A Trip to Hiroshima

A few weeks ago the whole CIEE group took a trip to Hiroshima.

At first we gathered at school that afternoon. It was rather hectic as there was no real time to finish my homework. I just did it really sloppily and left it with the rest of my school books in the CIEE office. At 5:00 we headed to the Shinkansen (Bullet Train).

Once you've come to understand some of the ins and outs of Japan the last thing you really want to do is travel around with a group of whities. Many of these people you realize come to forgien countries to party and and get wasted. It is only made worse by the fact that the primary place to get drunk and club (at least for stupid forgeiners) is Roppongi. As a result they hang out with other stupid forgieners and generally keep the Japanese out of that location. Despite having the highest genetic variation of any race the Japanese cannot tell whities apart (or any non-asian nationality) so as far as they are concerned everyone is wearing an "I'm with stupid" shirt with an American flag drapped over their shoulders.

That said they aren't completely wrong. It takes 4 stops on the train to get from Yotsuya (Station closest to school) to Tokyo (Station with the Shinkansen). In this 6 minutes one in the group girl managed to lose a suitcase because she just walked off the train without it. If this was a game show she'd be covered in failure scorpions.

The other hard part about traveling with stupid people is they love to get lost. We had to stop no less than 5 times to gather everyone up. You'd think after 4 months they'd at least figure out how to get from point A to point B.

This aside the Shinkansen was rather nice. It's like a roomy airplane without the recirculated air. The Bentos that we were provided with were awful though. It took 4 hours to reach Hiroshima.

Due to some poor planning despite arriving after 11:00 we had to be up by 7:00 at the latest. Zombified we had to walk outside in the cold of Hiroshima's peace park. It's an interestig place, the "Genbaku Dome" (Atomic Bomb Dome) is quite striking, being a collapsed structure in the middle of a park. Looks really creepy at night too. Afterward we walked around in the museum and saw lots of drawings from "Hibakusha" (Bomb survivors) of people who essentially melted from the heat wave. Apparently in a nuclear blast you don't just disintigrate, you melt and what's left of you gets cancer. Fantastic.

Area directly below the Atomic Bomb Hypocenter

We later checked into a Ryokan (Japanese-style Hotel) and hung out for a while. At dinner we were supposed to all go to one loaction but the lack of reservations broke us up. Who planned that one?

Miyajima

Miyama Jima is a small island a ferry ride away from Hiroshima. We came here on the second day. It's known for its Shine with a Tori gate that sits over the water. It's also known for wild deer that harass people in the streets. It's like an island petting zoo.

You can also take a cable car to the top of the moutain on the island. At the top you can find monkies!

You can also get some weird Bacon-Cheese-Fishcake-on-a-stick. I barely made it through.

Afterwards I was assaulted by deer. Bastards don't quit.

What is ediable in Japan

With as many posts as I've written on the subject I might as well stop listing what sorts of awful foods there are here and make it easier, here's a list of some foods are actually good in Japan (Hint: they aren't really Japanese):



Tantanmen


Chinese food is in high abundance in Japan. There is pretty much a ramen shop on every street corner, and this is not a total exaggeration. It is one of the most popular things to eat. Some of these shops may be so small that customers have to eat standing up. This is the quintessential food for travelers as it's both good and cheap.


Tantanmen is a variety of ramen. It's broth is made of sesame seeds and hot oil. It's often topped off with some bak choi. The thicker base means that it can actually be deceivingly filling making it one of the best foods to find.

Curry, Naan and Indian food

Japanese love Indian food. While not quite as popular as Chinese it probably comes in second as one of the easiest foods to find. Luckily it is quite delicious. It's rather expensive though, a meal will cost $12-15 depending on what you get and where you go but often well worth it. You usually get a cup or 2 of curry in different flavors and dip your naan bread into it. It's usually a bit spicier than it's lesser cousin Curried Rice, though not always.





Curried Rice

This I believe is the Japanese equivalent of the "enchirido." It's Indian inspired but mostly Japanese and it found pretty much everywhere. Popular types include plain rice and curry on the side (It's always on the side for some reason, God forbid you pour it OVER the rice) or with Katsu (fried pork) over it. It's usually at least decent. The variety pictured here is from a chain called coco's curry. They serve curried rice with a number of toppings, in this case sausage. You can also choose your hotness level here. I went for an 8/10 which was enough to induce a hiccup fit and nose running. I could do hotter but I don't know how much I could finish.




