K:
So lately I’ve been thinking about how Americans are perceiving the Japanese through the Olympic process and progress and the way the Japanese are talking about themselves in the international press versus the way the Japanese are speaking in the Japanese press. And there’s this huge disconnect. And it ties back to our conversation. I think last year we had a conversation about how good Japan is at having the propaganda machine. And I was watching the prime minister talk about how modest the Japanese people are when two weeks before he had said the Japanese were going to win 30 gold medals in the Summer Games.
C:
Yes.
K:
So for me, it’s like in Japan, it’s like, “We’re number one,” and Japanese exceptionalism. To the rest of the world, it’s like, “We Japanese are very humble.”
C:
Yes. In fact, we are the most humble country in the world.
K:
Yeah, exactly. Very that, very that. So in talking with your friends in the US, are any of them thinking about the Games?
C:
Yes, some of them are quite smitten with them. They’re watching. They’re up in the middle of the night to watch things live. They are just rooting for America.
C:
And even people with dual right of residence or dual citizenship are like, “Well, America’s my favorite team. And then I have my second favorite team for my other country. And I hope they don’t play so that I can just root for America, rah, rah, rah.”
K:
Well, what’s their perception of how things are going down in Japan? So we’re just going to talk about COVID a little bit, not the heavy part of it. But I had a friend say to me that they were surprised that Japan is not completely vaccinated. They thought Japan – the plan was that everybody in the world would be vaccinated by the Olympics.
K:
And I find that interesting because America calls itself the world. And sometimes I even slip and call America the world just from years and years of growing up that way and talking that way when America is such a tiny, tiny spot on the globe. It’s really just a spec if you look at its size compared to other countries. It’s huge compared to Japan. And the population is huge. And everyone’s like, “Japan’s the size of California. And all of California’s vaccinated.” And I was like, “Two falsehoods.” Back to back, stacked on each other, two complete falsehoods.
K:
All of California and the US is not vaccinated. There was a huge scandal of American athletes and athletes all around the world testing positive for COVID in their home country and still coming to Japan even though they had tested positive and then testing positive again. I don’t know what they were thinking. I think the Olympics-
C:
They were thinking that, “I’m going to beat this thing by the time of my competition.”
K:
Yeah, and they’re not thinking that they were going to have a COVID check at the airport. So what do you think of how Japan is handling the expats with COVID and the Japanese population in terms of vaccination? I think they’re doing a crappy job.
C:
I think so. If you’re a senior citizen, you’ve probably had an opportunity to get vaccinated yet – by now. We probably will have our vaccine tickets by the time that this episode is live because of the lag for transcription. But we don’t yet have our tickets.
K:
Yeah, and we didn’t get our tickets by the time we were supposed to.
C:
Right.
K:
So, our tickets were late. And at the time of recording this, we don’t have our tickets yet.
C:
That’s why I’m crossing my fingers. They’re supposed to be here any day now, because I looked at the website and it was like, “Starting on …” I’m like, “Okay, but you’ve only got a week until you’re supposed to be sending out new waves, so come on.”
K:
Yeah, and I find it interesting because they were saying, “You’ll receive it by …”
C:
Right.
K:
And then it’s changed to, “Starting on …” and I think that… Japan has been slower than most countries to vaccinate.
C:
Absolutely, and the tickets are like, “Okay, you’ll receive it by this date. And then you can book it for a month later,” except for us. We get to book ours early.
K:
Because we’re both high risk.
C:
Yes.
K:
So, benefits – there are some benefits to being disabled in that we can still get COVID even after we get vaccinated, but…
C:
Yeah.
K:
So I feel like the rest of the world made a lot of assumptions because Japan and Japanese culture is really good at leaving space for the assumption. Where I don’t say anything or what I say is deliberately deceptive or misleading. And I think Japan has that down to an art form. I think the only country better than Japan at it is Russia. I think Russia’s really good at saying – Russia and China and Japan, those three are all do the same thing.
K:
Japan said, “We’re making all of the preparations. And we will be prepared for the Olympics. And we have everything under control in terms of COVID.” And everybody presumed and then didn’t say anything beyond that. And nobody asked them, “What specific preparations are you doing?” And if they were asked that here at home, they said – originally said, “Everybody’s going to arrive. And then they’re going to have to stay secluded for two weeks. And they’ll test when they land. And then they’ll stay secluded for two weeks. And then we’ll test them again.”
K:
And then that turned into, “They’ll stay secluded for three days.” And then that turned into, “Well, they can only arrive two days before their event. And they have to leave the day after their event, so that they’ll only be in Japan for four days.” And that is true for some people and some of the athletes but not for all of them. Some athletes have events that happen at the start of the Olympics and that happen at the end of the Olympics.
C:
And they’re not making them fly out and then back.
