A Southern Expatriate

I see you Sky Tree

My crazy amount of leg room on the bullet train

Lounging in the hotel room in Tokyo

View from the hotel room in Tokyo

Stores in front of the Senso-ji Temple

We woke up this morning and headed to Osaka to get on the bullet train to Tokyo. On the way to the train station there was an ambulance, and I was waiting for people to move over and stop for the ambulance to drive past them, but no, they just kept going along. Apparently you don't have to stop for ambulances in Japan, they just drive around you. When we got to the train station we said bye to Riza's mom, who was amazing the whole trip and was the perfect example of hospitality. I don't think I will ever be able to thank her enough, she said I could thank her by being on Broadway, so I guess I'll do that. When we got on the train I had a HUGE suitcase with me. As I pushed my self through the aisle and got in my seat I had about one inch of leg room because my bag was so big, as you can tell in the picture at the top of the post. It was cool seeing some of the country side of Japan during the train ride; it looked a lot like home, like the Jones Valley area, without the Target and cows. I slept the majority of the time, so the two and a half hour trip felt really short to me. After I managed to get out from underneath
my suitcase, we went to find the hotel. When we got there we checked in and found out that Riza's uncle had gotten us two rooms, so I had a night to sleep away from Riza's beautiful snoring, love you Riza! We went to a temple called Senso-ji in Tokyo that was right across the street from the hotel. It is Tokyo's oldest temple. Leading up to the temple were all of these stores that had little charms and souvenirs in them. One was selling swords and I really wanted to get one, but alas, I think that would be difficult getting through customs, so I had to pass. We were walking down the back side of the stores by the temple and there were these creepy alleys, so of course I had to get a picture of me looking like I was lost in a creepy alley, so it is one of these pictures on here. All the stores were lined with the new years pink and white ball looking things that are everywhere in Japan celebrating the new year. After the temple, we went to the Sky Tree, which is the second tallest building in the world. It has a huge mall underneath it, so we walked around there for a little bit. I had to stop at Mister Donut while we were walking because I worked up a little appetite. We walked by a candy

Creepy alley

making store just as they were stretching out the candy and about to cut it to hand out free samples. I have no idea how they get it to say the words in the candy, I have uploaded a picture of that too; the words are tiny. I feel like it should all get mushed together, but somehow it works. In one store, that looked like a kid store, they had this thing where you stick you head in a hole and take a picture, and it was of a guy ripping the shirt off of another guy. Apparently it is a popular TV show of two gay guys, but I just thought it was weird that it was in a kids store, but Riza assured me that it wasn't a kids store, but I'm pretty sure it was, sorry Riza. Later that night I got to meet Riza's uncle. He took us out to eat at this restaurant where you sit on the floor in indian style. Let me tell you, this big boy can not sit in indian style for more than five minutes, so by the end of dinner my legs were completely numb. Needless to say, I was limping for a couple of hours after, but the food was good, so it was all worth it. Then we went to her uncle's house, which was a
block or two away from the Sky Tree so you could see it really

well, especially when it is lit up at night. The Sky Tree was blue the night we were there, but her uncle told us that it changes color every night. Her uncle's house was so cool, I have put up some pictures so you can get a feel of what it was like. If you went on the roof you got an amazing view of the Sky Tree. A little interesting face about the Sky Tree, it has these lights that circle the top of the Sky Tree and it takes two seconds for the lights to circle the building; it is true too, I stood there for about five minutes counting every time they went around. At her uncle's house we had green tea and this mochi stuffed with red beans, which is really sweet. The red beans were supposed to counteract the bitterness of the green tea, but I didn't think the tea was too bad, a little frothy, but I liked it. Then we had normal tea with cream and sugar, cookies, and these chestnuts candied in sugar syrup, I had about 24, so they were really good. At one point, Riza had to go to the bathroom, so she asked her uncle if he was okay with it just being me and him, because he can't speak english, and I obviously can't speak Japanese, but he said he was fine with it. So when she left there was about 20 seconds of silence, but then I tried to start a conversation. Pretty much I asked him how to pronounce certain Japanese characters. No idea how he understood what I was saying because my communicating pretty much consisted of pointing and grunting, but he somehow got it, so while Riza was

Making candy!!

gone I had a little Japanese lesson. So after I had eaten everything in sight and learned all the Japanese I could for the night, we headed back to the hotel. On the way back, we stopped by the temple and took pictures of it while it was completely empty. One thing that is really fun about Japan is the taxi drivers. They all wear white gloves and the doors open and close automatically. I wasn't used to them opening on their own, so I kept trying to do it myself, and I kept messing up the doors so they wouldn't open at all, it was pretty awkward. So I am going to end the post with the best advice I have for when visiting Japan, don't try to open Japanese taxi doors, you're welcome. My word for this post is "bullet train", shinkansen 新幹線

No idea how they get those little words in there, Asian magic probably

Awkward advertisement in a kid's store

Sky Tree lit up

Out side our hotel in Tokyo

At the Osaka train station

Ain't nobody here!!

