Flying in Japan

Here in Japan we have had a few flights to get to some of our away games. The regulations are a little bit different here than they are in the states. I am not sure if it is because we check in as part of of a group but there seems to be a lot less you need to stress about.
1. When you check in you dont need to show ID. All the flights that we have taken this year; and last year within Japan, I have not needed to show ID once (I am thinking this is the one that might be related to the group/team check-in, as I would think you would need an ID)
2. I accidently had a scissors in my carry-on and thought I would have to throw it out. The security person instead measured it and because it was under a certain length I was able to keep it. I thought that was very interesting that I could keep a scissors.
 
3. You are allowed to take a full drink bottle through security. Whether it is a bottle you have purchased, like water or Gatorade, or your own bottle that you filled up with water you can take it through. If you have a bottle you bought they put it on a machine that, I think, tests the contents and either says pass or reject. If it says pass, you're good and can take it with you. If it says reject I am guessing the either take it and throw it away or open it and drink it right in front of your face (okay I dont think they actually do that). If you have a bottle that you filled up yourself they will ask you what is inside and then have you open it so they can smell it. If it isnt lighter fluid or something of that nature you're good to go. I have to say this is very nice to be able to fill up a large bottle and take it with you instead of having to spend a lot of money of the high-priced-small-airport-bottles that you would otherwise have to purchase.
 
3. You dont need to take off your shoes at security (I think if you have certain big shoes like platform shoes you have to take them off to make sure you dont have a bazooka or something hidden, but for normal tennis and dress shoes you are allowed to keep them on and your smelly feet covered.
 
4. In flight service offers a drink for free, but the options are a little different. You of course are able to get coffee, tea, water and apple juice; but the one that really gets me is beef broth. Yes, you are able to order a cup of beef broth. Its served hot, ready to warm you up on a cold day, and yes people actually drink it. The person I was sitting next to on the plane today actually ordered it.
 

Its getting to be that time of year........eh?

There are definitley things that we miss being overseas, especially the holidays. This weekend is also one of those times that I miss.
Want to wish all the people heading to the woods, a safe and successful opening deer hunting weekend. Make sure to share those stories.

Kyoto

The place we are living at this year is Kyoto Japan. Kyoto is a city in the prefecture (state) of Kyoto. The population is about 1.5 million people.
For many years Kyoto was the capital of Japan before it switched to Tokyo in 1869. Because of this there are a lot of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines (Shintoism being one of the major religions here in Japan. You can learn more about Shintoism here at Wikipedia) There are 2000 temples and shrines - 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines in Kyoto. There is probably someone that can say they have visited all of them but I just dont think we are going to be able to put a check mark next to that one and say we have done it. I don't even know where you would start. Maybe get a really fast car and try to drive past the entrance of all of them and snap a quick picture? I let you try that one - just let me know how it goes
 
One of the major industries in Kyoto is tourism. As you can imagine with that many temples and shrines and a lot of history, there is a lot to see. From where we lived last year to where we live this year we see many more foreign people and many more people with cameras around their neck. We have had the chance to go to one of the famous temples a couple weeks ago (Kiyomizu-dera) and hope to get to a couple more on our next day off. This time of year is very popular for tourism in Kyoto as the leaves are turning colors and many people make trips here to the see the temples and shrines as the leaves change colors.
We saw a magazine this summer that was 100 places to see beofre you die - I think it was from Time magazine and Kyoto was on the list.
Kyoto is also the headquarters of Nintendo, who is currently building a new headquarters building not too far from where we live. I keep asking if there will be a cool visitors center that we can go take a tour of or go see, but everyone seems to think they wont have anything like that. Bummer.
So far we like Kyoto and what we have been able to see and look forward to finding out more about this ancient city.
In 1997 it hosted a conference about green house gas emissions that was aptly named the Kyoto Protocol

Typical food #3

Ramen
If you read my first post about typical food in Japan you know that beef bowls are very popular. Another very common thing is a bowl of ramen. This differs some from the instant ramen many of you may have had in college or bought when you had to bring items to school for a food drive. I would argue (some of you may stongly diasagree after your ramen-loving earlier years) that a bowl of ramen here is quite a bit better.
 
