AKB 48

For those of you not familiar with Japanese pop culture, so a vast majority of you, probably have no idea what that title means. No, it's not some high tech gun, or a complicated piece of machinery, but a Japanese pop group. Unlike American pop groups that usually have 5-6 people in them, as the number in the title would indicate, there are 48 girls in this group. Now you are probably about as confused and/or shocked as I was when I heard about this. BUT WAIT, there's more! I came downstairs the other day and looked at the TV and saw one of the members on TV crying. I was thinking something terrible had happened, so I asked my host mom what was up. She explained to me that it was the AKB 48 election time. Come again? Elections for a pop group. She went on to explain that the girls in the group had elections every year to determine their position in the band. The closer you were to 1, the more up front and center you would be during performances, music videos and such. At this point I was like, are you serious? This is ridiculous! But since seeing this a few days ago I have been analyzing it trying to think in terms of Japanese culture. This group of girls usually around 18-20 years old had 48 members that I guess would just get swapped out when they get too old or want out or something, the election is the process for this to happen. The votes for the election come from a ballot received when purchasing a CD (by the way, genius marketing ploy). That all made sense but then I started thinking, why 48. I still don't have a good answer but I have a hunch that it ties back to the Japanese sense of homogeneity (aka uniformity). That there were 48 girls, all pretty similar so nobody really stands out. Uniform. Now I could be completely wrong with this, and feel free to call me out on anything if you disagree but I have noticed that there are few solo groups. The majority of J-pop music is all groups. Just some food for thought.

Also, here is a video of them performing one of their songs. I'm pretty sure this is their most popular song because it's the one that plays almost always when their name is mentioned. Forewarning: This may be nauseatingly cute for some.

Japanese Swimming Pools

So just a quick update on things so far. Our class portion of the trip ended last Friday. I went to Kyoto again last Friday with Stephanie and Hannah for some last minute souvenir shopping and to hang out. Saturday, I just kind of hung around Otsu for the day and made my host family Mac and Cheese because they had never had it.  Crazy right? Today was an interesting day, and also where the title of this post comes from. So first off, my host dad, brother and I went to a ramen house. It was my first time to a ramen shop so I didn't really know what to expect. We get to this small restaurant and my host dad goes inside and gets us a number. We then waited outside for about 10 minutes until we ordered and got called in. We waited on a bench inside while they set up 3 seats at a bar for us. We sat down and after another couple minutes our food came. It was so good! I have only ever had instant ramen and I was always just kind of lukewarm about it but this ramen was delicious! After finishing lunch, I went to SUMS to meet up with the other international students to play some sports which was fun, except one of the other teams players got hurt while playing basketball. Luckily enough, like my friend Miriam pointed out, everyone here is pretty much a doctor so he got him all taken care of and played badminton for a bit until I had to go home for dinner. My host dad was teaching me how to make Okonomiyaki. I was very excited because I had been itching to learn how to cook Japanese food for people when I got home. I figured it would be a good way to help share my experiences more. Its hard to describe what Okonomiyaki is but I will try. It is kind of like a Japanese cross between a pancake and an omelet topped with a special sauce and mayo. It sounds weird but its delicious. I'll post a picture too so you guys can see what it looks like. 

After letting dinner digest, my host dad, brother and I went to the community pool. Now the differences weren't HUGE, but after swimming competitively for almost 8 years of my life and life guarding for 4 years, I notice these things.  So first we walked into this large sports complex and went to this ticket machine next to the front desk and bought 3 tickets to swim and took them to the front desk where we exchanged them for plastic chips with rubber bands on them. We went to the locker room, which was pretty small compared to most locker rooms you find in the US, and changed into our swim suits. Now all I brought with me was one of my old work suits, but everyone else was wearing jammers or one piece suits, depending on gender of course.  I thought this was a little strange because even thought this was a lap pool only, in the US unless you swim competitively, you probably don't even know what a jammer is. Now in America, its suggested that you shower before entering the pool, but nobody does. In Japan, they found a way to enforce this quite effectively. The entryway to the pool had motion activated showers in the ceiling that formed a barrier of hot water that you had to pass through before you could even get into the pool area. I thought this was interesting, I mean there had to have been a way around it for staff and people who for some reason or another came to a lap pool and couldn't get wet but still it was effective. I was just glad that the water was a pleasant temperature and not like freezing cold like I was expecting. The next difference was that each lane was specifically assigned for a purpose. 3 lanes were lap swim only, 1 lane for walking and 1 lane for kicking, with a side area for kids that was shallower than the rest of the pool. I thought this was nice so that way if you were trying to swim you wouldn't get caught behind some chatty Kathys with kick boards, moving at a leisurely pace. The last big thing I noticed were what I thought were sinks. On the wall by the entryway was what I thought to be a bank of sinks, which I thought was weird anyway but after getting out of the pool, my host dad walks over to them and puts his face over one of them and pushes the handle. They turned out to be eye washes to get the chlorine (I think they use chlorine in their pools) out of your eyes. I thought this was a great idea because I feel like a lot of the people at the pool I work at would love this. Okay, now to mention a few things about the locker room that I forget to mention above. All of the lockers were coin operated. You put in a 10 yen coin and the key (which was on a watch like wristband) came out when you shut and locked the door. Now I figured that this was like any other coin operated locker and that once your coin was in, it was gone. This was not the case. Before we got in the pool, I realized that I needed that plastic chip with the rubber band to get in. "Crap" I thought "There goes 10 yen down the drain," but when I put my key back in, out popped my coin. I guess the coin just acts as collateral for use of the locker, which doesn't make a whole lot on sense considering that 10 yen is approximately $0.12. Also, they had a hair dryer. Not one of those hand dryers they just put a few feet higher up so you could stand under it and get your hair half dry, but a real hair dryer that was just plugged into the outlet there. I thought this was strange and awfully trusting of people, but as demonstrated by a previous post, Japanese really don't steal anything (except bicycles  and umbrellas apparently). 

