Shopping!

One of the scariest best ways to learn about Japanese culture can be found via shopping. Food shopping, especially. While it's essentially the same as at home, there are some interesting differences between what you find at the supermarket here and what you'd find in a typical American store. On a recent foray into the wonders of the Japanese supermarket, my friend Gavin and I decided to have some fun and document the uniqueness of the items on display...

I'll start of with something simple, and safe. Fruit. It's incredibly expensive here (on average, one apple will cost you at least a dollar), yet also quite tasty, and incredibly large. Like this pear

Moving on from there, we wandered into the snack aisle. Along with the typical cookie and cracker options are the more traditional Japanese delicacies, like dried octopus, squid, and niboshi (small, dried fish).

Niboshi show up in my school lunches with a frightening frequency... I usually take the opportunity to make a "gift" of them to whoever happens to be lucky enough to sit next to me on that particular day (-_^)

From there we moved on to the refrigerated food section, where you can find a nice selection of seaweed

Bento (boxed lunches)

Sushi

And onigiri (rice balls)

I've actually become quite hooked on onigiri since I moved here. They're fairly cheap, and since you can find them virtually anywhere (supermarkets, convenience stores, tiny little shops tucked into alleyways...) they're super convenient. Actually, my favorite onigiri has a tasty seaweed and sesame seed filling (^o^)

Lest you should think that all food in Japanese cuisine is healthy, they also usually have a huge selection of pre-made fried food and tempura ready to take home

Moving over to the seafood section, you find delicacies like fresh squid

Niboshi

And one of my most hated school lunch additions (because there is just NO way to eat around it) are the chirasu boshi... teeny little fish they like to sprinkle on rice

And just for kicks... the cooked fish table


And should think that the biggest shopping surprises are reserved for the supermarket in this country, I'll throw in one bonus I found at the 100 yen shop

Yes, that is a syringe. A SYRINGE. At the dollar store! Will wonders never cease to amaze me...

Emperor's Cup

It seems there are two, rather short, comfortable seasons in Japan. One is in the spring when things are finally warming up, and the other the beginning of fall when things finally start cooling down. Other than that it's either unbearably hot or insanely cold, and in a place with no air conditioning or central heating, life can be pretty uncomfortable. All that to say that I am once again living in fleece and sitting in front of the, always-healthy, kerosene heater as I type this up. I've yet to pull out the kotatsu, I'm hesitant to break it out this year as once you get under that thing you never get up :P

Anyway, I spent last weekend visiting a friend in Tokyo, where it was much warmer ^_^ No need for kotatsus just yet, and I didn't even break out the fleece. Woo hoo!

On Sunday we went to go see Japanese horse racing (which is just like any other horse racing in the world, except that it's in Japan) at the Tokyo Race Course

We were there to see one of the biggest horse races in Japan, the Emperor's Cup.

It was a first for me; although I spent my childhood around horses and have been to race tracks before, I'd never actually seen a race.

This is the "backside" of the track, facing the paddock where the horses are paraded before and after the race

The "big" race of the day was scheduled for after 3pm, and we got there sometime around 1 so we decided to make some silly bets on the earlier races. To do this you fill out a betting card (which I didn't take a picture of but it was all in Japanese anyway) and then line up to stick it in a machine

That will issue you your ticket

For this race, we decided to go in 50/50 and placed our 200-yen bets on the horses with the best names. Like Ash Cake (#3). And Carmel Voice (#9). And Rikisan Shin O (#1).
Then we went out to the track to see our race...


And of course our horses didn't even place in the top 3, ha ha ha ha

By the time of the big race, the stadium was pretty full

We actually did our homework for this one, and both decided to place bets on the favorite (#14, Vodka).

This was a bit of a nail-biter, as Vodka was only marginally favored to beat #7, Daiwa Scarlet. I decided to also put a bet on a long-shot with a cool name (# 1, Asakura Kings), and Atsuro made some other bets too that I didn't pay attention to.

This time we decided to stand near the gigantic tv monitor, apparently the biggest tv in like, the entire world

Which also happened to be where they first brought all the horses out to the track

Most of them were pretty excited, and took off the second they got onto the track

Except for our beloved Vodka, who, like a true champion, calmly walked onto the track and steered herself over to the crowd and made everybody ooh and ahh... and I took no pictures of it (>.<)

The race ended up being really close, a total photo finish, between Vodka and Daiwa Scarlet

Everyone was waiting with baited breath for like 20 minutes while the judges decided the winner... which was...

...drumroll please...


VODKA! By 2 centimeters! Seriously! Here's a link.

In the end, I made back exactly what I spent that day at the track, including what I lost on the losing bets and the admission fee. Atsuro managed to come out 10 bucks ahead, lucky guy.

I may not have made my fortune betting on fast horses, but still, it was a good day at the races! v(^_^)v