K:
No, they’re not. And with the Paralympics, it’s just so messy because a lot of people aren’t able to bring their full support team.
C:
Yes… I think the most prominent was a swimmer from the US who’s deaf and blind. And her carer is her mother. And they said, “Nope, it’s not essential. You have one care assistant for a team of 28 athletes, all of whom are disabled in some way. And Tokyo is completely easy to get around for disabled people. Just come. It won’t be an issue.” And so she withdrew. She was like, “No, I’m not doing that. I did that before, and it was a nightmare. And I’m not doing it again.”
K:
Yeah, and Tokyo’s not easy to get around. And I think that saying “Tokyo” is really deceptive because it’s not in Tokyo City, it’s in Tokyo Prefecture. And it’s on the outskirts of Tokyo. And it’s down by the bay. And I find that to be really interesting because that was undeveloped land. And the reason it was undeveloped is it’s just too expensive. No one can afford to develop the land. And they used the Olympics as a way to get that land developed.
C:
I think that when people talk about Tokyo in Japan, they’re envisioning an area that would span from Bakersfield to LA.
K:
Okay, use a different state besides California because a lot of even Southern Californians won’t know Bakersfield.
C:
Okay, they are envisioning an area that-
K:
Something as big as Manhattan Island.
C:
Yeah, but it’s like 10 times the size because the population density is lower even though there’s a lot more people. So, you have rural areas of Tokyo.
K:
So, it’s a area of land bigger than Rhode Island.
C:
Yes.
K:
Bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
C:
So, the average commute for people who live in Tokyo and work in Tokyo is 80 minutes each way, which might give some indication of the kind of scope of Tokyo as far as travel is concerned.
K:
Well, and in Japan, when we say “Tokyo,” we usually mean Tokyo Station. And then we’ll say, like, Shibuya.
C:
Yeah, because Tokyo is … most of what’s called – is Tokyo is actually cities inside of Tokyo.
K:
Because it’s a prefecture as well as a city.
C:
Right.
K:
And the city’s actually not that big, Tokyo City. And it’s weirdly broken up. It’s kind of like San Jose City is in California where you have Santa Clara County right in the middle of it. And you have Milpitas. And it kind of – San Jose City snakes around a bunch of other cities and completely surrounds other cities. And Tokyo City does that as well. Whatever wasn’t a city becomes Tokyo City.
C:
And it’s got a lot of coastline.
K:
Yeah, it does have a lot of coast. A lot of coast that’s undeveloped because of weather and underdeveloped because of cost. And so I’m really interested to see what’s going to happen with the Tokyo Village – with the Olympic Village afterward.
K:
And I think that Japan did a really smart thing in the way that they developed the Olympic Village because if you look at the Olympic Village in Atlanta, it’s been passed around as student housing to several colleges. And now it’s just sitting there rotting because it was not kept up, and it was not made into something nice. I think that the London Games – Tokyo’s going to do a lot of things similar to what London did when they had the London Games. And London just made them really expensive housing. And I think that’s what the Olympic Village is going to become; really expensive housing.
C:
Yeah, or it’ll become social housing. I don’t know which way it’ll go.
K:
Or it’ll become what?
C:
Social housing.
K:
Really?
C:
UR housing because …
K:
Really, you think that-
C:
I’m not sure.
K:
… oceanfront property in Tokyo-
C:
But there are five different locations in Tokyo where people are staying. So I think that the ones on the oceanfront are not going to become UR housing. But UR is social housing. It’s not means tested. So I think we’ve talked about it before. You just sign up and say you want it. And then a couple of years later, they will contact you and say, “A place has opened. Here’s the rent. Do you want it?”
K:
I do think that the ones that are more inland are probably going to go that way because we have a housing shortage in Tokyo where people are living in 24-hour arcades and they live in the 24-hour internet booths. And they’re trying to get them out of that and out of the capsule hotels and into housing. So I think this is going to turn into an urban development.
C:
Yeah, when I lived in Tokyo for a month for training, I was coming back here to Nagoya every week. But it was like 180 square feet was a standard apartment. So people are used to quite small apartments in Tokyo.
K:
And I think some of them are going to be completely luxury apartments because a lot of them have two bathrooms. Two toilets in a house in Japan is really rare. But they have two full bathrooms. And it’s interesting watching the athletes talk about, “This is the smaller bathroom,” and it has a tub and a shower. It doesn’t have the big shower room.
K:
And so they have one with the huge – so in Japan, we’ve talked about it before. The shower is in a room all to its own. Ours has a shower and bathtub in there, which I don’t prefer.
K:
I’d love it if our bathtub was ripped out and it was just a shower room because in 10 years of living here, we’ve never used the tub once. It’s too small. It’s too short. I can’t soak my knees. So, there’s no point to taking a bath at all.
