Top to Bottom, Right to Left

Here in Japan, books are a little different than in Western countries. Instead of grabbing the book and opening it by grabbing the right side to flip the page, you grab the left side to flip the page. It would be like turning a book over and opening it to look at the last page. Only here, that is how you read. And, with western books your eyes read the horizontal text, left to right, and then work your way down the page, top to bottom, as you read. Here you start in the upper right hand corner, read the symbols going down (vertical text) and work your way from the right side of the page to the left.
The place that we lift at has some magazines sitting on their counter. I have gone to look at them a couple times, only when I lift the magazine up and try to the turn the page like I normally would, nothing happens, as I am trying to turn the spine of the book. Its sort of a weird feeling to flip the page from the left side and know you are going the correct direction and doing it how it is supposed to be done. I think it would take some time to get used to if you were to switch. Glad I really don't have to worry about it, unless I am picture reading, as I can read zero Japanese characters.

Nagano this past weekend

This weekend we played in Nagano. As you probably know, Nagano was host to the 1998 winter Olympic games, and we were lucky enough to play in one of the arenas. The place we played was called White Ring. In 1998 it was host to the figure skating and short track speed skating competitions. This weekend it was used for our double header basketball games. Nagano's basketball team doesn't normally play at this venue, they have another home arena, but this was a big weekend for the club as their management really promoted the game and tried to pack the 7,000 capacity arena. We did have a lot of people at the games and I have to say it is pretty cool to say that we played in an Olympic arena. In the end though, we came out on top both games and really played well. Our team is currently 14-12 and on a 6 game win streak. 
Nagano was a pretty city lined with mountains. And although the mountains weren't that big/tall, its
 









easy to see why the city of 390,000 was picked to host the games over 20 years ago.  Nagano is known for its mountains and because of it, skiing.  Every taxi that we rode in this weekend (to and from practices and games) had brochures of a ski hill. 
 If you happen to be in Tokyo ever it might be worth the visit, especially as its not that far away, as it is only 1.5 hours by bullet train or 3 hours by bus. And although we didn't make it there this weekend one of the main tourist attractions is the Zenkō-ji Temple. Built in the 7th century it is visited by many people each year and is considered a national treasure. If it wasn't for this temple Nagano city might not be in existence, as it started as a town built around the temple back in 1897.
 

Sumo Tournament - Tokyo

 This past weekend was all-star weekend and because our team didn't have a game we had a few days off - one being Saturday. We decided we were going to go to the Sumo tourney as Tokyo has its big Sumo tournament going on right now.
Things here in Tokyo are pretty expensive (I will write about this in posts later on) but when I looked for tickets they ranged in price from about $40 a piece up to $200 a piece - a bit pricey, and they were all sold out for Saturday. There was however some general admission tickets for the upper deck of the arena that were $25, that would be sold on the morning of when the ticket window opened at 8:00am. So we decided we would go and get the general admission tickets.
We didn't, however, get there until about 12:00 and as you can imagine all the tickets were sold out. We tried the will call window, the ticket office, and the workers standing outside and no way to get tickets. So we started asking people if they had extra tickets (I don't think this is normal here as I was the only one doing it). We found a boy scout leader who had one extra, and they said if we come back and meet them at 2:30 (when the professionals start, as there are junior matches in the morning) they might have more depending on if there were cancellations in their group or not.
After lunch and letting Myla play on the jungle gym at a nearby temple we headed back to resume our efforts to find tickets. One guy told us he had some cancellations in his group and to ask him again in 10 mins when the rest of his group came. In the meantime I kept asking (probably asked close to 1,000 people) and finally a gentleman came up and showed me 2 tickets. He didn't speak English, nor I Japanese so it was hard for me to tell him that the $115 tickets (a piece) were much more than we could spend as I only had $85 in my pocket. I took out the money and showed it to him and when he pointed again at the price all I could say was sorry - go-men-a-sigh.  But, instead of turning around and walking away he extended his hand towards me and handed me the tickets for the $85 dollars.
We were excited! We so badly wanted to go but when we saw we couldn't get the general admission tickets we were bummed as we thought we missed out.
Our seats were "good" seats. We were on the 1st floor instead of being up in the upper deck where we expected to be. Our seats weren't seats however. We were in a box. And when I say box I mean a five foot by five foot area that was separated from the other boxes by a metal pole around the outside. Inside there were seat cushions - like the ones you would have on your kitchen chairs at home - four of them. Katy and I occupied two of them and then there were 2 other random people.
It was quite cramped to say the least, but we made it work. When in Rome...as the saying goes.
The sumo was awesome. It was cool to see it up close and how powerful those guys are. And, contrary to what I thought going in, it wasn't always the biggest guys who won. There is a lot of strategy and technique to it. Smaller (but still big) guys who have good technique and are quick are very successful and won a lot of the matches.
Obviously being from a place where there is no Sumo, I didn't know much about it all and when we went to the match it was interesting to learn a little more about it. It is a sport that is rich in tradition (the 'wrestlers' do a 'dance' before each competition lifting one leg in the air then the other, throw salt onto the ring to clear the ring of evil spirits and spit water to cleanse themselves before the match). It is also a sport that you can make some good money. I found somewhere on the net that said as of 2006 the lowest level professionals make over $11,000 a month. Not bad!
To be honest, I could write on and on about Sumo, however I'll let you look it up on your own sometime if you are are interested.
I do have to say though that if you are in Japan in the future and happen to be in a city where there is a Grand Sumo tournament going on - go. It is well worth the money.

