Around Town

I got a gorgeous wall hanging from a friend for the Secret Santa swap at work (which tells you how far back some of our blog ideas come from) and I love it.  We were hoping to get two more in a similar style and hang them above the couch or somewhere else prominent and visited the geisha district to find some.  We got invited to lunch with a bunch of the KIT teachers downtown, so decided to visit the geisha district after lunch, and as it was a nice and sunny day, brought the camera.  Here are some of the sights around downtown Kanazawa:

Helpful maps in both Japanese and English, with some major points of interest listed specifically along with their distance and direction.  These can be very helpful if you're not sure if you turn at this intersection or the next one.  That situation comes up often because there are no street names.

Tall buildings and cars.  Both tend to be narrower than American ones.

An odd statue.  It's above a "subway" area, and here that doesn't mean a train that runs underground.  It means an underground crosswalk so you can get around that busy interchange without waiting for the lights to turn.  Some intersections have interesting crosswalks, stopping the traffic and allowing pedestrians to cross from any corner to any corner, even diagonally, and others have the underground crosswalks that connect all four corners.  Some have both.  Very pedestrian friendly streets.

This is a rather adorable map across the street from the odd statue.  It's Kanazawa with a "you are here" marker.  I love it!

I think all of our pictures were taken at the same intersection.  This shrine is right in front of the relief of Kanazawa and right next to the tourist map.  These landmarks are all right in front of a major department store, Daiwa, where you can find nearly anything if you're willing to pay for it.  They have a Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany's, and probably some other big names I don't recognize, along with imported alcoholic beverages, candy, and other foods, like anise and actual almond extract.  Last time I bought almond extract at a local grocery store, it turned out to actually be coconut.  I was disappointed.

Finally, we made it to the geisha district, which is probably a ten minute walk from the center of downtown.  It has many old houses, with some museums, some traditional tea or craft shops, restaurants, and many little souvenir shops.  It is profoundly lacking in actual geisha.  Sadly, we found that the amazing wall hanging we have is the only they sell that appeals to us, so while we got to walk around a pretty area of Kanazawa, we did not find what we were looking for.

We still have more places we haven't seen, like the samurai district, art museum, castle, and the major temples, but this gets things started.

The Couch

When we got here, we had to furnish our apartment.  Japanese furniture is typically a bit smaller and in some cases plainer than what we're used to.  We had trouble searching for desk chairs and desks, because the typical Japanese styles just weren't to our liking.  Few of the desk chairs were tall enough, and few had adjustable anything, so the lumbar support was more like upper hip support, and it just wasn't what Lee, who would be the main user of the desk chair, was interested in.  The desks are also a lot simpler than typical American desks, and it seems as though most Japanese either use laptops or just don't have desktops.  Few offered keyboard trays, there were almost no built-in monitor stands, and no desks in the local stores had designated areas for your tower or holes for cables.  We finally found a western style desk on Amazon.jp and chose a chair from the local home furnishings store.

Our couch, however, was even more difficult.  We went to all of the local stores that might sell couches.  Most of them were too low to the ground and had very low backs.  The ones that were taller typically also reclined, and so had much larger price tags than we wanted, especially if it's only going to be used for under five years.  We also went to the secondhand stores, and finally decided on a couch that was fairly comfortable and sized better for us, but in a color that Lee did not like  It's more yellow than the picture shows, more of a lemon sorbet than a butter color.  We found that the Japanese do not understand the concept of a couch cover as we understand it and will put a sheet over their couch if they want it covered.  This did not cover it quite the way we wanted it to.  I said I'd make a couch cover if he wanted, so we'd end up with a nice, comfortable, customized couch for under $500, plus some work on my part.

Lee and I purchased quite a few meters of fabric for this.  Since I was making a custom slipcover, we may as well have it be truly custom and give it some personality.  We chose mostly brown fabric, since everything in that area was already brown (and about 7 different shades already), and got an interesting rabbit print on a lighter brown fabric as an accent.  To make the couch look even more professional (and to hide uneven seams) I bought cording to go around all of the major edges.  Now that all the supplies were together, I was ready to start.