There are all different types of ramen with different noodles, meat, eggs, flavor and thickness of sauce and various veggies. Each region in Japan has there own version/flavor of ramen. So, if you were traveling around Japan you would be able to order a ramen bowl probably everywhere you went and have something similar but get to taste the different regions idea or take on the dish.

First Games

This weekend we had our first games. Much of the league started last week, but we had a bye. So, we played our season opener this weekend. We played a team called Takamatsu, which was 1-1 coming into the weekend.
Our team had a slow start last year and went 0-8, so we wanted to start out on the right foot and get the season going in the right direction this year.
Saturday we did just that and ended up winning 89-63. Then on Sunday we kept the weekend going by adding another win; 79-62.
 
It was a great first weekend for us, and hopefully there will be many more weekends like this during the season where we can get both games (as we play on both Saturday and Sunday every weekend this year).
This weekend after both of our games we collected donations to help out the people that were affected by the typhoon that came through a little while ago. Normally after that games we go around and clap/shake hands with all the fans. But after our two games this weekend we were given donation boxes and took donations from people who wanted to give money (we also clapped/shook there hands). I am not sure how much money we raised overall but it was great that the team did this to once again try and help out the people who were affected (we also went and helped one farmer clean up a landslide that blocked a road on his property (link here).

Report from game 1: Here (tranlsated using Google translate)
Report from game 2: Here (translated using Google translate)

Spalding - $300?

Spalding Japan has a competition going on right now - not sure if it is just for people in our basketball league or if it is for anyone in Japan, but you have to spin a basketball on your thumb and whoever has the best picture will get $300.
So, one of my teammates had me do it to try and win the money. It would make for a nice team dinner/lunch.
Here is the link to the Spalding Japan Facebook site where the pictures are.
Spalding Good Contest Pictures - Spalding Facebook Page
As of right now I think there are only 3 entries so hopefully we can get lucky and win.

Money maker - Pizza in Japan

If you ever decide you want to up and move to Japan, or are just looking for a way to make money in this Asian country I would say open a pizza place.
Think about it for a minute, how much does a pizza actually cost to make if you were to make it yourself?
 
Back home in the states if you were to order a pizza from one of the main pizza places you like Dominoes or Pizza Hut you could still get a good deal. Right now Pizza-hut has the get it "any way you want it deal" for $10. Meaning: any size, any toppings on pan, hand-tossed, or thin n' crispy crust with delivery or take-out for only $10.
Sound like a deal?
 
Here if you wanted a pizza your going to have to reach a little deeper in your pockets. And, if you are used to peperoni or sausage you might have to look hard to find something similar.
For example one of the pizzas on the menu at a local pizza place is: the seafood pizza. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, that simple sounding pizza would cost you 3,570 yen for a large or 2415 yen for a medium (with the exchange rate it is roughly $36 or $25) - for one pizza. That's not a buy one get one deal, or a special where you get 17 liters of soda with your purchase, that's for one pizza.

Other choices on the menu include:
Hawaiian Delight (tomato sauce)
Tunamayo (choice of tomato or curry based sauce)
 
Cream cheese and smoke fresh ham Italiana (tomato sauce)
Pepperoni garlic mozzarella (no sauce specified)
Anchovy seafood basil (no sauce specified)
Cheese and honey (no sauce specified)
Teriyaki chicken (mayonnaise sauce)
Monterey (choice of curry sauce, tomato sauce, or meat sauce)
Spicy sausage (salsa sauce)

Not a good deal at all if you ask me, but last year there was a pizza place a few doors down from where we stayed and the scooters that delivered the pizzas were going well into the night (snow, tropical storm, rain or shine). It seemed like the never stopped going, so, aside from the seemingly high prices the business must have been doing well.