C:
Exactly, thank you.
K:
And in the United States, I’ve talked about it before, we have the double jacuzzi that Rasta – it was big enough that Rasta could use it as a wading pool. And he could float on top of the pool with me in the tub. He still had enough to starfish float in it when he was like seven. And he’s always been a little tiny thing. So-
C:
He’s a little bit bigger now.
K:
(laughs) But not much. So for your non-American friends, and, yes, I’m talking about you, Puddin’, is Puddin’ interested in the Olympics?
C:
No.
K:
Not at all?
C:
Not at all.
K:
Really?
C:
Yeah, I mean, it might be that they are, but we haven’t talked about it. So my assumption is because they haven’t mentioned it, that they are not interested.
K:
Okay.
C:
They did ask me how people feel about it here. The newspaper did a survey of Tokyo residents. And something like 90% of people said, “Shut it down.”
K:
Yeah. No, we didn’t want it. But now that it’s here, we’re okay with it. And that’s kind of like a Japanese thing to do; to be quietly annoyed and then just be like, “Eh.” And then I didn’t think it was safe, everyone that went to see the fireworks at the Olympic Dome on the first day of the Olympics. That really concerned me. And then, of course, they’re was a COVID spike afterwards, you could contact trace that, yeah, it was everybody going to watch the fireworks. So, I just don’t feel like it’s safe.
K:
Something that I think is really cool is what’s going on with Nagano. And Nagano turned the Olympic Village into a hotel and turned the hockey rink – there’s two or three stadiums where the Olympic games took place. And they’ve kept those. They converted one into a museum, another one into a concert venue. And then a third one is still an ice skating rink. Ice hockey games and things that are done on ice are done there. They have icecapades and such.
K:
And then for the ski runs and slopes and such, they still have a lot of them up. They took some of them down so they’re not just standing there rotting like they do in Russia. Russia, like, just has a bunch of rotting structures.
C:
Yeah, the Sochi Games really were bad. So I looked this up because I knew we were going to talk about this. And the Nagano Games came in at two and a half – no… that’s about right – came in at something like two and a half times their cost. And the Sochi Games came in at four times their projected cost, which was a record. And a lot-
K:
Yeah, they are the most expensive games to date. But every year the games are like that.
C:
But a lot of the money spent at Nagano was spent on the infrastructure rather than on the temporary housing and competition. So they extended the Shinkansen – the bullet train – out to Nagano. So now you can get from Tokyo to Nagano in under 90 minutes, I think, which is like half of the time that it used to take. It’s a lot easier to get there.
C:
I think contrasting with a city like Salt Lake that already had a lot of infrastructure and was already easy to get to, it was really a big win for Nagano in terms of accessibility and infrastructure. They built new highways. They extended the train line. They built new public facilities. So I think they’re… they’re kind of reaping the benefit of it.
K:
Yeah, still even 40 years later. No, it was 1998.
C:
It was in ’98, yeah.
K:
Yeah, so …
C:
23.
K:
Yeah, I can’t do math because I was thinking it’s 2025. And I was like, “No, the 2024 Games haven’t happened yet.”
C:
Anything that happened before the year 2000 happened either 40 or 100 years ago. It’s one of the two.
K:
Yeah, I have a really hard time with dates. We launched the press in October of 2020. But I consistently say, “October of 2021,” because we have a bunch of stuff coming out in October 2021. S,o I’m really focused on that month. And it’s like a crunch month for me. And so everything is 2020.
K:
And people are laughing at me. And they’re like, “Is this going to be a thing now where you just don’t know the year?” I’m like, “Yes.” But if it’s a date of publication for one of our books, I know it. I just don’t know when I start doing anything. Because I start doing things years and years before.
C:
You do.
K:
And I always talk about them as soon as they’re happening. And right now it’s 2021. So, of course, everything with the press is happening in 2021 because we launched our first book.
C:
Yeah, that’s true.
K:
But everyone is dating us based on when we joined Twitter.
C:
That was not as-
K:
We joined Twitter in October of 2020 as the press. And that’s when we launched the website. No, we launched the website in January.
C:
Yeah, I don’t remember.
K:
When did we get your book cover? Because we launched the website whenever we got your book cover.
C:
I think that was December.
K:
Yeah, and so very, very grateful to our second author who went with us, Elizabeth. Just… our second and third authors completely made everything, the dream happen, for reals, because we had three authors. We had you, Elizabeth and Cynthia. And we had Not My Ruckus and Gracie & Zeus Live the Dream and Drōmfrangil. Is that the soft G?
C:
No, that’s not. You made it not a G at all.
K:
Okay, can you say it? I have the hardest … Cynthia, I’m so sorry. You know I struggle with this. So Drōmfrangil.
C:
Yeah, basically.
