A shot looking down the temple stairs towards Dogo.

This interesting house (shop?) is shaped like a giant Daruma doll.

The Ballad of Bone and Kuma (いもたき会)

Since last Tuesday was the Japanese national holiday Autumn Equinox Day (秋分の日), Cara and I took it upon ourselves to attend a local imotaki-kai (いもたき会) and gorge ourselves on this traditional seasonal soup.

Imotaki-kai (the "kai" means a meeting or party) is a seasonal celebration held throughout Ehime Prefecture from the middle of September until early October. The outdoor gathering is a chance to meet with family and friends and eat a hearty soup as you gaze at the moon.

One pays for the dining atmosphere at an imotaki-kai. The set admission fee gives you a seat on a towel in front of a tiny gas burner and a tray of ingredients. You are expected to boil the soup to your own individual liking.  Since we were the only two non-Japanese people present, we had to smile and reassure multiple staff members that we understood the basic cooking concept of "put stuff in bowl and boil until done."

The "Imotaki" soup that gives the celebration its name can be loosely likened to American chicken soup. Among its many ingredients are noodles (albeit udon), chicken, onions, and potatoes (specifically taro potatoes, known as "imo" in Japanese). The soup also contains traditional Japanese ingredients like fish cake, konyaku, and tofu as well. The resulting soup is rich, flavorful, and incredible filling. So filling in fact, that Cara and I both had to lay down and rest our bellies due to over-fullness immediately after finishing the pot.

As we neared the end of our meal, a friendly woman from a party sitting on the towel across from us came over and offered to take our picture. She proceeded to take no fewer than ten different pictures using every setting imaginable on Cara's camera. While a good 2/3 or them turned out comically blurry or underexposed, there were a few keepers.

It wasn't long after the photo shoot that the remaining members of the party fluttered their hands upwards, signaling for us to come join their group. Turns out our photographer's name was Kuma. Kuma means bear in Japanese and she demonstrated this by holding her arms above her head and growling for us all. While this may be the way she commonly introduces herself, I think the added theatrics were likely a result of the flowing booze.

Indeed, every member of our new "adopted family" was heavily intoxicated by the time we pulled up a cushion. Our hosts immediately asked for drink selections. I was poured heaping glasses of a yellowish colored shochu (sake). I happily drank all the cups given to me.

The more I drink the more I lose my ability to speak coherent Japanese. Luckily, I seem to retain most of my listening comprehension skills. It turns out that the group of eight middle-aged adults all met when they were middle school or high school students (I can't remember which). One group member's parents used to own a little eating place that the kids would all go to after school and hang out. I was told that for them, the imotaki-kai was a class reunion of sorts and that they don't have many opportunities to see each other.

By far the most entertaining member of the group was Mr. Ki*. Mr. Ki volunteers at the sightseeing center in Matsuyama City, and as such, in addition to sporting an encyclopedic knowledge of every festival and event in the area, spoke some English. To be fair, his English mostly followed the pattern of emphatically saying words like "YEAH" "ALL RIGHT" or "WOW!" after a long string of Japanese.

Mr. Ki couldn't remember our names. He asked Cara what her name was for the third time and Kuma, thinking he was talking to her, began to growl and wave her arms above her head again while repeating the word Kuma over and over. Thus, Cara became linked to the name Kuma (the bear) for the rest of the evening. Meanwhile, my name changed every time it was spoken aloud. I was Bill, Bob, and Ban. My personal favorite of the evening was Bone. Cara and I still use the nicknames Kuma and Bone when referring to each other.

A karaoke box sat on a small stage underneath the Shigenobu River imotaki-kai banner. After listening to an untold number of shy children whisper the theme song to the latest Power Rangers series into the mic, it was our turn to sing in English. We successfully performed "Let it Be" and tried our best to harmonize as the different parties in the audience all clapped along.

Returning back to the towel, our new friends were disappointed to hear that Cara and I weren't married. Further frowns greeted us when we used the label "friends" and admitted that we hadn't yet held hands (or held minds? This bit about sharing each other's thoughts was completely lost in translation for me).