Typical food #2 - Sushi (rice balls)

This is the second post in a series about typical food in Japan. You can find the 1st post here: Typical food #1 - Beef bowls
When you think of Japanese food, maybe one of the things you think about is sushi. You would be right in your thinking as sushi is a popular food here.  There are different places you can get sushi - fancy places, running sushi places (where there is a belt that goes around the inside - tables are just on the outside - with sushi on it - you pay based on what you choose to eat), and among others convenience stores. The sushi you get at convenience stores is actually a very common thing for people to eat. And, people stop at convenience stores quite a bit here. I think it is part of the culture. Whether to get a coffee or some sort of snack it seems like we stop at convenience stores a lot when I am traveling with a Japanese person (many people get lunch there). The sushi that is normally found at a convenience store is a rice ball, or in Japanese: onigiri (oh-nig-er-ee - todays Japanese lesson).
 
Most of the time it is a triangle form. It is rice wrapped with seaweed and has some sort of filling: tuna and mayo, teriyaki chicken, salmon, fish eggs, spicy fish eggs, more seaweed. Last year, there were many times where our players would have these for lunch before practice and we always had some in the locker room for games.
This got me thinking that this is a pretty easy thing to make and maybe to try. So, I included a 1 min youtube video on the correct and simple way to make sushi. Have a look.
 
Or, if that is not quite your style maybe you could find a different recipe online.

Typical food #1

A very popular and common thing to eat here is: a beef bowl (gyudon - beef bowl in Japanese)
Beef bowls consist of thin strips of beef and usually with onion (in some sort of sauce) and placed over a bowl of rice. This is a pretty inexpensive meal in Japan as you can get a beef bowl for about $4 - $5.
 
Places:
Yoshinoya
Sukiya
Matsuya
There are other local beef bowl restaurants but these are the 3 main chains that sell beef bowls and there always seems to be many people in the restaurants, even if only to scarf their food down and leave. (I think one of the reasons these places do so well is: you get your food really fast and even with chopsticks it is a relatively easy and speedy thing to eat).

You can get your beef bowl plain, with cheese on top, with a mayonaise sauce on top, or the one thats the most interesting to me: a raw egg on top. (yes the person who ordered the bowl in the picture got a lot a bit aggressive with the eggs.
How would you eat that you ask? In Japanese slurping is allowed and very much apart of the culture. Sometimes I think people might overdo it a little, because.......well, because they can. But with this dish the eggs would get mixed in before you ate it and not slurped off the top)
 

Kick off party

Last night we had the tip off party for our season (it was the last part of a very busy day for us - see post below). It was held at the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kyoto. It was a fun night where we had a chance to sit, eat and talk with the sponsors that help make this possible for us.
 
The food (of course I am going to talk about the food) at the event was delicious and we had a 6 course meal. When I got the menu and saw 7 things on it (one was coffee so I am not counting that as a course) I got excited. I like to eat, and because I am not average size, need to eat more than the average person. So, when I saw 7 things on the menu I thought I was set. (Of course I couldn't read what it said as it was in Japanese but my counting to seven skills are amazing).
When we got the first meal though, I understood this isnt quite the cooking I am used to - not the hearty portions of everything, like we cook. The first plate of food came and it was tuna - I think Ahi tuna. I had two pieces of tuna the size of quarters, on a bed of couscous, with some glaze drizzled on the side. It was definitely something you would see on a cooking show - fancy. My hungry belly wasn't quite sure what to think but even though it was small it was really good! Each part of the meal was like that - small but good. We had the tuna, soup, champagne sorbet, a fish plate, steak and foie gras, and a champagne slurry. It was great and my belly smiled when I managed to snag an extra piece of steak or 2 :)
The event was a fun night, but now that its finished it means that it is getting close to the first game. Most of the teams play this weekend, but we are off and have our first game next weekend. Its exciting that it is time for another season and I am looking forward to the start. Only 8 more days and we will be ready to go.