Me and Riza's uncle

These are SOOO good

Classy

Cool bookshelf at Riza's Uncle's house

Green tea and mochi stuffed with red beans

My first taxi in Japan

Just making a call

I thought this would be a good picture....I was right

Making Takoyaki

The next morning I woke up all alone in the room I feel asleep

BOOTSSSS

Cowboy Family

in. Apparently they all stayed up for two more hours while I was sleeping, so they closed all the doors and went in the other room and left me all on my lonesome. That morning we went to this restaurant called Cowboy Family, probably the best name I have ever heard of. Right when we walked in the door, I knew I was at home. The hours were posted with some sensible cowboy boots and all the staff were dressed up like cowboys. I always wondered what Asians thought American food was, I guess this is it. There was this old country music blaring, not like Leann Rimes in her glory days, like Vernon Dalhart's The Prisoner's Song old. When I saw the waitresses in the cowboy outfits I HAD to ask to get a picture. They didn't seem to amused, but I don't know when I am coming back to Japan so I don't really care what they thought. What was funny about the restaurant is, you don't have the same server. Whoever is available to serve you, does, and you don't have to tip, which is nice, but a little awkward for me. There is this button you press when you need service and a little bell rings and they all say in unison something like, "We are on our way", or something like that to let you know they are coming to help you. I also knew I was in an American themed restaurant because of the abundance of napkins, it was like heaven, and also the Texas flag on the wall gave me a little hint as well. After we ate, we went to a little shrine close to Riza's house because we had to burn these little charms and things they had in their house. You have to burn them after a certain date so when we got to the the shrine there was already a huge pile of ash where people had thrown things in the fire. Riza gave me some things to throw in, I am sure they were all looking at me thinking, "Who is this stupid white boy that has no idea what he is doing?" but I threw those charms in that fire like I had been doing it my whole life. Then we went back to Riza's apartment to chill for a little while. I had another encounter with a weird Japanese TV show. This show Riza had on a DVD, and she loved to watch it when she was younger. It was just a TV show of a ball going through different mazes made out of house hold objects. I made fun of Riza for watching it, but after about ten minutes, I was hooked and just sat there in silence watching. I took a little nap and

TEXAS

then headed back over to the place where we had the little sleepover the night before. We were having a takoyaki party so we had to prepare. Takoyaki is like a pancake mix kind of, but isn't really sweet, and it has all of these things in it like sausage, green onions, and most importantly, octopus. I decided to eat some of the octopus before we put it in the bater, and let me tell you, unless you already know you love octopus, don't do it. It was rubbery and tentacley, which is not a word but I don't care. Riza's grandparents, who live in the building that we were having the party in, stopped by to say hello, so it was really nice to get to meet them, and her grandmother also bought pizza, which is nice because she probably knew that the American might not like the octopus. When all the people got there, Riza was once again the translator. I would find myself just listening to them all talk in Japanese and laugh when they laughed like I knew what was going on. One of my favorite things to do was to ask them to do an America accent while they were speaking Japanese. It was

Finally, Napkins!

hilarious listening to what they thought an American accent was. It was like listening to an Asian Valley girl speaking Japanese, it was great. One of Riza's friends took a picture of me when I was flipping the takoyaki and she captured a beautiful moment. She was pointing the camera at me and speaking in Japanese and she captured the face that I have been making the majority of the time. It is mainly the, "Are you talking to me?" face. So many times this trip, people have just started to talk to me and I have had no idea what is going on, so they are speaking to me in Japanese and I am talking back in English saying that I have no idea what is going on; the conversations don't really get anything accomplished. I was pretty good at flipping the takoyaki, which impressed all of Riza's friends! You have this little metal stick thing that you pick the takoyaki up with and flip it, it sounds pretty easy, but when you try and do it, it is pretty hard. After we ate the takoyaki, we had some chocolate fondue with strawberries and the takoyaki batter with nothing in it, it was really good. I also uploaded a video of me and Riza singing the song from the

Button you press to get service.

Chicken Ramen commercial. You should really youtube it, it is the cutest thing you will ever see, that seems to be a common theme in Japan. The rest of the night we all just hung out and talked to each other in foreign languages, but somehow we were all able to communicate. I think that it is only fitting that my Japanese word for this post be octopus, so here it is, タコ