The only remedy it seemed was for us to return to the karaoke box and sing some traditional Japanese enka (folk music) duets about falling in love. Our final song of the evening was, "The Day Love Was Born" ( 愛が生まれた日). Since neither of us had any idea as to the melody of these songs, we had no choice but to make up our own while reading the Japanese lyrics off the screen. The rest of the group joined us onstage and acted as backup dancers and singers. They, it would seem, were singing the actual melody

And so concluded Bone and Kuma's live stage show. Mr. Ki gave us souvenir packs of udon noodles as we parted ways for the evening. Walking back home, our last love song's two distinct melodies lingered in my ears...

Sometimes its the songs you make up on the spot that end up sounding the best.

B.E.W.

*One reason why I call the man in question "Mr. Ki" is because I simply forgot his real name while ingesting multiple cups of shochu. However, this name also references a very special Matsuyama festival that he told me all about during our time together. For the full explanation, you'll have to wait a few more posts...

TO BE CONTINUED! 

This sign welcomes you to the annual imotaki-kai held at the Shigenobu River. You can just barely make out the karaoke machine down below where Cara and I were forced to sing love songs in Japanese. Imotaki-kai in Japan usually run from mid September until the beginning of October.

Seating at the imotaki-kai was a towel on the ground. The night wasn't clear enough for good moon viewing or star gazing.

Imotaki ingredients - including; taro potatoes, chicken, tofu, udon noodles...

And here was our pot and little gas burner for cooking the soup.

Back In Action

I apologize profusely for the recent lack of updates. You can picture me bowing deeply if it helps with the anger. I have some fun events planned for this weekend, so there should be some good stories and pictures on the way!

The reason for the delay is that the fall semester just started yesterday at Ehime University, and as such I spent most of the weekend working to get course materials in order for my intro and advanced English classes. Tuesday had me stuck in the copy room until past 2 AM. While I knew that photocopying a 100 page course reader for 100 students would take a long time, I didn’t account for the extra time wasted due to diabolical copy machine paper jams.

One particularly spectacular paper jam set off a chain reaction inside the copier, systematically disabling the entire machine. I had to pull out around 10 separate sheets of crumpled paper from every sector of the innards. By the time I was done, I was so smudged with ink that I looked like Bert the chimney sweep from Marry Poppins.

Oh…and in other news, my new refrigerator arrived yesterday afternoon. It is sleek, silver, and runs incredibly quiet. Now all I need to do is go grocery shopping and fill the baby up! I plan to do that (and laundry) sometime in the not too distant future.

Due to a cancellation in my schedule, I was able to spend most of the day exploring Matsuyama City. Here are a few pictures I snapped while walking around the Gintengai and Okaido shopping arcades.

B.E.W.

This sea of cute yellow beanies can mean only one thing...

CLASS FIELD TRIP!!! 

Here is a shot of the famous ferris wheel atop the Takashimaya department store at Matsuyama Station.  I have yet to ride it.  

This just doesn't make a (s)lot of sense.

These manikin halves thrust their sexy booties at you to sell pants.

Is this an establishment where children come to rest everyday?

Doctor Doctor! (病院へ行こう!)

“Hello, my name is Ben and I’m an asthmatic.”

(Group voice) “Hello Ben.”

“Well, I’ve been without a puff of my meds for going on two weeks now…”

(Collective nods and murmurs of acknowledgement)

-----

Yesterday was spent on a near all-day medical adventure that culminated with the filling of my very first Japanese drug prescription.

I arrived at the Ehime University Hospital at 9:30 in the morning. I began by filling out a registration form with my name and contact information. In Japan, the patient must also circle the specific medical area for which they are seeking treatment that day. There are separate symptom cards for internal medicine and for everything else (such as, eyes, pediatrics, etc.).

I selected the long string of kanji that referred to the lungs and respiratory system on the internal medicine card. Check-in was as easy as handing the receptionist my info form and national health insurance card. I was then instructed to take a seat and wait.

During your first hospital visit, you are given a unique magnetized data card that stores your name and contact information. Thus, repeat visits simply require you to scan your card at one of many automated check-in machines. The machine accesses your file and spits out a slip, telling you when and where your appointment will be held.

