Nutrition Diary (for project) day 4

instant miso soup
natto
white rice
tea

mabo dofu
white rice
salad (w/wakame & imitation crab)
spinach and egg
green tea

chocolate twists (4)

yakionigiri
masuzushi onigiri

matsuya's pork & eggplant in spicy miso
salad (corn, etc)
white rice
oolong tea

Nutrition Diary (for project) day 3 (Thanksgiving!)

two pieces of white bread
yogurt drink
Vinegar & Milk drink
omrice onigiri

green tea

Okuma lunch
(beef bowl, salad, sesame carrots and root veg, hamburger, croquette, white rice)
green tea

oolong tea
little stuffing
little chicken
mashed potatoes w/chicken gravy
carrots & onions
Russian salad
1/4 nikuman
1/2 ear of corn
5 slices of Spanish ham with white bread
chocolate chip vanilla cookie
anko-filled doughnuts (2)
cheesecake (1.5 slices)
vanilla ice cream (too much)
chocolate-covered almond
small Chinese fruit/nut stuffed cake (1/2)
chocolate salty chips

tea
chocolate cookies

(It was an awesome Thanksgiving, thanks to everybody showing up, and especially to the Russian girl who ended up making almost everything.)

Nutrition Diary (for project) day 2

no breakfast

hard-boiled egg
spicy chinese nabe (pork, veggies, cell.noodles)
half spring roll
tiny salad w/chicken
tiny bit of tofu in fermented sauce
bowl of white rice

coke
small salad
two pieces of fried chicken
three large flat french fries
1/4 pepperoni pizza
1/4 habanero pizza (with pork)
1/8 beef/mushroom pizza
1/8 salami/onion pizza
1/8 chicken teriyaki pizza
1/8 dessert pizza (marshmallows)

Nutrition Diary (for project) day 1

two thick pieces of bread
plain yogurt

apple (biggish)

chai tea latte, grande

3/4 of savory "French" toast

five gyoza with sauce
white/brown rice with furikake (egg & seaweed)
one mikan (clementine)

14 small doughnuts filled with anko



(And how are you guys doing?)

need to sleep

I didn't do enough studying today. But I did do some. I might be in okay shape for the coming week. Maybe.

Instead of studying, I did laundry, picked up my dry cleaning, went grocery shopping, and learned how to make a new dish: nikujaga.

I did not successfully finish making stuff for my bento box lunch for tomorrow's picnic. Have to get up early tomorrow. Great.

Saturday's Meals:

Breakfast:
plain yogurt
granolaish cereal

Lunch:
scrambled eggs with mushrooms, green onions
last of the curry
white rice
little bit of kimchee

Dinner:
a small amt. of yakisoba
two small bowls of nikujaga
half a container of peaches in yogurt

Cats and Dogs

We had a death in our dorm family last night; a one-eyed cat who loved us gaijin despite our differences. She was always friendly, although sometimes too playful (bitingly). She liked our front terrace, even though it had no shelter from rain or any comfy places to curl up. Yesterday, she saw me and rolled upside down. I didn't pet her because this action usually meant she'd be up for biting (playfully). Now I wish I had. She was run over last night. I'm not sure if her remains have been taken care of, I don't know how to request that sort of thing, and I am trying not to think about it.

So, now that I've ruined your mood, let me tell you about the good things about yesterday.

1. I didn't fall asleep (at least not all the way) in my classes on Friday. Three hours of conversation in the morning, three hours of moderately easy grammar in the afternoon. It's hard to take that on inadequate sleep.
2. I registered for (most of) my classes, finally.
   
3. I dressed up for the Welcome Party. My suits were stilll at the cleaners, so I had to make due with brown pants and a bluish-black sportscoat. It went together better than it sounds like it did. (For those interested, I wore my white with-invisible-green bespoke shirt with my yellow dogstooth Tyrwhitt tie with Italian glass cufflinks. Let's not talk about my shoes.)
4. The party was okay. I ate too much of the free and quite good food, as you may note below if you ever get that far.*
   
5. After the offical welcome party, I went to the steps of the auditorium for kumanomi, where a lot of other students were drinking. (Drinking outdoors is legal.)
   
6. We got chased away by a policeman around 10pm. (Being loud is not legal.)
7. We went to the park, which is often the drinking place of choice.
   