This couch cover and I, we had quite the relationship.  First off,
the couch is, of course, not a simple shape.  The cushions are not detachable and most of the edges are curved.  I brought a sewing machine to Japan, a Mighty Mender that I hadn't used too much in the past.  I soon found that it was not up to the task.  The tension for some reason never stayed where it was set.  It would loosen or tighten itself while you were using it, and it had one exact sweet spot, an area of about 5 degrees along the dial, that it would sew evenly in.  This spot changed due to the vibrations of using the machine, so I'd have to spend more time finding the right tension than sewing a single seam.  It was worse than the servo motors in the robotics class at RIT.

So, I got a new one!  A lovely Jaguar
X300, on sale at Amazon.jp, and it came with a sewing kit of many different colors of thread, bobbins, pins, scissors, measuring tape, and a hard case that is quite useful.  This machine is a Japanese machine, but quite intuitive with many pictures in the manual.  It did not come with a foot pedal, and I was thrown at first.  It is automatic - it tensions itself automatically, runs when you push the start button and stops when you push it again, has quite a few different stitches for pretty much anything you'd want to do with controls for stitch width and length, and is just generally a good value.  With this machine, I crafted the slipcover.  Well, all but the last ten inches when the new machine had some mechanical problems.

After months of working on the slipcover, some mistakes requiring a seam ripper and patience, and many, many, many measurements, I finally finished the slipcover.  In the image to the left, I accidentally made two left halves for the couch.  Riiiiiiiiiiip!  For the most part, I am happy with it, especially since it's my first major sewing project and there were no patterns for it.  I followed some tutorials and have an excellent guide, the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing from the '70s, but due to the shape of the couch, they really weren't much more than starting points.  Well, starting points and in the case of the book, an excellent resource for many of the techniques I used.  I'm not 100% pleased with the sewing job; there are a couple of multi-seam joins in crevices that might not quite join correctly, there is extra stress on some of the corners due to the way the cushions move when we're both sitting on it that might tear the seam out, and it wrinkles easier than I'd like, but all in all, I'm happy with it.  It covers the yellow that wasn't too appealing and is some pretty darn good amateur work if I do say so myself.

Dinner!

A few months ago, I got invited to a sushi-rolling class/party hosted by some ladies from work.
One of the Japanese women's mother was our teacher for the afternoon.  We brought some ingredients and she tried to teach us the correct way to roll sushi.  Everyone was amused by my bacon and carrots; apparently the Japanese don't tend to use bacon or carrots in their sushi.  We got to keep our sushi rolling pads, and I had good time.

Since then, I've made sushi at home a couple of times, and before one recent dinner I told Lee that if he wanted any he'd have to photograph the process for the blog.  He got some good pictures of the first roll, then went back to more important things (video games).  So, to make sushi.  First, you need some sushi rice, cooked and seasoned.  I use this recipe.  It makes a enough rice to feed Japan for a week.  You also need a small bowl of water because the rice will stick to your hands very easily unless they are wet.
Of course, you also need the fillings.  I like crab and bacon rolls as well as cucumber rolls, so we had crab, bacon (already cooked), sushi-grade raw salmon, cucumbers, and carrots.  Everything was of course pre-sliced and ready to go before I started.  You also need the nori (seaweed wrappers), and a rolling mat to roll the sushi on.

You put the nori on the mat shiny side down, rinse off your fingers, and take a large double handful of rice.  You spread the rice out over the nori, and you should go pretty much to the ends on three sides but about 1/2" to 1" from the top end.  This is the most difficult part for me.  You have to disperse the rice without actually smushing it around, and the rice likes to stick to itself, the nori, and anything else it comes into contact with.  The grains of rice are still warm and soft, so easily mushable, and you want distinct grains inside your sushi roll.  This usually takes me awhile and a few dunks of my hands into the water to get right.