Bou-kun Habenaro

These are easily the most delicious snack food ever invented. They are probably laced with crack because I can't stop eating them. They are flavored potato rings, that come in two flavors: Chili and Habenaro. Both are good. Chili is pictured.

Katsu

This has come up a lot. It's basically a fried pork patty. You see it in a variety of settings including on curried rice, in ramen, in sandwiches and by itself. By itself it is usually eaten with a type of BBQ sauce. There's not a whole lot to this, but it's fried meat which basically ensures that it'll be hard to mess up.


Note: In writing this I've pretty much decided that the only thing Japan can do right consistantly is spicy. I'm not sure I exactly understand why either.

Japanese Western Food

One of the things being in another country is you start looking for the familiar. I'd assume that this typically manifests itself as a craving for a particular food that is common in one's own country. In Japan this is simply filtered down into anything that was not scraped off the hull of a cruise ship.

The Japanese fancy themselves culinary savants. The is easily seen in shows like "Iron Chef." What you may not see is that Japanese have an obsession with food. Any normal conversation will at least touch on foods in some way. Japanese scientists have gone so far as to classify new tastes like Umami, Shibui, and Kokumi. Strange as this may be the Japanese seemingly have no sense of taste (perhaps this is why they obsess?). This is fairly obvious given that every meal will contain plain rice which is about as bland as you can get. The favored drinks are tea which tastes like hot water filtered through twigs and hay. Not just that but even the textures are gross. I've had to eat things here like shrimp and muscles in what appeared to be gelled fat, and one of the most awful things is "oden" a variety dish were everything is in amorphous blobs and is akin to chewing through a pack of condoms. It is in fact so bad that many deaths occur each year, primarily in elderly people caused by choking on these mucusy morsels. But in an effort to show their prowess they've taken it upon themselves to mimic western food, which unfortunately to the non-existent Japanese pallet something invariably gets lost in translation.

I don't have pictures for all of these so bear with me.

Spaghetti:

The Italian classic. This is wheat noodles in tomato sauce it should be easy right? Apparently not. For one let's just touch on the notion that Western food is considered somewhat chic. As a result something as simple as pasta goes for about $10 a plate. This may also be as little as 1/2 a cup of pasta, definitely not anything that will fill you up. At least the restaurants have some decent pastas even if they are woefully overpriced. The dorms seem to be another matter. At breakfast a choice is given for western food, this usually translates into the same thing with a piece of ham or just on one plate instead of 2 (I don't get it either). It can also mean getting spaghetti...for breakfast. I'm not sure where they got this information but needless to say it is quite the head-scratcher. However aside from temporal issues, it is actually possible to mess it up. For dinner occasioanlly you may find spaghetti as well (usually as a side) or at least what you think is spaghetti. It's actually noodles covered in ketchup. Yes noodles with ketchup, delicious. I know a couple of people who would do this but I also expect them to perish in their 30s among a pile of discarded pizza boxes clutching a bong.

For an even bigger slap to the face try noodles covered with mayonnaise. Maybe they should just stick to sea creatures.

Bread

Okay so the bread isn't always terrible. They have invented things like "Melon Pan" (It wants to sound french) that do taste quite good. Also are the sausage baguette type things you can find at most bakeries. Then there are the eyebrow raisers like bread covered in corn and mayonnaise. To this day I still have not the courage to try it.

Mexican

Mexican is very rare in Japan. I dare say that is is non-existent because my experience is something that may look the part but tastes very "unique." For example take this number:

It looks kinda like a burrito, however note that the sauce is pretty much a tomato sauce creating an authentic Mexican-Italian something-or-other. It is also served with an Italian dressing salad adorned with guacamole. Right....


This dish is the same thing. It looks like it's Mexican but the sauce tastes kinda sweet.