8. A German girl almost beat me in arm wrestling.
   
9. I went home and had hot water with lemon with some good people.
   

Friday's Meals:

Breakfast:
natto with tomatoes and shirasu
on top of white/brown rice

Lunch:
the rest of the mabo-dofu
brown/white rice
the last bit of spinach/mushroom stuff

Dinner:
slice of grapefruit
three french fries
three cocktail wieners
two shumai
four eggrolls (small)
two tuna roll pieces
a cucumber roll piece
one big maki roll piece (egg, crab, cuke, ???)
a small triangular egg salad sandwich
a scoop of yakisoba
three fried chicken nuggets
two broiled chunks of chicken
a slice of ham
a small cup of apple juice
a small cup of sweetened iced tea
half a cream puff filled with ice cream (vanilla)

Late Night:
hot water with lemon
a handful of sweet crackers

*why I ate so much: it had been too long since lunch, it was free, it was MEAT (which is expensive here), and I had to fight with Chinese people for a clear shot to the food, which made me go into competition mode.

Winded

Today we ended up having no classes on account of a typhoon. The typhoon's main effect on the campus's area was to make it sunny, warm, and breezy: a perfect indian summer day.

(Why close school? So the teachers and students who live in neighboring prefectures wouldn't have to ride the trains. The trains can easily get disrupted in typhoons.)

I went with a group of other students to go get my Alien Registration Card. I know, I know, "alien?" But that's what they call us, officially, at least on that card.

After we got our cards, we went to a nearby ice cream shop, where I had some amazing Italian ice cream. Grom, in Shinjuku. Very nice.

Well, that was around 5pm, and a big meal was to come later, so, as you will soon see, I strayed from the ideal nutrition path today very much in the afternoon and evening.

Today's meals:

Breakfast:

plain yogurt
granolaesque cereal
apple

Lunch:

leftover mabo-dofu (homemade)
brown/white rice combo
sauteed spinach, mushrooms, green onions, garlic

Snack:

Grom ice cream cone.
Blueberry-raspberry on top.
The Italiana's recommended "Grom di creme" on the bottom.
Delicious.
(only 490 for the small cone.)
(yeah, not very frugal.)
(but worth it.)


























Dinner:

Goulash with dumplings (amazing)
too much cheetara (cheese strips in strips of cod), kaki no tane (crackers), and senbei (more crackers)

Eiyou (栄養) Means "Nutrition"

The past two weeks: registration. First, a level test. Then pick, within whatever level they give you, from among very similar classes which ones to register for. The descriptions of said classes are all in Japanese. Then, attend each class you registered for as well as the class you actually want. Then you may or may not be able to register for the class you actually want.

Gotta love the Japanese bureaucracy.

I was lucky enough to ascend a level in my core class. Most of my classmates are more fluent than me, but I feel that they're within reach. The core class I chose is a textbookless class. We're going to talk about our own topic, write essays on our topic, read each other's essays, discuss them, interview people, write more essays, and finally produce a final report to be bound in a book. Yes, all in Japanese.

The important thing is to pick a topic that is important enough to you to hold your own interest for four months. So what to pick. I at first thought about linguistics. Too abstract, and, without a specific focus, people might not know how to discuss it with me. Then, over the weekend, it came to me: nutrition!

As some of you may know, when I was [redacted] this summer, I was in the middle of a summer-term nutrition class. I wasn't able to finish the class due to being [redacted], so I worked out a deal with the teacher. If I can get a proctor over here to give me the exams, I can get the credit.

Taking 13 Japanese classes (1.5 hours each) doesn't leave many hours for studying an unrelated subject on my own. But, if it's tied to one of my courses, I might make the time. So I picked nutrition as my topic for the core class.

Specifically, I'm interested in the idea of nutrition in Japan as compared to the idea of nutrition in America, and how the statistics work out. It's common knowledge that the Japanese are very long-lived, and many have tried to claim that the Japanese diet is responsible. Yet the Japanese eat little meat, lots of rice, and very little insoluble fiber. What's the recommended dietary intake here? What's the average intake of those nutrients? How do those figures compare to America's? What's considered a "balanced diet" here? What do people think makes a healthy meal?

Another reason nutrition is on my mind may be because of the health check I went through last Friday. I, like almost all the other foreigners, was told that I should lose weight. I reacted a little strongly to that. I was told to lose about 20 pounds (9 kilos). I happen to know that, for my height, by American standards I would be in acceptable range with a loss of 5 pounds.

While weight has little to do with nutrition per se, this encounter has made me keep more of an eye on my serving sizes. (At the health check, I told the doctor how much rice I ate with my nattou, how much curry-rice I have for lunch, etc. She asked if I drink, and I said never. She asked if I drank water. I said "A lot." She asked, "No-Calorie water?" I said of course. She had nothing to say after that, except that, once my [redacted] gets better, I might exercise a bit more. She did not know who she was dealing with, obviously.)

All of this is to explain that, from now on, I would like to start documenting my meals once again. Long-time readers may recall February of this year I reported my food intake daily. That was partly to lose wintergut, partly to irritate G., and partly to get over a blogging slump. I risk alienating my readership here if I indulge in such self-metrics, but, well, I don't really think anyone reads this anyway. Also, it fits in with the original theme of this blog: how to eat on the cheap in Tokyo. (Mainly: eat rice.)

