I thought I took a picture of a salon, but I can’t find it. So here’s a repost from my salon that failed post.

I studied about 2 hours every day and learned almost everything in a week. The next class was way easier to understand and I wrote about half in English, half in Hiragana and it was pretty sweet to be able to read Japanese. It’s like reading some cryptic language… and I feel cool… and now I totally sound like a foreigner by saying that. But it’s all good because now I can read things like “udon” and “karaage” and that’s a step in the right direction in my book.

The next week I focused on kya, gya, and characters like that, so it took about 2 weeks to learn everything. Am I a pro? No. I’m pretty slow when reading words and sometimes I have to think about what the character is but it’s a start! I decided to stop studying and dedicate time to work and our wedding that’s coming up. I still look at my flash cards I made every day and have read things every day so it’s still staying fresh, I’m just not studying every day. That should change on June 1st through!

The memberships I’ve found in Japan vary from 6500-10,000 Yen (about $65-100 USD) per month. The hours are 9am-9pm or similar, and I’d rather be at the gym by 7am. There are strange rules like every Thursday it’s closed, or if you pay less you can only be there 1-9pm on the weekdays, or you can have a weekend only memberhsip for 6500, and all holidays the gym is closed. Also you can only pay through a bank account, so you have to open one at the bank they use.

photo credit: takeratta

So let’s break this down… You can’t go on holidays, you can’t go on certain days (like a Thursday, or every other Monday), you can only go around 9am-9pm. What I just mentioned is 8900-10,000 yen per month. So let’s say 10,000 to be safe after taxes and bank fees. If you spend 2 hours total in a gym and go 3 times a week which comes to 24 hours per month you end up paying 416 ($4) per hour to go to the gym. What!? That’s insane. I also asked how much the employees make at one place and they said they start at 800 yen per hour. What!?

By the way, I went to all gyms within a 15 minute walk. Most were full of physically fit people. However I stopped at a place in Fukuoka called American Gym and all of the people inside were freakin’ HUGE! It was an older gym, darker with only a few windows, and felt like people were training for the Strongman competition. Check out the picture of the sign taken by e-chan.

I did some searching, I did some asking, and I visited the very helpful foreigners center in Fukuoka called The Rainbow Center. I found out that each ward has a community center with a gym, basketball court, and other things. My ward’s community center has a small gym with decent equipment. It’s open from 9-9 as well and if you go when it’s open the equipment is available and you don’t have to deal with many people. The price on this… 260 Yen for two hours. That’s what I’m talking about! If you go 3 times a week per month you’re looking at 3120 Yen. It costs an extra 30 yen to use the extremely small locker so everybody just puts their gym bag in the corner of the workout area which is cool with me. This is one of the many deals I’ve found in Japan so far.

Here’s a picture of Gold’s Gym here in Japan taken by charlton_b. It’s always interesting seeing things here that I’ve seen in America.

This is a picture of the urinals. I haven’t seen a mini urinal yet, they’re all huge and they start from the floor and go up about 1 meter or so.

 This next one is the style I’m used to, the 2nd is traditional Japanese (or Asian?) style, and the 3rd and 4th are of a public toilet near the river which look pretty sweet (except the litter around it). I was going share the pictures of these two entrances because I thought they look cool, but I thought I’d snap the other ones too so people can see a difference in styles.

I wasn’t going to talk about it and I was going to fix the problem, but just two days after I noticed this, my fiancee mentioned that I’m getting skinny. She says she wants me to eat more and either get some extra baggage (aka fat) or bulk up. For now I’ll just eat more and after the wedding I’ll hit the gym. I’m 1.9m (6′2″) and 78kg (172lbs). Within a month I hope to stop tall-skinny trend and start working my way back up to 86kg (190lbs). By the way I was 86.5kg when I moved to Japan.

I can’t believe it’s in 26 days! In about 20 days some guests from America will arrive so that gives us a little less than three weeks to finish everything up. I know we can handle it and I’ll be memorizing itinerary to help everything go smoothly, but I still need to finalize my vows, I need to write a speech for the reception as well as a few other things I want to say, and memorize some lyrics of a Japanese song for one of our duets (luckily I have the easy part!). We’ve added some events to our wedding, removed some, added some new things.

