International Sunday

Last night, I slept again from 5pm to around 10pm.  I had my brunch of katsu-kari (curry with deep-fried pork cutlet or "tonkatsu") and some Japanese bento meal at ~3:10pm already.  Then I slept from 5pm to around 10pm.  I had a 6" "instant" pizza, and ice cream for dinner.  I slept at around 4am already, I think.  I woke up at around 12noon, but as expected I was a little too tired.  But surprisingly, I didn't have any real muscle or heel pain, not like just right after the climb.

Anyways, I was too tired even to prepare or buy lunch.  I just edited my videos from the Fuji trip and then whoah, it was 4:30pm already.  I had to go to the 5pm mass at the Atsugi Catholic Church.

I just found out that the videos on Multiply, where I have my Mt Fuji videos hosted, play only up to the 10:00 minute mark.  Yikes!  If you can find a way, download the whole video to your computer and watch it offline.  Alternatively, if you have a Facebook account, and I'm your friend there, you can watch it from these links:

Part 1. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=463002935927
Part 2. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=463007370927

I took the 4:50pm bus and made it in time for I think the Glory song - I wasn't sure because it was in a foreign language.  This 5pm mass is actually a special International Mass, in celebration of the feast of the Assumption today, the 15th of August.  Very interesting mass.  The 1st reading was in Portuguese, the Responsorial Psalm in Japanese, the 2nd reading in Spanish, the Gospel in English, and the homily in both English and Japanese.  The prayers of the faithful were in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Japanese, in that order.  The Our Father was in English.  The recessional song ("Santa Maria del Camino") was in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Japanese.

Then after the mass, there was a little party.  There was my lunch!  God making lambing.  I was looking forward to this as well as this was a chance to meet some fellow Pinoys.  I approached one guy who was apparently with a rather large group of 20-something fellow Pinoys.  My opener was "Pinoy kayo?"  He said yes but he and his friends were too shy, the only thing I got out of him was that they are not from Atsugi itself, that they were all here on training for 1 year, but they did not arrive here all at the same time.  And then just like that, he said he had to go.  Okay.  On to my next Pinoy.  I approached a more mature group and then proceeded with my opener question to the lone man amongst the otherwise group of women.  He was a little more accommodating and was encouraging me to dig into the food before it all runs out.  I guess the difference between this group and the first group I approached was that the former is composed of people who are here or have been here for a long time (say 2 years or more).  I guess I belonged more to this group than the first.  Apparently, not many Filipino going to church here in Atsugi are from Atsugi!  Yikes, I wanna meet Pinoy Atsugi-ites!  Anyways, it's all good.  Finally I met the choir lead singer/organist, Rinna, and then she introduced me to a slightly younger group of 2-year or longer residents.  I also met and interacted with Nina, Mickey, and another lady.  Mickey is a 20-something student who graduated from Don Bosco Manda and is here with a Monbusho (Japanese ministry of education, etc) scholarship but haven't found a school yet so he's currently an English teacher; he's been here for 2 years.  As usual, these guys aren't from Atsugi!

Anyways, it was fun meeting them and I hope to see them again next time.  I just confirmed that there is indeed an English mass here in Atsugi also on the 1st Sunday of each month!  That is great news.

At the party, in addition to the sushi, pasta, fruits, and sausages, I had lechon manok, kutsinta, biko, and sopas.  Yummy, Filipino food!  I don't really like sopas, but serve me sopas here (once in a while) in Japan, and I can finish thehole batch you cooked.  I most especially loved the lechon manok.   Yum-to-the-nth-power-mee.  It was a pretty good lunch. :-D

I took off at around 7pm and went to KFC to buy my dinner for the next two days (6-piece chicken and "emu-saizu koru-suro" or M-size cole slaw).  I also passed by the convenience store to buy milk and juice.  Then back home.  I ate my dinner at around 9pm already.

