I personally can't recommend any good bars for sake. Pretty much any izakaya you go to will have sake, but if you are some kind of sake coinsurer, you might have a little more difficult time finding good sake. It will be expensive and the patronage are likely to be exclusively Japanese. For a good time though, try finding some crazy out of the way bars. Check narrow alleys, you might find interesting stuff. Bring a friend that's Japanese though, it'll lessen the awkwardness of the situation. If you do go by yourself, expect to have to be the proactive one and talk to people. JP young guys are 'afraid' of girls (ie: overly shy).

If you like beer though, I know of a good bar in 西宮 that serves microbrew Japanese beer, but its a bit pricey. If you miss real beer, there's a pretty good bar in 梅田 that has happy hour @ 500円 a bottle. They have a good selection of international beers.

Clubs-wise: http://iflyer.tv/

IceCream Wrote:hahah im quite a difficult person to annoy when it comes to countries, but we'll see... i'm pretty sure i'll miss my cat & friends & family though.

there's something i really wanna know about Kyoto.
WHEN WILL IT STOP RAINING!?!? i am so lazy in the rain, hardly seen anything and theres so much to see T_T

@bodhi: hmmm, i looked, but i can't see much difference between girls here & girls anywhere else in Japan. Maybe you are obsessed? :p
anyway, its possible that we'd know some of the same people, but actually my department isn't in Kyoto at all, it's in a town called 犬山, so, maybe not...? I just came here to visit while i'm here this time (and attended a symposium in a beautiful building in Kyoto university. It was all in Japanese. So hard!!!)

btw, did anyone else realise that those low tables actually have holes under them?? Like, to put your legs in. So, it's exactly like a normal table but lower!! i thought everyone had to sit cross legged before...

@ta12121: this is my first time in Japan actually, though ive been other places alone before. Definately try to come for a long time if you can, but i recommend staying in one place for a while if you can, and not always moving around.

Yea, that's my plan exactly. Stay in one place and just travel around. If I stay for a 3-month vacation, would it be better to stay at apartments? I know that hotels are deadly expensive, even japanese people told me it's best if I just rent out an apartment for a few months and bring your own food back to the apartment. Saves you a lot of money compared to a hotel.

gfb345 Wrote:I've heard that, "with enough practice", one can get to the point where one can sit seiza basically indefinitely. This never made any physiological sense to me. The problem for me is mostly a matter of reduced circulation, and it's hard for me to envision a plausible physiological adaptation (from a lot of seiza sitting "practice") that would eliminate this problem.

I don't know about indefinitely, but you can sit for hours in seiza with practice. Seiza isn't a relaxed position; you have to have strong leg muscles to keep your weight from being completely on your heels. In most situations, I think, which require sitting seiza for hours also include periods of bowing and or a sort of forward leaning position, during which weight can be partially releived by your hands.

When I first came to Japan in 2007, I went to the Kyoto International Center and put up a free ad up on the bulletin board for a language exchange partner. I made a few initial friends that way. Those connections would be much more interesting than what you would find at a bar I think. I've never met a guy who went to a bar with the intention of making new friends.

bodhisamaya Wrote:I've never met a guy who went to a bar with the intention of making new friends.

Raises hand. I've met a lot of my Japanese friends that way- because a bar is a place where people will speak more freely. Actually most of my Japanese friends in Melbourne right now are from one connection I made at a bar a couple months ago. I was at a bar with my girlfriend and she looked over at the next table and mentioned that there were some Japanese people sitting there (it can be hard for me to tell as there are so many Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc in Melbourne). It just happened that they came over and asked us to take a picture of their table. I was like, sure. I went over holding their camera and said "はい、チーズ" and after the initial shock we all ended up drinking and chatting together.

I met quite a few people in Japan at bars as well- however if you're a guy it's easier to make friends with guys as girls will think you're just hitting on them.

So not everyone is after friends.

Ah, but was that your intention?
Actually, I met my first wife of nine years at a honkey tonk. She was a city girl visiting from New York and was just curious as to what "Shit Kickers" were. I was still a semi-redneck back then and happened to have a pair of them on at the time.