Mai’s good friend in Tokyo is a designer and has been working on a unique wedding dress since September. I haven’t seen it of course but I hear it looks amazing so far.

How do other foreigners have their wedding in Japan? I’m not quite sure. So far I’ve seen the traditional Japanese wedding with full kimono and I’ve seen the ‘western style’ type of wedding at a chapel or restaurant with a reception dinner following. We’ll be having a western style with a touch of Steve and Mai and our closest friends and relatives will be attending. I’ll probably post some pictures next month.

I’d say it’s smaller than this huge Coke I saw at a crepes store. And it’s only 47 yen more than the 160ml can of Coke I found at Sunny (a grocery store chain).

First of all before your journey you’ll need 100 Yen. That’s right, tax is already included in the price!

 Next, you’ll need to find a Daily Yamazaki convenience store. It looks like this (I got the picture from Wikipedia)

And here are some pictures of the beast of a drink!

For the ultimate cheap snack I recommend this 100 Yen Coke and the 105 Yen Tiramisu. Both combined are cheaper than the Ishiyaki Imo from the back of the traveling guy’s truck.

The price… 105 Yen.
The satisfaction… 80%

It seems to have more pudding and fluffier cake than the 300 Yen Tiramisu’s at 7-11, but it’s nice because it’s light, sweet, and delicious.  I took some pictures so you can see it in action!

This what 105 Yen looks like. This is all you need to get this party started. Reminds me of a quarter and a big penny with a hole in it.

And this is what a Family Mart looks like (picture taken from Wikipedia)

And this is the Tiramisu. The conbini clerks also give you tools to conquer your quests. Today’s weapon of choice is a tiny tiny spoon.

As I open the container I see it has Japanese writing on each side. I can’t read it so I assume it says “Tastes great! Only 105 Yen hellz yeah! Fat free and calorie free, just like the State Fair food you eat once a year back home! You should try to put it on a stick and deep fry it some day. Enjoy! / 140ml”

And here it is in the final stage of life. It took 2 minutes to devour with the tiny spoon. I like the spoon… it forces me to slow down and enjoy things.

I’ve seen some pictures of the trees, I heard they’re beautiful, I heard they’re romantic, I heard they’re magical, but I didn’t hear about the crazy drunken madness at night! We went to experience Hanami (flower viewing, enjoying tasty bento similar to this) at Ohori koen (means… Ohori park). I thought I was in for a romantic sakura viewing… but in fact… it was more of a fun time packed full of people, mostly drunk office workers, with some romantic moments in the quiet areas (near the temple).

The road to the park was lined up with vendors selling things from chocholate covered bananas to takoyoki (a grilled octopus dish). There were some families with kids running around having a good time and couples eating bento together, and then… there were tons of drunk people with sake, sho chu, and grills. Apparently the people under the trees brought tarps in advance and 1-2 people reserved their spot. Each cluster seemed to stay within their group of people which is good when family + drunk people are mixed.

We took some pictures but most of them ended up blurry and I took a lot of video which I haven’t taken off the camera. Here are a few of the decent pictures from that night.

If I had to sum up this experience in one sentance I’d say… it was like a tailgating party for the sakura football game. Ahh… good times, good times.

I’ve been in Japan for a little over 6 months and I like the country a lot. It feels like I’m in another world, a much different feeling I get from traveling to other countries. My main barrier is that I don’t speak the language and that makes it difficult to do simple things like make dinner plans, learn about current events in the area, or even get the help I might need when shopping. I’d say I know about 50 words at one given time (sometimes I learn new ones but forget others) and that helps, but it’s not good enough. My sentances are basic too. People are probably tired of me asking if they’re good, the weather is nice, and I’ll have a draft a beer.

I picked up a book of some basic vocabulary the last time I was at Costco, and an Australian friend gave me a Hiragana book as a gift which I’ve tried out and then became lazy.

My goal is to learn Hiragana in about 3 months, so I’ve set a goal of August 1st. And I plan on studying vocabulary as much as I study Hiragana. I know I can do this if I hit the books every day.