No sun

This day did not happen.  Serious!  I woke up very late, maybe around 2pm.  The sleeping problems are still there.  I only had one meal - my ginisang giniling with pechay.  Maybe I was up for just 10 hours today.  And didn't do anything at all.  Did not feel well at all.  Yikes, it's the first day of August.  Is it the heat?

Where did my Sunday go?

Woke up really, really late - 2pm.  Caught the 3:50pm bus, just in time to make the 4:14pm train going to Komabatodaimae station for the 5pm English mass at the chapel, just less than a 5-minute walk from the Komabatodaimae station.  When I got to Hon-Atsugi station to board the train, it hit me.  I haven't eaten lunch yet!  It was going to be another 45 minutes travel going, plus the 30-minute mass before I can eat.  Can't wait!  So I grabbed me a chicken sandwich at BK.  Took me 15 minutes (including the wait)!  So now I was going to miss half the mass.  Oh well.

I tried doing my grocery shopping at the SATY (department store) basement this time around.  I noticed that the prices are generally more expensive (like the cheapest 1L of milk and 5kg of rice is 99 and 1850 yen respectively, versus 88 and 1650 yen respectively at Atsugi Trellis), and my bill was nearly 6000 yen (or around 4150 yen without the 5kg rice).  I guess overall it wasn't bad.  I didn't buy any breakfast or snack food though.  I did forget to buy tomatoes for cooking; I only got me some cherry tomatoes for a salad.  I am to prepare chicken adobo (my first time to), pork steak, and grilled salmon.  I'll eat these with veggies on the side, of course.  I bought pechay and some kind of lettuce, as well as the cherry tomatoes.  I didn't find any peeled and ready-to-eat, sweet baby carrots though I still have half a small pack of it at home.  Thankfully the bananas here (by Dole) are all not-so-ripe yet, unlike at AT were usually the bananas are good for only a day.

Today was hot as usual.  My inner shirt caught some sweat and I was not able to change shirts immediately when I got home; I almost caught a cold.  Good thing I noticed it early enough and so I changed when I did notice that I was about to catch a cold. The heat and humidity is really a little bothersome.

Of course I only cooked the adobo and the pork steak.  The grilled salmon is reserved for when I am about to eat them.  Which maybe the next day. :-D

Sunday, Bloody (Scorching Hot) Sunday

Was about to entitle this post Sunny Sunday, similar to a post I wrote months ago.  But that Sunday was a pleasantly sunny Sunday.  It was a welcome surprise amidst the cold, rainy spring days. But now it's summer and oh baby.  Daytime high today was 35 degrees.  That's the record high since the first time I've visited Japan.  In the coming nights, the nighttime low is as high as 26 degrees.  Another record high for me.

By the way, "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" is a song by the world famous and legendary (i.e. now they're senior citizens) band, U2.

Anyways, woke up not so early.  I was able to take the 1:20pm bus, and so I arrived at Hon-Atsugi around 1:40pm, 20 minutes before the start of the mass.  Haven't eaten lunch yet so since I've been craving for real fried chicken (not the filleted chicken), I ate fried chicken.  Kentucky style. :-D  Actually I ordered one that comes with a chicken fillet sandwich.  The sizes are too small - 810 yen total.  So expensive!  I was so hungry, so I ordered a nana-pizu setto with koru-suro.  Figure that one out. :-D

Anywho, so off to mass I went.  The usual Filipinos there.  You know, those who see each other only during Sunday mass so they catch up, and they play with the very cute babies during mass.

After mass, I decided to go to the Smile Company, a second-hand (Tagalog: ukay-ukay) shop.  No wait, it's a mall (or department store)!  They have a 5-storey building along a national highway!  It was quite a long walk from Hon-Atsugi station, and this was around 3:30pm.  Scorching hot indeed.  It was interesting to find lots of... well, interesting stuff there.  Like a 980 yen (10 dollars, 500 pesos) guitar!  And iPod touch for only ~25,000 yen (250 dollars, 12500 pesos), nearly 40% off a brand new price.  There are some clothes that are just 100 yen (1 dollar, 50 pesos) each - but mostly women's or children's clothing.  The jeans - they were still in the 5,000 yen (50 dollars, 2,500 pesos)  range.  Yikes.  Clothes in general are way too expensive here.  My friend says you're lucky to find a shirt below 3,000 yen (30 dollars, 1,500 pesos) here.  I wanna buy an I (Heart) Tokyo (in Kanji) shirt!  Actually, I found some being sold online for only 2,685 yen plus shipping, it goes up above 3,000 yen.  Oh boy.  Maybe next time.

