Would you?

Here are some situations that really happened, that I have seen here in Japan. Would you do the same thing?

#1
If you were riding your bike on the very side of a busy street - 2 lanes going one way and two lanes going the other way - would you swerve out into the closest lane next to you if there was nothing in front of you to swerve for? Would you do it without looking to see if there are cars coming? How about: would you cross all 4 lanes of traffic without looking to see if there is anyone coming.
Last year on the way to a game a biker (it was an older gentleman) did just this. He was riding on the side of the road when all of a sudden he started crossing lanes of traffic. The van I was in had to swerve to miss him on one side and the car that was following us had to swerve the other way to avoid hitting him. We looked out the back and saw him continue all away across the 4 lanes of traffic. Did it seem to startle him that he almost got hit twice? Nope. To be honest I don't even think he knew we were there.

#2
If you were walking along a busy street during the weekend when there is a lot of traffic (again - 2 lanes going one way and 2 lanes going the other way), would you cross it where there was no crosswalk? What if you were in Japan (I ask this because here in Japan when you are at a crosswalk and waiting to cross the road, you wait until the little man goes from red to green to signal its okay to walk. It could be that there are no cars on the road or no cars for 15 miles but you would wait for the little red man to turn green. I would say 95% of the people do this here - and at every crosswalk. Sure, you get your rebels, but for the most part this is how it is. So, to cross the street where there is no crosswalk and no little green man is quite out of the ordinary.)
 
Back to the scenario: would you cross it where there was no crosswalk? Would you also cross this busy street without looking to see if there are cars coming? What if you were 80+ years old? What if you had a walker?
I saw this happen last year. An older lady was walking along the busy road on the sidewalk when she decided to cross the street. Only she didn't look to see if there were any cars coming until halfway through the first lane. Luckily she did look, because cars were coming and she turned around in time to make it safely back.

#3
For the next scenario, the intersection I was waiting at didn't have a little green man or a little red man to tell you when it was okay to walk/go.
If you could see the traffic light in front of you was red would you still cross the street? Would you do it without looking to see if there were any cars coming? Would you do it if you were elderly and in an electric mobility scooter?
 
I was sitting in my teammates car at a stop light about a month ago. Our light was red and had just turned a little while before. You could also clearly see the light for the traffic going across in front of us was green, meaning they could go. Again it was an older gentleman, but he passed us in his electric mobility scooter, didn't even check to see if there were any cars coming and went straight through the light which was still red. The street that he went through was also a pretty busy street and I almost closed my eyes when I cringed because I thought for sure he wasn't going to make it.
Luckily nothing happened but I dont think I would take my chances like that.

These are just 3 instances like this, but I have seen things like this happen many times. Here in Japan there are many cultural things and rules that people follow and based on what I have seen I think maybe there is one where the elderly have the right away. Not sure if this is really the case or not, but if you happen to visit Japan keep an extra eye out to be safe.

Birthday

Last week was my birthday and I want to say thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes and for the gifts you boosters were generous enough to give.
Even though we had practice it was a great birthday. The girls woke up and made me 30 little blueberry pancakes (my 30th birthday), which they helped me eat (Myla's help consisted of breaking a pancake in half, eating the blueberries and then putting it back on the plate for us to enjoy). They also gave me 30 balloons and a sign that had 30 reasons why they love me.
What a great morning.
Then in the evening we went out to eat. We found a very nice hotel that had a revolving restaurant on the top floor and decided to eat there - the Rhiga Royal "Top of Kyoto" restaurant.
 
After practice I met the girls at the hotel and we made it just at the time the sun was going down. The views over the whole city were amazing and it was really cool to see it both while it was still light out and then once the sun was set.

The restaurant was a little different than what we are used to in that it was a really fancy restaurant. I was lucky enough to get a pair of jeans for my birthday that I was able to wear as the only other pants I have here are sweat pants (my suit was at the cleaners and we really don't bring that much stuff with us as we only get one suitcase a piece so I don't have any others), and this was not a restaurant that you would wear sweats to. Right when we sat down the wait staff came over and moved our stuff to some lounge chairs at the end of our table and covered them with a table cloth. It was nice to have our stuff right there but basically out of the way. However as soon as they did this we got a little nervous that this might not have been the best place to take our two loud and sometimes not-able-to-sit-in-one-place-for-more-than-5-minutes girls, that maybe it was a little too fancy. But, since we had gone early we had the restaurant to ourselves for the first hour and the girls did great!
 
