Japanese Red

Here in Japan mnay people use the trains and public transportation to get to and from where they want to go as it is so easy and convenient. Here the price of your house or apartment, of course depends on how big it is, but the closer you are to the train station the more expensive your place will be.
Even though the trains are easy to use and get you to where you want to go pretty quickly, there are still many cars that drive. This past week we had many sponsor visits to say thank you to our sponsors and had go many places in the car. For the most part Japanese drivers are very courteous and follow the traffic laws. There is one thing that I get quite a kick out of though.
Here if you are at an intersection and need to turn to go across traffic you usually have to wait. Once the light goes red you get a green turn arrow. At some of the lights the normal green light is fairly long but the green turn arrow might be only 5 seconds (or something very short). This doesn't seem to work so well when there is a long line of cars waiting to turn. So the Japanese people have figured out how 'get around' this little problem.
 
If you are going straight at a light and the light goes yellow, you wont see many people speeding up to go through it. Once the light goes yellow the majority of people slow down right away, some even slow down a little when they are approaching the green in case it goes yellow (we have had quite a few taxi drivers who operated this way). A turn arrow is a different story.
Once a green turn arrow goes yellow though, it is your cue to get moving. There have been numerous times, maybe every time, where the green turn arrow has gone from green to yellow and then to red and still 3 cars will go. The most I have seen is 5 cars go after the light has turned to red. I am not sure if it is just the custom to do that here or not, but I am guessing the police let it go if everyone participates.
I have to say I haven't seen it like this anywhere else we have lived and it had lead us Americans over here to call it: the Japanese red.

Red Triangles

Here in Kyoto there are many apartments buildings. If you look at one of the apartment buildings you will see some windows have red triangles on them. For a while we thought this was a company's logo and that this company had almost all of the buildings. But, we found out this week that the red triangles are the 'emergency exits' or windows that can open. This makes it easier for the fire depart to be able to get people out if there is a fire or an emergency.

Katys Birthday - forgot to post

Katys birthday was a while ago now but we made sure she had a good day.
In the morning when we woke up we made Crepes. We got different fruit and some peanut butter to go inside and of course we got some whipped topping to make them even yummier (Myla liked the cream too :) - I am surprised Katy's crepes had any cream left as Myla liked to lick it all off).
Then after breakfast we went to Fushimi Inari Shrine. Here Katy got to take part in a Shinto ceremony and was blessed by a Shinto priest after he said a prayer for her. After her blessing she was given a small box of things to take home -rice, seaweed, and one other thing and she asked if she needed to eat it all to have a good year :)

 


Then in the afternoon we had a basketball game so she took the girls there.

The game was in the afternoon so when we finished we had some time to go out for dinner. We wanted to do something that we hadnt done before and went to Shabu Shabu. If you get a chance to try this I definitely recommend this. Shabu Shabu is where you have a big pot of sauce - ir at our restaurant, 2 sauces. One of them was a chicken based sauce and the other was a fish based sauce.

When you sit down at the table you turn your pot of sauce on so it heats up and starts to boil. When the sauce is hot you take the very thin slices of beef (or pork if you choose) and drop them in the sauce where it cooks. You also get dishes of vegetables that you can put in the sauce. This a very healthy meal and one that was very good. I think there are some shabu-shabu that are not all you can eat, but the one that we went to was. So, all we had to do was open up the menu (there was pictures) and we could point to what we want. We had an hour to eat (many of the all-you-can-eat places here have a time limit of 60 or 90 minutes) and we pretty much had the restaurant to ourselves as we went after our game. This was out first time and we really liked it; it costed about $30 a person but it was well worth it. I would recommend it if you make a trip to Japan and would like a nice a meal and want to try something Japanese! Myla really enjoyed it as she was able to help put the all the veggies and the glass noodles in the sauce, and had fun eating all the different types of food that we were able to get.

Hotel extras

Throughout the course of a season we stay in many hotels as half of our games are away games (actually we probably stayed at hotels for more than half of the games this year as we had a lot of "home-away" games - games that were considered home games but were far away so we stayed in hotels).
Throughout our stays at these hotels I have seen some differences between the hotels here and the ones in the states.
The first thing I would have say is the vending machines. Sure they have the normal vending machines that you see all around Japan, with the hot and cold coffees and bottles of water but they also have vending machines for another kind of drink. Not all hotels have these, but many of them have beer vending machines. Now I cant be sure as I havent made a purchase at any of them but it doesnt look like there is a slot to put your ID or something to verify your age.


I think what this would be like in the U.S. I think if there were a hotel that had this kind of vending machine it would often times be empty. I think there would be a lot of under-agers that would book rooms at the hotel just to take advantage of the situation.
If your looking to make some money might be a good idea......or not.

Another type of vending machine is a cigarette vending machine. Again by the looks of it there is no where to put an ID to check the age.
 
 Both of these vending machines are not just limited to hotels though, I have also seen them along some streets when I am riding my bike. And some of the ones that have beer also have sake (rice alcohol). So much for not being able to get alcohol past 12:00.




Another thing that is different in the hotels here is the way you order movies. In the states if order an in-room movie the cost is added to your bill and you see the change in price when you check out. Here they have little machines on each floor that dispense cards. Each card costs 1000 yen, or about $10, and it allows you to watch one movie. You bring the card back to your room and use it to rent a movie. You can rent a new release or something on the not-so-new-release-a-little-bit-on-the-naughtier side if you wish - and this way you don't have to feel embarrassed when you check out the next day as the hotel staff will be none the wiser.

One more thing about hotels here. I have never slept in one, but in some cities they have capsule hotels. These hotels are basically a capsule that you sleep in. When we were close to Tokyo last year we were told that these were for, at least frequently used, by the business men who missed the last train (which usually goes at about 12:00. Here in Japan, the way the culture is, you dont leave until your boss leaves. So, if your boss decides to stay late you do too).

Good english

Here in Japan they are many different examples of English that maybe isnt used the same it is back home - so of these can be quite funny at times.
I will try to post some of these on here.
Here are 2 things from Kyoto.
When we come back from a road trip and exit off of the Highway there is a store, I think one of the guys said it is an electronics store, but the name is "The Glory Hole." I think a quick Google search might have helped check the name on that one.

 

And where we live, Kyoto, is part of the Kansai region. This region includes the prefectures (what we would call a state in the U.S.) of Mie, Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo (where Kobe is) and Shiga. Another name for this region is the Kinki region. One day we were in a car in Kyoto and saw the Kinki taxi go by. We just couldn't help but laugh. (maybe you could catch the Kinki taxi to the glory hole.....too much?)