IceCream Wrote:there's something i really wanna know about Kyoto.
WHEN WILL IT STOP RAINING!?!? i am so lazy in the rain, hardly seen anything and theres so much to see T_T

Trust me, I know that feeling. Compared to when I was in Australia, I am so lazy in Japan. I mean, apart from going to university and doing homework/assessment I haven't even been bothered to go anywhere other than Sendai Eki/CBD (except to Kyoto and Nara for ryuugakusei trip) or to study Japanese for the last few weeks. All JLPT stuff has been forgotten about, and I have 1400 words sitting in anki waiting to be reviewed....

I blame tsuyu and its stupid humidity. It makes you so tired and to feel like doing nothing but sleeping with the aircon turned right down. But then again, once tsuyu ends I am not expecting the rain to go away. That's because I live in Sendai.......I think I could just about count the number of sunny days here since the start of the year on my fingers, and maybe my toes too.

IceCream Wrote:夏ばてだねー

やった！！　i went to 祇園祭 again, tonight was wicked!!! the atmosphere was so much better than last time i went!! It was brilliant!!! then i plucked up the courage to go in one of those tiny bars in the alleyways, and people were drunk & spoke to me, & i chatted in bad drunk japanese 勝った！！日本は素敵。。。人生は素晴らしい：）：）：）

おめでとう on realizing your fantasy, alcohol surly is a magical beverage

Btw there should be some sort of validating mechanism implemented that only allows posts containing at least one Japanese word. This way all of us that try to procrastinate by lurking in here would be forced to look at Japanese anyway.

When I was walking down 四条 at 10:30 after work last night, I was wondering, "Hmm, I wonder if one of these white girls is Ice Cream?" It was much more crowded than the previous nights. These are the events that make Japan so much fun. The bright colorful kimonos the girls were wearing were amazing.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Ah, but was that your intention?

Yes, it was. I go out to a bar and just try to meet people and see what happens. I've met girls as well, but I've never taken them home or had the intention to. But I also had a girlfriend that I was (and still am) very happy with at the time.

IceCream Wrote:but yeah, i came over for an internship at the primate research institute at kyoto university... and got accepted!!!

おめでとう！

I was going to add one of my photos of a Japanese macaque for you but couldn't figure out how to do it - I suppose it would take up too much space on the forum anyway. I live in Okayama. Nearby is an island called 小豆島 (Shodoshima) where the classic film 二十四の瞳 (Twenty Four Eyes) was filmed. It has olive groves giving the island a Mediterranean feel. There's also a cable car which takes you into the hills where you have a good chance of seeing お猿さん. Several times I've had the pleasure of watching a group of macaques pass through. And in August and September, you'll see the baby ones too.

I wonder if there are any around Kyoto. I'm sure you'll have opportunities to see them too.

IceCream Wrote:Everything, the houses, the cicadas, the railway crossings, the heat

ｔｈｅｒｅｓ　ｒｉｃe fields all over too, even really small ones like in a back garden. i love it to bits!!!

Where I come from in the UK there tends to be a distinction between town and countryside. In Japan I like the way you can find rice fields and odd strips of cultivated land in the city. I live in a town but am still surrounded by 田んぼ. I love being able to look out the window and see herons and egrets in the rice fields. In addition to the cicadas during the day, the evenings are filled with the sound of frogs - the ones the egrets didn't catch! They make quite a racket but I love the sound and find it soothing.






IceCream Wrote:if one of them was short, and had a baby turtle crawling up their arm it was me.
i didn't see you though, or i woulda said hi!! Enjoy tonight if you're going

Short white girl with a turtle crawling up her arm.... eh, you'll have to be a little more specific. I was there around 9pm tonight.
Come up to the Gaba office if you are in the area. It is on the 7th floor above the UFJ bank on the corner of Shijou and karasuma. I am usually there from 9:30am to 10:30pm six days a week.

bodhisamaya Wrote:

IceCream Wrote:if one of them was short, and had a baby turtle crawling up their arm it was me.
i didn't see you though, or i woulda said hi!! Enjoy tonight if you're going

Short white girl with a turtle crawling up her arm.... eh, you'll have to be a little more specific. I was there around 9pm tonight.
Come up to the Gaba office if you are in the area. It is on the 7th floor above the UFJ bank on the corner of Shijou and karasuma. I am usually there from 9:30am to 10:30pm six days a week.