For dinner, our meal consisted of a few different courses, some might say the portions were small, others might say 'foo-foo-ish', but either way they were pretty good. We had salad, pumpkin soup, cold shrimp 'soup', bread/rolls, sea bass, and for our main dish I had tenderloin and Katy had duck (again the portion was......well.......petite). Then for dessert we had a champagne slurry with fresh fruit and 2 small pieces of cake.
The dinner was a little expensive even though we didn't chose the $17 glasses of champagne but it is something I will always remember and exactly what I wanted to do. If you ever get a chance to see Kyoto from a top a building, or somewhere in the city with amazing views I would say do it as it was quite impressive. You can see all the trains going by (both city trains and bullet trains), how big the city is and many of the old temples and shrines.

Then when we got home Myla got after our two 'cakes'. Katy made me a pumpkin bread 'cake' and then I got one from the team - from one of our sponsors (arrigato Malebranche) - a chocolate layered cake

All in all this was a wonderful birthday and now that I am 30 I feel much smarter - I just couldn't help waking up in the morning with a sense of being much more enlightened and full of wisdom ;). So if you need some guidance or advice I am gladly here to help (although most of what I might say would probably be a big load of b.s. - but I am ready and willing).
Hope all is well where you are and thanks for reading.

Don't Use?

We got a poster of the bus map for Kyoto City from the tourism bureau here in Kyoto. It is a great map and really helps if you are trying to get around the city by bus.
But, in the bottom right hand corner there is something that we just dont quite understand.

If you get it please fill us in and let us know what it is all about, but we're not quite sure why you would put something on there that says please don't copy or use. I guess maybe I understand the copy part of it, but the maps are free so even that seems a little strange. However, the don't use part seems awfully strange and out of place.

L or R (the letters not left or right)

Here in Japan the language is obviously different than it is in the States, Australia or Europe. One of the the ways it is different is the sounds that are made. In the Japanese language there is no distinction between the sounds that the letter L and the letter R make.
This sometimes can lead to some funny translations and a word could be translated with either an L or an R.
Ill show you what I mean.
In my last post I talked about us going to Biwako Valley - a ski area (Biwako Valley Sledding) where we could take Myla sledding. When we got to the ski hill we picked up some of the information they had there, one flyer in particular was written in English. This showed us where we were, where the cable car lift went, where the ski runs and restaurants were. And, where the half pipe was. Only it wasn't the half pipe, it was the harf pipe. We both got a pretty good laugh out of this and wondered how a mistake like that could be made.


But then I got to thinking and it made it made me remember back to last year when we had the ability to watch Japanese TV in our apartment. In the mornings there was one channel that had some kids shows on that Myla liked. One of these TV shows was called "Happy Clappy." They had a nice little jingle they sang at the beginning and end and they seemed very happy.
 
 Only the little jingle didnt really sound like clappy, it sounded more like the L of clappy was replaced with an R. It sounded like crappy......Happy Crappy. The first time I heard it I had to stop and listen again as I thought I was making it up but sure enough.....Happy Crappy was streaming into our living room from some Japanese TV studio.
I happened to put this in the internet and see what would come up. Other people said the same thing, but not only did they hear it - they saw it. One viewer posted that in his TV guide the show was listed as Happy Crappy (Happy Crappy). Not bad for a show aimed at 1-3 year olds :)


So, the lesson here is:
If you are ever around a Japanese person and they say something to the effect of:
I love crapping
Lets crap together
You are a good crapper
There is a lot of crapping going on here
Please crap louder
That is a good golf crap

You will now know to substitute an L for the R and make an awkward sentence perfectly normal.
Happy Crapping :)

How do you do it?

Like different countries have different languages, they also have different ways to count. If you are going to count to 5 and use your finger how would you do it? If you are in the U.S. you would probably start with your pointer finger and count like this:



If you were in Europe (or at least Germany or Austria) you would count to five like this (just so you're not confused the picture shows the front and back side of the hand)




But if you were in Japan, you would go the opposite way. Instead of adding fingers as you get higher in numbers, you take them away - like this:


And if you want to get really crazy with counting on your fingers here you go (not quite sure how this works as 4 doesn't even show 4 fingers or have 4 taken away, but if you could master this it would be pretty impressive):