回転寿司

Just down the road from the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto is a large and reasonably priced "kaiten" sushi restaurant.

For those who have yet to eat at a "revolving" sushi restaurant, simply put these are establishments in which sushi plates are placed on a rotating conveyor belt that moves the plates slowly around the entire restaurant. The belt winds past every table and a counter where customers may sit.

What you do is pick up a plate from the conveyor belt as it goes by your booth. Chopsticks, wasabi, and soy sauce are all on your table.

The plates are sometimes labeled, sometimes not.

Your bill will be calculated based on the number of plates you take. At some restaurants, prices vary depending upon the type of sushi.

At Kaiten Sushi - the name of this restaurant - all plates are 100 yen, or 105 with sales tax included.

As this restaurant is close to Ritsumeikan University, home to many exchange students, and within walking distance of both Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavilion) and Ryoanji Temple, the menu had some English.

Language, though, is not a problem.

You will be seated by a waiter/waitress, then you choose plates, eat, and finally walk to the register to pay.

Access

From the main gate of the Golden Pavilion, turn right. Walk straight along the street that leads west (the street you are on). The restaurant is on the left side of the street about five minutes on foot from the Golden Pavilion.

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• Date: THIS SATURDAY Jan. 17th, 2009
• Time: 18:30 - 21:00
• Drinks will be served between 6:30pm-8:50pm.
• Place: Shooter’s Bar (Pola Bldg, 2-9-26 Sakae, Naka-ku (very close to Fushimi Station)
• Fee: 3000 Yen
• Dress code: Anything (Casual, etc)
• Reservations: Not necessary but recommended and appreciated. Just
  show up to the party!
• Over 25,000 Yen worth of exciting prize giveaways each month!

There will be free food along with free drinks (beers, wine, cocktail drinks and juices).
Our party is not a dinner party, but we will have light food & snacks.
Quantities are limited, so please come early! Please free to come alone or bring your friends.
EVERYBODY is welcome to join regardless of nationality/gender. Reservation is greatly appreciated.
About 125-150+ people are expected to attend. Approximately 55% female and 45% male, 70% Japanese and 30% non-Japanese.
Pictures from previous Nagoya Friends Parties.

Contact: 080-3648-1666 (Japanese) 080-5469-6317 (English)

Get off at Fushimi Station [Exit #5]

Shooter’s Bar (Pola Bldg, 2-9-26 Sakae, Naka-ku (very close to Fushimi Station)

Train Directions

From Nagoya Stn. take the Higashiyama Subway line to Fushimi Station (GET OFF
at Fushimi Station!!) Take the #5 Exit from then walk straight along Rt. 19
AWAY from Hirokoji-Dori for about 3/4 of a block. Shooters is on the left side
of the street at the end of the block. Look for the sign on the sidewalk.

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武家屋敷, 松江, 島根県

The Buke Yashiki in Matsue is located on the Shiomi Nawate, the street bordering Matsue Castle moat to the north of the castle that also contains the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum and Lafcadio Hearn's Old Residence.



A buke yashiki is a residence of a samurai, and this area was where the samurai serving the Lord of Matsue, Daimyo Matsudaira, lived.



The residence was home to a samurai named Shiomi and his family and servants. The house remains exactly as it was when built in 1730. Shiomi was a middle-ranking samurai with an income of 1,000 koku, considerably less than a similarly ranked samurai from a richer region, so his property was somewhat more austere.



Visitors can not actually enter the house, but because of the nature of traditional Japanese homes with their multitude of siding screen doors, one can peer into most parts of the dwelling and view the objects of daily use and also weapons.

Matsue Buke Yashiki
Tel: 0852 22 2243
Open every day
Apr-Sept 8:30am - 6:30pm
Oct-Mar 8:30am - 5:00pm
Entrance: 300 yen (50% discount for foreigners)



© Jake Davies & Japan Visitor.com

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体部位

Listen to the parts of the body in Japanese from Joji

We have already delved into the numbers in Japanese, colors and days of the week, another vocabulary category to master is parts of the body (taibui 体部位).