I was instructed to go to the internal medicine wing and sit in the “waiting room.” The area wasn’t so much a traditional “room” as it was a series of chairs and benches lined up in the hallway. I must admit that it was a little odd to see so many people of all different shapes, sizes, and ages queued up in such a small space. The entire hospital seemed flooded with outpatients. My boss later told me that hospitals in Japan usually get crowded on Mondays and after holidays.

When it was my turn to be seen, my name was called and I was brought into exam room #14 and greeted by Dr. Chika Sato. She was very friendly and had read over the note provided by my American asthma doctor explaining my symptoms and current medications. She didn’t understand one of the English words that my doctor had written in his description. Turns out, neither did I. Humorously, we both laughed and took out our electronic dictionaries in order to gain a better understanding of the vocabulary word, me fishing around in English, her in Japanese.

She asked me some generalized questions about my asthma, listened to my breathing with a stethoscope and conducted a peak flow reading. It was just like a trip to the asthma doctor back home, albeit entirely in Japanese. Based on my experience, going to the doctor in Japan without a working understanding of the language would prove to be very difficult, as no one generally speaks English. If you must go and are not fluent conversing in Japanese, it might be best to bring along someone to act as an interpreter.

Dr. Sato said my saturation was a little low and told me to come back in a month for a follow-up visit. With that, she wrote me my prescriptions, smiled, and said I could go.

I made my way to the payment counter and subsequently experienced the biggest sticker shock of my life. I paid a whopping $9.52 for my entire checkup at the hospital. Since Japanese national health care pays for 70% of any medical care or prescriptions, this means that the grand total for the visit was only a little over 30 bucks. In America, this exact same asthma checkup at my local clinic would have run me into the hundreds of dollars, even with insurance coverage. I guess this explains the general lack of Ferrari driving dermatologists cruising around the streets of Shikoku.

The hospital automatically faxes your prescriptions to a pharmacy of your choice for easy pickup. I had mine sent to the pharmacy conveniently located across the street. All that was left was to stroll over and pick up my medication.

My current asthma medicine is the Advair Diskus (500/50 strength) manufactured by Glaxo Smith Kline. It is a combination of the two drugs Serevent and Flovent that I used to take via separate inhalers as a child.

Prior to leaving for Japan, I visited my neighborhood pharmacy to fill a prescription of Advair to take with me. Since I was without medical insurance, the pharmacist told me that the price for a single inhaler with a one-month supply of medication would be over $300. After some button pressing on the computer, he was able to bring the price down to somewhere in the ballpark of $280.

The price was simply too high for me to pay. I walked out of the pharmacy without my medication and left for Japan a few days later. I had no choice. In this case, I could only feel genuinely grateful that I didn’t have to take the medication everyday in order to live.

Yesterday I purchased an Advair Diskus asthma inhaler in Japan. The dosage and manufacturer are identical. The only difference is literally that the Japanese product has kanji characters on the label. I paid $26.14 for a one month supply. I couldn’t stop shaking my head as I paid. I was truly in disbelief.

I brought up the subject with my boss. She said that the $9.52 I paid for my hospital check-up was actually pretty high by Japanese standards. I genuinely burst out laughing. According to her, even cancer drugs typically run less than $100 per prescription. $100 for medicine is so astronomically high by Japanese standards that the hospital will often conference and give you advance warning if it is likely you will have to pay that much.

In summary, I am a foreigner living in Japan. Despite being a foreigner, the government has granted me the exact same universal health care coverage afforded to citizens. Yesterday I was able to receive a hospital checkup and fill my prescription for well under $40 USD.

To all those who still oppose the idea of universal health care coverage for all Americans, all I can say is,

It’s time for America to cut the bullshit and get on board!

B.E.W.

My Japanese Advair Diskus asthma inhaler.

Animal House (とべ動物園)

Happy Autumn Equinox Day!!!

Since yesterday marked yet another seemingly random Japanese national holiday, I had the day off. SCORE! With no grand plans in mind, I headed off to the Tobe Zoo. Tobe is a town neighboring Matsuyama City and is famous for its zoo and also its pottery (known as tobe-yaki in Japanese).