I also dropped by the 100-yen store, and saw an unfamiliar Pringles flavor.  Apparently it's a "Spareribs"-flavored Pringles, although it also shows the world-famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.  (Well, it's not really that world-famous, but most Americans and Vegas tourists would know what I'm talking about.)  Let's see how it will taste.

Anywho, so today I cooked Nilaga, Ginisa (Giniling), and...  Lechon Kawali, at least the first part of it.  Midway through cooking Nilaga, I realized I didn't have enough black pepper and onions anymore so I made a quick trip to the convenience store.  While before I said it was unconveniently out of the way, now by bicycle it is quite near and more so because I found a really short (and not so slopey) route going there!  There was no crushed black pepper!  Big problem.  There was ground black pepper though.  Good enough.  And the onions I thought were too expensive.  Then I saw sliced onions in a pouch!  Scallions actually, more commonly known as spring onions.  I thought I should try it out.  So I bought it.

Can't wait to eat these foods! :-D

P.S. last night as I went to the convenience store to buy my dinner, I noticed that nearby there was some kind of celebration or something; they had tents set-up with lights, and there were some fireworks (I only heard them; no more fireworks when I got there).  On my way from the grocery, they were also setting up another kind of mini-festival; they have a truck that converts into a stage and there was someone singing (or rehearsing for her performance).  They have lots of celebrations during summer, usually with fireworks.  I heard that every first weekend of August there will be the largest fireworks display in Atsugi at one of its famous tourist spots, the Iiyama Kannon (a 10-minute bike ride from TPU!)  Actually it might be the only real tourist spot here in Atsugi.  They also have hot springs ("onsen") there.

No sun Sunday

Well it did shine for a very little while actually.  But today is generally one of those "rainy season" days.  But it's not like pouring rain, but instead it was very Asian - very shy rain.  In the exact same 1 square meter area, there is only one drop every minute.  So technically you don't need an umbrella.

I was in Tokyo when the sun first shone today.  I went to the church in Meguro to attend the 12 noon mass.  A one way trip from my apartment to Meguro takes an hour and 50 minutes.  Before going home, I went around the Shinjuku area and took pictures of the two most prominent buildings there: the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, and the Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower.  I also went to Bic Camera, the electronics store, and was able to try the new iPhone 4 and iPad.

One of the things I did today was withdraw from the bank, via the ATM.  Guess what.  There's an "overtime charge," apparently because it's Sunday today.  Overtime charge????  Who's doing overtime?????  Well, I guess Japan is still very much Asian.  Any opportunities to earn money, they will grab.  I mean, of course, that's a good thing to do, from a business-owner perspective.  Like in renting apartments, aside from paying the rent and a 2-months deposit, you usually would have to pay a non-refundable 2-months' worth of "gratitude payment" (or what they call "key money") to the landlord and when you leave, you may need to pay a fee to have your apartment "cleaned" and ready for occupancy by the next tenant.  I mean, in other countries, the rent (as well as the deposit) is supposed to cover all that already.