The McDonald's Mega Mac

Actually this is pretty damn American and not surprising as McDonald's tastes the same the world over. This was a special burger that was for a limited time - In the unlikely event that the Japanese get something right it is only for a limited-time. This is a common business practice here as a lot of foods are considered seasonal. So things like the awesome Sprite 3G disappear and will never be seen again. - but was so popular it became a regular item. It's just a really big, Big Mac. It's got 4 patties and it's pretty delicious as far a McDonald's goes. Definitely has that American arm tingling feel to it.

DSi

The story starts on the First of October. Nintendo has planned a press meeting but some of the contents are leaked 2 days early by a Japanese newspaper, the article details the unvieling of a new DS. Nintendo of course reconfirms this articles with more indepth details and as such the DSi is born and set to release on the first of November.

The DSi is at its core only an upgrade to to the DS Lite but it includes features like bigger screens, lighter weight, better sound, the ability to play AAC music, digital camera and the ability to download software. This may not make for a large release crowd but Japan is the land of DS, DS Lite accessories can be found even in 100yen ($1) stores.

October passes and not another word is spoken about it. Then suddenly on the 22th a flood of advertisesments appears out of the blue. It is on this day that stores start taking pre-orders.

Of course being so sudden this isn't apparent. I actually find out from a message board that this is in fact, taking place and set out to find one. Unfortunately it becomes some what of a mess, stores do not actively announce whether or not they are taking them and even among stores of the same chain they may or may not. I set off to Akihabara but come back with nothing, apparently not everyone even knows it exists. The week passes and still no word of preorders. By the 28th preorders, where ever they had existed are pretty much over as I found out later from people who had managed to get one. This of course leaves me in an interesting predicament, I am now forced to camp for one.

Even when camping it becomes interesting because you don't know where and where not to camp. As it turns out most stores were taking preorders only but apparently they themselves didn't really know, or at least the clerks. Walking around on Halloween I hit a stroke of luck and find a sign that announces that people should line up here for the 10:00am opening. And so begins the final day.

I had originally anticipated taking the first train only to be made aware that dorm residents can't actually leave before 6:00am. Biding my time for a little while I take the 6:00am train to Akihabara in hopes of getting in line. Thankfully, it's not bad and I secure myself as 4th in line outside Ishimaru Game and Hobby. At this time Akihabara is a ghost town and looks strangely awkward like Laser Quest with the lights on. Usually brimming with people and shops it is a mass of concrete and metal shutters. People will not arrive in numbers until 10:00am.

The line is pretty interesting. The men in front of me are all young salarymen, in their early 20s dressed up in business suits. It appears as if they plan to go into work late after picking up their DSs. The two at the front have constructed a makeshift fort out of cardboard boxes and one of them offers me a flattened box to sit on.

It is quite cold outside. Not blistering but I only have a light jacket on. The box helps insulate me from the cold pavement. The man sitting next to me speaks some English and converses with me a little. Slowly a few more patrons fill in the line, this time they look more like the geekish otakus one would think of in this type of situation. The men at the front a nice and decide to pass down some snacks they have purchased at the local convenience store. More people trickle in. More look like otaku, but there is even a guy who looks to be in his 60s dropped off by a guy on a motorcycle.

I am bother with intestinal cramping of which I can trace back to at least 2 days ago. Japanese food makes for random diarrea, the worst of which is the stealthy time that hits you on the train. In the morning one can often note the line to use the sitting/squatting toilets at stations during rush hour, many brave souls have probably not been so fortunate as to aquire one. Luckly, I had taken medicine for just such an instance which would last for another 40 hours however the movement in one's colon is still unsettling. I excuse myself to at least relieve myself of liquids, but of couse have forgotten that toilets are often well hidden in a sea of buildings most of which have not opened yet. As I scurry about in a groggy daze I find that after 2 fruitless laps around the block that I will not find suitable facilities. Shambling back the the train station I am fortunate that as my transfer station I am able to gain entry. I then hurry myself back to my position.

The line has now moved. It appears that misunderstanding has taken place over where the line was to start. The campers have now re-arranged themselves using the new system. Luckily my friend in line has moved my stuff and saved my position in line and I express my thanks to him. As 10:00am approaches the clanking of metal shutters becomes perceptive and the morning sun has angled itself into the alleyway. We are then given tickets to reserve our specific system with a choice of black or white. I choose a black one. We are then escorted into the building to the second floor where we are rung up at the register. 18900yen.

