Zeebra - Bushido

Bushido spirit meets modern hip hop in this recent single from Japanese hip hop pioneer Zeebra. Pretty cool.

First Day of Spring = A Cold, Rainy Holiday

If you have talked to many Japanese people then you may have heard them say that Japan is the only country in the world that has “four distinct seasons”. That’s probably BS, but the Japanese do take the changing of the seasons quite seriously. As you know today was the first day of spring or “shunbun no hi” in Japanese. In a lot of cultures the day passes with an “oh it’s spring now” comment, but in Japan it is a national holiday. While restraunts and stores are still open, all government and company offices are closed and there is no school.

Unfortunatley the first day of spring in the Kanto area arrived not with birds chirping and sunny skies but with ugly clouds and cold rain. Oh well.  Since Kaori’s work was closed today, we headed out to do some shopping. Tsukuba has no shortage of shopping areas but we needed to pick up some items for the apartment so we headed out to a place called “Gran Stage”, located a short distance from our place.

Gran Stage Tsukuba opened about two years ago and includes a huge home goods store, an auto parts store called “Ken’s Garage”, a massive pet shop and  a large food court. It’s not your trendy fashion mall but more like a place you can take the family (and your pets) for a day of one-stop shopping.

This wasn’t my first time there but this time I remembered to snap a few pictures with my camera phone. Please excuse the poor photo quality.

The first stop was Ken’s Garage, which is very similar to Super Autobacs. They have everything from tires to car care goods to tuning parts to die cast collectibles.

The sign over the entrance. It looks like Ken is a Mopar guy. He just got done throwing some new hubcaps on his ‘64 Dodge.

In case you were looking for stylish luxury curtains for your VIP car they have plenty to choose from at Ken’s.

TE37’s , Advans and coilover kits. I don’t think they sell these sort of things at Auto Zone.

A small part of the die cast section. They have everything from miniature Ferrari’s to GT-R’s to Toyota Hi Ace vans. They are far from cheap though.

Retro-style wheel covers in 12″ diameter. Perfect to take your kei car back to the good ole’ days. I actually thought these were pretty cool. If those aren’t your thing there are some more traditional 13″ “Nyron” wheel covers below.

After Ken’s we headed to the pet store to have a look. Pets are big in Japan.

We wanted to take this little fella home. I don’t think our landlord would be too happy about that though.  It’s funny because the American short hair kittens they had cost about double what the pure bred puppies cost. Always greener (more expensive) on the other side I guess?

This is sort of weird. Gourmet desserts that you can share with your dog? I can’t imagine that they taste too well.

As tempting as the dog bakery was, we grabbed some lunch at the food court and then did some unexciting shopping at the home store. Afterwards we headed to Kaori’s parent’s house for the afternoon.

When we got there Kaori’s dad was watching the movie “Crank” on DVD, he’s a pretty big fan of action movies. Cool flick, but kinda strange seeing it dubbed in Japanese. After that he gave me a complimentary hair cut (he owns a barber shop right next to the house).

Sporting my fresh new hair cut, I headed out with Kaori and her pops to the local kaiten sushi joint and stuffed myself with sushi and beer. Then we went back and watched some TV and played with Kaori’s sister’s baby, Kira.

It was nothing exciting but it turned out to be a nice “holiday”.

An Afternoon Stroll

Well, I must say that I’m surprised with the feedback I have gotten for this blog already. I’ll say that since I have only lived here a few months, I can’t really make many definitive statements about life in Japan. I am pretty much basing everything on comparisons to living in a medium-sized city in California and from how I have heard other people describe Japan.

I will say that I think the image of Japan often gets distorted based on broad generalizations, just as anything can. For example, a lot of people’s image of Japan is of some high tech futuristic urban wonderland. This may be true if you base everything on a huge city like Tokyo, but thinking of Japan as Tokyo is the same as thinking the United States is only New York City or San Francisco. There is simply more to it than can ever be uncovered by one person.

With that said, I will share what I personally find interesting about life here.

This afternoon I took a little bike ride and shot a few more pictures of the area around my apartment. I probably looked like a freak riding around on taking pictures of random things but whatever.

When I step out of my door, this is what I see. The parking lot of the 24hr bookstore/video rental place and a huge Internet /manga cafe. During the week it’s pretty quiet but on weekend nights the area is pretty busy. At least I can check it out cool cars in the parking lot all the time.

Outside of the bookstore. It’s pretty nice because I can go get my car magazine fix anytime 24/7.

This is a “wedding house”. It’s sole purpose is basically to be a place for weddings. Weddings in Japan can be quite extravagant (and expensive) affairs. Underneath the building is a parking area with some classy Rolls Royce limos. I don’t even wanna know what it costs to have a wedding here.