Another thing I did today was... to finally try eating at Denny's here.  As I mentioned before, there are two Denny's branches here in Atsugi alone.  Pretty surprising.  The Denny's closer to the Hon-Atsugi station is on the 2nd floor of a 3-storey building; a.k.a. a building with no elevators or escalators.  Anyways, from what I can understand from the sign, this Denny's store is open 24 hours!  So I come in, and as expected, the interiors are very Western, much like the Denny's stores I've visited in California.  Then I sit down, look at the menu and...  It's a Japanese menu!  Of course the text is in Japanese, this is Japan anyway.  But the items on the menu are all Japanese (or Japanese-style) food!  I was really craving for some Amerika-no tabemono (American food), though I wasn't sure yet what exactly.  Anyways, I ordered the suteiku (steak, Japanese-style), but it was "sold out," the waitress said in English.  So I asked what's a similar dish, and so she pointed to another kind of suteiku, but this time instead of one big slab of meat, it's pre-sliced already.  Anyways, fyi, Japanese-style steak usually comes on a sizzling plate and with onions and "sauce."  The price, is expensive, though for the ambiance, it wasn't so bad.  I've eaten at a hole-in-the-wall Japanese steak place before, and their prices are my reference point.

And that's about it for my day.  Hi, mom!  Don't worry, I'm fine. :-)

Meguro Church, Tokyo!

I was supposed to attend an event in Tokyo today, particularly at the Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo.  The event starts 9am and will be until 5pm.  That meant I have to get the 7:20am bus to get there on time.  That meant I had to be up 6:30am latest.  I've never been up that early here!

But I did try, and I had my alarms set at 6:30am...  To no avail.  I woke up at 7am but got up at... 8am!  I was ready to leave at 9am.  The latest I would arrive at the event venue would be 11am.  I would miss the Sunday mass at the venue.  I cancelled my trip there.  Instead I took the 10:20am bus to get to Meguro Church.  I got to the church around 12:10pm already!  Almost a two hour trip!  (Inclusive of the waiting for the trains, and the walking.)

Anyways, this is by far the largest church I've been to since coming here.  More Filipinos as expected.  But also more non-Filipino foreigners.  And like in the mass I attended in Tachikawa, there was a baptism ceremony for two adults and one very cute little girl, as well as a First Communion ceremony for the two newly baptized Catholic adults.  Of course, it's Pentecost Sunday so the priest was wearing a red vestment. :-)

I also met up with Prof Germar, one of my master's thesis advisers, at the church.  And after mass we saw some of my former undergrad schoolmates from UP (also BS Civil Engineering grads) who are now taking their PhD, masters, or working here in Japan.  We decided to have (late) lunch together at this "Italian" place (I'm sure my Italian colleagues here in TPU would disagree), but actually what I like about that place is that it's tabehodai (eat-all-you-can/buffet).  The second thing I like about the place is that it can be as cheap as just 1000 yen for a buffet lunch meal!  Of course, I like that it's Italian.  I like fresh green salads with Italian dressing.  And Caesar salad with grilled chicken.  There was also "spicy" chicken nuggets, and a few other yummy stuff.  Just a few.  There was only one pasta dish on the buffet menu.  Overall, it's not great but... it's great (for me)!  Oh, but I have one complaint about the place though I would understand why they do it: they have very small plates for the buffet!  Each plate was just probably 6 inches in diameter.  So imagine how many trips I had to make!

On my way home, I dropped by the Atsugi Basu Senta (bus center) to look for the ramen place I used to visit 5 years ago with my colleagues back then (who have since earned their PhD degrees).  It was closed!  I don't know if it was only closed on Sundays or open only at certain times but...  Well there's one less place to visit.

By the way, it was rainy the whole day.  A little cool but not so cold - people were wearing plain t-shirts still.  Daytime high was just 21 degrees.

For dinner I cooked my own rice yet again, and ate siomai (Tagalog for Chinese dumplings) dipped in Kikkoman soy sauce, some side veggies, some takoyaki, and a banana.  The frozen takoyaki doesn't come close to being like the freshly prepared ones.  But it was a hearty meal.  Thank God for all the blessings.

P.S.  Last night before I drank my milk and went to sleep, I made one bowl of sinigang soup - I brought with me some Knorr Sabaw ng Sinigang (or is it Mama Sita Sinigang Mix?), dropped about a teaspoon into a bowl of hot water, and voila.  Didn't taste the same as the real thing though, maybe because there's no pork, veggies (most specially onions and tomatoes!), and fish sauce in there which add to the overall flavor of the real deal.  Oh well, I loved it nonetheless.  Thank God indeed for all the blessings.  :-)

Ran Day

So this post is late again.  Strike two.