The Tobe Zoo is a pretty popular tourist attraction here in Ehime Prefecture. In fact, one of the adult students in my faculty class was telling me how her children love visiting the place to see the giant hippo. She recommended I go. Indeed, the Tobe Zoo seems to be the amusement area of choice for the average Ehime family. I can safely report that there were no fewer than 10 billion children screaming, laughing, crying, and running amuck inside the zoo grounds.

While I have only been to a few zoos in Japan, I have yet to leave the experience without harboring a feeling of general uneasiness. One of the main aspects that bothered me about the Tobe Zoo (it was the same at the bear habitat I visited in Hokkaido) was the feeding / performance aspect.

Since animal food dispensing vending machines are located throughout the zoo, the whole idea is that patrons will buy bread / chips / fish etc. and chuck it at the animals as they beg for food. I didn’t know tree monkeys in the wild ate curried rice chips. Half the time the food doesn’t even make it in the cage due to bad aiming on the part of the gawking visitors. In these cases, you’ve just effectively taunted and teased the animal. I’m sure that’s great for the psyche.

While I am by no means a veterinarian, several of the animals also looked sickly and malnutritioned. I felt sad when I saw the matted coat of the orangutan, the rotting tusks of the elephants, and one very skinny gazelle with its ribs protruding.

While it is always fun to point at your favorite critters and snap pictures of all the animals, there is something about Japanese zoos that doesn’t mesh well with my sense of kindness towards animals. I suppose one could easily argue that any zoo, no matter the location, is cruel and unnatural for wild animals.

Maybe I’m bringing too much of my foreign (Western) mindset to the experience. I don’t know. I mean, the tons of Japanese families at the park seemed to be having a simply great time chucking chips at the monkeys.

B.E.W.

The front entrance to the Tobe Zoo (とべ動物園).  Any unhappiness with a tourist attraction quickly fades when the admission fee is a mere 300 yen.

Flamingos!  I could put them on my lawn, assuming I had one that is.

Her evil-looking glare sort of bothers me.  I make it a rule of mine to never trust pink creatures, they'll get you every time!

Presenting to you the most beautiful and majestic creature on this crazy little planet we call earth.

Penguins at play!

Drying off after a cool dip.

This seal is waiting patiently for one of those delicious vending machine sardines at 100 yen a pop.

This one has taken the more direct approach of loudly barking nonstop until fish end up in his mouth.

Just your ordinary run-of-the-mill llama.  They also had standard horses and raccoons on display as well.

This ugly South American Tapir was the animal that decided to do an about face and spray pee all over me.  Look at him smiling, he's happy about it!

Me speckled with drops of tapir urine.  Having already received such a special souvenir, I didn't even bother with the gift shop.  

Even big cats like this jaguar here need their beauty rest.

Action shot of a panther on the prowl.

This is right before the tiger started pacing back and forth, growling, and gnawing at its on leg.  I think it was aggetated by the flash on my camera.  I'm sorry tora-san!

I'd lounge around all day if I were a lion too.  Especially in the shikoku heat!

Sticks make great play toys.  I miss my kitties Simon and Theo!

Great, so now they decide to warn you about the whole "getting pissed on by the animals" possibility.  A little too late in my case.

Severely malnutritioned looking gazelle.

Me waiting to catch a glimpse of the hippo, affectionately named "kaba-san" or "Mr. Hippo" in Japanese.  He is one of the star attractions at the Tobe Zoo.  The posters and pamphlets always show him opening his huge four toothed mouth in order to graciously accept carrots.  The carrots are available for purchase from a vending machine next to his tank.  I guess Mr. Hippo wasn't too hungry this afternoon...  

I guess kaba-san is not into the whole picture-taking / hamming it up for the crowd scene.

This was the best shot I got of the antisocial kaba-san.  My encounter certainly wasn't like the one pictured on the pamphlet.

Zo and baby zo.  Hey, you've just learned an animal name in Japanese!

This was the elephant whose tusks looked like they needed some serious periodontal maintenance.

Rafiki here doesn't look too pleased to meet my acquaintance.

I absolutely loved this monkey! He looked so wise and all-knowing with his fluffy white beard. He must be the Yoda of the Tobe Zoo monkey community.

Mister bear here doesn't get to go back home to his posh mansion in To-on City like I do.

