Nihongo Journal covers
I recently finished these two issues of Nihongo Journal. I have about eight issues left. Given that I have eight weeks left until I depart it looks like I need to read about an issue a week.
TravelJapanBlog.com - Japan (07, 09-10, 13), Denmark (08, 11, 16-19, 21, 24), Korea (13), Poland (21), Mexico (14, 15, 19, 26), Iceland (17, 19), Hawaii (14, 17, 22), Czech Republic (16, 17, 19, 21)
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Archive for Japan
Game arcade at Seibuen Yuenchi
アーケード大通り or The Big Street Arcade at 西武園ゆうえんち.
Jaws at USJ
As previously mentioned, you don’t want to spend a day at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. You’ll spend tons of money to stand in lines.
The Jaws ride is less scary in pictures than it was in person (not that it was scary in person either). The best part of this ride was our boat operator, who was extremely animated. I was laughing at her antics, but not enough to make it worth the hour plus wait in line. If you don’t understand Japanese, though, you won’t be able to understand the captain of your boat so that will make it even less enjoyable.
Here is an analogy for you… Pretend you are Japanese for a moment. You come to the USA for the first time and go to a place less than an hour away from the Grand Canyon. Instead of going to see the Grand Canyon though, you decide to go to a sushi restaurant run by a Korean who charges you five times the normal price and then makes you wait for hours to eat the mediocre sushi. That is what it is like if you, as an American, go to Osaka (or Nara or Kyoto) and opt to spend one of your precious days at Universal Studios Japan.
Cell phone plan for a family in Japan
I’m one of the last people on the planet to own a cell phone. Being that my family can’t speak Japanese, they are pretty adamant that I get one in Japan in case they ever need to call me to help them out of a sticky situation. That being the case, I plan to obtain my first (and hopefully last) cell phone in Japan.
The first plan I was referred to was by NTT. The NTT family plan appears to be about $16 a month. Not bad. But then I found that Softbank has an even better plan at only about $10 a month.
Given that nearly all of our calls will be to each other, the fact that both of these plans allow for free calls to family is great.
We’ll also have to purchase phones. However, I understand that if you get the bottom of the barrel variety the phones are almost free. And I’ve heard that the worst cell phones in Japan are better than the best elsewhere so the cheapest Japanese phone is fine by me.
Most of these plans have large penalties if you don’t continue the plan for at least a year. Since we will be in Tokyo for a year that shouldn’t be a problem for us. If you plan to go to Japan for a shorter period of time then you probably just want to purchase some prepaid minutes.
Do you have any experiences with a cell phone plan in Japan that can be of use to me (or others reading this)? If so, please respond to this message with any hints, feedback, etc.
Waseda Walker
Yesterday I was surfing the internet to find out more about my future neighborhood near Waseda University. While I had previously used Google maps, I found Yahoo Japan’s maps to be more useful for finding out what cool things are within walking distance. My son, for instance, was thrilled to see dozens of Ramen shops less than a 10 minute walk away from our future apartment.
I noticed a Shinto shrine just a stone’s throw from our apartment that I wanted to investigate. So I googled 天祖神社 to find some pictures of it. While the shrine itself doesn’t look very impressive, I found a fantastic site, that had pictures of the shrine on it, to learn about my future home. The site no longer exists.
On the front page of Waseda Walker it states, “日本でも有数の学生街として賑わう早稲田・高田馬場周辺の歴史と文化の足跡をたどりながら、この街の魅力を再発見していきます.” which, for those of you who can’t read Japanese, means something like, “Even for Japan, this place is known for its number of students; we’ll follow the footsteps of history and culture around Takadanobaba and Waseda and set out to rediscover the charm of this part of Tokyo.” Given that my apartment lies directly between Takadanobaba and Waseda, I was very pleased in the discovery of this site. I poked around for a bit and then sent the webmaster a brief email in Japanese thanking him for his site.
He responded today with a very nice reply, all in Japanese. I look forward to learning more from Hiroki San, the Waseda Walker, and in a couple of months walking the paths that he has researched and explained, seemingly for me, on his website.
Happiness jizo
You can seldom go a day in Japan without encountering a jizo, or six, or thousands. They usually are featured wearing a red bib. Jizo are associated with many things including peace, children, and safe traveling.
I spotted this jizo in front of a shop in Kyoto. The sign reads “Yorokobi wa fubyo no kusuri” which means something like “Happiness is the medicine for no sickness.”