Japanese Food Daibouken Part 1

Matcha Azuki Mushi Keki (Green Tea Azuki Steam Cake)

Matcha is green tea, Azuki is a sweet bean and a Mushi Cake is a steam cake. The actual cake portion tastes like pound cake, you can't really tell there's green tea. The Azuki beans are sweet though, kinda like baked beans. Needless to say they ruin the whole thing. I actually didn't buy this one, Abi did and she thoroughly enjoy them.

Rating: 2/5



Calbee Olive Oil Potato Chips (Exactly what it sounds like)

Olive Oil Potato Chips. It tastes like it sounds, olive oily with very slight salt. They are pretty good.

Rating: 4/5



Tonkatsu Sando (Fried Pork Sandwich)

For the not-in-the-know "Tonkatsu" is a fried pork patty usually served with a special sauce the resembles barbeque. "Sando" is simply a shortened Japanese word for "Sandwich." Tonkatsu a Japanese thing but what makes this interesting is that they put it into a sandwich. It's more-or-less like a chicken sandwich except it's pork and on white bread. The sauce is somewhat sweet. Overall it's not bad as Tonkatsu is one of the more bearable and dare I say good Japanese dishes.

Rating: 3/5



Nori Potato Chips (Seaweed Flavored Potato Chips)

Kinda sea-salty and with Nori which has a somewhat metallic taste. It definitely smells like the ocean though and the green pieces needed to be picked out of my teeth and facial hair for the rest of the day. These are actually kinda good.

Rating: 4/5



Subway Herbdog (It's a sandwich sausage)

A Subway Sandwich that is mostly just a seasoned sausage in a sandwich bun. Not terribly nasty like American Subway, but this isn't really a sandwich either.

Rating: 3/5



Sprite 3G (Sprite Energy Drink)

This is a Sprite Energy Drink. It always comes in a aluminum bottle. The 3Gs stand for Green Tea Caffine, Garauna, and Glucose. While probably massively unhealthy it is pretty good. It tastes like Sprite with a bit of Vitamin C, a little sour. Definately the best energy drink I've ever had.

Rating: 5/5



Pepsi White (Yogurt Pepsi)

This edition's Coup de Grace is Pepsi White. A recently released and most likely limited run soda it is a combination of Pepsi and yogurt. I'm pretty sure I know exactly what happened here:

Pepsi Exec: Let's mix Pepsi and fermented milk and package it such that it looks like a bottle of semen.

*approving chatter*

Well they suckered at least one person in to buying one so it's not a total failure, and I drank the whole thing. It's odd. The flavor is most similar to Calpis, another dairy flavored soft drink. It's hard to describe, it's not very sweet but it's not completely awful either. I tried it once and it didn't kill me but I don't think I'll go back for seconds.

Rating: 2.5/5

Japanese Cars

Japan is not a land of cars. This is probably due to most of their space being occupied by other non-car things. As such is is prohibitively expensive and people are much more likely to take a train to get anywhere. However, out in the suburbia (which in Japan simply means there is at least 1 tree for every 3 blocks) they are slightly more common as people may have places to go where the trains do not directly serve.

The Japanese cars you see in America aren't really Japanese at all. The first thing one notices when looking at a real Japanese car is that they are incredibly boxy. Perhaps this is simply an under-handed business dealing with the gas companies to reduce gas mileage, or perhaps deep within the underground chamber of the Mitsubishi Motor company there is an alter with a plate-gold Scion XB and burning incense. They are also very small which is to be expected. You find sports cars every now and then, usually owned by what would be college students spending their tuition on a car that will never be able to exceed 40 MPH on the crowded, narrow streets and pay some $6.5 a for a gallon of gas. Note that a while home parking space is rare, a garage is practically unheard of. Seems like a lot of money just to blue-ball one's self.

Despite having rigorous driving tests it is pretty obvious that they don't drive all that often. While they diligently stopping in front of crosswalks they will constantly take turns at high speed around blind corners which probably results in more than a few human okonomiyakis every year. In more urban areas it is impossible to make a turn at all, while given the right away at the light you need to contend with an infinite steam of pedestrians. The procedure is to awkwardly turn into the crosswalk forcing the pedestrians to go around you and finally go once the light is red and the pedestrian light ends. You have to wonder why they chose to drive at all.

