No sense? No problem. But a hell of a lot of cents.

Here's a little cultural corner for ya here on this fine fine fine rainy day. It's time to drops some knowledge, son. Okay nay it's not raining anymore.

I wanna just start by saying, Japan is WEIRD. I think that is pretty much internationally known at this point, but I may never run out of weird points to mention about Japan. I am confused and surprised just about everyday. It's one thing that is so interesting about this country. So often you find yourself asking yourself "Why?? Why that?? Why??" Many things in Japan make sense only because things in Japan consistently don't make sense, and you just see things and just think "Oh, that doesn't make sense, well that wouldn't make sense." So here we go.


Money in Japan is like, wtf

You know for what research would allege is a money saving society*, Japan sure does make such a task incredibly difficult. That is unless you prefer to shun conventional banks or wallets and would rather opt to save your money under your local drink machine, in the crevices of the interior of your vehicle, or a bowl on your room divider for things you don't otherwise have any idea what to do with. Yes, folks, I'm talking about coins. The COINS THE COINS. WHY JAPAN WHYY???

There's a simple misstep which takes us all down to China town. Not too far from here but rather an annoying trip to make more than anything. The largest coin in Japan is worth FIVE FRIGGIN DOLLARS. Not only that, but the smallest bill in Japan is TEN FRIGGIN DOLLARS. Well you guessed it, the smallest coin is equivalent to a penny. Thus, FML. Coins in Japan are a painfully annoying fact of life.

Now I know what you might be sitting there thinking, yup I do. You're thinking Yeah we have pennies and they're annoying but hell nobody carries cash anymore so how does Mr. Complainypants have any kind of point here? Wellllll think again genius in a bottle, I'll tell you what rubs my brain the wrong way, and that's the fact that PEOPLE DON'T USE DEBIT OR CREDIT CARDS HERE.

HUH??? But Sensei, didn't you know that Japan is one of the most advanced societies on God's green Earth?? Well you know what, you're right about that. It is one of the most high tech societies there is, but to my surprise, Japan actually picks and chooses convenient technologies to use, ones that we understand as modern facts of life. It has stuff we've never seen before that it considers normal, and stuff we've had since the ice age that they just pass on. However, my friend, is for another blog post altogether and a tangent in this one.

Japan is a cash based society, and that doesn't seem to be changing with even "deliberate" speed. And that doesn't mean just in bars. Forget it, if you come to Japan bring a big tough wallet and a tight fitting belt to hold your pants up as you lug boatloads of change for reasons beyond the grasp of mere lay like ourselves. If you ever wanna get an idea of how much that sucks, get 20 quarters and stack them up. Then imagine they're just a tiny bit bigger. Realize that in Japan you have 100 dollars sitting there instead of 5 dollars. Now keep up with all the change rendered from those things cause a dollar bill is also a coin. Then there's 50 cent, 10 cent, 5 cent, and 1 cent coins. No quarters, and the dimes are huge. You quickly find yourself leaving bread crumbs of money everywhere you go. Of course you get all of it back because it would strongly violate a Japanese conscience  to keep or use anything they even have a suspicion isn't theirs. Any left over talents they may have from the days of ninja mercenaries are now used to track people down and give them back their money or items they dropped.

So what about cards? I mean come on, people don't just........what do people do anyways to get money?? I wasn't born before this archaic vestige you call "cash" became so.  Well people do use cards, but only generally at ATMs, to get money out. IE, you can't pay for anything with them. Nobody told me that shit actually. I often tried to pay with it when I first got here. I often gave people my card, and they would just look at me and hand it back to me timidly like ummm....this is a cash card sooo...... They wouldn't say that of course because English isn't exactly widely spoken, but that was the obvious sentiment. People are so polite here though, they would even sometimes try to use it knowing full well it wouldn't work.

Little pic of the coinz, minus a 500yen($5) coin because those things get broken so quickly.

Insofar as people don't use cards, they don't use them for online payments either. In fact, when you order something online, you go pay at a convenience store. Convenience stores are a whole other blog as well, they're indispensable in Japan. Seven-eleven picks up the slack where all of Japan decides to deliberately inconvenience itself.

So to be fair, there does exist the capacity to use cards in spots. Some people actually have credit cards, but I almost never see people use them. In fact, to my knowledge, there aren't debit cards either. Now maybe they exist but I just haven't noticed or inquired far enough, but the point overall still stands - that people use cash. Many places won't accept card period, and only larger places like shopping malls and grocery stores even have to potential to do so.