To pray for our season

Yesterday, (10-3) we had a busy day. In the morning we went to a shrine to pray for our season and visited the Kyoto Mayor's office to ask for his support. Then in the evening we had our kickoff party for the season.
In the morning though, the first thing we did was go to the temple to pray for our season.
The shrine we went to was Heian Jingu Shrine


It was a very pretty and large temple. As far as I can understand this temple was built to honor the emperor who moved the capital of Japan to Kyoto in the 700's. It is a relatively new temple as the many of the structures were built in the 1900's, with the oldest being in the late 1800's.

The website for this temple said, "...does not only figure as a tourist attraction for foreign visitors but also serves as the spiritual center of the nation as a whole, as well as of the patriotic citizens of Kyoto. "

 To pray for the season were invited "into the shrine", past the area where you could go as a tourist, and were all asked to sit on little folding stools that they had set out for us. A Shinto priest (Shintoism and Buddhism are the 2 main religions in Japan) then went through a ritual of blessing us and blessing the few objects (one being a basketball) that we had brought with us. The ritual involved many bows, a few chants,
 
waving this object  in front of us and in front of the things we brought to be blessed, and some claps. When we were finished we were all asked to have a small sip of Sake to cleanse our body and then we were free to go.
It was a really neat ceremony and hopefully it will help us get started on the right track and injury free.

Welcome........to the dentist

Today after practice a couple of the other guys and I went to the dentist's office to get fitted for a mouthguard. The dentist is one of our team's sponsors and is providing us with a custom form-fitted mouthguard. Which, as you can imagine, can be helpful in our line of work. I dont always wear one but think it is probably a good idea, especially as I don't look back on the experience of having my tooth go through my lip a while ago all that fondly - yep it was just as pretty as it sounds.
But it wasn't just a normal visit. When we got to the dentist's office this was the sign that was hanging on the reception desk - Pretty nice welcome if you ask me.
Thanks!

Coffee Culture

We have been to a few different continents and one thing I noticed is that people like coffee, but they way they get "their fix" varies from place to place. All of these places have many different ways of getting coffee (such as: you can probably find a good coffee shop to go and order a coffee anywhere you are, or, Keurig Machines where you brew an individual cup of coffee at a time  gaining popularity, but I tried to focus on the main way people get their caffeine fix, at least as we saw it).
U.S.
As you may know many people in the U.S. drink coffee from coffee pots that look like this:


Australia:
When we were in Australia in 2008 and 2009, a lot of instant coffee was consumed (the kind that you put into a glass with hot water, stir and drink.
Available in individual packets or a larger jar.




In Europe (or at least in Germany and Austria) the culture was more about going to get a cup of coffee to sit and talk with your friends. It was very common to meet at a coffee shop for a cup. But, whether either in a coffee shop or in someone's personal house coffee was made by a coffee machine that ground the beans (put whole coffee beans in the top), mixed them with water and would even froth your milk if you wanted. With the settings on the machine you could control how strong or light the coffee was. We were even given one of these machines with our apartment in Austria. I'm not much of a coffee drinker but Katy said it was really good coffee.




Here in Japan, most coffee is consumed in even a different way yet. Little cans of coffee seem to be the norm here. There are a lot of 'vending' machines around town that carry different kinds of coffee (as well as other things). But the vending machines will dispense the coffee cold or very hot depending on the type. And when I say hot I am not talking about dispensing the coffee into a cup, the actual can of coffee will come out hot. Everywhere we have gone in Japan I have seen these machines and it always seems like there are people using them. I know the guys on the team use them a lot.
Another popular place to get coffee is a convenience store. But again, its coffee in the cans again. I am actually not even sure if there is another way that you can buy coffee here (except of course in a restaurant or coffee shop) but otherwise I think it is all in a can.