The worst people are of course the motorcyclers. Like the US they like to make the exhaust system as loud as possible, unlike the US the streets are packed with tall buildings that will reverberate and deafen anyone on the block. To make matters worse in some sort of bizzaro-world twist they like to put large subs on their bikes. So you get a twin dose of aural rape with a an exhaust system system that sounds like a jet engine blasting over a heavy ground shaking bass of some pseudo-English Japanese rap. But if this was an attempt to be cool you'd at least think they'd get a bike that didn't look so damn ugly. Again although you might see Japanese branded bikes in the US that's not what the Japanese own. Instead of small crotch-rockets their bikes they are these long, fat bikes that look like big mopeds kinda like a Harley Davidson had sex with a vespa and gave birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome. the riders wear old fashion motorcycle helmets and goggles making the whole thing a gigantic explosion of douche-dom.

The second most annoying people are the giant moving billboards. Regular "Semi" trucks in Japan are small, basically a tiny cab with a huge back storage area yet still smaller than your average SUV. Moving billboards on the other hand do not transport anything and yet are the size of actual trailer trucks. Instead they contain large speakers and will blast out loud music into the street to advertise a new song album because the best way to get people to buy music is to make sure they can't hear. Though not nearly as bad are the political wagons. These are usually a minivan with a loud speaker where they basically shout propaganda at the the public. Again all this is an ironic twist in that the Japanese love their peace and quiet and to be loud is to be rude. They will text back and forth on the trains to avoid talking but there's surprisingly nothing stopping them from yelling at people from a car with a loud speaker. There's certainly some priorities that need to be straitened out.

An Introduction to the Japanese Garbage System

One of the most confusing things aside from the trains (which aren't so bad once you get used to it) is trying to figure out the impressively complex garbage system. Japan is of course in need of space and so of course there's not a whole lot of places to put garbage. Personally I say that the Mariana Trench would suffice but I guess that wouldn't fly the international community. Instead the solution they came up with was a confusing network of bins.

Garbage is primarily sorted into 4 groups:

Moeru Gomi (Burnable Garbage) - This is paper, string and fabric type stuff. Anything you could start a fire with.

Moenai Gomi (Non-Combustible Garbage) Plastic - This groups is plastic, things like grocery bags. plastic wrap and certain bottles. Note that when I say bottles it doesn't mean all bottles, PET bottles have their own bin.

PET Bottles - These are specific types of plastic bottles with a PET logo on them. Note that there will be a smaller receptacle for the caps next to the bin.

Cans - This is for aluminum cans.

This is a little annoying but perhaps bearable. However the astute reader will notice that you can potentially find items that do not fit into any of the aforementioned bins. What about something like the metallic wrapping you get with a bag of chips? Well in this case the proper procedure is to panic and stuff it into the nearest bin when nobody is looking. There is no real solution and it's a complete judgement call.

What makes the system absolutely maddening is the lack of bins and the excessive Japanese courtesy wrapping. Trash cans are extremely hard to find and there are pretty much no public ones. This means if you happened to grab say some food at a store you will be walking around with the packaging for maybe an hour or two before you can actually throw it away. But the killer is that everything in Japan is wrapped with so much damn wrapping that it puts Christmas Day to shame.

Lets say you go to McDonalds. You get a combo. The drink is in a cup with a lid and of course a wrapped straw, the fries are in their own container, and the burger is wrapped. This is fine to prevent a lot of mess but then the drink (or drinks) will be put into a separate paper bag, as will the fries and hamburgers (separated hot/cold). Then the whole thing is put into one very large paper bag and sealed with tape. All this wrapping is mandatory but they will at least ask you if you want a receipt to save a little on paper.

*Note that dine-in restaurant goers need to take heed that drinks and food are to be deposited into separate receptacles.

So you always wind up with these huge double to quadruply wrapped things and not a place to throw the packaging away.