K:
Okay, Drōmfrangil. I call it Drōmfrangil. She’s like, “What is it with you and the hard R? Do you not like the soft R?” The soft G, rather.
C:
Well, I think when she said-
K:
What is the soft G? Give me a word with a soft G.
C:
Giraffe, gymnasium.
K:
Giraffe, so Drōmfrangil?
C:
Yeah.
K:
Okay, I’m going to go with that. You try and say it.
C:
Drōmfrangil.
K:
(laughs) Whatever for you.
C:
Right?
K:
Whatever for you. So I’ve run out of stuff to say. We’re halfway through, and I’ve run out of stuff to say about the Olympics. So I’m just going to change the topic. What do you think about that?
C:
I think that is very much what the press has been trying to do about the Olympics.
K:
So you want to stick with the topic and just be rigid?
C:
No, I’m just thinking about the ambiguity of Japanese, and how it really lends itself to that deceptiveness.
K:
Oh, there is one more thing I wanted to say because we don’t have a TV, which we were bragging and boasting about and popping off. I pop off about it all the time because of NHK. I can’t watch the Olympics. I have no way to watch the Olympics. So I can watch the Olympics in Russian. But outside of that, NBC has it locked down for English-speaking, for North America.
C:
It’s a good thing you speak Russian then.
K:
Right? And I can watch it from a Philippine feed.
C:
Okay, there’s big money in those television contracts.
K:
Yeah, and CBS, I think it is. I don’t know, whichever one has the Peacock because they have it on the Peacock channel.
C:
That’s NBC.
K:
Yeah, but I can’t get the Peacock channel because I’m not in the US. And so I have to wait till the events come on YouTube.
C:
Those sport hoarders.
K:
Yeah, and then watch them on YouTube. So I don’t know. I’m bored and over talking about the Olympics.
C:
Okay.
K:
What should we talk about? See, this is what I go through. Whenever I ask Chad, “What should the topic be?” I’m met with silence.
C:
I say, “Give me a few days.” And then a few days later, you haven’t asked me again. So next time you ask me, I say, “I had a great idea. And I forgot it. So, give me a few days.”
K:
So I give you a few days. And I tell you, “Why don’t you send it to me in an email?”
C:
Well, because then it’d be nailed down and stuff.
K:
What do you mean?
C:
I mean, I am treating this like you’re asking me to develop an Olympic Village with no notice.
K:
(laughs) So I think I want to talk about the podcast, and when is it okay to recycle ideas? Because I think that part of the problem is that we haven’t done anything for a year.
C:
Yeah, that has because we talked about the Olympics last week. But we haven’t had any chance to-
K:
No, we talked about the Olympics the week before last.
C:
Okay. Yeah, I think you’re right.
K:
Like two weeks ago, I think.
C:
Well, we haven’t had any chance to travel.
K:
Or it might have been last week. I don’t know. This past week has felt like a year to me.
C:
Yeah, because we haven’t had any chance to travel.
K:
No.
C:
And it’s coming up where my company, we were supposed to be traveling to Australia to go to that thing and then stay some extra time as a vacation. But that’s not happening because Australia’s not letting that happen, Japan’s not letting that happen.
K:
So do you think it’s safe to do car trips and weekend getaways?
C:
I think the car trip thing is as safe as our life is anyway because that would be spending time in a car with our son.
K:
But, I mean, do a car trip and then an Airbnb. I’m afraid of the Airbnb because I don’t know if the person had COVID who was at the Airbnb before us.
C:
Yeah, I mean-
K:
The hotel to me, I trust that the hotel is more sanitary. But they don’t have hotels with kitchenettes so that I can cook because I don’t trust the food. But then I was thinking, “If they do it like the Olympic Village where you have to wear a face mask and gloves to go into the restaurant and then they do the partitions, then I feel safe.” But then that’s not eating together if we have a partition between us. So I wonder if they would do partition between tables.
C:
Maybe. Yeah, I think this is an area where we’d have to call hotels and ask them because when we’ve looked at them before, none of them has put up except that they are taking every precaution.
K:
Yeah, what’s every precaution?
C:
Exactly, and I think this goes back to the high context versus low context of Japanese language being high context, meaning if they say … “Anzen no tame”, like “For your safety.” Then we’re supposed to assume things about it that they’re not actually saying. We’re supposed to assume that not only are they cleaning the room to a certain standard, but that everybody working there is wearing a mask and gloves and that the food safety – so I don’t know.
K:
So for me, if they’re doing it like the Olympic Village, I feel really comfortable because all of the Olympic Village staff has to take a spit test. And they have to be quick tested every day. And the quick tests aren’t as accurate as the non-quick tests. But I feel comfortable for that.