Update (April 14): After the comments and encouragement you guys left I’ve learned about a new book, new methods, and some new websites so I’ve decided to update my goal. I’ve been very motivated and went to a 90 minute Japanese conversation lesson on Saturday. The teacher was speaking Japanese and using Hiragana and Katakana to explain things which tells me I need to speed things up! So I’ve set a new goal of learning Hiragana in 3 weeks  like claytonian mentioned, which is May 2nd. Then I’ll focus on Katakana.

Unfortunately it seems like they were open for a few weeks and then closed up shop or moved. I’m not sure why, but the prices were comparable or a bit cheaper than other hair salons in the area.

Something that I find interesting is even though construction can be happening downtown in multiple locations, I don’t seem to notice it. That’s because they usually block off the construction site wtih some type of wall or gate that surrounds the entire area. I’ve seen some cheap plastic walls, some expensive plastic walls with windows, and some wooden walls. I snapped some pics on a Sunday, so no workers were harmed in the photographing.

Here’s a picture of some type of portable wall

Ooo! This is the heavy duty wall with VIP windows!

I’m VIP, here’s proof, I’m looking through the window.

And here’s another construction location. It looks like they’re escavating dinosaurs.

Here are the directions. As you can see there are instructions for food service preparation and the two bags come to a combined total of 102 servings.

Here’s the box with the 2 bags of Oatmeal that was inside.

Here’s are some details.

This is after I filled up my small container that lasts about 2 months. Now I’m good to go!

So here we are… going into the Starbucks that’s inside Tsutaya.

For the record… Tsutaya is pretty sweet. It’s 6 stories and you can rent DVDs, CDs, buy them, get books and magazines, and enjoy some Starbucks. The DVD releases that have been out for a while usually run on a special that’s 4 DVDs for 1000 Yen. I’d say about $9-10 US.

Here’s kind of a cool photo

And here’s a picture I took from Starbucks of Starbucks across the street while enjoying some coffee with some friends.

By having so many Starbucks so close to me I’d have to say

1. It’s kind of crazy in my opinion
2. They are is busy and the city is big
3. I love it!

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First of all, what is shochu? It’s a distilled drink and I’ve seen 20%, 25%, and 40% strength with most of them being 20-25%. There are over 20 varieties and the most popular main ingredients are potato, rice, or barley. How does it taste? I’d say it tastes similar to sake but less fruity, it has a bite, and the 40% tastes like whiskey. If I were to create shochu from existing drinks I’d take sake, remove the fruity flavor and smoothness, then I’d take Gin and remove the pine tree flavor, and mix them. If you want to know more, here’s a wikipedia link. Shochu ranges in price and you can get a good brand for 900 Yen or up. If you missed missed my liquor price check post, check out my alcohol prices in Japan.

All, or almost all, of the Kyushu Island shochu distilleries were present at this fair. It was 300 Yen in advance, 500 at the door, and you got sample as many different types of shochu and plum wine as you wanted. Each taste is about one shot or half of a shot so you definitely had to pace yourself and luckily it appeared that everybody was doing just that. Also they made you get a bracelet showing that you’re not driving home before you started your shochu adventure. The guys handing out the 40% shochu were giving me about 1-2 shots worth every time! I ask for a little, then that’s 1 shot, it was crazy.

POTATOES HOOOOOOOO! That’s right, rollin VIP in the JP yo. We visited one of the booths from Kagoshima to enjoy a tasty sample of their sweet potato shochu. The people at the booth and Mai got to talking about Kagoshima and their shochu. The company is one Mai’s friends favorites back in the U.S. so we bought two small bottles for 500 yen as a gift which were connected nicely in twine. As an added bonus they gave us a big bag of sweet potatoes to go along with it! How awesome is that? Word on the street is that Kagoshima is famous for sweet potatoes. I have yet to eat a sweet potato while drinking shochu made from potatoes, but it’s on my list of things to do. The second part of our VIP status happened when we were at a booth who insisted on giving me a double shot of the strong whiskey type of shochu which was 45%. And then they gave us two small bottles for free. That was surprising and very cool of them. He kept saying “It’s good, it’s good!” and I kept thinking “It tastes like ass! It tastes like ass!” but I got to enjoy some last week and he’s right, it’s good. *Note: Sweet potato shochu is not sweet.

Here are more pictures from the shochu fair. First I want to start with my favorite ones. The first one is Mai puring some shochu from a barrel

Fans of MXC will appreciate this one! Hideo Higashikokubaru is now governor of Miyazaki Prefecture.