2

Picture from the girls photo shoot

Couldn't be more proud or happy of our little girls!

Japanese Baseball Game

A couple days ago we took the afternoon and went to a baseball game with our team. It was a good team activity (team bonding) and something fun to do outside of basketball.

Japanese baseball games are a little different from the standpoint of how the fans cheer. If you sit in one of the outfield bleacher sections you will be pretty much standing and cheering the whole time your team is up to bat. Whether you are for the home team or the away team there will be a section for you to do this if you want to. The fans don't just yell and clap, they have actual 'choreographed cheers.'  For some of the cheers the person leading it will blow a whistle and you follow what he is doing. Other cheers are led by pounding on a big drum, while others are led with a trumpet (yes all this stuff is in outfield bleachers during the game - not sure if someone brings it in or if the team gives it to the fans).  And of course what would a cheer section be without chants, claps and yelling peoples names? For the game we went to - the Orix Buffaloes (the team Ichiro used to play for) and the Seibu Lions fans even had 4 massive flags that they waved around while the home team, Buffaloes, were up to bat.
(At the end of the season last year Katy, Myla and I went and watched the Chiba Marines play the Soft Bank Hawks and it was the same with the chants, cheers and flags - really cool to see)

 


Then in the seventh inning you blow up ballons - balloons are long, like a bat, and everyone realeses them at the same time up into the air. For the 5-10 seconds the balloons are flying it is really cool to look around the stadium and see the teams colors floating through the air. Our coach was kind enough to get a bunch of balloons and we all got to participate. (Heres a little video so you can see what it is like)

 The place we went to watch the game was the Osaka Dome (Osaka is a major city that is next to Kyoto). The dome itself sticks out a little bit, as it looks like a massive alien spaceship. No Joke. When we were walking up to this thing I couldn't help but think that if the world were going to end and I needed to get out I would come here, find a seat and wait for it to take off.
Picture your stereotypical flying saucer/alien spaceship looking thing.......got a picture in your head?.......yep, this is exactly what the dome looked like. It even had little lights on the side that pretty much said, "Im ready for blastoff."
When we got to the game and got our tickets we found out that we were in the upper deck. Forget the tractor beam, I thought with all the stairs we had to go up that we were marching right up to the cockpit of the mothership. I half expected to turn around and see something staring me in the face during the game. Luckily I was spared.

I guess though if it really is a stadium and it cant fly (which I find hard to believe) than I think it should be called a UnFO (Un-identifed non-flying object).
Whatever the thing is, we had a good time in it and enjoyed the time we spent there as a team. Hope you may get the chance to go to baseball game some day in Japan as it was a cool experience - both times were (whether it be somewhere else in Japan, in Osaka at the dome, or off in some far away galaxy when the spaceship takes off).

Help

As you may have heard on the news, Kyoto was hit by a typhoon not too long ago and it affected a lot of people. 260,000 people were forced to evacuate and wait until the typhoon had passed.
As you can imagine a storm that had winds of over 100 mph could do some damage. In the days after the storm there were a lot of people/groups that volunteered to help out and our team was one of them.
I think there were different volunteer stations in different cities around the prefecture (state) of Kyoto (as Kyoto is a prefecture/state as well as a city) and we went and registered there. Then after a short wait we were off to where we were going to help.

A farmer on the outside of one of the local towns had a mudslide go over a road on his property that separated the back of his farm (or another small village - it was hard to understand with the translation difference). So we were all given shovels and gloves, hopped in some vehicles and headed to the farmers land to work. We were working on the side of a rice paddy and had a lot of dirt to clear. There must have been 20 of us working on this one area and it took us a number of hours to shovel all the dirt into the back of small trucks or wheelbarrows and make the road passable again.