Once you finally have your rice spread out (and in this case, there should be a bit more rice around the edges and bottom) you can start filling it.  You want to pile your fillings in the center of the rice covered area.  Once it is filled, you roll it up.  You want to roll it up as tightly as you can, joining the rice at the bottom to the rice at the top, so the top uncovered nori overlaps the rice-covered nori of the bottom.  Then you squish it down into a square or circle to make it nice and tight.  Ta-da!

Rinse (always gotta keep rinsing the hands in that water!) and repeat until your nori, rice, or fillings are gone, or you have enough rolls.  Cut the rolls using a knife dipped in water, because again, the rice will stick to everything.  Enjoy the sushi, for it will be delicious.  We did not eat all of this sushi for dinner, it was lunch and dinner the next day as well, and I still have a lot of rice left in the fridge.  It tastes pretty good mixed with vegetables as a side, and I'm going to try to reconstitute it for more sushi since we have more nori as well.

PR

KTC is unique in that they have an amazing English program and native English professors in their engineering classes.  Since they are a private school, they have to advertise to entice new students into applying.  Because of these two facts, they put out a lot of PR with the foreign staff showcased.  Recently, we had an Open Campus that included hands-on projects highlighting the foreign staff.  For this, they animated us and put us on a billboard in front of the school to advertise.  There were also fliers with the same animations on them.  The teachers are describing what they'll be teaching; mine was a bit difficult to describe, or got lost in translation, so it just says to wait and see.

We're also all in a big billboard advertising KTC to anyone who passes by:

There's a big page in the school catalog showcasing all of the foreign engineering teachers.  There are about three other pictures of me throughout the catalog, all working with students on their various projects.  We had a fun modeling session for this one, posing in many different ways for the camera, and were asked to write a short motivational blurb to go with it.  I thought they'd be translating them into Japanese, but apparently they left them in English. 

There's also a really interesting pamphlet that's designed to introduce interested students to the English curriculum and opportunities at KTC.  In this, you follow an animated boy through his years at KTC, going to America and New Zealand while working on projects and learning up through graduation and a good job.  I can't read it all yet, but it's pretty obvious what's going on from the pictures:

Click to see larger versions through Flickr.

Bali the Final: A Police Procedural

There was one major item of drama associated with the surfing.  On the second and final day of surfing, Ana's iPod and some cash (exactly half the amount in the wallet) were stolen while we were surfing.  We missed the iPod on the way home but weren't certain it was missing until we tore the hotel room apart looking for it.  Once we knew things had been stolen, we checked the money and found half of the day's starting amount missing there as well.  Thus began significant drama.

I called the surf place and got ahold of the owner.  I told the exact circumstances of the theft (ie we checked the amount of money we had directly before leaving to get in the van for the surf shop, and the bags were never out of their care from then until we were back at the hotel, so we were certain that someone got to our stuff while they had it) and he was pretty surprised - hadn't had theft problems before apparently.  We went over the story several times until he was convinced that there really weren't any loopholes.  Once convinced, the owner graciously offered to pay us the cash value of the stolen items (about $270).  I do give him major kudos for this.  Getting that $270, though, took pretty much the last day and a half of my time in Bali, plus expenses.

Initially, the owner told me that someone from the shop would come over immediately, have me give them a written report, and then give me the cash and we could all go on our merry ways.  That sounded good.  What actually happened was that about two and a half hours later the entire staff of the surf school, less the owner who was traveling and only reachable by cell phone, showed up to get that written report.  Obviously, several members of the staff felt threatened by my accusations (which, since most of them were probably innocent and this threatened their livelihood, is legitimate) and were not really pleased to be there.  Over the course of a rather intense hour, I repeatedly told the story, then wrote it down and signed the statement.  I also had to debunk repeated questions and statements from the various members of the staff the whole time.  At the end, I didn't get the money.  They said the Hard Rock wanted a police report and that I should report to the school the next morning at 9am (on my own dime) in order to meet them to go file one.  I objected to the owner over the phone about having to pay for my own taxi, and he said they would send one, but the staff either didn't get the memo or didn't obey, so the next morning I got my own taxi back to Kuta at 8:30am.