Despite all the extra packaging the average Japanese trash bin will be maybe half the size of it's American equivalent and to fit down the narrow streets Garbage trucks are about half the size. I think that there must be some sort of wormhole in the back of every house because I can't figure out how they do it.

Garbage collection is also expensive. There are of course extra trash pickups for large items. TVs are $30 to dispose of, ironically worth more than the set in many cases. Refrigerators are $50.

With all this recycling you'd perhaps assume that it's at least saving the environment. But then think about what the bins mean. Paper is going to be burned, not recycled and I believe it is used to power some sort of generator but that's still a lot of chemicals that are perhaps enlarging an atmospheric ozone hole that will melt the ice caps and drown the inhabitants of Japan save for a couple of hikers on Fuji-san.

Japanese Phones

Japan is a cell-phone society. Every person has a cellphone, even little children. It's somewhat interesting seeing as Japanese phone companies are more evil than Adolf Hitler riding a motorcycle full of dynamite, pockets full of puppies, into a hospital full of comatose nun orphans with a tacky vanity license plate reading "See U l8r."

First let's talk about why cellphones are so popular. Few Japanese homes have actual landlines. Japan has some of the cheapest broadband service in the world but nobody has it because to hook up a line costs a small fortune seeing as they pretty much have to run the copper wire to your home. You can see how much of a mess the system is by looking at Japanese powerlines, which cluster like the silk sewn from some giant cybernetic Tarantula and supported by these giant cancer enducing pylons. Because of this it's easier to go wireless.

Most Japanese go for contract phones because they are cheaper in the long run but you will be spending a minimum of $300 up front for the phone and almost no contracts are less than 2 years. The phone will do everything from letting you watch short range broadcast TV, scan barcodes, video chat, surf the web and any sort of IR, bluetooth or other wireless protocol; pretty much anything you can think of except make a phone call. Japanese do nothing but text. It's not the same as in America where all the trendy douche bags have to be trendy douchebags by texting their friends in class just to show off their new iPhone (which makes your e-penis at least 10 times longer). The reason is texting is cheap and unlimited and a regular phone call would bankrupt Scrooge McDuck.

For instance, I have a prepaid phone. A phone call costs me 9yen (9 cents) every 6 seconds. You do the math and you find out a local phone call to someone on the same network costs nearly a dollar per minute (I know which company executives are having a Karaoke party tonight). This of course means that texting is my only real option. In addition they never really added English predictive text so with the amount of time it would take to type out a message to my friend in Shinjuku it would probably be faster to jump on a train and tell them in person.

Note that while texting is unlimited it's only to people on the same network. Using Softbank if my friend had Docomo it would cost about 10yen (10 cents) a message. Well I guess I can only expect so much from the same assholes that charged me an extra $8 for the charger. That's like selling a car without tires.

Japanese Food

While most people think of a food pyramid filled with various food groups in Japan it's more of a line. You have fish and you have rice.

At one point or another most people have been exposed to Japanese food, or at least what they think Japanese food is. A general rule of thumb: If it doesn't have enough of a face left in which to judge you it's probably not real Japanese.

Where as the Japanese salary men work long into the evening Japanese cooks don't really do any work. "The more alive it looks the more delicious it is" seems to be the Japanese kitchen policy. It's common to just have a whole fish that is no more than salted and grilled and it is up to you the eater to pull it apart. Using the same methods found in a high school biology lab it is possible to separate the vital organs from the edible flesh but unfortunately the same is not so true of the bones which will ultimately explode into a bunch of splintery shards in the back of your throat in the creature's final desperate show of defiance.

The other group is rice which is the deliciously bland cornerstone of any Japanese meal. Contrary to popular belief you should not add soy sauce to the rice, just enjoy it in its naked glory. You might think this is rather lacking in taste but the Japanese will assure you that they can taste the difference in types. I'm no rice expert but to me the types of rice seem to be: white, off-white, snowstorm-white, polar bear-white, arctic-white, colorless, extra white, mostly-white, possibly-white, could-be-white and probably-white. This is also added to almost any dish to distract you from the fact that your $15 pork plate had about as much protein as an amoeba. But hey at least you're full.