Perhaps for my final project I will get some Japanese people to record their meals for a week or two and then we can compare. Do you think any Japanese people would be into that?

Today's Meals:

Breakfast:
45g of natto with chopped green onion, cherry tomatoes, and whole shirasu (little white fishies)
white rice
instant miso soup (wakame seaweed and fried tofu)

Lunch:
small bowl of Japanese curry on white rice
small portion of sauteed spinach (olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, hot pepper)
one hardboiled egg
iced green tea

Dinner:
apple
five big gyoza (at a brand-new restaurant, only 290 yen)

Second Dinner:
two grabs of spinach mixed with a bit of kimchee
a small amount of curry with a small amount of rice

Language Learning

(Ma) Vaffancuulo : Go fuck yourself.

Ymen no iisa [name] : My name is [name]

Ai yak te? : And yours?

Tezhimin : Nice to meet you.

Dobreedden : Hello (formal)

Ahoy : Hi (informal)

And not one of the above phrases is Japanese.

Broken Japanese: the Placement Test

The test was about as difficult as I'd imagined it'd be. I doubt I can go into details here, but I can at least tell you that it was not multiple choice. Either you knew it or you didn't.

Waseda's Japanese classes are split up into 8 levels, 1 being for beginners and 8 being for near-fluent folks. I got level 3, which is the low end of the intermediate level.

Level 3 is pretty disappointing for me, but I'm willing to admit it's probably right for me in some skillsets. My kanji is probably at level 3. My speaking ability might be 3, too, although I'm doing pretty well day-to-day. Writing (self-expressively) is also probably 3. But Listening, Grammar, and Reading should probably be higher. Luckily, I can go up one level, if the teachers see I'm doing very well in the first week.

(I feel a cram coming on...)

Many people also feel that the test results were not accurate. Some feel that they just got lucky with the test and are scared of the high level they are in. Others are below me, when I know for certain that their speaking is on par with if not better than mine.

We'll just have to see how this pans out. Registration is tomorrow afternoon, and the first week of classes starts on September 28. (Class details to follow in another post, after I've taken a few.)

Broken Orchestra: Karaoke Outings 1 & 2

So glad to be back in the land of good karaoke. Songs I picked:

• I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues, by Elton John
• Can't Stop, by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Under the Sea, Disney
• Lean on Me, by Bill Withers
• Come Undone, by Duran Duran
• The Scientist, by Coldplay

Lean on Me is beyond me, clearly. It's not a song you should be screaming to hit the notes. After attempting Withers, Come Undone was also beyond. I got it back together for The Scientist, so that was good.

With all of us being from different countries, you struggle to find songs that everyone knows. I ought to make a list for international karaoke groups. Here is the beginning.

• Bad Beatles songs. Everybody knows Yellow Submarine.
• Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire.
• Edith Piaf, La Vie En Rose.* (In the words of a Frenchman, she is their Johnny Cash.)
• Spice Girls, Wannabe.
• Britney Spears, Hit Me Baby One More Time.
• Aqua, Barbie Girl.
• Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World.

Any more that you think are universal?

*You know, the song that plays in the background whenever any characters in any (non-French) movie go to a French restaurant. I didn't know the words except for soem of the refrain, but I knew the melody enough to join in. Fun was had, and an earworm was caught.

Third Post of the Night Has No Broken Pun

I am envious of people with serious language chops. Always have been, as far as I can remember.

I'm envious of the Europeans here, who speak near perfect English but who say they are glad of the opportunity to improve it. I think that they have a serious advantage over me. They already are in the habit of thinking in another language. It's not that much of a jump, then, to start thinking in Japanese.

I'm envious of the Europeans in other ways, as well. I see now the extreme advantage of living in Europe (for those who would like to be polyglots or to be culturally-well-versed.) Their countries are small and close together in comparison to the US. Travel is not really a big deal. Maybe it is a hassle, I don't know.

I'm envious, now, of everyone who went abroad in college. What a great idea that would have been. Not just for the experience of another country, but also for meeting different exchange students from all over. I've met some amazing, brilliant, funny, and very kind people here already, and I'm not even counting the Japanese students I've been talking with.

In short, I'm filled with envy. So don't envy me, whatever you do, even if I got an iPhone two days ago.

(Where did that come from? What's in this green tea stuff, anyway?)

Broken English in Tokyo

Specifically, mine.

I have reverted to Simplified English in my everyday speech. Not just with Japanese folks. Not just with the Italians, French, Chinese, and Germans populating the dorms. No, even with Americans and Brits, I find myself using simple language and speaking... absurdly... slowly.... (Yes, slower than normal.)

