Orientation and Okonomiyaki in Okazaki

 Food, Japan, Japanese Language, Travel  Comments Off on Orientation and Okonomiyaki in Okazaki
Oct 052011
 

Orientation at Yamasa started today.

We learned lots of things that don’t apply to me, because I’m on a short-term visa, and will be gone in 3 months. It’s kind of a bummer, but there you go. But there was a lot of really useful information, too, like what to do with my trash.

I’ve been hoarding trash for the last week or so, because frankly, I don’t know what to do with it.

Welcome to Japan! You Fail at Trash!

When I got first got into my apartment, I was checking all of the drawers, and in the file cabinet there was this thick brochure, and in it was this whole dissertation on how to sort trash about 800 different ways.

So I figured that’s what I had to do. I went to the nearest conbini, bought a bunch of trash bags, and went at it.

There are trash bags for all kinds of trash here. It’s mind-boggling. Each type of trash gets its own special bag. We only have the one sort of trash bag in the US, and we pick based on brand loyalty, size, application, and how much trash can it hold before exploding.

In Okazaki (I’ve been told it’s different in other places), ordinary people have to sort their trash into bags of burnable trash, paper, plastic, non-burnable trash, and PET (plastic) bottles.

But wait, you’re not done yet. That milk carton is made of paper, so you think it goes into the “paper” bag, right? Wrong! It gets cut open and flattened (after you wash it out and dry it, of course), then stacked and bundled with twine, and disposed of at the proper place. (Wherever that is.) Same goes for newspapers, glass bottles, cans, and a long list of other things you probably didn’t realize.

You think you can just hide it in the trash bag? HA! You fool! You have to write your address on all of your trash bags, and one of your neighbors (the Trash Shogun) will be checking your trash for “improper items,” and that person has the right to reject your trash.

Yes, in Japan your trash can fail to be proper trash.

And you can’t hope that they won’t see it, because the trash bags are clear. Fun, huh? Makes you think twice before throwing out a lot of stuff, doesn’t it?

So rather than try to actually throw out the trash, I panicked and just stuffed it under the sink in a lame attempt to sort it until I got orders on what to actually do with it.

After orientation, I learned something very important.

I don’t need all of those bags.

Luckily, our apartment complex just has two blue dumpsters, one marked “burnable trash,” and the other marked “nonburnable trash.” At orientation, I learned that I just have to keep two little trash bags, and I can just use any old bags I want.

I don’t even have to write my address on them.

Thank God.

Recycling Back Home

Still, I miss the way we do it Back Home. How do we do it there? Simple: most recyclables go in the blue box everyone gets. Put the blue box outside on your designated day, and a truck comes and picks it up. Usually. When they feel like it.

Vegetables and other kitchen waste can be ground up in the garbage disposal and handled as raw sewage, or you can compost it, or just toss it in the trash. Bulky stuff, like electronics and the like, needs to go to a recycling center run by the county. Hazardous stuff goes to a special center. Not a big deal.

I learned a lot of other useful stuff, too. There’s a grocery store just down the street from the school. Woot. My lunch problem is solved!

I also got a ZigZag coupon. Yay. I hope I can get some beer with it!

After orientation, I went with a group of fellow students to a local restaurant that sells okonmiyaki. It used to be the kaiten-zushi shop, I went to four years ago, I think.

It was pouring rain, so when we got there, we were soaked.

The United Nations of Japanese Language Education

Yamasa does a really good job of mixing up the student body. It’s not just a bunch of Chinese or Korean students with the odd American. There are folks from all over the world here, not just Asia.

The group that went to the restaurant was a good mix. There was a guy from Switzerland, and a woman from Israel. And of course a couple of Americans, and some folks from other places, too. I can’t remember them all, but it was a good mix of people.

Then I went home, dried off, watched some TV and went to bed. Gotta get up early for class.

The Trash Heap Has Spoken!

 Food, Japan, Photos, Travel  Comments Off on The Trash Heap Has Spoken!
Oct 232007
 

Yesterday was interesting.

I got up at 8 a.m. I was freezing, and my throat was killing me. The window had been leaking cold air into my room, and it was right above where my head is on the bed. (Or was– I moved the other way on the bed so my head and feet are reversed.)

I felt lousy for most of the morning. The funny thing is, most of the people I saw on campus were coughing and hacking too. So apparently I wasn’t the only one who got caught in the draft. And no, the window was closed. It just wasn’t well-insulated.

Class got moved to from 12:40 to 1:40, only I didn’t remember being told that. They probably told me in Japanese, which explains why I screwed up. The rest of my classes this week will go from 1:40-4:40, so now I have mornings totally free. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with that now.

Denny’s

After class, I finally went to the local Denny’s. First off, I saw no chopsticks. All I saw was silverware. Sorry, guys. No souvenirs for you.