Counting

This post is about differences in language - but with counting.
We have lived in 3 different language speaking areas
Obviously English (America & Australia)
German (Germany & Austria)
Japanese (Japan)
Each country counts a little differently.
As you are well aware of if you are reading this, in English the numbers 1-10 have their own word as well as 11 and 12, then 13-19 goes into a pattern where you add teen to the end and the same with 20, 30, 40, 50, so on forth - it follows a pattern where each new group of ten has a new word (thirty, forty, fifty) - it might make more sense as to what I mean when I get to Japanese.
In German, like English, you have 1-10, 11 & 12 have their own words and then 13-19 follow a pattern where instead of adding teen you add the German equivalent 'zehn' - pronounced zane. Then each following group of ten has its own word like in english only once you get to 20 you start counting in reverse - so for 21 you would say: one and twenty, for 35 you would say 5 and 30.
In Japanese it is much simpler - 1-10 have their own words, but for 11 you say: ten one, for 12 you say ten two. for 13 you would say: ten three, for 16 you say: ten six. Then for 20 you would say: two ten, for thirty you would say 3 ten, for 50 you would say: five ten. If you wanted to say 73 you would say: seven ten three. If you wanted to say 89 it would be: eight ten four
The numbers in Japanese are (with the English pronunciation)
1 - itchy
2 - knee
3 - sahn
4 - she
5 - go
6 - row-koo
7 - na-na
8 - hah-chee
9 - Q
10 - jew

so 73 would be pronounced: na-na, jew, sahn  (7, 10, 3)

Observation #2 - how do you grunt?

Over here in Japan many things are different. One thing that you might not think of when you think about another country/culture/language is how someone grunts. In the U.S. if we have to lift something heavy or exert a lot of force we may make some noise to help with the task at hand - and it would probably sound something like: uh or mmmm or maybe if you have a little grizzly in you it might be grr. Here they do it a little differently. Here it sounds like ee-ish-ahp (with the ah being like what you would say at the docs office when they put the big popsicle stick in your mouth and tell you to say ah - only this has a p at the end) or ish-ahp for short. Not quite sure why there's a difference, but the next time you have to give a good grunt switch it up and let me know how it works

New Years

On New Years we decided to join many, (maybe the majority of people) in Japan and head to a temple. The one we went to was packed and it was just a small local one near our neighborhood.  If you wanted to say your prayer in front of the temple there was probably a 30-45 minute wait (a long line to do so)

Here are some pictures from our New Years.

108 Defilements of Buddhism

This goes along with the last post about the bells on the temples ringing 108 times for the 108 "sins" (defilements) of Buddhism. Ill give you a dollar if you can remove all these from your life for a week :)
Here they are:

ostentatiousness	grudge	gambling	ingratitude
dipsomania	ambition	dominance	faithlessness
manipulation	stinginess	pessimism	hostility
abuse	debasement	sexual lust	sarcasm
humiliation	jealousy	gluttony	unruliness
hurt	cruelty	unkindness	obstinacy
envy	indifference	negativity	furtiveness
sadism	enviousness	derision	falseness
high-handedness	know-it-all	rage	aggression
rapacity	effrontery	disrespectfulness	hard-heartedness
eagerness for power	lying	insidiousness	self-denial
inattentiveness	contempt	wrath	haughtiness
greed for money	seducement	vindictiveness	insatiability
voluptuousness	excessiveness	censoriousness	dissatisfaction
egoism	ignorance	hatred	greed
impudence	imposture	cursing	imperiousness
lecherousness	callousness	malignancy	torment
intolerance	blasphemy	shamelessness	irresponsibility
obsession	prejudice	arrogance	violent temper
garrulity	dogmatism	presumption	intransigence
oppression	prodigality	lack of comprehension	obstinacy
pride	conceitedness	delusion	quarrelsomeness
self-hatred	violence	vanity	hypocrisy
stubbornness	baseness	pretence	mercilessness
disrespect	ridicule	masochism	tyranny
capriciousness	deceit	anger	discord
calculation	unyielding	desire for fame	deception

Good Bread?

Have you ever gone to the store to buy wheat bread, only to find that they have none, settle on rye bread instead, bring it home and make a pb&j sandwich to give to your one-year-old as a healthy snack only to find after your little one devours the treat that the bread is chocolate? I know - normal problem and it probably happens to you all the time but this was our first and we got a good laugh out it. No wonder our daughter liked it so much :)