Jan. 3, 2012

Well, we had lunch at Burger King today.  I thought it would be a lot longer before I wrote those words.  We decided to take the kids to a movie, getting there took a little longer than we thought, and there was a Burger King just as we exited the subway.  Fast, convenient, and, compared to many of our other meals, not expensive (though I can't say "cheap").

I wanted to take a picture of the menu, but it couldn't be seen clearly with the kids in the picture, so I took two:

The cinema was quite crowded, probably due to the New Year's holiday.  As I mentioned earlier, New Year's is an important holiday in Japan.  Many businesses close down for several days around New Year's.  TGA, the company that works with Exxon families to help them relocate, is closed from Dec. 28 to Jan. 3, and the management company for our apartment is closed through Jan. 4; hence our move-in date of Jan. 5.  Here's where Drew experienced a problem with cross-cultural communication.  Drew realized that TGA was back in the office a day before the realty management company, so he thought we might be able to move in a day earlier.  He proposed this, TGA came back with why they thought it might not be a good idea, he replied to their concern, they came back with a different concern, etc.  After an exchange of several emails, he finally realized they were trying to tell him "no" without actually saying "no."  Then he thanked them for looking out for him and said Jan. 5 was an excellent move-in day. :)

We had checked out the movies in advance and picked one of the movies in English - Real Steel.  The Adventures of Tintin was also playing in English, but we had seen that over Christmas break in Ohio.  Purchasing our tickets we came across something new:  we were asked where we wanted to sit in the theater.  We were given tickets with specific aisle and seat numbers on them.  Another note about purchasing the tickets: Drew first went to the hotel concierge to see if we could book the tickets online ahead of time.  But we couldn't because you have to be a resident and put in your home address.  No fly-by-night movie ticket purchases!

As we came out of the theater, we heard a drum beat start up.  Lucky us!  We were just about to witness a performance on the Japanese drums.

After the performance, some of the performers were talking to members of the audience, so we asked one if she spoke English.  She didn't, but her friend did.  That's how we found out it they were called Japanese drums, or taiko, and we found out the name of their group, Wadaiko Dojo Dondoko.  We took a short video of part of the performance, but the quality of our video was so poor that we decided not to upload it to the blog.  Instead, here's a link to a YouTube video of this same group performing in the same location on Jan. 1.  They performed there Jan. 1, 2, and 3 as part of the New Year celebration.  (I guess the person who did this video is working with slightly better equipment than my old point-and-shoot camera. :) )

Then we wandered around the area a little more and found a very large Starbucks that was also a bookstore.  They had a small English section, but no luck on Greer's book.  We also came across this pond that was home to Space Medaka, which, according to the English sign, are descendants of fish born in space during a 1994 space shuttle flight.  Of course, we couldn't read the Japanese above the English, and it might have been talking about the joke played on the gaijin. :)  (Though I did find this info about Space Medaka (click here) online.)

Then we stopped for dinner at an Asian restaurant.  Everybody picked a dish and we all shared, which was good since every dish arrived at a different time.  We had steamed soup buns, stir-fried shrimp with chili sauce, fried rice with spiny lobster and asparagus, and shredded beef with bell peppers.  I had to list them because it was amazing that everybody (read: "Cooper") liked everything.  We even all liked the jasmine tea.

Japanese word of the day:  shi  (click to hear pronunciation) means "four"
Note about this word of the day:  Four is considered an unlucky number in Japan because shi has the same pronunciation as death.