When I arrived at the school on time, I first had to wait for 15 minutes for various members of the staff to assemble, including the driver who told me he would be unable to pick me up at the hotel because he would not be available the next day.  Then, they took me to meet the manager of the Hard Rock, who assured me that the Hard Rock had no responsibility for the surf school (which doesn't surprise me) and he was only interested because there had been a theft on his grounds.  He sort of explained a bunch of things I already knew, and had me repeat the story yet again, before sending me and the surf school staff off to get a police report.

The first police station we went to, we didn't even get inside.  There was one traffic cop in uniform smoking cigarettes outside, and they explained everything to him first.  I told the story again, and was questioned on the details, again.  At this point, if I'm lying, I have it down pat.  After hearing the fullness of everything, the officer says that it isn't his jurisdiction, and sends us to the police in Sanur, since that was where I called from to initially report the theft.  So we drive to Sanur.

There, we actually make it to the front desk of the police station, where once again we explain everything and are questioned on the details.  The officer there also concludes that this matter is not his jurisdiction after hearing the whole thing out instead of at the beginning.  He does us the favor of actually calling the people whose jurisdiction it is to make sure that we're going to the right place.  We take a taxi back to Kuta, as the driver has disappeared with the van.

This time we go to a much bigger police station.  We tell the whole story and are questioned on the details at the first front desk.  This gets us in to the second front desk, where we tell the whole story and are questioned on the details repeatedly.  A policeman laboriously types the information in to a computer terminal, and gives a lecture on how to pack a day bag to make theft less likely.  The information is printed and signed.  I think, finally. But I'm wrong, and we are not even close to done yet.

See, that was in fact the police report.  However, now that we have filed the report, they want to investigate the crime, even though everybody involved must know that the only purpose for this is so that the shop can make an insurance claim.  So they bring everybody into another room and guess what?  We tell the whole story again.  They debrief one member of the staff, who I think they were trying to pin it on, separately.  I'm 99% sure she didn't steal the stuff, but she was the one who was supposed to be watching it and the police were definitely sort of interested in her.  If I had to guess, I would say one of the photographers got it - they were the sketchiest people there and we got a bad vibe from them.  Also, enough money was left in the wallet to purchase our photos from them, but not a whole lot more.

Anyhow, we tell the story again and again, and get questioned on the details again and again.  Another officer is typing all this up into a longer report that everybody knows is going to get stuffed in the bottom drawer and forgotten about.  Eventually, they herd us back out into the hallway and tell us to wait.  Twenty minutes later, they ask what we are still doing in the hallway and tell us that we're finished here.  From there, we go back to the surf shop so they can get copies of everything, and finally, finally, finally, I get paid and catch a taxi back to the hotel in Sanur.  Ana has been worried for hours that the police are tormenting me in a back room somewhere.

Cash $270 never looked so good.  It took fully eight hours (skipped lunch) plus $16 in taxis and $6 in long-distance phone calls to get that money back, which of course was mostly spent immediately upon coming home on a new iPod for Ana.  That girl owes me for this one, and no mistake.  After I got back, we went to Spike's and I had a well deserved quesadilla with real cheese, salsa, and guacamole.

One authentic Indonesian police report

After that, we had our flight back at midnight, and everything else as far as getting home was uneventful, aside from said flight coming in late enough that we had to sprint across the well-designed Osaka terminal and boarded our train about 90 seconds before it was scheduled to leave.  Then it left 6 minutes late for some reason.

