i really dont understand why

circle k, my former favourite convenience store, used to have a great pancake package where you get 2 pancake sandwiches with butter and maple syrup in the middle for ￥85. they have apparently replaced them with a new version that has no maple syrup, just some ambiguous jam in the middle, for ￥105.

now my only option for pancakes is the hot cake combo for breakfast at mcdonalds, complete with maple syrup, hot coffee, and hashbrowns, which at ￥400, i still maintain is by far the best breakfast you can buy in nagoya.

consumer apathy

5 things that i dont understand how japanese people put up with other than the fact that they must be apathetic consumers:

1) it costs about 40 canadian bucks to buy a pizza from pizza hut
2) street performers do magic tricks that i know for a fact can be done by a 12 year old
3) annoying tape loops at seemingly every store
4) land prices in japan are crazy...houses and apartments are too expensive
5) the fact you need 1 traffic directing person for every 1 construction worker or 4 employees to wrap your hamburger must push prices through the roof

basically the japanese pay whatever the retailer asks and no questions are asked. maybe its the whole group mentality over individualism ethos over here where its considered rude to stand up for yourself, but when it comes to getting bang for your buck they could be a little more interested in consumer rights and less interested in fads, trends, and whats new.

blatant false advertising

so apparently a major cause of concern for the major beer brewers here - those being asahi, sapporo, suntory, and kirin - is beer tax. its apparently huge and makes beer really expensive.

to compensate for such matters, what theyve done is make and somehow successfully market fake beer. it looks like a beer can, will say something like "asahis original brew" on the outside, looks like beer, and at first sip tastes like beer. if somebody never told me about fake beer i probably wouldve lived in ignorant bliss and wouldve never known the difference, other than the beer tasted a little funny. i wouldve of thought thatd just be the japanese way of making silly beer.

closer taste testing reveals that its not beer at all. it contains alcohol and im sure some beer making ingrediants, but the traditional mixture of barley, malt, and hops is done away with for some random unknown concocture that im sure is explained in kanji on the can but i cant read in the slightest.

basically when you go to buy beer at the convenience store, theres a section for real beer and a section for fake beer. a 6 pack of fake beer will set you back about 1200 yen, while a 6 pack of real beer will set you back about 1600 yen. ive tried my hardest to like the fake beer to save money, but ive given up hope that theres some liquid gold to be found in the fake section and have moved on to the real beer. to be fair, the real beer is a bit of all right (as an fyi its really really light and goes down like water, unlike thick czech beer) and if it wasnt so expensive id probably drink it more often.

please mr. postman

i must say that japanese efficiency reached a new level the other day. i had a small problem by not receiving my vodafone cell phone bill last week, so i went into vodafone to ask why i hadnt received it yet. they said that although i had changed my address with the city and the post office i had to change it with vodafone as well (sidenote...thats ridiculous...a change of address is a change of address...but i digress). so i talked to an english operator on the phone and they said that theyd mail me a new bill and while id missed the payment date i wouldnt be charged interest on the outstanding balance.

the new bill arrived in my mailbox the next morning. literally in under 24 hours a new bill was mailed to me. in north america itd take a week or so.

the authorities here are among the best ive seen too. everybody at the ward office, the post office, the gym, ecc, the police station, ect...seem to take their job seriously and are happy to serve you. with the exception of one pleasant yet stubborn man at the naka ward office one day who wouldnt let me leave for work when something got delayed, he kept saying "patterson-san doko desu ka? patterson-san doko desu ka?" even when i said i had to go to work, even when it was explained to him in japanese. other than him everybody treats you like a servant.

engrish prease

perhaps some people have noted in the past about the inability for japanese people speaking english to pronounce their l and r sounds correctly. im here to say thats absolutely true. its wierd to go into a store and say "cokacola kudaisai", get a blank stare, then say "cookacoora kudaisai" and then get what you want. basically for english words in japanese you have to say them as the japanese pronounce them, so if you want some chocolate or say congratulations, you better ask for some choocoretto or say congraturations or you wont get what you want.

i must say that english language editing is badly needed here too. theres some pretty horrid/dirty/borderline offensive tshirts being worn over here by people who have no idea what they mean. probably happens at home with people wearing or tattooing kanji onto themselves, so hey.

finally, the translations can be amusing. stores sometimes have mission statements that make no sense, ie: a dog grooming place in kanayama that says something like "we look forward to making happy living between you and your dog in the future" or something like that. i also have a shirt that says "i love listening to music at home...ive never been so happy...i have alot of cds." of course theres spelling mistakes all over the shirt and it makes no sense. i should quit the teaching gig and just offer my services to the city and businesses of nagoya as an english editor.

with the beatles

one thing i love about the japanese is that we both share a passion/love/obsession with the beatles. i was in a recycle shop today and there was a reworked instrumental/elevator version of girl playing in the background. other examples:

1) in the music part of free time lessons if you have nothing else to talk about you can always argue why the white album is superior to abbey road

2) at every kareoke bar they will have only about 2-3 selections for prominent western artists and yet you can sing pretty much any obscure beatles song you know, from cry baby cry to ive just seen a face to doctor robert to for you blue

3) i once had a student that dressed as george harrison for an entire year and thought i was the coolest person ever for carrying around a george harrison biography in my bag

4) other places ive heard beatles music: internet cafes, curry restaurants, elevators, ecc schools, golds gym, department stores

5) you see beatles tshirts all the time either in stores or being worn on the street

what can i say...japanese pop and enka music is generally terrible (in my humble biased opinion) but their love of the beatles totally balances out any bad musical taste they may have.

cruisin nagoya

right now the weather is about as close to perfect in this concrete-filled city as can be. since ive been warned by basically every single free time lesson student about the horridly humid summers that they get here in nagoya ive been trying to soak up as much dry heat as i can get. so riding around on a nice summers day with a bicycle is about as good a time as one can spend on a sunday i think.

tonight theres some fireworks down by atsuta shrine that the higashi betsuin crowd is going to check out i believe. be interesting to see how crazy the japanese are about their explosions.

can i get a voice?

so the last few days ive been voiceless. on wednesday i had my usual class of 4-6 year olds and they were being very bad as usual. so i had to yell at them a bit to tell them to stop running headfirst into the wall or stop ripping apart my flashcards or stop stealing cookie monster puppet or stop using permanent marker on the whiteboard. turns out that since then i havent been able to talk too well. yesterday i basically had to apologize before each lesson about my voice...embarrasing when you tell students to repeat words after you when im whispering and they can barely hear what im saying or how to pronounce the words properly.

on the positive side, ive been told that it makes me sound like im a radio dj, so its not all bad.