I have been meaning to post a random facts list for a while. Here it is:
1. Winter at school feels like wintercamp in Belgium. Its very cold except for in the main room, where its only warm if you are close enough to a heater. They use kerosene heaters, so the smell reminds me of the heaters and gaslamps at camp. Classrooms are cold. Hallways are cold. Toilets are cold.
2. In the summer, it gets hot and humid....so people wear a towel around their neck like a scarf to soak up the sweat.
3. Police car lights are always flashing. They use their loudspeakers when they want to pull someone over.
4. People don't pull over for ambulances....I guess unless they absolutely have to.
5. Japan has three alphabets and all three are used. Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji. The first two have more than 40 characters each and Kanji is basically a new vocabulary list, which must be drawn/written in the correct stroke order and with the exact number of strokes. THEY CAN TELL WHEN ITS WRONG!
6. Katakana is used for foreign words, but those words still need serious decoding. Some examples:
ka-n-to-ri = country
a-re-ru-gi = allergy
bu-ru = ????
hu-i-ru-taa = ????
Can you figure out the last two? In the next post we'll give you some more to figure out.
7. Rice with raw egg is a typical breakfast.
8. Fermented soybeans, some sticky, stinky, gooey brown stuff (= nato) is many children's favorite.
9. Road work seems to happen mostly in the winter and at night. At night? Yes, well, we dont know when they stop working but they tend to set up the road work stuff almost every day around 8 or 9 pm. Route 50 is the road we take straight into town....maybe about 10 km from our place. On our way in town its a perfectly clear road (except for the traffic). On our way back, after 9 pm, we can run into anywhere from 2 to 6 road work activities for which our lane takes turns with the oncoming traffic to pass the roadwork in the one usable lane.
10. Apparently green is blue.
11. I'm a big fan of inside shoes and bathroom shoes.
12. They really like mayonaise and corn here. In the store, you can buy a bun that just has mayonaise and corn on it. In almost any restaurant that sells pizza you can buy a mayo and corn pizza.
13. Crosswalks. Many crosswalk signal lights have a bird chirping sound to go along with the green light. Both directions have different sounds. Yes, I realize this is for blind people, which is awesome. I just think its funny they chose two different bird chirps. Also, you can cross an intersection diagonally (busy intersections)!! Yes, they actually stop road traffic from all 4 directions so that pedestrians have a green light from any corner to any corner.
14. It is cheaper to travel from Japan to South Korea or Thailand for vacation than to travel within Japan, considering all costs.
15. There is no real bacon and you can't buy a whole chicken anywhere.
16. One of the most popular desserts is anko. This is sweet bean paste. (sometimes its chunky!) Examples of anko dishes are 1) anko-filled mochi (remember the mochi rice stuff?), 2) anko-filled donuts and 3) anko-filled pancakes.
17. Pancake mixes are everywhere!
18. Bikers ride on the street against traffic (yes, on the side where pedestrians are supposed to walk if there is no sidewalk) on busy streets. (This is quite annoying and dangerous for us as scooter drivers because we typically kind of "hug" the curb to pass cars between the car and curb when traffic is moving slowly.)
19. Kewpies are actually not just known, but popular here. (They have a kewpie brand mayonaise!!) (If you do not know what a kewpie is, look it up....it is also Derrick's High School mascot)
20. Apparently gargling water or tea prevents illnesses, like the common cold or the flue.
3 comments:
For the list#9
The road construction in winter is common in order to use up the remaining fund for the annual budget the city got this FY.
The city can't get the amount of the money for the next FY's budget if it haven't used up 100% of the fund received in previous FY.
I don't know about the U.S. cities,
but I think this system is quite rediculous.
For the list#15
Isn't the Canadian bacon real bacon?
For the list#16
I think the most popular stuff with anko in Japan is "an-pan", the anko filled bread. We even have a super hero called "an-pan man".
Anko is one of the Japanese food that devides people who like it or
not very clearly. Do you like it?
For the list#18
According to the law, the bikes are light vehicle, which must use the road set for all vehicles.
Japanese government didn't take effort to make bike lanes for the bikes, like in many European countries, so many people who ride bikes don't care about traffic rules.
BTW, did you know that the while line at the outer edge of the road dosen't mean that the margin between the white line and the curve is reserved for bikes or scooters (unless it's explicitly marked for bikes)? The white line simply shows that the edge of the road is near there. I hope you won't get accident while riding scooter.
For the list#17
Yes they are. Thank you very much for the yummy pancakes!
For the list#20
It really works!
Dude! Apparently green is blue here too. Freaky...
And here when you ask for fruit salad they bring you fruit salad,but with gobs of mayo on top.
And here we're too afraid to operate any kind of a vehicle in traffic, most of all two wheeled ones.
Delightful post. Truly I enjoyed every word.
1. You have toilets? I'm jealous already.
5. I would give my little toe to be able to sound out any kind of writing that I couldn't understand.
8. We lovingly call that stuff "poop sauce." Ugh.
11. ME TOO :)
12. Don't get me started.
15. Refer to 12
19. I'm becoming rather fond of Kewpie...
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