Here’s a tasty snack. It tastes ok.

Huge Mario and other games for the kids.

And now here are the rest of the pictures I took. After the Yahoo! Dome we headed over to Hawks’ Town and I’ll post about that in the next few days.
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 This time our nabe was filled with a soup, udon noodles, carrots, cabbage, crab legs aka ‘kani’ (pronounced: Connie), and some sausages. I think the sausages give it a western style taste and this time we used cabbage instead of “hakusai” (pronounced: hawk-sai, or hawkseye) which is Chinese cabbage. We cooked it on a burner right on the living room table. The table is called a kotatsu (pronounced koh-ta-tsu). A kotatsu is  a table used mostly in Japan and is a wooden table covered by a heavy blanket with a built in heater underneath to keep you warm. Great for warm winters! Bad for people with dust allergies. I’ve never had it before coming to Japan but here they have nabe restaurants which are very affordable. If you get the chance you should enjoy some nabe with a group of friends. Maybe there are some restaurants in your country that offer nabe, but it might take some investigating to find them.

With all the tiny cute coffees around I wonder if my eyes are deceiving me and it is actually a 24oz cup. I guess I’ll never know unless I buy one, bring it home, and measure it which probably won’t be happening.

Because it was too much chocolate to handle, my fiancee gave me a gift on the 13th, and then one on the 14th. On the 13th she hand made a chocolate parfait! It was amazing! It looked and tasted like it was expensive and hand crafted by a chef. It contained chocolate, ice cream, more chocolate, cake, chocolate covered crispy things, and strawberry Pocky. Oh, and hand whipped whip cream! Here are a few pictures (sorry for the blurriness, I’m not used to my friends camera yet). It was delicious.

On Valentine’s Day she gave me a wonderfully wrapped gift. It looked expensive and the presentation was great, so at first I thought she bought it at some expensive shop. She told me that she hand made the chocolate using ‘an idea’ but no recipe and a few ingredients she thought would work. And she wrapped it herself.

Here’s my blurry picture of the chocolates when I opened the cute basket they were in.

And finally here are the chocolates she made. They were powered with cocoa and had a very rich taste. It wasn’t a dark chocolate taste, and wasn’t a milk chocolate taste, it felt like a truffle when I ate it, but it was nothing I’ve tasted before.

When I opened the gift I felt overwhelmed and a little teary eyed when I ate the first piece because I know she spent all of that time and effort to prepare everything and that’s very special to me. Even when it’s not a holiday she often does special things like this to show me how she feels about me, and she is the first person in my life to ever do this. She’s so great. This was the best Valentine’s Day ever.

1. First of all I have been interviewed by the Daily J. You can see Part 1 here and Part 2 here. I have to say thanks to the Daily J because they took an initiative and contacted me which was great.
2. The second good thing is my blog has been reviewed at Nick’s blog, Long Countdown. It gives a nice review of my site and I appreciate the time he took to take a look through Japan it UP! He does rant about ‘how anonymous should an anonymous blog be’ which he speaks of the name ‘Smoother’ and that fine. Nobody has ever inquired about it. Could it be my last name? How about a nick name? What about part of a company name? Regardless of this, it has got me to thinking. I first started this blog for friends and family and find a lot of other people visiting here so I just changed things up to show my first name Steve. Nice to meet you
3. The third thing is my camera. I haven’t talked about this sad moment in life, but my digital camera broke about 1 month before coming to Japan and I haven’t gotten around to buying a new one. It’s sad because it was a gift from my fiancee, DOH! I’ve been using my fiancee’s but it’s tough because she uses it a lot and then we have problems finding it (and the memory card) when we want it. A friend of ours from Kumamoto came to visit and forgot his camera. What’s the good news? Well… I’ve been using his camera for as long as the battery lasts and now I have some interesting pictures to post!

Stay tuned!

Speaking of McDonald’s, their profit grew five-fold according to The Japan Times

McDonald’s Holdings Co. (Japan) Ltd. said Thursday its consolidated net profit in 2007 was five times higher than in the previous year, totaling Â¥7.82 billion on record high sales of Â¥395.06 billion, up 11.1 percent.

I find that pretty interesting.