Tokyo nights

Doing my best

After several unfortunate events this month (including my mother's recent bad health), I'm finding it very hard to get into the Christmas spirit. All the joy of the season seems to have been sucked right out of me, and all I can think of is being alone.

Even my Mochi can't keep me happy. I did enjoy buying him his Christmas presents, though. Two of which I gave him early because the packages took up too much room in the house.

Present 1: A new super squishy and soft sheepskin (synthetic) blanket for his bed

You behold a satisfied cat!

The second gift was a new stuffed toy that is a replica of one I accidentally destroyed in the washing machine. He was bereft without it, so I just had to get him another one.

 

I woke him up in this shot, hence the cranky face. He's not even a year old and already a grumpy old man.

My mom sent me a package in the mail for xmas and it should arrive by UPS tomorrow. Hopefully I can pull it together by Friday and wake up happy it's the holidays. Ms. Gloomy, that's me.

A little self-promotion

I finally got around to updating my food blog over at "Mochi". Check it out! I have my first Christmas cookie recipe up!

Just a quick photo

Went to see a movie the other night with a friend. I got to the hills too early, so I wanted to shop around for a clutch purse for my big party on Saturday. The rain was against me. I couldn't even get from the Mori Art museum to Banana Republic because of the strong wind and rain.

I did get this great photo from the shelter of the hills, though. You can see a bit of Tokyo Tower lit up. Too bad about all the fog from the rain. Enjoy.

A photo post, hurrah!

Since my job is in the backwoods of Saitama (literally, I'm walking through rice fields to get there), it has some really nice scenery on the way. I thought I'd share one day's walk to and from work. Excuse the poor quality of some shots. I took them with my cellphone and had to blow a few of them up so that you could see them in this post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Grief!

Okay, this post has nothing whatsoever do to with Japan.

I was watching this video on youtube that has gone viral called "surprised kitty." I'm sure most of you have seen it. It is indeed cute and addictive. After I had finished the video, the usual suggestion videos popped up on the screen. Three of them were "re: surprised kitty" videos. Yes, videos of people filming their reactions to watching the surprised kitty video. Jesus Christ.  You can see one of them here:

....eeyyaahhhh. Cuz everyone on the internet is DYING to know your reaction to a kitten being tickled.

Although, I find videos like that far less irritating than the idiots who filmed their reactions to watching the Twilight series trailers. THE TRAILERS, not even the actual movie. Twihards are scary beings

Case in point:

I have no more words. Just head shaking.

Tokyo Courts Den of Iniquity

I had this cute photo post I was going to do of fall scenery, but something is bothering me too much right now. I may post it on the weekend.

Once again I am disappointed by a verdict handed down from a Japanese court of law. Proof that in Japan the big fish always wins, whether they are guilty or not.

In my company, an older coworker was being pressured to quit. In Japan, full time employees of a company are nearly impossible to fire, no matter how incompetent they are. Because of this, many companies use dirty tactics like bullying, emotional blackmail, and ostracization to force people to quit of their "own free will." Most times workers can't take the pressure and flee the company, even if it means they will be unemployed for a long period of time. Most lawsuits in Japan end in failure if the organization you are trying to sue happens to be a large one with lots of money (who can pay for round the clock legal representation).

My brave coworker refused to give in to those dirty tactics and actually brought my company to court, suing them for emotional and physical damage. Another coworker went with him to the courthouse to testify. He was a good employee who just happened not to be popular with the current boss due to his beliefs and...his age. Our boss wants young people and part time workers because their salaries are much lower than someone who has many years of seniority within the company.

After months of this being in court, with the health of my coworker wasting away as his peers avoided him out of fear (no one wants to be tainted by association), the courts came back with their verdict; there is no concrete proof that the company was trying to force my coworker to quit. The courts did chastise the company for damaging the health of my coworker, but the company didn't even have to apologize. They said they would "investigate the matter." Even with testimony of another coworker and tons of documentation, the verdict went against him. Now it's all over, and how can my coworker go back to his job? He lost (in effect) his lawsuit.

It's days like these that make me question why I stay here.

Before holiday woes

Sorry I've been silent so long. Lots going on right now.

I am in the middle of a recruiting campaign at work that won't taper off until the holidays. Working 6 days or even 7 days in a row for the past few months has been killing me. Also still going to dance class and trying to get some stuff ready for the holidays.

The baking spirit is upon me, but thwarted by the lack of good baking stores (or just my lack of knowledge of them). Does anyone know a good shop where I can buy edible glitter and colored sugars? The Kaldi near my house disappoints me and the other fancy shops around my area are very limited.

I thought maybe LOFT would have some if I went to one of the big locations...

I'm trying to get this effect with my sugar cookies. I need those toppings! An opalescent glitter would be fab!

I did buy a lot of toppings for my xmas cake, though. Mwahahaha! I'm actually doing two of them. One cake is going to be for my mom and I (who is flying in around the middle of next month) and the other is for some friends I'm having over to my house (hopefully) at the beginning of December.

I'm also planning a huge Christmas/End of the year party of maybe 20 odd people (which I have dubbed the "メリクリ忘年会"). It's stressful because location isn't suiting a lot of people (they don't like the atmosphere, they don't like the price of the set menu, yadda yadda yadda). It's giving me more white hairs. More on that later.