So in the end, how you supposed to save moneys like that bro? Smallest bill is ten dollars and nobody uses electronic/plastic payment. Everyone uses cash for everything and a much larger proportion of their "cash" is pesky easy to lose coins. You got metal flying everywhere and some politician should run on quitting that. The GDP would probably spike and lead Japan to the promise land!......Oh. What a weird thing to lead you to the promise land, you say? That doesn't make any sense, you say? Well that wouldn't make any sense. Peace.


*(Statistically countries whose native language has no future tense tend to save more money than their future tense language counterparts - saw it on NPR son!)

Expect the unexpected when travelling, but this, really?

I moved left. I moved right. I touched the ground a few times and wondered how I got myself in this situation. The night was warm and I never thought I would find myself like this right after such a Fuji pickle. But there I was two nights later, doing something which would cause me to open this blog with a trite literary device. That said, here we go folks -

SO. Yeah son stuff is happening way too fast for me to blog about, but never fear. Lotsa material I'll keep on plugging and chuggin until it all runs out yo!! Things will slow down, and I'll thereafter vomit the ridiculous loads of stuff that's gone down. I'll start where we last left our heroes, and luckily, that wasn't on Fuji. That, if I remember right, was with my jont around Tokyo in my good ole trusty spongebob PJs. Ah yes. I remember now.

As it all comes flowing back to me, it is fair to note that the first real weekend was PACKED with action, because after my spongebob stroll, I went straight to my apartment and went to sleep. Okay so it doesn't seem packed yet, I'm getting there. I went back to my apartment at around 4:30pm on Saturday. That was after waking up last also in my apartment at 7:00am on Friday. That's right, the Fuji adventure had been nearly a 36 hour adventure of just not sleeping but instead well if you read the last blog then you know. If you didn't then fear not! these episodes are not cumulative. There will be a quiz though.

When I got home it was bed time, so I went to sleep at 4:30pm....woke up briefly at ~10pm wondering where the hell I was, then went back to sleep immediately and woke up again around 5am. Bummed around for an hour reading the news and such, then went back to sleep around 6am. Woke up at 8am. So in all......around 14-15 hours of good quality sleep. Good thing too because I woke up to a message from my friends saying let's go to be BEACH YAYAYAYAYY!!!! Well let me tell you, I was tired, but it's less than 3 hours to the beach from here, so I'm loath to turn down a good honest trip to the beach. I was out the door and at the train by 10am.

Fast-forward and we're there!!! It was nice. Actually we went to a park first that was pretty cool. For good measure I'll throw in a picture of the park as it were:

One word, bigasssunflowers

Okay this picture is actually pretty sweet. Yeah I know it's two pictures now and I said "a" picture. Who's counting though?(besides you).....(and me)

Little group pho never hurt anyone. Don't know what the hell happened to second from the left.

Alright time to walk to the beach now.

WEEEEEEE THE BEACH!!!!

Yes yes, it was a quiet and normal day which provided relaxation not nearly commensurate to the struggle of the day before and night before that, because that's dang near impossible, but it tried! It was a really nice time. Only my feet were slightly sore and less functional than usual but other than that awesome. After finishing up a little chillax on the beach it was time to step up the relaxation a little bit. You guessed it! It was time to eat some squid salad:

That's right, nothing takes a load off like some chewy tentacle, MMMMM

Just joshin that didn't really relax me at all, but what came after did. We followed directly into the Japanese onsen after that. It's my first time in the famed onsen, which is a bath house where you (generally) go bathe naked with people of the same sex. I know, I had you at "bathe naked with people of the same sex." Well it goes on. The way these things work is that you're in a big open area and there are many pools of different temperatures. It's actually quite awesome. The point of an onsen is just to relax, not to actually take a bath, that would be pretty odd haha. You actually are required to shower beforehand before getting in the bath. That's how much of a not bath it is. And wash you do man, freaking a. There's a bunch of stools as you walk into the room on the right. There's a line of folk all with their own individual shower heads just showering away sitting down though. Strange but I didn't ask, not that I would know how. There was actually a line to get showered off because people were taking FOREVER to shower. I'm not sure if this extends to other onsens or the rest of Japan, but DANG MAN. They must take this clean before getting in the onsen thing super seriously. Those dudes were cleaning everything like six times, in places probably still left undiscovered by even modern science. Thus, by corollary, and the ever present law of physics, "monkey see monkey do," I also took forever to shower. And felt violated(by my own self), which was a perfect segue to heading into the bath. It was HOT. Very peaceful tough, partially outside and on the roof. Nice rock landscaping. Pools that were super cold, then with a tunnel into a sauna room with a pool that was super hot. A pool in a little cave, etc it was awesome. I was relaxed and happy. Good for the muscles.