K:
And then they’re sanitizing everything in between everybody’s visits. They have a crew of people that just go around sanitizing all of the eating spaces. And in the shopping spaces, you can’t touch anything before you buy it. If you touch it, you have to buy it, that kind of thing.
K:
And so I feel like if the rest of Japan is being as sanitary as the Olympic Village, then I could trust it. But I’m also not delusional. I know I’m not an Olympic athlete. And so I don’t think they’re going to care as much about whether or not I catch COVID because it’s not going to make international news if I catch COVID.
C:
Oh, I’ll make sure it does.
K:
(laughs) Because I think they’re being so careful because Japan really doesn’t like to be embarrassed. And Japan is kind of like… Kind of – so in Black culture, what happens at home stays at home. Good, bad and otherwise, you just don’t talk about your home life in public, which, of course, I’m violating because we talk about our home life every week on the podcast.
K:
And Japan is like that. We don’t talk about what goes on in Japan outside of Japan unless you’re like us and then you have a podcast, and you just drag Japan every week. I don’t feel like we drag it.
C:
I don’t think so.
K:
I’m happy here. So do you think that everyone is going to adopt those standards? Because during Travel Japan, every city that participated in Travel Japan experienced massive COVID spikes.
C:
They did. But every time they would trace it, they would find that those COVID spikes were related to basically bars and restaurants and sometimes maid cafes and different entertainment venues. They didn’t trace it back to public transit. And they didn’t trace it back to… Hotels or anything. They’ve been entertainment venues and some work places, like factories and things, where they’ve traced it. So I don’t know. I feel like-
K:
So what would we do for food?
C:
You know, we could be honest that there have been times that we have survived on convenience store food.
K:
Yeah, and I know you’ve been eating conbini food throughout. But you have not been eating any of the fresh conbini food. You’ve been eating the pre-made conbini food.
C:
Yeah, that’s right.
K:
And I don’t like any pre-made conbini food.
C:
Mm. Yeah.
K:
I don’t like any hot conbini food. I eat corn dogs. But I don’t want to go and sustain on conbini food. When we travel, when we go somewhere, I want it to be fun. I want to be able to cook. I want to be able to chill and relax and basically do everything as if I’m sequestered at home just not being at home.
C:
This is a different thing, right? We look out at night, we see the same sky every night. I think that my hope is we get our vaccines soon, our first dose, and that we can schedule our second dose for a month after… And go somewhere because the hotels have done a really strong propaganda push that we are safe. And so there’s a lot of information about how many exposures there have not been at Japanese hotels. But part of that has just been that they are ghost towns. So it’s hard.
K:
Well, and I have a friend that goes to Kobe quite frequently, like twice a month. And they’re fine. They go. And they get a face massage. And they game. And they just live their normal life. And they’re completely fine. And they haven’t contracted COVID. And they’re not vaccinated.
K:
So I’m torn. I think I’d be really motivated to go someplace and stay by the sea because I’ve been really homesick for the sea and having… the ocean near me and hearing the sound of the ocean, the sound of the waves. I’m homesick for Monte Ray. And I’m homesick for staying in Monte Ray where, in your hotel room, you can hear the sound of the ocean and go to sleep to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. That just really sounds so peaceful for me.
C:
And Nagoya’s a port city. It’s got one of the biggest ports in the world. But it’s also a harbor city.
K:
Yeah, so there’s no beach.
C:
Yeah, so the most watery thing that we do in Nagoya is there are ferries, including tourist ferries, that you can go on. But they’re very public and very crowded and not feeling safe these days.
K:
Yeah, and then too, Flower Island isn’t always blooming.
C:
No.
K:
(laughs)
New Speaker:
The ferry goes over there. And it drops you off. And then it leaves an hour later. And sometimes we’re like, “Oh, it’s just dirt. How fun.” And we just play Pokemon or something for an hour and then go back.
K:
That’s what we did because the first time we went, I was like, “No.” You were like, “Are you sure they’re going to be flowers?” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s called Flower Island. It’s gotta be blooming year round.”
K:
And you were like, “I don’t think so, babe. I think it’s a springtime thing.” And the ferry that we took was mysteriously empty. And I was like, “No, it’s just we’re smart because we’re doing it early enough in the day before the heat,” because we went in the summer. And I was like, “It’s early enough in the day. It’s one of the first ferries. We’re so smart.”
K:
And then you were very nice to not make any cryptic comments about my intelligence or how smart I was when we got there and there were absolutely no flowers anywhere. And there were little shops that were open like… Basically like festival food shops that were open. And we had some festival food and walked around. It wasn’t that bad.
C:
No.
K:
We still had fun.
C:
We did. And I think that is so rude; like, ugh, people who assume, one, that if you didn’t know what you were talking about, that you want correction and, two, that if you make a mistake, that it’s something that you deserve to be criticized for. It just gets to me. It’s a way to kill a mood.