Bali the Eighth: Most People Are Surfing Now

Originally the plan for the trip was to SCUBA for the first half and then have sort of a recovery and relaxation time during the second half. That got scuttled when I learned that Bali is a major surfing destination, and that inexpensive classes (in English) were available. It's been on my list to try and opportunities are not entirely common. Ana was the driving force behind getting SCUBA certified, which I was initially ambivalent about, but I dragged her into surfing. I think I had more fun doing her activity than vice versa.

Don't I look like I'm having fun?

The surf is up pretty much every day at the beach in Kuta, so all the classes are located there. Ana selected Bali Learn to Surf based on the fact that they at least claimed to be insured and were located within the Hard Rock Hotel so they probably weren't too sketchy. Also, they would pick us up and drop us off at our hotel for no extra fee.

The first morning they were supposed to pick us up we had a scheduling miscommunication, so instead of spreading classes out over three days, we did two classes the second day and one class on the third, which worked out fine and gave us another day to recover from Mt. Agung before trying to make surf.

The second day the scheduling worked out and they brought us to the surf school. One interesting item of note is that the vehicles going in to the Hard Rock were searched by men carrying assault rifles, and the undersides were examined with mirrors for bombs. All the big hotels and even some of the stores had that level of security, but it seemed mostly for show to us.

At the school they issued us surfboards that had a softish foam coating on the outside, so that if you hit yourself on the head with it (or rather, allowed a giant wave to hit you on the head with it) you just felt pain rather than the sensation of having your brain smooshed. We also got board shirts for the prevention of chafing and sunburn, which worked pretty well though mine was a little small for me. The first day of classes they also had uber-waterproof-sunscreen which they were out of the second day - empircal results suggest that the uber-sunscreen worked a lot better.

Ana really likes this picture for some reason.

The first lesson was in the Hard Rock Hotel's pool, which was probably the nicest pool setup I have ever seen. The pool had a sand bottom over a lot of it which felt so nice on the feet, and the whole thing was surrounded by bungalows and waterfalls. The beach across the street costs a lot less to access though (nothing) - why fly to the Pacific Ocean to use the pool? They had us paddle around and get a bit of a feel for the balance, then had us practice getting upright.

I managed to subdue this smaller one, and keep wave, board, and body in the correct order.

Afterwards, they took us down to the ocean and we pretty much just had at it from there. There were several instructors and they sort of milled around helping the people who weren't doing as well. Mostly they told us to paddle faster when the waves were coming, which I surely would do except I generally was already paddling as fast as I could. Anyhow, the whole thing seemed to make basic sense to me, so after a certain amount of trial and error I could catch and stay with the smaller waves, and even steer with moderate success. I think developing real expertise would take significant practice. I got cocky at a few points and tried to catch some moderate to large size waves and was pretty much eaten alive and spit out. I recommend letting the big ones pass you by if it is your first or second day. Aside from those the biggest hazards were probably the other beginning surfers, as I got hit several times and began to wonder mildly if they were aiming for me. I was definitely among the stronger of the beginning surfers according to Ana.

That one in the back is too big.

Ana did not have so much luck with the surfing. By the end of the three classes she had managed to catch and ride several waves (we even have photographic proof of this) but spent the majority of the time falling off sideways, backwards, frontwards, etc. She told me early that surfing wasn't nearly as unbearable as she expected so we're going to go with that as her opinion in general. I liked it somewhat more than that, but between SCUBA and surfing we'll probably do more SCUBA in the future. The school has photographers associated with it who sit on the beach with really nice cameras with really strong zoom, so we have bunches of high quality pictures of low quality surfing in the gallery. We had one additional large item of drama associated with surfing, which I will address in the next post.

This happened somewhat more often...

...than this.

Bali the Seventh: Sanur and Kuta

Along with our SCUBA adventure, we wanted to hang out at the beach a bit. Tulamben has rocky beaches not suitable for playing in the sand or sunbathing, so we headed southwest over to Sanur and Kuta.