It had somehow managed to seem like it would be a normal evening. As if things were without a hitch and for the love, we were being thrown a bone after having our bodies tested the days before. Then as we were leaving....wha...??? Music? I like it. There had been music coming from some ambiguous direction the whole time we were on the beach but this was louder and closer. We were still just one street over from the beach btw. So at this point we're like sweet well we have some time before the train so lets do this. We went over and found a party!! Wohoo! LET'S DO THIS:

Dance floor????

Friends?? Okay he was there the whole time.

TIME FOR FUN! Now those who know me know I just love me a good dance from time to time. It's just that music baby, keeps ma body movin! And what did you know? They were actually playing western hiphop and r&b at this particular joint - something people seem to find difficult to come across in ole Japan. So I was ecstatic, ready to go baby. Even though it was like a shitty Cinderella story cause the train was at like 1030 or something but anyways we had some time to jam out. 

When we got on the dance floor, people were obviously a bit surprised. Westerners are pretty hard to come by in Japan, for real. And to see them out and about in a group in a non-international tourist area is something that turns heads pretty instantly. So we made a bit of a splash, plus I love dancing so I don't exactly keep a low profile even though I'm a goofy ass dancer. Wait what the hell am I saying??? I'm sweet.

One thing in Japan I've learned, however, is yeah, lots of dudes love to dance. What's more, in my short and meager experience, they're freaking good at it! So on this particular dance floor there were a few good dancers, and one in particular who was kind of the ring leader guy. My first thought when I saw him: Oh shit. I'm gonna get into a dance battle with this guy aren't I? I knew it from the second I saw him. First, some background.

So for some reason in my history
I have a tendency to be challenged to miniature dance battles. I don't know why, I've never taken any kind of dance lessons or anything like that whatsoever, but it still happens. Usually it's in a small enough situation and few enough people are watching that I can just be like uhh haha umm and then just act like I didn't notice the challenge. I've never taken anyone up on it. I think I get challenged just cause usually the only folks ever brave enough to dance are usually those who have had some kind of training or at least think they're good. For me I just don't care about looking like an idiot if I'm having fun. 

Unfortunately an hour into dancing, there was no ignoring this challenge. I had too big of a profile being a foreigner who was actually managing to fake dancing experience. I was fodder man, irresistible to a curious Japanese dancer who has possibly dreamed of this moment when he could challenge a gaijin(foreigner). Son of a b****, so I put this thought down in the back of my mind. Everyone danced in peace for a pretty good while, managing to still be a slight bit of a spectacle, but not that bad considering. But I drifted too close to this guy. It was slightly intentional, I was hoping to come dancing in peace, dancing in his general vicinity with this "Hey! Party right?" mood about me. Well that nope. I got close to him and like he had been planning his dance dis for his whole life, he came directly to me and danced in my face with a strongly worded (in body language) taunt. He backed away and everybody said OOOOHHHH.......NOOOOO FINE. Here goes nothing.

Well everybody knew what was up at that point, they all cleared the dance floor and got into a well defined home team and away team. Some other people went and sat at picnic tables cause they didn't care. In all epic stories there's always those people who don't care, just no author has such balls to mention such individuals as yours truly. I embellish not!? And to be honest, after that it was all a blur. I danced, he danced. His favorite song came on, my favorite song came on, I slipped a few times on the sand and made it look ambiguous as if I meant for that to happen. But we were beasts clashing, my legs at this point burned like I can't even express! They made me fully aware that 48 hours before I was hiking up a volcano when I should have been sleeping. Anyways there is one legendary picture of this even which will go down in history I kid you not. Somehow, it'll go in the books. Any here is your first look, the originals. 

There it is, look at that guy, he's like "Ohhhh shiiittttt!"

Of course yours truly won this thing. I mean who else? Except the guy who has probably been dancing his whole life.......I WON. So to end this thing, I'd like to just say after this eventful situation we went home NOT. Dang it our train left us, good thing there was a festival going on in this town. We were just running into festivals left and right I swear! But then we had to sneak a bunch of people into a hotel room. Then I had to go to my first day of work the next day on a 4:30am train, ohhhhh yay Japan! Even with all the expectations to do things I've never done before when travelling, I never figured it would be this! More to come, this blog has just gotten started!