It was definitely a good workout, digging and moving the dirt all day, but more importantly it was a good thing to do. We were able to help out the farmer who really needed it. Otherwise, he would have probably spent weeks clearing the mess up, valuable time he could be using doing something else.

(Filling the road/potholes with the dirt that took from the landslide pile)

Hello World

On Friday Sept 13th, our daughter Haven was born. It has been amazing to get to meet the little one you have been talking and dreaming about the last 10+ months.
When we had her we waited to find out if it was going to be a boy or a girl and it was truly a great surprise! Many people had said that they thought it was going to be a boy, but both of us thought that it was going to be a girl.
The two weeks before she was born I was in Japan as the season is starting over here and I had to come to start practice. We were both a little worried that the little one was going to decide to come too soon and that I wouldn't be able to be there for the birth. But, she waited. Thanks Haven!
 
I think her big sister will be a great big sister and has already given her many kisses.
We couldn't be more happy with our two little girls and are absolutely loving life.

Back to the land of the rising sun

Well I made it back to Japan, and safely. Although it wasn't without a hiccup. This year to fly over to Japan I flew out of Milwaukee.

My flight went Milwaukee - Chicago - Tokyo - Osaka
When I got to the airport in Milwaukee everything was set on on time and I was good to go. When I got to Chicago though it was a different story. Instead of being on time the flight I had was delayed over 3.5 hours..... Fantastic. Not cool when you have a connection to make. So, I waited. Finally after some time and promise form the United Airlines workers in Chicago that the company employees in Tokyo would help either get me a different flight to Osaka or a hotel room I was ready to go. So we all got on the plane and.....more delay..... Excellent.
The flight was a good flight but I should have enjoyed something nice while I had the chance because things weren't so rosy in Tokyo.
When we got in, they had different lines that you had to go to depending on which kind of connecting flight you missed. If you had an international connection you had two different lines you could go to, or if you had a domestic flight that you missed you had a different line to go to. Since I missed my domestic connecting flight I moseyed into that line. The guy behind the makeshift table they had set up told me that there were no more flights to Osaka that evening and that I would have to wait until the morning to be able to fly. I had kind of guessed this much was going to happen as we got to the baggage claim (where the United people were waiting to help) at 8:30pm. I was a little disappointed but told the guy no problem as I would just hop on the flight in the morning.
But until then I needed somewhere to go. Because I missed my flight United should have paid for my hotel room right? Ha.

The United guy asked me where I was going to stay the night. I saw all the other people in the line being handed red and white vouchers for hotel rooms and said wherever you guys are going to have me stay. He left for a minute and came back. I thought it was going to be to hand me a voucher for the hotel room, instead he handed me some great advice. He told me that because my ticket was booked in two different parts: from Milwaukee to Tokyo and then from Tokyo to Osaka (I think the team did it this way to save a little money) they wouldn't give me a hotel room because their part of the ticket ended in Tokyo. My attempts to explain that if it wasn't for United's mistake I would have made my flight and there wouldn't be a need for us to be talking, fell on deaf ears. He graciously let me know though, that if I needed a place to sleep I could find myself some space out in the arrivals hall and sleep in the airport :) Thanks guy!
But, thats not all. After he told me that they wouldn't get me a hotel room, he went to switch my flight (luckily he didnt tell me I had to buy a whole new airplane ticket). He did however tell me that I would not be able to leave from the same airport I flew into. Instead I would have the privilege of flying out from the other Tokyo airport on the whole other side of Tokyo. How long does it take to get there you ask? A 1.5 hour bus ride..... Super!

I managed to talk the guy into paying for my bus ticket, and dog-tired made it to the other airport (almost slept through my stop). Once I got to the there I checked into the $140 hotel room I found, and got some sleep. The last leg of the trip from the other Tokyo airport to Osaka, and then the car ride from Osaka airport to my place in Kyoto went well, but my goodness what a disaster...... and feat of customer service.
I guess though, I did make it here safely and that's the most important thing.