Well now you are pretty much caught up on my adventures. I still haven't finished the kanpo post I have mentioned a few times now but it's almost done so hopefully in the next few days I can finish it. I start my internship/ hospital observation tomorrow so that should be interesting, but for now it's off to bed so I can get enough sleep for the long days ahead. 

Updates

I feel like I say this too often here but I have fallen behind again on my blogging. So just to catch up with my trip I will write some short blurbs about what I have done recently and hopefully go back later and go into more detail (I have a Kanpo piece in the works but I dont have my laptop here to work on it). Thursday and Friday last week were our last days with Denise before she flew back to America. Thursday was mainly about Kanpo and Friday was about minorities in Japan, and like I said I will probably go back once I have more time because both were really fascinating. I should also mention that on Friday at SUMS (Shiga University of Medical Sciences) a part was thrown for us so we could meet students here. This was very nice of SUMS to do for us and it was really fun. There was loads of good food and we met a bunch of new people!

Saturday I spent most of it looking at temples and shrines with my otoosan. The first one we went to was one of my favorites because you had to walk like 2km through the mountains, away from civilization, to get there. It was almost as though it was place where it was long ago so that you had to almost walk through the woods and kind of forget everything behind you and focus on where you were going before you could get there. I really like this concept of almost purification before getting there, but that might just be the Shinto sinking in. Next we went to Mt. Hiei, which was this HUGE mountain overlooking both Otsu and Kyoto. Otoosan was telling me that pretty much the whole mountain was considered a temple. I could see what he meant when we got to the top. There had to have been at least 12 shrines and temples to visit. I think the one that was my favorite was a Buddhist temple that was at the top of the flight of steep stairs. The set up of the temple was some steps up to a small outside vestibule where you would remove your shoes. After you did that there was a small enclosed garden that had a wood path leading you into the main building. You entered into this semi lit room where you would go kneel before a small fence facing another room that was not too visible when you walked in, but once you got up to the fence and knelt the view was amazing. I was just telling my friend that I wish I could have gotten a picture but it would not have done it any justice. I will try and describe it as best as I can. The air was heavy with incense. Even though it was only 2pm outside, the sun was mostly blocked and replaced with many candles. As I knelt down I was astounded at what was on the other side. Many candles lit up the the large space beyond the fence. In the center was a large statue of a Buddha. Not the stereotypical fat jolly Buddha but a more sober serene Buddha, sitting with his right hand raised. Around him were statues of what I believe were other smaller deities. The walls were covered in this round black and gold globe like decorations. It was breathtaking! It is amazing that after all of these years this shrine has been here it still maintains its original beauty.

After seeing a few more temples we started our decent. This mountain was so high that going up and down caused your ears to pop like on an airplane even though I was in a car. I found this amazing because I am from Michigan where it is flat. After making a few quick stops places on the way home, we had dinner with the rest of the family.

Nothing too exceptional happened Sunday except going back to Hikone for the afternoon to do Karaoke with my friends back there. It was really fun and I got in some quality songs because this was the first karaoke place I had been that had Panic! at the Disco (my favorite band). I will admit however, I am no Brendon Urie.

Post Op Picture.

Monday was probably one of the best class days so far because we got to learn about MRI image guided surgery AND THEN PREFORM IT! I mean it was only on a block of agar gel with a hypotheitcal tumor but we still did a pretty legitimate procedure with the Double Donut MRI and the Microwave probes to coagulate the hypothetical tumors. This was very interesting and a wonderful opportunity to try this type of procedure first hand. The rest of that day and today were lectures from various professors at SUMS that were interesting but I will be honest did not top the surgery. The only bad part about the surgery was that I forgot to take my bus pass out of my pocket and the MRI deactivated it because to the magnets but it was an easy fix. Just had to go to the Keihan Bus Office and ask them to remake it.

Well there are some quick updates. Hopefully I can find sometime this week to finish my piece on Kanpo and maybe a few others about other topics covered.