K:
Yeah, it is.
C:
So if you and I go someplace, and it doesn’t turn out to be what we thought it was… I think we still find ways to have fun and not in the, “I’m going to have fun despite this being super crap,” but just, “Oh, this is not what we planned. But here we are.”
K:
I’m always like, “This is not what we planned. So what is it?” That’s what I want to know. What is it?
K:
And that’s why we walked around. The island is so tiny. You can walk the entire island in a day, in the hour it takes for the ferry to go and come back.
C:
And there’s a nursery where you can buy flowers. And there’s a few different things. There’s not a lot if it’s off season. But we had a nice walk.
K:
Yeah, just like when we went down Ozmall, we had an nice walk. We’ve talked about Ozmall before with all the small figurines. And it was like when we went to Palette Town.
C:
Yes, in Tokyo.
K:
Yeah, so Palette Town was really fun. We had to take a ferry over to Palette Town. And we did because we’re all huge Pokemon fans. And then there’s a couple little tiny Pokemon things that go on there. And there’s a bunch of statuary throughout the town. But the rest of the town is just a town.
C:
Well, there’s the Ferris wheel.
K:
Yeah, there’s the Ferris wheel. And that’s like the only Pokemon thing that’s there. It’s a Pokemon-themed Ferris wheel. So I don’t know when it was Palette Town. I don’t know what was Palette Town about it.
C:
I think there are these naming commissions to market different places. And that is something that I saw in the US. But Japan takes it to just another level on this.
C:
Every town will have its special dish. And they’ll be like, “This is the only place in Japan you can get this.” And we’ve traveled to a bunch of different Shinkansen stations because that’s the easiest way to go. And if you go look at the souvenir shops, the omiyage shops, everyone’s got like… The local baseball team cookies. It’s all made by the same company.
K:
Well, except for the Tokyo Banana.
C:
Yeah, but the Tokyo Banana is made by the Tokyo Banana company.
K:
Yeah, so every city does really have its own thing.
C:
Yes.
K:
And they also have a mascot. The most funnest part of being an expat in Japan is buying a Japanese person the right omiyage. When you get the right omiyage to a Japanese person, you are a freaking rockstar. And I’m going to just hip you all to the secret. You get the mascot cookie box.
C:
Thank you. That’s what I was saying.
K:
Yeah, because when we went to Asahikawa, it was the first time because nobody wants a Tokyo Banana.
C:
Right.
K:
They don’t – Tokyo Banana, you either love them or hate them. And there’s no in between.
C:
There is no in between.
K:
And they’re not a Twinkie, but they’re Twinkie-esque. You’re better-
C:
It’s a sponge cake with banana mush in the middle.
K:
Yeah.
C:
Or you can get a sponge cake with banana mush and a little bit of artificial strawberry flavoring.
K:
And they also have chocolate now too.
C:
Yeah, I haven’t tried the chocolate.
K:
So I think it’s coated on the outside. I don’t know. They’ve done a whole revolution because you can have matcha flavored, I mean, green tea flavored. You can get a green tea flavored anything in Japan. So saying it’s matcha flavored is not … “matcha” is Japanese for “green tea.”
K:
So we went to Asahikawa. And we brought back asapi cookies for everyone. And we did it because in Asahikawa, they have a three-story omiyage shop. And that’s all they sell is omiyage. And omiyage is basically … I can’t think of the English for “omiyage.”
C:
Souvenirs.
K:
Thank you.
C & K:
(laughter).
K:
How you know you’ve been in Japan too long, it’s like you can’t remember, “What do they call it? It’s omiyage.”
C:
Yeah.
K:
So the rules for souvenirs, and we’ve talked about this before, I think, is that the souvenirs have to be consumable so that they don’t take up space in someone’s home forever because the homes are small and crowded in Japan for the most part.
C:
I feel like it’s also acceptable if it is plausible destructible.
K:
What do you mean?
C:
I mean, cellphone dangles and things where you’re not expected to keep it forever, where they wear out.
K:
But cellphone dangles are not omiyage for someone else. They’re omiyage you buy yourself or a romantic partner.
C:
Yeah.
K:
And so your girlfriend-
C:
I’ve never bought any for anybody but you just to be clear.
K:
Yeah, because I’m giving you the side eye right now like, “Who have you bought a dangle for?”
C:
Yeah, but sometimes I have intentionally purchased the Coke or Pepsi bottle with the attached cellphone dangle.
K:
Yeah, because I like them.
C:
Yeah.
K:
And so the old flip phone cellphones used to have a little widget off to the side where you could stick cellphone dangles. But now they don’t do cellphone dangles anymore. It’s cellphone fobs that are for the back of the cellphone.
C:
For smartphones.
