Welcome to a (presumably) reoccurring* post, where I try new things.

*Presumably reoccuring because eating will be a necessity while I live here, and because I have the curiosity of a cat with no sense of self-preservation.

This weeks theme is WHY DOES THIS TASTE LIKE THAT? Junk food with odd or unnecessary themes!

For Science! Sakura Flavored Pepsi/mountain dew

Looks like: violently, florescently pink- so bright I thought it would glow when I turned the lights out. Font is surprisingly violent-looking for the petal covered black label

Smells like: adolescent floral perfume, the kind that comes in a gift set from an older family member who doesn’t know you well but you’re “growing into such a young lady”

tastes like: someone carbonated sugar water in the same room as potpourri

target market: hummingbirds who like fragging n00bz

FOR SCIENCE! Sake Flavored KitKat Bars

looks like: A valentine’s day special: innocuous white chocolate with floral packaging.

smells like: your clothes the morning after a college bender- slight tang of alcohol, sickly sweet.

tastes like: your clothes the morning after a college bender, but crunchy

target market: secret work alcoholics

FOR SCIENCE! Sakura flavored Macarons

looks like: too cute to eat (thanks to my friend Goth Annie Hall for modeling)

smells like: almond essence, vanilla, rose, hint of tart jam, your best memory of childhood but this time with puppies

tastes like: melting effervescent classiness

target market: anyone who appreciates traditional French desserts combined with Japanese appreciation of cuteness (note: this Venn diagram is  circle)

BONUS: typical school lunch.

looks like: nothing like that weird brick pizza with melted plasticy cheese (no bitterness here)

smells like: a well-balanced, nutritious meal

tastes like: deliciousness

target market: something that you might feed children, the future of your country

I eat lunch with the students every day. It allows them to practice English in a lower stress environment than the classroom, and gives me the opportunity to finally experience being popular in 6th grade. The food is always something I look forward to- everyone gets the same meal, served in classrooms, and the general rule is that you finish what you are given. I haven’t met a lot of picky eaters in these classes yet.

Join us for later episodes of FOR SCIENCE! where we eat natto, ramune flavored alcohol (yes, really) and basically everything edible and not stapled down!

First, Kanamara Matsuri.

The line to enter Kanayama Shrine stretched around the block twice but moved surprisingly quickly. Once I was in sight of the shrine, I could hear karaoke shrines of “Africa” by Toto, and see a row of dick-themed food carts. A large assortment of dicks, big and small, decorated every square inch of the small shrine: in hair clips, t-shirts, and lollipops.

Kanamara Matsuri, or the Festival of the Steel Phallus, is a local tradition in the Kanayama Shrine. A long long time ago, a woman was haunted by a demon that would not allow her to marry. Any time she tried, the demon would attack her husband by waiting in her vagina and biting him when he tried to consumate the marriage. In desperation, she turned to a blacksmith (who ya gonna call??) who built her a steel phallus in order to break the demons teeth. She was able to marry, and the iron dildo that came to her rescule was venerated and enshrined.

The kanayama Shrine hosts the festival every year. Sex workers pray at the shrine for protection against STI’s, and young families pray for fertility. Much of the money now raised goes to HIV research.
Unfortunately by the time I got there, they had run out of dick pops, but my friend very kindly gave me one of her vagina pops.

Ultimately we left pretty early- the lines were long, and after a while strangers in a crowd accidentally hitting you with their giant balloon animal boners gets tiring and makes your pants staticky (there was a guy making balloon animals from long and skinny balloons, minus the ‘making them into animals’ part) But I got to eat a vagina pop in a shrine while listening to a cover of “It’s Raining Men” sung by a Japanese rock band, so I am much less disappointed on missing Seattle Pride this year.

 

 

I moved in about ten days ago. It’s a rural little area just a stone’s throw away from Tokyo, in a region famous for peanuts.

My neighborhood is quiet at night but wakes up early in the morning with commuters. Not all residents commute to Tokyo, though. There seem to be an unusual number of graveyards here.

I’m close to a huge recycle store with a daiso on top, so I’m less than a km away from anything a gaijin could want or need.

I’ve always considered myself a city person, I crave nightlife, lights and movement. A change of pace will be good for me, though. It amazes me that I can live less than an hour from the harried, bustling center of Shinjuku, and return to the peace and quiet here.

Last Friday night was a crash course in Tokyo nightlife and transportation.

First, dinner. Dear friend and senpai brought us all out for deep-fried everything and beer, as well as a plate of Russian Roulette- one of the very innocent looking pieces of sushi is hiding a wasabi bomb inside. Fortunately I wasn’t the lucky recipient… this time.

After dinner and Asahi, we made our way to a karaoke bar. A private room on a high floor overlooking the lights of Shibuya. We sang some Japanese and English pop songs (I will be forever grateful to my colleagues for tolerating my alcohol soaked rendition of Adele) and then hit a club on the ground floor.

At some point, I got seperated from the group, grabbed my things, and headed back to the train station early, looking forward to falling asleep in my own bed. Stepping over vomit onto a nearly empty train car I grabbed a seat and leaned back against the window. The train stopped gathering speed and coasted into the next station, doors opening while the car came to a halt. I sat patiently, using my tried and true method of problem-solving: denial that anything is wrong and the fervant wish that ignoring the unwanted issue will make it go away. A security guard stepped onto the train, informing me and the nearly prone man across the car that train service had stopped for the night, in the middle of the line.

Well, shit.

I stumbled out of the train car, more tired and irritated than tipsy. In corners of the train station, there were people huddled over, waiting out the night. For a city with such a booming nightlife, some aspects of Tokyo shut down quite early. While reliable and fairly inexpensive, Tokyo’s trains turn into pumpkins after midnight. I checked the price of an Uber, which came to well over 10,000 yen. Google maps informed me that the first trains started running again at 4:30. I decided to join the crowd of people waiting out the night.

Which is how I ended up at 7-11 in the middle of the night drinking wine with two strangers.

I stopped in a 7-11, Someone was already sleeping in the corner, so it seemed like a good location to sit down and charge my phone. I made a few friends there, two very friendly pilots with a private airline out exploring the nightlife, and we stood and chatted about Donald Trump and American politics for a few hours, until the trains started running again. At some point the sleeping man stood up, looked around as if in surprise, and left.In a bizarre mix of American retail apathy and Japanese hospitality, the 7-11 workers never once acknowledged that we were standing around in their shop, allowing us to sit out the night and discuss world events. 7-11, with their international ATM’s, delicious and quick food, and better nighttime service than I’ve gotten in some hotels, will always hold a place in my heart.

I got on the earliest train possible, made my connection, and promptly fell asleep on the train in the wrong direction. I returned home about 7 hours later than intended no worse for wear, and, following Murphy’s Law, ran into more of my neighbors then I had previously ever met.

What started as a quick drink with coworkers turned into a whirlwind reason that I love travel: unideal situations- delayed flights, stopped trains- are often the best way to meet people and have discussions you never would have normally.

And with that discovery came the Line camera edit function, which allows you to take adorable selfies and edit them with anime eyes and heart stickers (and apparently volumized breasts, but I haven’t gotten that far yet)

So now my new hobby is taking context quotes from Slavoj Zizek and transposing them over the pastel hearts and stars. It’s like Nihilisa Frank, but without that depressing optimism of the 90’s!

In other news, I haven’t left my apartment today. These two events may or may or not be related.