When not eating slimey sea creatures, they will ocassionally chow down on more normal things. Fruit is fairly common but ungodly expensive. Local in-season fruits can be had at a normal price but anything else goes through the roof. In Japan, there is a aim for perfection. If you go down to the market on B1 of the local department store you'll find what Bill Gates keeps in his fruit bowl. Here, the largest most perfect of all the fruits can be purchased individually wrapped. Rated (and priced) much like diamonds the roundest Melons with virtually no blemishes can be purchased for a cool $100 (Keep in mind that's 1 melon). There are also grapes the size of hand-fruits and pears that cold kill a man if dropped from a decent height sold in small sets costing $50-70. Supposedly these no-doubt delicious treats are to be given out as gifts and not eaten by the purchaser but eitherway the only thing the buyer of one these has more of than money is chromosomes.

This also indicates the fatal flaw with Japanese food, it's all presentation and often lacking substance. A $3 bowl of Ramen will look pretty nice even if it doesn't taste it often making it hard to make a good decision (Thankfully Ramen is one of the few good and cheap foods). So, for as neat as a 12 course ryoukan dinner looks (no less than half of them have the texture of boogers) it doesn't really seem to capture the raw deliciousness of a slightly smooshed, oversalted hamburger made by a 17 year old who made a poor life decision.

Japanese Dormitories

The CIEE handbook tells us not to make comparisons between dorms at home and those abroad. I think it was pretty obvious why: Dorms in Japan are awful and at least at the outset there are little redeeming values for running it this way. First let's start with the good:

-Meals are provided on most days, included.
-Laundry is free to do
-Rooms are furnished
-There's a sink in each room (at least in my case)
-You can take a bath

But that's really all there is at the moment and most of it doesn't matter:

-Meals are basically 2 types of breakfasts (Japanese and Western) and one dinner (Japanese) if you don't like it then you don't eat. Food is not unlimited except for rice. Furthermore food cannot be taken into or out of the cafeteria. Taking in might make sense if it wasn't free, but the reason they use for this is sanitation concerns as if outside food will explode into a cloud of toxic spores. Likewise taking it out is like opening the Ark of the Covenant and may lead to accidental face meltings. In addition you need to mark a book with when you have eaten, again with the excuse that it is for safety concerns. The TSA has nothing on Japanese kitchens which is quite surprising coming from a country that will willingly eat raw horse meat, and deadly puffer-fish.

-Laundry is free but Japan has a vendetta against dryers so those you have to pay for.

-While there is a sink in every room you need to activate a water heater beneath the sink 30 minutes prior to using any hot water.

-Baths must be taken naked with other dudes. But I suppose if you're the kind of guy who wears an expensive Prada man-purse that's not a problem.

Here's what sucks:

-As with most Japanese homes you must take off your shoes before entering the building in an entryway. Your shoes are then put into a locker and you must wear slippers around inside which for a person who hates slippers really sucks. But that's not all, to be extra anal you must use a public pair of toilet slippers when using the restroom, that is you need to change shoes again inside a bathroom and in any room with tatami you can't wear footwear at all. The idea is to keep the inside nice and clean but it just doesn't seem worth it.

-Curfew restrictions are ridiculous. You cannot leave before 6:30am and you must be back by 12:00am. Failure to adhere to the deadlines means you get locked out, because at the stroke of midnight the rapists come beating down on the doors like nocturnal zombies. While it's possible to stay out overnight you need to submit a form to do so.

-Visiting restrictions are even more ridiculous. There is complete gender separation. Females are not allowed into the dorms what-so-ever, that includes family members. Friends and family must be the same sex as you and you need to submit a form when they visit you. Friends must leave by 8:00pm but family can stay over for a couple nights. Maybe you could make a case for some over-protective female dorm going this route, but as a male I'm far more afraid of naked man-baths than the opposite sex (which you will invariably brush up against in a crowded train anyway).

These problems are only amplified by the fact that the dorms are a short (long) 50 minute commute from the campus. There are of course other problems which I will touch on later like the incomprehensible garbage system but those aren't really personal choices as much as they are societal failings. The is some good in that there is less idiocy, and more cleanliness and quiet but compared to what you lose it's a rather mock win. In some ways it makes you appreciate your loud inebriated roommate.