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名古屋で人生を楽しむ

This week is the Obon holiday in Japan. And although it's not an official government holiday, pretty much all non-service businesses shut down during this time. So on one of the days I went to Odawara (小田原) in Kanagawa prefecture to take part in a ceremony for this holiday. Here are some pictures:

小田原 2008-08-15

On Saturday, the hottest day of the year so far all across Japan, I went to Gifu city, about a 25 minute train ride from Nagoya, to watch one of the most famous annual fireworks displays in the country - the Nagaragawa fireworks. We got there early enough and sweat a lot in the hot sun, but it was sure worth it for 1 hour and 45 minutes of one of the most memorable pyrotechnics exhibitions I've seen. Probably about five times during the display there were outbursts worthy of grand finales in most of the fireworks shows I'd seen before in my life. I know the quality of the photographs aren't the best, but the movies, if you can download them, hopefully begin to give you a little taste.

長良川の花火

Here are the links to the videos：

(And by the way, if these files are too big for you to download, I did put a few of them on youtube：1, 2, 3,
4.)

(8.9M)	(28M)
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(13M)

Today I finally got the results back from the KanjiKentei I took last month. I was really pleased to have passed both level 7 and level 6! It's kind of funny, but these are tests on the level of 4th and 5th graders, but, dammit, I'm pretty proud of it. And so now it's off to, in October, level 5 and maybe 4, and in December the JLPT (Japanese Level Proficiency Test, or something like that). I'm going for level 2 in that one, but that will be much more of a challenge, I think. Anyway, they do a really great job of making you feel good with your accomplishments with the nice certificates and also very well detailed assessments of the tests.

The building next door just caught fire on the second floor. I live on the third floor, and the source of the fire was like 50m from my apartment. But in reality, apart from the loud noises and the fire engines, not too much to go on about. I'd post pictures, but I didn't have my phone with me when I evacuated (stupidly). Not that much to see. Black smoke billowing out of the window(strong burning tire smell), getting really strong, then changing to light white smoke and you think it's under control. But then some pretty big flames for about a minute before they were doused. It doesn't appear that anyone was hurt, but the Shop 99 downstairs got drenched.
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OK, after posting, I did get a few pictures. They're not very good though. Sorry about the bad quality. Maybe I'll add some more tomorrow morning if I wake up early enough.

火事

I haven't written in quite a while for many reasons. One is that I've been spending a lot of time studying for the Kanken, or Kanji Kentei, or Japanese Chinese character proficiency test. Maybe that doesn't make sense to some people, anyway, to put it simply, much of Japanese is written in Chinese characters, so it's good to have proficiency in them if you want to learn Japanese.

A few months ago, I signed up online to take this test today. I actually took two tests, level 7 and level 6. The highest and most difficult is level one, the easiest is level 10. The tests are exactly one hour long, and I'm sure that this is an experience that Japanese go through untold times in their lives. This experience was quite interesting. For the first test, there were 100 test takers. Three of us were adults, the rest were all very young children, probably around 8-11 years old. In the second test, there were 80 test takers, and two of us adults. As you might imagine, it's a little humbling to have an eight-year-old child finish a test 20 minutes ahead of you when you're struggling to finish in time.

One nice thing about these tests is that they allow you to take the question sheets home with you, so you can check and see how you did right away. I'm pretty confident about my level 7 test, and even my level 6 test, I think I got enough answers correct. However, it might depend on if I wrote neatly enough and my characters were well-formed enough to be marked right. We'll see. Anyways, next time, in October, I'll at least take level 5 for sure, and maybe level 4. I am looking forward to the time when I can take the higher levels when there might be more adults taking the test. Anyway, if anyone's interested, I scanned my test papers, and you can see them here:

Level 7 part 1
Level 7 part 2
Level 6 part 1
Level 6 part 2

Went back to Tokuzo in Imaike last night to see Bob Log 3. Hadn't seen him since, I don't know, 2002 or so in SF (at Bimbo's). He's exactly as I remembered, although with the smaller club it was a little better view. Plus there were three other bands, all pretty memorable, although the third one, ハッチハッチェル・バンド (Hachihacher Band? I'm not sure what it means) was pretty memorable. They had us all singing a song about monkeys and gorillas at the end of their set.

Dang but this camera takes crappy photos for the most part, doesn't it?