One good thing today: the weather was pleasant, sunny and clear skies, not so cold, just perfect "air-conditioner" weather.  Day-time high was ~19 degrees.

But it wasn't my day.  Now on to the bad stuff:

1. I woke up surprisingly very late - around 11am!  Apparently my alarm was set to alarm only on weekdays, I think.  Well actually it was good that I got some rest, but I might be late for the mass!  Then...
2. I missed the bus by a few (say 5) minutes, and the next bus would arrive not until after 30 minutes!  If only I were a few minutes earlier, I would have made it to the 2pm mass just in time, and maybe even slightly earlier!  So now I'm probably 35 minutes late!  Buses are 30 minutes apart on Sundays.  This was a day I wish I had already bought/gotten a bicycle!
3. Anyway, so what I did was, because halfway along the bus route to Hon-Atsugi, a second bus route comes along so the bus frequency increases (maybe every 10 minutes).
4. So I ran for 30 minutes to get to the halfway point of my bus route.  Alas, 5 minutes earlier, I saw the other bus line a kilometer away already.  Pointless running!?  Well, of course, the exercise was good, and as I said it was a pleasant day to be outside...
5. Problem was, I was not able to change shirts not until I got home...  Which caused a little sneezing.  (Just a little.)  And, this was the first time I was exposed to low humidity + cool temperature, and so it was also the first time I felt my lips really dry up!  But anyhow, good thing I had lip balm with me.
6. When I got to the church, I was probably 15 or 20 minutes late, it was homily already.  Guess what.  The mass was in Spanish!  That was bad, but not so bad, so I thought I had to worry about #1 to #5 above when in fact I was too early for the English mass!
7. So I asked one of the Japanese there "Eigo de kyo wa nan ji desu ka?" which literally should translate to something like "Today what time is in English?"  She checked and said "Kyo wa eigo de nai desu!" which meant "There is no English (mass) today!"  Argh!  So anyway, there I was in a Spanish mass in Japan.  I know some Spanish but it was still difficult to understand...  Oh well.
8. And then my computer just suddenly crashed.  I was working on something and then boom!  Blue screen of death.  I tried all sorts of things - starting in Safe Mode, etc, reinstalling the OS, and so on, but to no avail.  Goodbye, files.  Anyway, my diagnosis was that it was a memory problem, and surprisingly the onboard BIOS has a Diagnostics tool and it also made the same diagnosis....  
9. Sigh, no Skype date for tonight with Mara.  Actually I could use my laptop but because I did not bring it to school and it was getting late already, I thought I would just call it a night.  What a day.

Anyways, I also did what hopefully would be my last day for home-stuff shopping...  At Daiso.  Actually before going to Daiso, I went around this "department" store or mall where there's a shoe place, Eddie Bauer, Uni Qlo (apparently a popular Japanese casual clothes brand, like Gap), and many more.  There's this store that sells furniture, home stuff, some clothes, some school and office stuff - that I immediately fell in love with.  Japanese, minimalist design for everyday stuff.  Similar to IKEA, and I like IKEA, but I like that with this brand there is just one color theme, neutrals - white, wood/birch, silver, black - and so I don't have to mix and match and all that.  If I bought all my stuff from this store, I could achieve a really nice design for my interiors.  Of course...  The prices are generally on the expensive side, except maybe for some notebooks - comparing with those I found at the school store.  Or maybe I was looking at a different size that's why it was cheaper there than at the school store.  What is the name of the place?  I don't know, the store sign is in Japanese, but I think there's a branch of the store in Singapore but I forgot the name.  I think it's MUJI. :-)

Today also marks the first day I used my rice cooker.  The night before I asked for help from Kim-san, the Korean PhD student, on how to use it.

And also today I bought from the supermarket what looked like Yakitori, 6 sticks of it...  And then I found out that 3 out of the 6 sticks are all chicken skin and chicken fat.  Yummy but, unhealthy.  Oh well.  No, I didn't eat most of it.