Head (atama 頭), face (kao 顔), hair (kami 髪), neck, (kubi 首) arm (ude 腕), elbow (hiji ひじ), ankle (ashikubi 足首), armpit (wakinoshita 腋の下), eye (me 目), ear (mimi 耳), nose (hana 鼻), mouth (kuchi 口), tongue (shita 舌), shoulder (kata 肩), hand (te 手), finger (yubi 指), chest (mune 胸), toe (tsumasaki つま先), leg (ashi 足), back (senaka 背中), knee (hiza 膝), heel (kakato かかと), lip (kuchibiru 唇).

Internally, we have heart (shinzo 心臓), tooth (ha 歯), liver (kanzo 肝臓), kidney (jinzo 腎臓), brain (no 脳), bladder (boukou 膀胱).

A useful expression is the part of the body plus "ga itai"　- thus atama ga itai (頭が痛い)、naka ga itai (腹が痛い). My heads aches, my stomach aches etc.

Expressions using the parts of the body are legion. Be all eyes - me wo sara no yo ni suru (目を皿のようにする) - similar in meaning to the English "be all ears." I am really busy - te ga hanasenai "I can't let go of my hands" (手が離せない), kuchi wa wazawai no moto (口は禍のもと) - evil stems from the mouth.

Others are: to get angry - ha wo muku (歯をむく) - lit. bear the teeth or hara ga tatsu (腹が立つ) - lit. the belly stands up. The book Japanese Proverbs and Sayings by Daniel Crump Buchanan has a whole section of proverbs dedicated to parts of the body.

Last week's Japanese lesson

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ツアーバス

Tour buses are a cheap and easy way to get to see some of Japan's major sights. Tour buses leave early in the morning from main stations, typically around 7am, and usually visit a couple of attractions during the day.



The tours may or may not include lunch. The tour guides, almost always uniformed Japanese women carrying colored flags, keep up a constant stream of patter from the front of the bus during the day. A movie may be shown in the evening as you head home on the highway.



Cheap tours can cost around 3,000 yen. Frequent destinations include Kyoto's Kinkakuji Temple, Nara, Ise Shima and Takayama. The most famous tour bus in Tokyo is the yellow Hato Bus, which provides English-language tours of the capital's many attractions.

Bus tours are advertised in newspapers and online and are usually paid for at any travel agent.


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中野区の桃太郎



Tokyo’s Nakano ward is just west of Shinjuku ward. Nakano Post Office is on Okubo-dori Street, which is too narrow to safely accommodate pedestrians. Therefore, there is a parallel walkway behind, and running all the way alongside, the row of houses lining the southern side of the street.

As you can see in the photo above, the walkway is done in paving stones. Every few meters there is a set of picture tiles depicting a scene.

The first four you come across walking from Nakano Post Office towards Shinjuku are scenes from the legend of Momotaro, or Peach Boy.

The legend of Momotaro is originally a fertility legend. An old woman washing her clothes by the river sees a giant peach floating by, and takes it home.



In the original story, she eats a piece of it and suddenly finds herself magically restored to her youthful vigor. Her husband, after having to be convinced by her that she actually is his wife and not a stray young maiden, also eats some, and the same happens to him. As would be expected, their sex life is also suddenly invigorated, and as a result of their subsequent copulation the wife becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy they call Taro, a common traditional Japanese boy’s name. Momo-Taro literally translates as Peach-Taro.

As the word “peachy” in English also suggests, the peach, in Japanese culture, is symbolic of sex, its softness, roundness, and the cleavage it sports resembling a woman’s breasts or buttocks.



However, it is believed that during the Meiji Period, the influence of Western “delicacy” surrounding the topic of sex saw the legend bowdlerized to become the one depicted on the Okubo-dori Street tiles, where the woman takes the peach open, cuts it open, and finds a ready-made boy inside.



Momotaro grows up big and strong (seen here playfighting with his father). Momotaro eventually assembles a band of animal helpers who, together, make a journey to an ogre’s castle, and defeat him. Momotaro returns home with a massive booty and lives with his parents happily ever after.



Read more about Momotaro as the mascot of Okayama City, or about the Momotaro Festival in Inuyama in Aichi prefecture.

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