least I am about average height for males in America. If I were super tall there, I would never be able to find shoes for myself here. Alrica better not decide she wants shoes, because that would be right out.

Yes, life must be hard for giants. Well, when they need new shoes.