Saturday night, went to Casablanca, this really close and wonderful Moroccan place. The food was really amazing. I've been to many great Middle Eastern restaurants before in San Francisco and in the UAE among other places. But I was really pleasantly surprised at the new flavors we were treated to. The shish kebabs had mouthwatering whitefish. The hummus had exceptional spiciness. And there was a great chicken dish with cinnamon, dates, white beans and sesame seeds. And I met some interesting new people. Oh and to top it all off, I made a fool of myself on stage dancing with a belly dancer. And I wasn't even drunk.

Casablanca

Oh, by the way, today we walked up a mountain six times. すごい気持ちよかった。

Yesterday's randomly picked city to visit was Obama, in Fukui prefecture. It's a really tiny town on the Sea of Japan that I chose, of course, for its name. Ever since Barack Obama started running for president, this little town has started a publicity campaign of its own, basically trying to cash in on the name. There's a little local group that supports his candidacy, and some correspondence between the candidate and the mayor. I'm not sure how much it's done for the tourism trade, however, because I visited on a holiday weekend and there wasn't too much tourist activity. Oh well, it was a nice relaxing day by the sea, and I got some good views of some hawks, a really dangerous-looking fishing pier, and a closeup view of a bunch of those concrete things they have around harbors using them for whatever they're used for. Also the train ride there and back was pleasant enough. A day well spent.

小浜

Today, because my company generously cares for our health, I went to the doctor for the first time in Japan for a checkup. I certainly experienced some of the differences between Japanese and American medicine. The first thing was I got to take a stool sample for the first time in my life! It was greatly aided by this poster with the cute little turd on it demonstrating the correct way to sit on the toilet to collect your sample. I found this a little strange. I mean, do anthropomorphised turds shit out little people?

The actual checkup was pretty normal for the most part, except for some key differences. It was pretty much like the kind of thing we used to have to do in the military, where you go around to all these different stations with your folder and you get checked out for each diagnostic - blood, chest X-ray, eyes, ears, etc. Except it was much better organized and no one was yelling at me. The most significant part, by far, though was the stomach cancer screening. You can't eat or drink anything (including water) from the night before to prepare you for it. Then you stand on this platform, and take some white stuff, (basically just like pop rocks) which give you gas and you're not supposed to burp. The big thing though is that they make you drink a thick slurry of white stuff - this is barium. Now I was told I could refuse to take the stuff, but my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to convince anyone of anything, so I gave in. (Barium is a low-level radioactive substance, and if there's one thing we learned in the Navy Nuclear Power program it's that any exposure to radiation increases your risk of cancer, so I still try to reduce my exposure to X-rays and stuff as much as I can). Now, the reason for this procedure is that Japan has a high rate of stomach cancer (10 times higher than the US). And they were really adamant about how important this procedure is. "If you do this we'll diagnose if you have cancer. You don't want cancer, do you?"

The procedure itself is actually pretty neat, because you can watch a screen and see the stuff go down your throat and into your stomach. You can see your spine and all your organs in real time, just like those fluoroscope movies of people eating they used to show us as kids. Then, the guy moves the table into all sorts of positions to see how the barium flows and if there are any growths, I guess there would be irregularities.

But anyways, my point is, this stuff is nasty. Immediately after giving it to you they give you this big warning sheet and a couple of laxatives to make sure you get the stuff out of your system as soon as possible.

I'm just thinking that perhaps the Japanese have such a high rate of stomach cancer is because they all do chest X-rays and drink barium shakes once a year, you know!

Anyways, I give this checkup 3 Godzillas.

They did give me a coupon for a free drink at the local cafe, but still, a checkup isn't supposed to make you feel worse.

So today I had ramen again for the first time in like three weeks. I went to the Ramen Ninja, and discovered that a place called Hasegawa is really close - just a block from the TV Tower. I had the Spicy Beef Ramen - geez, I haven't had beef ramen in like two years, if ever. It was really Chinese-tasting, something about the vegetables (not MSG-y). Even though the soup was light, it was full of spicy beefy flavor, and even though the noodles were the curly kind, which I don't like so much, it was a really satisfying bowl. I think what really made it was the atmosphere. The place was really clean and bright, with lots of windows and pleasant, seasonal decorations. The tables were highly polished wood, there was a big table in the middle that seated like twenty, and smaller couple tables all around. Also the chairs were really cool heavy circular objects that were a joy to sit on. It didn't hurt that some of the customers were not unattractive. I'll be patronizing this establishment again. Four godzillas.

Now, back to Days of Our Lives. I really dig John Black's character these days.