This is my "MAN!" tofu purchased today at the supermarket. The full product name is actually "handsome man" tofu. Women should not even look at the packaging! Since I purchased a fair amount of groceries, I got two free spins of the prize wheel. I won both times and walked away with $15 in vouchers.

Update #1: The tofu was very creamy and soft with a light musky flavor. It paired well with green onions and ponzu. However, I fear that the musky flavor might be a little too strong for other dishes.

Update #2: My fridge decided to die on me right after I bought all my nice new food. What bad timing! Without the luxury of refrigeration, today became official "drink your milk and eat your tofu before they spoil" day.

Scenery

Below are a few pics I snapped while walking around the vicinity of my apartment.  Check them out for some shots of Japanese nature in action!

B.E.W.

The picturesque mountains of To-on City.  One of these days I'm going to go hiking up there with a professor who is in one of my faculty English classes.  He knows all the trails and wildlife up there.  He says the thing to watch out for are packs of wild boars (inoshishi). 

The dry riverbed near where I live.  There's a neat little picnic area nearby where elderly Japanese people seem to congregate no matter the time of day.

Here is a picture of a particularly neat looking cloud I saw.  I thought it looked like a giant foot squashing To-on City!

According to its packaging, Black Black chewing gum from Lotte has a "high-technical excellent taste and flavor."  I picked up a pack at the local conbini (convenience store) this afternoon.  Black Black's claim to fame is that it is the world's first caffeinated chewing gum.  Each stick also has a bunch of other junk in it like tea extracts and ginko.  I guess it's sorta like chewing a Red Bull.  

Having jammed four sticks in my mouth, I can report that any sort of "pleasant" flavor is only temporary.  After the sugary coating has warn off, Black Black gives you the sensation that you're chewing a mixture of Binaca and charcoal.  I'm not sure how much caffeine resides in each stick.  Maybe it wasn't the best idea to chew a bunch of this before bedtime...    

I guess you can go to this place to pre-order a tombstone for that special relative you can't wait to see gone.

Alcohol specific vending machines seem to be slowly fading away from public places, though you still see some here and there.  This machine sells sake varieties in white peach and grape.

Since it was pouring rain, I decided to buy canned oden (Japanese wintertime stew) from the vending machine. Ever since I first saw this stuff in Akihabara, where it is insanley popular among the otaku (nerd) culture, I've always been hankering to try some. The can actually came out piping hot, so you could eat if right away it you wanted. I saved mine for dinner.

Here's the entire vending machine I spotted while walking around town. I want to carry around a jug of beer like an old-timey prospector!

A close-up of the giant jugs of beer available for 1020 Yen (I think).  This vending machine looked so old and dilapidated that I was afraid to insert money.  Still, it might have been worth it for the sheer novelty of walking away with that much booze in my backpack.

Here's the completed oden with the added grilled fish I made.  It actually wasn't half bad.

The Pumpkin King! (かぼちゃカーニバル)

The closest supermarket to my apartment is located in an outlet shopping center known as “Cool’s Mall.”  While biking to the supermarket yesterday afternoon to do some grocery shopping, I suddenly found myself smack dab in the middle of the annual Pumpkin Carnival.  Go figure!

I arrived near the tail end of the festivities, but  still had enough time to see all the prizewinning gourds.  In keeping with the traditional matsuri (festival) atmosphere, there were little booths selling yakisoba, shaved ice, and pumpkin and red bean mochi.  I bought some takoyaki (octopus balls) which were sadly not pumpkin flavored.  I ate them while looking at all the different pumpkin entries, some of which were quite creative as you can see from the pictures below.

At one point there were a bunch of guys atop a platform tossing out mystery doodads to the audience.  All the kids began scrambling and going nuts for the trinkets, so I can only guess that they were prizes of some sort.

When volunteers started circling around with donation boxes in order to, “help keep the Pumpkin Carnival alive,” I figured it was a good time to leave and continue with my previously scheduled grocery shopping.

Enjoy the pumptastical pictures below!

B.E.W.   

Just a small sampling of the different festival entries. In Japanese, the word "kabocha" can refer to both pumpkins and other types of gourds.