Endless Goals

I could not remember much about the night life and places where people hang out to have a drink in Japan. I am not a regular drinker and only join for drinking session when there were some special functions.

All across Tokyo and big cities in Japan there are many snack bars and izakaya. These places are mostly patron by Japanese as most foreigners would prefer western style discos and bars.

I still do not know why some bars in Japan are called snacks, probably they serve snack food together with alcohol. Izakaya are Japanese style drinking place where they serve Japanese food as well which goes well with beer and sake like the yakitori.

I prefer places like the Izakaya as it is cheaper and where students normally hangout on weekends. We could imagine how the place could turn to be very noisy when students started to get drunk and making funs of themselves.

The session will normally go to second round or third round until everyone were too drunk to do anything. As long as I can remember there was not a single function where there was no karaoke session. Japanese are so fond of karaoke and almost everybody would have their favorite karaoke song. Do you know that karaoke originate from Japanese word, kara for empty and oke for orchestra, well it’s a combination of Japanese and English actually.

If we walk along some empty streets we will come across one or two snack bars. It seems that the places are located at abandoned area but they do have regular customers who are mostly salarymen or office workers. Some of these places would have a karaoke sets for their customers and we could hear some torturing sound of Japanese songs from the bars nearby.

Those days the bars would usually close around midnight or just in time for the workers to catch the last train home. However Tokyo is also regarded as the city never sleeps where there are also places where clubs, discos and bars would still open until the next morning. Businessmen would normally treat their clients or business prospects in this type of places and this kind of places are not cheap and I have never been to one. We could just imagine how much money was spent on entertainment and not surprisingly Japan was the world number one economic power during the time.

Liquors are widely consumed in Japan. There are vending machines for beers too but surprisingly these machines are programmed to sell until 12 midnight. But we hardly hear any alcohol related crime or abuse.

I’m not an expert on alcohol or liquor drink but Japanese sake taste a lot better that any rice wine from any other country in the world. Some said it is because of the quality of the water they use to make the wine.

Working hard during the day time and drink a lot after work is part of the Japanese culture which others find hard to understand. Where do they get the energy to work hard and play hard at the same time. There was an TV advertisement which with phrases like ganbatte ganbatte shigoto, ganbatte ganbatte asobi. After a late night drinking, Japanese worker would be back in the office the next morning.

I used to think where are all the funs when most of the time we are all focus in work and night drinking which is of course mostly are work related. Obviously Japanese do have time for other things and hobbies. They have very good hobbies and will at least go for overseas vacation at least once a year.

After learning that Japanese working life is so much hectic, I tried to make full use of my time when I was a student. I managed to visit all the major cities and sometimes I participated in the homestay programs where student were given a chance to stay with a Japanese family and learning their way of life.

In my coming postings I will share some others things like Japanese everyday life and how we feel about and how much we understand  them.

We cannot deny the fact that Japanese food has caught the world like crazy. We can find Japanese restaurants everywhere in any major towns or cities and they are not only meant for Japanese customer alone but Japanese food has found a place in other community just like any other Western, Indian or Chinese food.

My first taste of Japanese food was actually in Japan. Back then we did not have the luxury to eat at Japanese restaurants as there were very few back then. The name sushi and sashimi were just too foreign for me and my rough understanding was Japanese food is all about raw fish.

Nor do I understand why people like raw fish when it is so nice when fish are cooked or fried as what is usually done in other countries.

My first taste of a real Japanese food was a tempura set. Tempura as we know is a fried shrimps, cuttle fish and other vegetable fruits like okura. I was brought by a friend on the first I stepped foot on Tokyo to a Japanese restaurant as tempura was like the most acceptable food to a foreigner as it is not raw.

My first impression was that everything was done in a big serving. As a person who eat very little, a set lunch with a bowl of rice, a plate of fried tempura and a miso soup were just too much for me to finish. Everything was in a fixed size and put nicely on a tray.

I did not have a good impression with tempura and I found it was rather tasteless. But there are funny things about food and tempura became one of my favorite not too long after that.

Sushi and sashimi was a bit expensive for me at that time and I just indulged myself at the kaiten sushi and it was relatively cheap at about 200-400 yen for plate of sushi. Now whenever I take sushi I remember the good taste of the sushi in Japan. Even those from the Kaiten sushi are so much better.