Okazaki on the way to class

Let me just say that every meal I’ve had in Japan up until now has been very good. I was surprised to discover that Denny’s in Japan is somehow worse than Denny’s in the U.S. My server was very nice, but the food she brought me was poison.

Drinks. What would I like to drink? How about ginger ale? No, they don’t have that. So she gave me a colorful drink menu to choose from. Hmm… Okay, how about pink lemonade? It can’t be all that bad, right? She brings me something bright pink. It turns out it’s pink lemonade soda so sweet it would put a 5-year old into insulin shock.

I’ll have water then.

Then the puzzle of settling on actual food to eat. My confidence unshaken, I perused the menu. Hmm… American Club Sandwich. I can’t read this other stuff, but the picture looks good.

Well, it looks like a sandwich…

I’ll get a side of fries with that, too. What the heck.

The fries came as an appetizer. They were taramasala mayo fries, I think. All I know is that they came with a pink sauce with little red dots in it. It wasn’t bad. It tasted like mayo mixed with something. So far, not bad.

Then came the sandwich.

I’m getting nauseous just thinking about it. It was a double-decker club sandwich all right, but the first deck consisted of bacon, 2 fried eggs, and ketchup.

Where I come from, that’s already a meal.

We call it breakfast.

The second deck was some sort of chicken in a sweet sauce or gravy, lettuce, and mayo.

And that’s something we call lunch, or maybe dinner.

You might think it doesn’t sound too bad.

And you would be wrong.

They are all foods I like.  And I’m actually amazed that I got it down without bringing it back up. Describing it later to someone, I could actually feel the normal meal I had later try to make an escape from my stomach.

So yeah, Denny’s. Service was great. Food… ugh. Throws self on sword to relieve stomach pain.

I don’t know of any Americans who would think, “Hmm, I think I’ll have a club sandwich. Esther, let’s fry some eggs and bacon, and hey, get some of that chicken and gravy out!”

Just as much as Americans don’t understand Japan, Japanese don’t get us. “American” gets stuck on the most random stuff here: it’s put on stuff that no American (well, no American in his right mind, anyway) would ever eat.

I think it’s just an excuse to for one group of Japanese to try to fool the rest of the country into trying to eat something they wouldn’t ordinarily eat.

“Hey, I know you wouldn’t normally eat a bacon and egg and chicken and gravy sandwich, but you know, those Americans do, and they’re so wild! Now you eat it too, so you can be wild!”

“Mmkay.”

“Now have this American ice cream. We filled a big paint bucket with ice cream…”

Not much else happened yesterday. I spent the evening recovering from that meal mistake, then got a snack at the conbini. Thank you, conbini. You saved me again.

All Hail MiniStop!

My heeeero!

Oh I Looove Trash

Trash sorting is the most disgusting thing ever. I’ll have a hard time taking the shoe-switching thing seriously now that I’ve seen what the landlady does to improperly sorted trash.

If you’ve never been to Japan, let me explain. It’s a small country, with little room for things like landfills, so you’re not allowed to throw anything away.

You have to pack out all of your trash with you, because you will never see a public trash can. If there was such a mythical beast, it would be crammed full of trash that people didn’t know what to do with, or just got tired of carrying around with them all the time.

Okay, that’s only half true.

Trash is supposed to be sorted into burnable trash, paper, plastic/non-burnable trash, PET (plastic bottles), cans, and glass. I’ve been sorting as best as I can, and taking it down to the kitchen, which also serves as Sorting Central.

But apparently, people fail sorting on a daily basis, and the landlady has decided that if you don’t put trash in the right place, she’ll put it ON THE PREP TABLE BY THE TRASH. So when you come into the kitchen, you can see a lovely (and by lovely, I mean repulsive and disgusting) pile of Other People’s Rejected Trash. Things like Kleenex with hairballs, old food containers, old dirty chopsticks, cigarette butts… I even saw a pair of torn dirty underwear.

Let me repeat that last item again, just in case you missed it. Someone threw away their underwear because it was in such terrible shape, and instead of winding up in the trash, it wound up on the prep table in the kitchen by the trash can.

This is the same prep table people make their food on.

So yeah. Japan? Never taking the shoe thing with a straight face again.

Oh, and I’m staying the hell away from the kitchen.

Now I’m hoarding all of my trash until the last day, where I’ll just ninja-sort it and flee, unless I can find a trashcan, which will probably be next to the unicorn and the leprechaun.

By the way, hotels are great for the simple reason that they have trashcans in the rooms, AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO SORT IT.

Oh, you can find recycling bins for the various things you buy from vending machines, but that’s 99% cans and bottles, which does me no good at all.

This blog is protected by Dave\'s Spam Karma 2: 3159 Spams eaten and counting...