K:
And it’s not a cellphone case. It’s specifically the little round thing that people use to hold it. Or you can get cellphone covers and cases or little cellphone bags where your cellphone case is also a bag and comes with a strap. And so you have your cellphone on the outside and a little purse area on the inside. And that’s a really hot piece of omiyage to get a girlfriend if you’re out shopping together.
C:
Like a romantic girlfriend or like a friend girlfriend?
K:
Like a romantic girlfriend.
C:
Okay.
K:
That’s a romantic gift because every time she uses her cellphone or every time she sees her friends, it’s really flossy that she has this specific thing from your romantic adventure.
C:
Wow, okay.
K:
It’s a whole thing.
C:
No, I believe it’s a whole thing because there are little cake shops and things where a lot of their business is romance. You can buy a cake there. But also they have seating so that you can go and have your romantic experience in the cake shop, like in a manga.
K:
Yeah, and something that Japan does that I love, there’s one down the street from my office where they have fruit sandwiches. So it’s super romantic and super sheeshee, like upscale, to go to the fruit sandwich shop and get a fruit sandwich before they’ve sold out. Like to get up in the morning, it’s a thing that you get up and go do. You get up and go get your fruit sandwich.
C:
I start work at this time of year at around 8:00. And if I go to 7-Eleven just before 8:00, they are sold out of fruit sandwiches by that point. I have to go before 7:00.
K:
Yeah, because it’s a thing.
C:
Yeah.
K:
It’s completely a clout thing that if you have a fruit sandwich that you did not make.
C:
And fruit sandwiches are bread and whipped cream and usually either strawberries or kiwis.
K:
Or bananas.
C:
Or bananas, okay.
K:
So I like fruit sandwiches that are just … I like banana sandwiches where it’s just banana and bread. And then I like to smash all the air out of the bread, which you do not get my banana sandwich.
C:
No, I don’t. I’m like, “Why don’t you just eat a Tokyo Banana?”
K:
Ew. Yeah, why don’t you just eat mayonnaise is how I feel. Shots fired.
C:
I do sometimes.
K:
When do you eat mayonnaise?
C:
Sometimes.
K:
I don’t know if we’ve talked about Japan and mayonnaise. They put mayonnaise on everything.
C:
They do.
K:
So in Japan, you can get a pizza with mayonnaise on it. That’s an okay topping with mayonnaise.
C:
Like a seafood mayonnaise pizza.
K:
Yeah, mayonnaise and a raw egg in the center. What are you doing, Japan?
C:
Mayonnaise and baked potato on a pizza.
K:
What are you doing, Japan? Nobody needs potato salad on a pizza.
C:
Well, but it’s silver mayonnaise. So silver mayonnaise is super sweet and has vinegar and stuff in it. And it’s just not American mayonnaise.
K:
So in Japan, there’s seven or eight different types of mayonnaise.
C:
Yes.
K:
It’s not different brands. It’s different types of mayonnaise because they have salad mayonnaise. They have fish mayonnaise. They have topping mayonnaise. They have sandwich mayonnaise.
C:
Yeah, it’s as different as mustards. A yellow mustard, you can get in a couple of brands. But then you’ve got Dijon mustard. And you’ve got stone ground mustards. Mayonnaise is the same kind of way.
K:
That’s a good comparison. So they really take pride in it. So I think of Japan as having as many types of mayonnaise as you’ll find in the cheese section – the different types of cheese with flavors, like how they have in the United States red cheddar, white cheddar, sharp cheddar, mild cheddar, sweet cheddar.
C:
Right, something for our US listeners who are mayonnaise aficionados that they will know is that whether you have Best Foods or Hellmann’s mayonnaise in the US, depends on where you live because they’re the same brand just with a different label. But here when we go to the coffee store, because coffee stores are for whatever reason where they tend to have import goods, they will often have both Best Foods and Hellmann’s mayonnaise side by side.
K:
Yes, and I’m so branded, I want Best Foods.
C:
Yeah.
K:
I’m so branded.
C:
I bought Hellmann’s one time. She was like, “What the fuck is this?”
K:
Yeah, this is not Best Foods. What are you trying to pull here?
C:
“You might as well buy Japanese mayonnaise.” I’m like, “No, this is exactly the same.”
K:
And in a pinch, I’ll use Japanese mayonnaise. But it’s so weird now because we have all this mayonnaise, and I’ve stopped eating bread.
C:
Yeah.
K:
I’ve gone off bread. And everyone who’s clutching their pearls and wondering what I eat, everything.
C:
Okay.
K:
And I’ve also gone off corn. I used to be a big … but I’ve been craving corn and mayonnaise recently, not corn and mayonnaise mixed together.
C:
I was looking at you because I was thinking, “Really?”