I got back today from dance class and couldn't be bothered to do anything around the house. Tomorrow is a national holiday (thank YOU Japan!) so I'm going to get my cleaning and the first experimental batch of a new sugar cookie recipe done then. For now I'm sitting back with a big bowl of chili con carne and watching The Holiday and Love Actually. Ah, bliss.

Tokyo rocks!

When I first came to Tokyo I admit I was only thinking about living somewhere exciting. I wanted to be able to go party until the wee hours if I wanted to, visit strange theme bars and clubs, have a higher salary job, etc. I never really thought about how incredibly convenient and metropolitan the city is, and how I could benefit from it.

I'm thankful for the variety of cultures represented here. Having dozens of different embassies, cultural events and schools is so wonderful. If it weren't for Tokyo, I probably wouldn't have the chance to learn Kathak. I certainly wouldn't have learned it sitting back in my hometown! How many other places outside India can I learn an authentic nothern Indian dance?

Below is the video for one of my fave dances with Gopi Krishna (best male Kathak dancer!!!). The movie is Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje. The day I got it in the mail I was beyond happy! The singing takes some getting used to for people who aren't used to it. Watch the fast footwork. Amazing!

Today was my first lesson (finally!). My teacher learned from one of the great dancers in India, Guru Birju Maharaj (he did the choreography for Devdas!!!), and I was excited to learn the Lucknow style. Happily, she is as kind and patient as she is graceful; because I can't dance. I think it was well established today that not only can I not dance, but my body isn't that flexible either. My teacher and the other student present were bending into contortions I could only dream of while I sweated and strained to make it even halfway. I need a lot of work!

We started with a lot of warm up stretches (painful ones) and then moved on to Tatkar, the basic footwork of Kathak dance. I didn't have much trouble keeping the rhythm because of all the years I spent learning music (and tapping my foot to the beat). Since I was so good at this, I thought I was IT. This lasted about 5 minutes, until my teacher said "Okay, let's start working in the arm movements!" From there is was all downhill. I cannot keep my arms and legs moving separately for long. Sooner or later (usually sooner) my arm movements will stop or I"ll lose the beat with my feet. I felt like a total idiot. I still can't get the overhead circular movement down.

My teacher was ever encouraging and said I could probably advance to the next level class (I'm in the beginner, beginner class) in a few weeks or so. I'm content to stay in a low level class until I know what I'm doing. I can see that it's going to take a LOT of work to get even the basics down pat.

I can't wait for my next lesson because we'll be doing more chakkars (I suck suck suck at spinning)!

My cool new ghungroos!

Again?!?

So I was on my way home tonight when I remembered I hadn't faxed in my time card to the head office for this month. Liking money, as I do, I thought I should fax that sucker in toot sweet. Once I was out of the train station, I ran into the nearest convenience store and made my way to the back...where I was stopped in my tracks by the image of another foreigner who was monopolizing the machine to copy/fax every page of her passport. Damn.

I took some money out of the ATM to kill time and was browsing around the store waiting for the other gaijin to piss off when I came across this little item:

 

Your eyes do not deceive you. This is Ginger Ale flavored Kit Kat. All I could think was, "What new fuckery is this?"

I have to admit I have this thing where whenever Kit Kat in Japan comes out with a new weird flavor, I take a great interest in knowing about it. I don't always buy one (some flavors I refuse to try), but the ingenuity of Kit Kat's Japan division never ceases to amaze me.  I like to walk casually around the chocolate aisle of conbini and nod knowingly, thinking, "Ah, this month they've come out with xxx."

I have taste tested a variety of crazy Kit Kat flavors including; rose , red bean, pickled plum, Kuri (chestnut), green apple, kiwi, mango, lemon chocolate (yes, together), soy sauce (you saw that right, it was a Tokyo only edition), grilled corn (Hokkaido edition), and a host of other wacky, random ones.

Ginger Ale is not the most scary or strange flavor idea they've had, so I decided to give it a shot and buy the thing while I was waiting for that fax machine to free up. I threw it in my purse and moved off to hover menacingly around the copy machine to hurry things along.

After dinner I kind of forgot about buying it (attention span of a fruit fly, that's me!). It wasn't until I was looking for my cellphone to confirm several birthday party plans for this weekend that I saw it sitting there in the bottom of my beat up Vivienne Westwood bag. I decided to have it with my tea.

Since most of you won't get to try it (these wackjob flavors are limited editions inside Japan only), I'll reassure you now that you aren't missing much. The scent they used for the ginger ale is so strong that it practically slaps you in the face when you tear open the package. They also used lemon powder in the cream between wafers and the strong artificial ginger/lemon flavor isn't that great. 

It rates higher than some flavors like soy sauce and miso, due to it not being disturbing, but it loses to flavors like sakura (cherry blossom), cherry cheesecake and Kinako. I give it 2 out of 5 stars.

Kit Kat score: ★★☆☆☆

Just a note

I got a few emails that the CAPTCHA verification codes weren't working well on the site, so I deleted them. I also opened up comments and they no longer require my authorization before being published. Sorry for the inconvenience! Typepad sure has a lot of bugs!