On Starting the Weekend with Transit Issues

It was the end of the first week of December.

Japanese announcements were blaring from the intercom. We stood there, slightly speechless, staring at the electric sign that should’ve been lit up with details on the next trains incoming. It, instead, showed only one line, alternating between Japanese and English: all service on the Blue Line — the Yokohama municipal subway system — had been suspended, and people were advised to take alternate modes of transportation.

There had been an omen earlier: the line for the bus outside of the FamilyMart right beside the Mitsuzawa-kamicho station entrance was far longer than it usually was. We’d been joking that the line’d been long because maybe something had happened to the subway, and maybe we should instead swing by a karaoke joint in Wada-machi before taking the Sotetsu line from the station there instead, but it turns out: it was true. There were, in fact, no trains to take.

Something had happened on a Japanese train system that made it shut everything down, and we were at a loss on what to do next.  Continue reading →

I’m Okay

To those people who know me IRL: yes, this earthquake just happened, and yes, we felt it in Yokohama. Don’t worry, we’re completely fine.

There was quite a bit that happened today on the way back from the university, though…I’ll put up a blog post tomorrow on that.

Mille-Feuille Pizza

 

For the pizza fan in Japan, there are plenty of options: go to a sit-down Italian restaurant (like, say, Saizeriya); go to a mom-and-pop pizza place (we’ve got one here in Gumyoji); or, the simple lazy option: delivery. There’s no shortage of places (serving pizza or otherwise) that’ll deliver food to your place of residence. (While I’m on the subject: Costco also exists in Japan, and, like its American counterpart, has pizza slices and full pies ready to order at their snack bar. I presume it’s take-out only, just like in America.)

American brands such as Domino’s and Pizza Hut have Japanese branches that’ll nurse your cravings while abroad, but there’s a catch: though the US has enjoyed the luxury of great deals such as Little Caesar’s $5 Hot-N-Ready boxes and Pizza Hut’s $10 for nearly-anything-you-want, Japan has not: pizzas are three to four times more expensive than what you’d pay back home. (This apparently isn’t true of just the US; my British and Australian friends have said likewise.)

Domino’s Japan seems to understand this: for those of us who use the English language, there’s a special site just for us.

On the English side of the Domino’s Japan website, there are several deals not to be found on the Japanese version — deals good enough that there’s a Japanese guide on how to order from the English pages because it’s cheaper that way. Tax isn’t included in the advertised prices, but with an automatic 5% off for placing your order online that’s stackable with other coupons and promos like the ones on the English page, you don’t have to worry about it.

So, in a weak moment of fiscal irresponsibility the name of checking whether or not these deals were actually worth it, I placed an order of the “Home Alone” package: one medium two-topping pizza (I went with basil and pepperoni) and a solitary can of Coke (yes, Coca-Cola or its diet variant only!). Normally, it’s ¥1400, but there was something I was sort of curious about.

When I think of interesting and occasionally strange pizza crusts, I think of Pizza Hut (an image that I also think may be perpetuated in Japan — Code Geass, anyone?), so when I saw these options for “mille-feuille” crust, I waffled slightly, then went for the triple for the sake of blogging science curiosity. Total cost: ¥1874, thirty minutes to delivery. And it arrived on time. Apologizing to the driver for my terrible Japanese, I paid and brought the pizza back up to my room.

Of course, the first thing I did was to take a look at its three layers — wait a minute, where’s the cheese I was promised?

Ah, there we go.

Turns out the cheese in the “layers” of this particular mille-feuille pizza were actually sort of spotty, moreso designed to give you a huge mouthful of mozzarella at once every few bites. There was one slice of pizza in which the cheese was actually fairly uniform, and that was quite nice. But with how the cheese was set up on the other slices, I was actually fairly surprised at how well it held together before I bit into it and the three layers separated in my mouth, making for a really nice texture. The pizza itself was rather small (the site claimed their medium is 10 in/25cm — update: according to a picture a friend posted, 10″ at Domino’s is a “small” in America); I was able to finish the entire pizza in one go. (mind, I hadn’t eaten anything beforehand).

Would I order it again? I didn’t think it was worth the premium, but if I’m in a super-cheesy mood, I might consider ordering another. ◆

I Promised You A Yakiniku Post

…but I ate all of it. Sorry. Next time, for sure.

I do highly recommend going to all-you-can-eat yakiniku at least once, though, if you enjoy eating meat. It’s quite nice. The place I’d visited was quite cheap, too: 2,000 yen, and another 360 yen for all-you-can-soft-drink.

Oh, and if anything’s going to get me to get used to munching on cartilage (referred to as “hormone” in Japanese — I don’t know why!)…it’s probably Japan. I’d already gotten used to munching on salted grilled beef tongue back home at Korean barbecue places, but…yeah, I guess I’m now leveling up my Asian food…sensibility. I guess.

I think I definitely won’t get used to liver, though — the texture and aftertaste just doesn’t sit well with me at present. ◆

Last Train Out of Kamiooka

Yesterday was a Friday; normally, I have classes on Fridays, but this Friday was a public holiday known as Labor Thanksgiving Day — to give thanks to each other for…working, I guess. In the old days, it was a harvest festival…I guess they needed an equivalent for the modern age.

In any case, for whatever reason, the gaming arcade I frequent in Kamiooka one stop down decided it’d hold a no-strings-attached free-to-play weekend on music games; people who know me well back home (and are reading this, right? 😉 ) know I love me some music games. The machines were to be set on free play from 9 to 12 both in the morning and in the evening; I was there for both of them, unlocking as much as I could on jubeat saucer, waiting in lines of up to sixteen people.

After squeezing in a four-song game of DrumMania XG3 to finish off my session night once jubeat had stopped accepting new players¹, I headed back, amidst an Japanese-and-English-language track telling people that the store was closing, to Kamiooka Station. There, I waited for the last train back home.

The vast majority of the trains on the municipal subway’s Blue Line go in one of two directions: to Azamino in the north, or to Shonandai in the south. This one, normally bound for Azamino, read that it was stopping at Nippa, some six stops shy of the Blue Line’s true endpoint, but home to the subway’s northern trainyard. I’d seen this before, but I’d never taken a Nippa-bound train. Inside the train was also sort of eerie: the recorded announcements that played and the scrolling text displays had nothing to say of Azamino. It’s not really a huge deal, mind — the train stopped and I got off at my station just fine — but it…still definitely felt a bit odd taking the last train out of Kamiooka.

And now I can say I’ve taken both the first train out of anywhere², and the last train out of anywhere, each for the first times in my life. ◆

1: Arcade machines have recently employed something called the Shop Close setting, which locks down the machine past a certain time; it’s very handy for gently getting people out of a given shop. Sort of nifty, actually.
2: I took the first train out of Yokohama after my first all-night karaoke session, which I still have yet to write about.