K:
Yeah, no. I’ve been wanting sweet corn fried in butter with lots of salt.
C:
Yeah, that is a favorite.
K:
That is a tasty summer snack. And I also like fuirt – I mean, vegetables that are boiled so hard that when you drain them and you put the butter in, you can mix them, and they become the consistency of dip.
C:
So you basically puree them.
K:
I think of them as creamed vegetables.
C:
Okay, yeah. That’s fair.
K:
I love a good creamed vegetable. But it’s been too hot to make them because I don’t want to stand over the stove boiling. Like, while the water’s boiling.
C:
That’s reasonable, yeah.
K:
That’s just bananas. So to bring it back to the Olympics, you can see that my passion for the Olympics has faded. And I quickly got to the place of I don’t really care what happened because I didn’t want to go down the path of reading for filth, China and Russia. And I also did not want to talk about what happened in Israel at the Olympic Village. It’s a huge tragedy. Google it if you want to know. And I was just like, “Okay, I don’t see how we continue talking about the Olympics without having just a really dark conversation.”
C:
Yeah, if you’ve heard about the anti-sex beds, then you probably have also heard that actually they were just cardboard beds. And cardboard construction’s a thing here in Japan.
K:
Yeah, it is.
C:
So I feel like a lot of the topics people are talking about, I have read so many stories about them that it makes me think, “Why am I so vulnerable to click bait when I’m reading news?”
K:
(laughs)
C:
On Twitter, if I see click bait, I just block it. But when I’m reading the news, I’m just susceptible.
K:
And they’re just letting the athletes take everything else but the bed; the pillow, the blankets, just everything else. And they can even take the cardboard bed if they want to. They just assume the athletes are going to take everything. So everything that’s in the Olympic Village rooms, they can have. And Japan’s just like, “That way, we don’t have to worry about anything.” So I’m like, “Right on.”
C:
So I think it’s going to be like the park here when the World Expo was held in 2005.
K:
You think it’s going to be like what?
C:
Like Morikoro Park, which was where the 2005 World Expo was held in that it sat empty for a minute. And then it was repurposed for a lot of other stuff. And it’s just now become part of the landscape.
K:
Yeah, they do the walkathon there.
C:
Yeah, and there might be a Studio Ghibli there. And there’s events. Rasta and I have gone to food events and different things there.
K:
Yeah, because there was a huge My Neighbor Totoro. You had to have tickets to go into it. And I had tickets because I’m on it like that.
C:
Yeah, and they’ve kept that running since the last 15 years.
K:
Yeah, so I don’t know. That was awesome.
C:
Yeah. So, I mean, join us next week if you want to hear more about the giant jar of mayonnaise in our refrigerator.
K:
(laughs) There is not a giant jar of mayonnaise.
C:
You just said there is.
K:
It’s too big for the shelf that it’s on.
C:
Yeah, it’s a normal size jar of mayonnaise. But it’s too big for the shelf it’s on.
K:
The way that we’ve set our shelves is bizarre. I don’t understand our choices. And we could make different choices. It would be as simple as taking a shelf off.
K:
And we do eat fresh. So our refrigerator is empty before we go to the grocery store. And we could readjust it. But it just feels like this is the way our refrigerator is now, and I have no choice in the matter.
C:
Yeah, our refrigerator is very flexible.
K:
This is how I’m living.
C:
You can open it from either side.
K:
Yeah, and you can set the shelves at almost any height. But I’m like, “Can you really?” (laughs)
C:
Thank you. I think the answer is no.
K:
I think we need to lower one shelf and raise another. So tune in next week if you want … we’re not going to talk about that next week. This is just what it’s come to. So looking – oh, we have a really exciting take Two Today. It’s, how can you tell if a press is trustworthy? Because there are untrustworthy and bad presses out there that are screwing over authors, which I don’t approve of.
C:
Yeah, and they are not trying to steal your manuscripts for the most part. So we’ll talk about that.
K:
Yeah, so that was a little spoiler for the Take Two.
C:
Yeah.
K:
Thank you so much for listening to this ramble that was, you know, about the Olympics and not. So I guess it’s about the Olympics and travel.
C:
Yes.
K:
And we appreciate your time and effort. We love every single Musick Note. Thank you for listening.
K:
And we hope that you follow us on over for the Take Two, where for three bucks you can have over 100 Take Two episodes. Some are written. Some are about books. Some are extended thoughts on episodes. It’s a good mix of stuff.
K:
So… Think about becoming a patron. And thank you for everyone who has become a patron because now we have an official transcriber. And thank you for our new transcriptionist who’s name I cannot say because I didn’t ask them before if they wanted to be known.
C:
Yeah, we’ll have to find out.
K:
So bye, Puddin’ and all our Musick Notes. Talk to you next week.
C:
Bye.
K:
Bye.
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