It is very common for parking to be located underneath buildings as seen in this photo.

A typical unpaved parking lot. Who says Japanese people only drive tiny cars?

This area has more “traditional” Japanese homes. There is very little room on the sides of the road, it can be make for a nerve racking experience when passing a big truck coming the other way. After a while you get used to it though.

Small patches of fields in the middle of the city.

This area has more “western” style housing., same narrow roads though.

A common misconception about Japan is that very few people have cars. That is probably true in Tokyo where there is a massive rail system, but once you get outside of Tokyo it is quite different. It is not uncommon for there to be 2-3 cars per household like this one. Basically, the farther you get from an urban area the bigger necessity a car becomes.

This building is typical of the “mansion” buildings that have been springing up all over the area since the Tsukuba Express has arrived.

Another apartment/mansion complex. To me, this one looks more like something you would see in California. Check out the R33 GT-R and the awesome 3rd generation Pontiac Firebird!

Most of the time Tsukuba is pretty relaxing and quiet.

The busier streets in usually have decent sidewalks.

The one generalization about Japan that is true is that there are vending machines everywhere. There really is.  Whether you are in the middle of the boonies, or in the center of Tokyo there is probably one within spitting distance.

This photo shows some of the greenery that is common around here.

Pizza Hut and their fleet of exciting delivery vehicles. I wonder if they are hiring?

Is that Urkel? Where are his glasses?

One of the many research facilities around here. I think this one has something to do with soil.

The Tsukuba Mini dealer right across from our place.

This is an older photo, but it shows the outside of our apartment building. My next door neighbor is pretty into cars and he has managed to squeeze three cars into a spot made for two. My other neighbor has a pretty cool FD RX7.

I hope you enjoyed that exotic tour.

Next up, the apartment itself.

Welcome to Jungle! (Tsukuba Science City)

In case you didn’t know, I moved to Japan with my lovely wife Kaori at the end of December, 2007. She is now working as a travel agent and I have started on my path towards a career in auto-related media after graduating college last year.

I already have a blog  about car stuff but occasionally I do something not related to cars. I figured I should make a new blog that is more like a traditional diary type of thing so I can share my relatively-uninteresting life in Japan with my friends and family back home, as well as anyone else who might be interested. I will probably also post random music, movies or other stuff I find interesting from time to time.

There are a million blogs about “life in Japan” so I’ll try to show a more unique side of things though I can’t promise it will be very interesting to read . I’ll start off with a small intro to our city for those that don’t know.

Tsukuba city is located in southern Ibaraki prefecture about 30 miles or so from the center of Tokyo. Even though it is not that far away, going to Tokyo by car is kind of a pain in the ass. Luckily in 2005 the Tsukuba Express train line was opened, connecting Tsukuba to Akihabara in the center of Tokyo in 45 minutes. Tsukuba is also close to my in-laws house when we feel the need for a nice, home-cooked meal.

In this photo you can see our location relative to Tokyo. Tokyo/Narita International Airport is at the bottom right.

If you are interested in cars than you are probably also thinking of Tsukuba Circuit which I frequent quite often. Actually, the circuit is located in Shimotsuma which is the city next door to us. It’s only about 12 miles away from the apartment but the trip takes about 30-40 minutes given the slow speeds on the roads.

Tsukuba City is known for its university and its large amount of research facilities and other science-related establishments. Because of this, Tsukuba has a pretty large population of foreign people and fortunately they are generally a quiet, intelligent bunch and not really the rowdy, trouble-making types that sometimes cause the Japanese to view jam-packed everywhere with no regard for how it looks. The city has a lot of trees, parks, and bike trails like this one pictured below-

Since the Tsukuba Express was finished the city has been going through massive growth. Tsukuba is now becoming a commuter town for people who work in Tokyo but want a quieter lifestyle with more room and cheaper property. There a huge, high rise luxury apartment or “mansion” buildings being built all over the city as well as a number of fashion malls and other “Tokyo-like” stuff.

This is the Tsukuba Center area near the train station. There are bunch of department stores, restaurants and other places that that have been built within the last few years. This is about a 10-15 minute walk from the apartment.

We even have a Lexus dealer. So classy.

One of the entrances to Tsukuba Station. Just 45 minutes to Akihabara and all of its nerdy extravagance!

A JAXA (Japanese NASA) facility down the street from our place. They don’t launch rockets here but it is a large training base.

No less important is the Up Garage store, which is also down the street. I have been tempted to buy parts here for a car I don’t even own yet.

Well that does it for the first post. Next time I will show a little more of the local area as well as our apartment itself. Stay tuned!