Sanur faces east, so we'd be able to watch the sunrise over the ocean from that shore if we woke up early enough to do so. We did the last day, and sat in the little bungalows set up along the shore to provide shade during the day. We stayed at the Laghawa Beach Inn, which wasn't a bad hotel, but we'd be likely to upgrade to a better hotel if we were to go back. It had beach access, lovely gardens, and a few really cool birds (peacock, blue and green macaw, and a cockatoo), but wasn't exactly the nicest hotel we've stayed at. Especially after staying in the amazing Wreck Divers villa, we were a bit disappointed with the hotel. The doors had cracks in them so you could hear what was going on outside, the locking cabinet didn't really lock, and for some reason when the cleaning service came, they re-set the sheets but put the top blanket somewhere else. Breakfast was included and about the same as at the villa, lots of fresh fruits and very delicious.

Sunrise at Sanur

The beach at Sanur had a cement boardwalk between the hotel compounds and the beach. There were a lot of vendors, trying to sell massages, pedicures, fruit drinks, kites, and anything else people might pay for. Most hotels had restaurants and/or bars near the boardwalk and lounge chairs or couches with umbrellas on the beach. At night, the lounge chairs/couches on the beach were sometimes replaced with tables, and they set up grills on the beach. The night following our first full day in Sanur we ate at the beach barbecue of one of the higher-emd hotels. The side dishes were set up on a buffet table, and you ordered whatever drinks and main courses you wanted. There was an assortment of sea food along with some meat dishes. We shared an amazing grilled grouper steak, a grilled spiny lobster, some clams, and really enjoyed the evening. There was a live band playing and the lead singer was excellent. She sang a John Mayer song much better than he ever could, and had a voice like Ella Fitzgerald - deep, throaty, and just wonderful.

The next night, we stayed in Kuta for dinner after our surfing lessons. Lee will describe those in depth in a later post.

Sanur is more laid-back, for those who want to hang out reading in the lounge chairs, take a walk along the beach, and have some good food. The water has a lot of vegetation in it, so we never swam in it. Kuta, however, is for those who like to play in the sun and is more of a party town. Kuta has warm clear water with constant waves. This beach faces west, so we watched the sunset on the beach before heading over for dinner. Kuta's beach has a lot of sunbathers and surfers hanging out. There are fewer vendors, but they of course are there, selling kites, cold drinks, towels, renting surfboards, and anything else people might pay for.

Sunset at Kuta

Walking around Sanur and Kuta, especially if you are walking on the side with the traffic (left hand side, like Japan), the taxi drivers continually slow down, beep, and call out, "Transport?" Everyone is trying to drive you wherever you need to go, even

if it's just down the street. People are always asking you to walk through their stores or buy something or other, newspapers from home, souvenirs, again, anything people might pay for. There are the expected souvenir shops and restaurants, as well as tailor shops everywhere. Most of what is being sold is expected, t-shirts with interesting phrases and designs, sarongs, other beachwear, but there were a few odd designs everywhere, like phallic incense holders and keychains. There were also a lot of offerings of food, flowers, and incense in palm leaf dishes set out by every restaurant, shop, hotel, and everywhere else to make their business successful.

Our hotel didn't have internet access even though it was supposed to, so we tended to go to restaurants with internet access for lunch. We found one really excellent little American style restaurant named Spike's, which we ate at twice.

Lee was very happy to have a full-size cheeseburger with real fries and some fresh salsa and guacamole with an enchilada and the feta from my salads. I enjoyed possibly the best Oreo shake I've ever had and delicious lasagna with real ricotta both times. It was wonderful. We also really enjoyed the Indonesian food for every other meal. The flavors and spices were very different from what you get here in Japan, and so delicious. Curries, fish steaks, and drier, long grain rice were a nice change of pace from Japanese food. The food, weather, beaches, activities, and scenery made for a darn good tropical vacation.