You may not be familiar with this concept, but there are some people out there who are proposing that the commonly-used international language should be Simplified English. For internationals, what is the point of memorizing all of the plural exceptions, obscure sentence patterns, and bizarre spellings? As long as information is carried across, there's no need for sticklerism.

Before you balk, please consider this: according to Wikipedia, estimates vary, but many indicate that there are more speakers of English as a second language than there are speakers of it as their native tongue. There are more of them than us. Therefore shouldn't they have a say in how English is to be defined?

They certainly have a say in how my English is defined. I go around saying stuff like "This fish does good." "I live on floor one." "At this time can you go?" Help.

Break in Service

Apologies for the lack of content for the past several days. Instead of the usual late-blogger platitudes, here is a compromise: http://knaak.tumblr.com/

Posting my pictures here in this blog is problematic. I'm a bit perfectionistic when it comes to photos, but I don't have the time to fool around in this old, clunky version of Photoshop I've got here.

I am much less picky about cameraphone photos, hence I've created Unbroken Tokyo, a tumblelog that I can update very simply from my phone. "Unbroken" because, hopefully, it will be continuously updated. Those of you on Facebook might not want to subscribe to Unbroken's feed, since it'll be updating there, too. Or maybe you don't want to miss out on any of my food photos. If so, by all means.

Yes, I said food photos. "Unbroken" will be mundane in the extreme. I promise scads of mundanity, punctuated with an interesting shot every 40th shot. Look forward to weird kanji, strange English, bizarre fashions, and foreign scenery, slipped amidst the hundreds of photos I will take of my breakfast natto.

Admittedly, I did not take a picture of my dinner tonight, after I had this whole great idea, but, starting tomorrow...

Broke in Tokyo Tip: Hyakuen Shop

You may think this is an obvious tip for the frugal Tokyoite. You may already know about the wonders of the 100-yen shop. You may already have been to one many times for food, clothing, storage solutions, stationary, cleaning supplies, basically anything and everything.

I knew about it, too, and I still made the mistake of not going to a Hyakuen shop as soon as I got to my new place.

For those who don't know, a Hyakuen (100 yen) shop sells everything for 105 yen (the extra 5 is tax). You may think, "Oh, it's like a dollar store back in the States." Oh ho ho no, it's so much more.

The dollar stores in the States have tons of crap that I never really need, plus anything from such stores breaks within an hour. The Hyakuen shops in Japan have tons of stuff that I do need, and it's not really that bad in quality. Far from breaking within the first hour, I still use some 105-yen items I purchased over 4 years ago.

I got to my dorm and found that I needed dishes, shampoo, etc. I followed some people to a supermarket. Big mistake. I could have found everything I bought at the supermarket and more at the Hyakuen shop.

If you specifically like higher-quality shower supplies, here's a more specific tip for you. In Japan, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash comes two ways: in pumps and refill bags. The pumps cost about twice as much as the bags. I got refill bags at the store, and then I bought Hyakuen-shop empty pumps, saving at least 300 yen per item.

Make the Hyakuen shop your first stop. I wouldn't buy everything soley from it; I do like better food and teas. But it will get you started living cheaply in Tokyo.

Breaking into Tokyo

When I first flew to Japan, back a few years, I was nervous as hell. I was memorizing little phrases on the plane, thinking about how bad I might suck as a teacher, unable to sleep much.

This time, it was completely different. In fact, I had a hard time distinguishing what I was feeling exactly. I was a little nervous about the classes, but not much. I know enough of the language to get around anywhere with little confusion. So what was I feeling? Wrapped up in all the packing, organizing, physical therapy, seeing friends and family, I hadn't had much time for introspection.

As the plane descended after the 13th hour, through wispy layers of clouds that became an overcast sky once we were close enough to see the rice fields, and as the plane landed the air was filled with a grey haze, and we taxied down the runway past a neatly-trimmed hedge that said NARITA (the airport's name), and then later, after passing through customs, when an elderly lady airport attendant showed me how the luggage carts were designed to fit perfectly onto the escalators, and then later, on the train to Tokyo, in the middle of the rush hour press, when one guy fell asleep with his head just below my shoulder blade on my back, so I couldn't move without waking him, and I looked around at everybody's personal fashion, everyone so put together, and later, as I fought with a salaryman who was pushing my bags out of his way while I was holding them in place, and as I stood there looking at the sunset, which had liquified the grey haze into a gleaming gold against the concrete and the wires and the signs, I realized what I had been feeling.

Relief. At coming back to a place that is more a part of me than I ever admitted.

I'm excited to be focusing on my Japanese. I'm thrilled for this opportunity to advance towards a career in linguistics and translation. But, in a certain sense, Japan is a kind of home. I don't think I'll end up living here for good. For now, though, it'll do.