Sun Day!

It's Sun Day today, a sunny Sunday indeed.  Temperature was as high as 17 degrees but because of sunshine it feels like 21 degrees, as reported by Accuweather.com.  Itinerary: Downtown Atsugi, lunch at some western fastfood joint, attend Mass, buy stuff for the home at the 100-Yen Store, and buy ready-to-eat freshly cooked dinner at discounted prices just before closing time at the supermarket.  % Completion: 100%.  Yay!

I was supposed to eat at McDonald's but when I got down at Hon-Atsugi (Central/Downtown Atsugi), the first place I saw was KFC.  I wondered where McDonald's was, later I found out I remembered its location wrong.  It was somewhere else, where upon seeing it now I remember!  The KFC here do not serve rice.  Awww.  But the food was good, like how KFC should be.  Their chicken fillet sandwich tastes better and is larger than the Manila counterpart.  Actually I didn't know it was their chicken fillet sandwich when I ordered, until I saw it!  They didn't provide any utensils so I'm not sure if I was supposed to eat the chicken with my hands.  I just used the paper napkins to hold the chicken.  It was a breast part.  I didn't really get to choose, but maybe it was the default with the meal/combo I ordered.

And then...  Mass!  Just last night I found out that there was a Catholic Church in Atsugi.  How very convenient.  As expected, lots of kababayans.  The priest was Caucasian, but apparently not American.  The music min and lector/commentator are Filipino.  We sung "Still" as a communion song and "My Life Is In You" as the last song.  Actually I'm considering joining the music min when I'm settled down.  They have practices Thursdays from 5:30-7:00pm.  Unfortunately I'm packed with lectures on Thursdays, and I think our official time-off is 5:30pm so I can't make it on time.  We'll see.  Hopefully I can join on the Thursday after next.

And then the 100-yen store.  I went to the one on the 3rd floor of Atsugi Trellis, where the supermarket is on the 1st floor.  Walang sinabi ang Daiso sa Philippines or Singapore; these 100-yen stores here in Japan are huge and has a huge collection of stuff.  I could've just bought my "lakwatsa"/travel bag here instead of buying one in the Philippines.  Generally cheaper here also - 105 yen for the basic items (5 yen for the tax), so roughly under 50 pesos only, compared with 88 pesos in the Philippines and around 66 pesos or more in Singapore.  Well this is where it started.

Last year when I first went to this same store, I just knew it was a 100-yen store from the sign, but I didn't understand the prices.  One would say 100 and 105, 200 and 210, and so on.  But I couldn't find the Yen sign that I'm familiar with (Y with double strikeouts).  The Japanese sign for the Yen is actually different from what we are all familiar with.  It's like a...  badminton net with one leg bent.  Get the picture?  Ehehe.  So now you know.  :-D

And I went again to the supermarket at around 7:20pm.  The freshly prepared food were 20% off already, but only a few choices left.  I picked up one sushi roll (actually a maki with cucumber, egg, tofu, mushrooms, and seaweeds in the inside) and one bunch of deep fried shrimps, similar to the ones they once offered at KFC in the Philippines.  It was like worth P16 per shrimp; not bad.  I got a couple of other food items, and when it was around 7:30pm when I heard an announcement.  When I was about to check out, I noticed the freshly-prepared food items are now 30% off!  But the stuff I got were the last ones so, no, it wasn't like I could've saved a few Yen more.  Phew!

Well that's about my day.  Using Skype again to chat with the love of my life.  Ja mata.

P.S. I hope to post photos soon.  By the way, I was able to buy this prepaid card called "PASMO" for use at buses, trains, and some stores, just like the EZ-Link card in Singapore.  And I was able to use it already when riding the bus.  Bus trip here by the way is roughly 80 pesos for a 10-minute trip, 117 pesos for a 15-minute trip.  Yikes!

P.P.S. I learned about the Atsugi Catholic Church by doing a search on Google, and then going to this site: http://catholicinjapan.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/atsugi-chruch/