Tennoji Zoo

I’m not even going to apologize for not having posted in over a month. I’ve been busy, and that’s the story I’m going to stick with. I’ve written three posts simultaneously, so there are two more following this one. A few days ago we went into Tennoji to the zoo. It was a nicer zoo than I had imagined, but I still thought the enclosures were a bit small for the animals. Of course, ten minutes after we got there, Hannah fell asleep. Rie and I walked around for an hour or so until she woke up. Hannah was indifferent to a lot of the animals mainly due to the fact that they just sat there like pieces of furniture. She did respond to the birds, and was terrified by the pelicans because they were making strange pelican noises. Here are some photos at the zoo as well as some other recent ones.

Hannah started eating “solid” food this week. Here she dines on mashed rice

We also bought a baby walker, which she took to immediately. This has helped us immensely, as it now eats up an extra half-hour of the day’s repertoire

On Vacation!

I’ve been on vacation for about two weeks now (although last week was spent submitting final grades for my classes). The last week of classes were spent testing, so that was a fairly easy one to get through. On Tuesdays I teach CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). During the last week, while my students were diligently finishing up their coursework, I was naturally surfing the Internet trying to amuse myself for 90 minutes. I happened to discover that David Byrne was going to be performing in Osaka that Friday night, so I told my colleague in the next room (also surfing the Net), who is a huge Talking Heads fan , about it and we ended up getting tickets. The concert was at Namba Hatch, a cool looking performing arts center in south Osaka.

Having no idea how many people would be at the concert, or even where our seats were, we got there about an hour early. As it turned out, there were only about 600 people, and it was festival seating. We ended up in the third row about ten meters off to the right of the microphone. The show was incredible! The concert was promoted as a showcase of the music Byrne and producer Brian Eno have made together. I wasn’t expecting a lot of Talking Heads stuff, but there were quite a few of the classic hits. He did three encores, which is unheard of in Japan, due to the subdued nature of Japanese audiences. I was especially surprised to see only a handful of non-Japanese there. I was anticipating a large number of western ex-pats to fill the auditorium. I’m not complaining. It was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in about ten years. I also highly recommend listening to the newest Byrne/Eno album, which you can do here.</pnd wh

New Year’s and Other Stuff

We went to Saitama for ten days  to visit Rie’s family over the New Year’s holiday. It was the first time for Hannah to take the plane.  There were no problems going there or coming back. To be fair, the flight from Osaka to Tokyo is less than an hour. It takes us longer than that just to get from our apartment to the airport. Still, it was good practice for when we do the marathon flight back to the States this summer. Rie’s brother picked us up and dropped us off at the airport, which was great because it saved us the trouble dealing with the train going to Saitama. The trip consisted of the usual things (visiting friends & relatives, going into Tokyo and  losing a lot of money at pachinko). This time, however, there were a few additional highlights:

Rie, her sister and I went to see the Blue Man Group in Tokyo. It was the same show that we saw in London, but still worth the price of admission. The only problem was that the show relies a lot on audience participation, which doesn’t go over very well with a Japanese audience. I cannot express in words how much of a difference there was in atmosphere between the London show and the Tokyo show. Actually, I can express it in words. Four words to be exact.

London: electrical excitement

Tokyo: confused tranquility

After the show we went into the Ginza district to eat at a famous Indian curry restaurant. As we sat down, Rie asked me if I knew who the man was sitting in the corner. I didn’t. Turns out he was the biggest Kabuki performer in Japan. I’m aware that this man is a huge celebrity here, but my level of enthusiasm was that as if I had been in France and someone told me the man sitting at the counter was the country’s top chocolatier. And believe me, my knowledge of chocolate far outweighs my knowledge of Kabuki. The curry was very nice, but bordered the limit of spiciness that my palate can endure.

Six or seven years ago, on another trip to Tokyo, Rie and I had bought keitais (cell phones). To have the same cell phone for seven years in Japan is roughly the equivalent of using the same toothbrush for the same amount of time. Our keitai phone provider finally sent us a message saying that our phone service would be discontinued in February unless we bought new phones. When you buy a new keitai in Japan, if you buy with the same company, you get points depending on how much you use it and what you do with it. These points are then converted into cash to go toward the new keitai payment. Since most people renew their phones every two years or so, they get maybe two or three thousand yen ($20-$30). My total came to over seventeen thousand yen ($175). My head filled with images of a new iphone, all black and shiny with a crystal clear screen ready to transmit my entire collection of “The Family Guy”. Oddly enough, Rie’s head filled with those same images, which is why I now have a keitai  that, by Japanese standards, is only a few steps up from the old Motorola cell phones of the 1970s. To be honest, I am very happy with it since I don’t use it for anything but calling and texting.

Another grand moment came when we found a shoe store that sells nothing but big-sized shoes. Before, finding shoes that fit was nearly impossible. I had always had to wait and buy shoes on my trips back to the States. This store has a huge selection (although some were not to my taste). They also have a website, so I can order over the Internet and they will send them to Osaka.

I swear that I do have hair. For some reason I look bald under bright lights…as well as 10 years older

Some other pics from New Year’s:

Ginza District

Shinjuku District

Shinjuku District

Ueno District