It is hard to imagine that sashimi has become the most favorite Japanese food to foreigners all over the world. Thus it makes tuna and salmon fish to be among the most expensive fish that can reach thousands of dollars.

Not every food in Japan are that of raw fish. Many restaurants serve western food and Chinese food which to some may look like Japanese food. In the college restaurants we can find chicken cutlets rice, curry rice or char han which come together with miso soup and prepared in a very Japanese style.

Most of the time I had this type of food and they were not really expensive. As I did not have any handicap in the language, I did not have the problem reading the menu or ordering food.

Japanese ramen is a Chinese food that has settled very well in Japan and has become almost 100% Japanese as the taste is very much different of any noodles dishes serve in Chinese restaurant elsewhere. Everybody likes ramen in Japan and I was so surprise that the size of the bowl to serve ramen was so big and the quantity was enough for 2 people serving. But most Japanese people can finish the food serve to them. But at the same time we hardly see any Japanese people who are overweight.

As student we need to save a lot in Japan especially on food and we just take any kind of food which was affordable to us. Many students take bento from the bento shop. It is a packed Japanese food and it is cheaper than those serve in the stall. I remember one bento that has become my favorite that is the karaage bento or fried chicken bento.

Japanese drink a lot. I could hardly remember of the number of the brand names of beer in Japan. They come in different names like Asahi, Sapporo, Kirin and many more. In almost any dinner table a beer is almost a must.

In my next post I will touch a bit on the drinking session we used to have and how it was done back then.

One of the things I want to do in life is to travel the world, visit and see as many places as I can. I did not have the chance to travel that much as it requires time and a lot of money. If I have I chance where will I travel next time, the answer is simple that is anywhere where I have not been. There will be a very long list of places and countries.

In fact the first foreign country that I touched my feet on is Japan. From a small town in Malaysia and ended up in a big city like Tokyo was a bit of a shock for me. I did not know why but I took a very surprise decision that time that I want to go to Japan to study. Fortunately it was a very good decision as I learned a lot about the country and their culture and it was an experience that we cannot have it anywhere else.

About 20 years ago I took off to the land of the rising sun in an expectation to learn something with hope and big dreams. Little did I know that this country things can be very tough, a place where people only speak their own language and that was an immediate problem for many foreigners who first landed in Japan.

The language barrier

I stayed in the city of Tokyo a big city for a person who just hatched out from a small village and seeing people running around in hundreds and thousands was just something very shocking. Everything is in Japanese, the train station, the taxi and when ordering food are in Japanese. Luckily for me I picked up some basic Japanese and able to communicate in basic Japanese when ordering food or using the train service.

Now I am a Japanese speaker and speak the language fluently although it has been like 15 years I left the country. Japanese language is not that hard to learn especially when you are forced to use it daily, from the moment you wake up and turn on the TV, taking the train, read the newspaper, going to school, having lunch, school again and back home watching TV. All are done in Japanese. Sometimes people asked me if I even dream in Japanese or in my native language.

Many foreigners only need a month to understand the basic language if they attend some Japanese language school and a year to be able to speak and talk fluently with any Japanese. My Japanese was already very good during my second year stay in Tokyo. But even when we speak the language fluently, we will never be a Japanese or be part of their culture which so different and somehow I feel that non Japanese will never able to be part of it even if she or he tries to.

But many foreigners or gaijin speak very good Japanese and there are many who made appearance in TV shows and they speak and write Japanese as if it is their mother tongue.

Foreigners from different countries will also communicate in Japanese among foreigners. Even foreigners who know how to talk English will use Japanese as the primary language to communicate. After leaving Japan for more than 15 years now, I still can remember the language very well. I read the Japanese websites and listen to their music and TV shows. Maybe once you learned about something it is hard to forget about it, just like riding the bicycle.

I will write more about Japan and anything about Japanese the way I understand it in this blog and everything will be categorized at Japan for easy follow up. In my next writing I will write on Japanese people, the good and the bad part, the working culture, before and the present. I hope I can cover some on Japanese food which I believe is the favorite by many people in the world