Working hard eh? How do you like Gaba? I was thinking about trying to work for them if I end up back in Japan for the flexibility.

If you're planning on staying in Japan for awhile, just start building up a group of students to teach privately. Gaba pays like half the going rate for a private lesson unless you have a perfect rating from all your students, complete level-up seminars, and work more than x hours per week, and maintain all of that for a number of months to level up...

Even then you'd be making less than private teaching with a good number of students (I'm up to about 15 now).

Jarvik7 Wrote:Even then you'd be making less than private teaching with a good number of students (I'm up to about 15 now).

15? That's an impressive amount. How do you manage to schedule that all?

I'm tutoring a few people right now, but I haven't really started yet (waiting on a few things). It seems like the hardest part of the work is planning (time/location) with students, and finding students.

About half the instructors at the Kyoto branch are making 400,000yen per month. If you break it down per lesson taught, it might be less than other Eikaiwas, but they are one on one lessons so much easier than teaching groups of three or four. There is a lot of pressure to get high evaluations from the students though. I got two negative ones my first month due to an unfamiliarity to the texts. One more and my six month contract is not renewed. That would be a shame because I enjoy working there.

Jarvik7 Wrote:If you're planning on staying in Japan for awhile, just start building up a group of students to teach privately. Gaba pays like half the going rate for a private lesson unless you have a perfect rating from all your students, complete level-up seminars, and work more than x hours per week, and maintain all of that for a number of months to level up...

Even then you'd be making less than private teaching with a good number of students (I'm up to about 15 now).

It's not easy to find those students either- it's always something you could work on while doing Gaba. I guess the other risk is that your students can always quit while with Gaba new students will still sign up with you.

There's also very much the mentality in Japan that the more you pay for something, the better it is- which is probably why people pay outrageous amounts to companies like Gaba when they could get the same thing for a lot less. A lot of it is also business paying to have people trained from what I hear.

Jesus, I just got back to my dorm after a night out and I've officially learned yet another thing from Japan: I. Hate. Cicadas.

Don't they know how badly I want to sleep? They are proof there is no god. Their very existence prevents this from being the best of all possible worlds. Anyway, brb, gotta go stomp on the one on my balcony out of spite.

Grinkers Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Even then you'd be making less than private teaching with a good number of students (I'm up to about 15 now).

15? That's an impressive amount. How do you manage to schedule that all?

I'm tutoring a few people right now, but I haven't really started yet (waiting on a few things). It seems like the hardest part of the work is planning (time/location) with students, and finding students.

I keep them on a regular schedule in a regular place instead of allowing them to schedule differently every week. If they need to reschedule it usually just means cancelling that week's lesson. I'm also a full time+overtime salaryman so I can't have them all over the place. I teach 7 of them on Saturday back to back. Their being late means their lesson is shorter. Because of their busy schedules I don't teach everyone every week, but having a lot of students means you can keep your schedule as full as you want it.

Finding new students isn't that hard. I'm constantly turning down people that I don't want to teach (too old, too low level, can't go to the one cafe I teach at, i dont like their schedule, etc)

Mcjon01 Wrote:They are proof there is no god. Their very existence prevents this from being the best of all possible worlds.

I don't know what you have against Cicadas. For me, this sentence applies to mukade.

Actually, easily, the most bucked up bug in Japan is the Japanese giant hornet, but I see them far less often then mukade, so I'm not quite as mad at them.

Tzadeck Wrote:I don't know what you have against Cicadas. For me, this sentence applies to mukade.

Actually, easily, the most bucked up bug in Japan is the Japanese giant hornet, but I see them far less often then mukade, so I'm not quite as mad at them.

Oh, sure, there's plenty of bugs that are more terrifying, but since they're not currently acting as the immediate barrier between me and precious sleep, I'm not nearly as mad at them. If, in the near future, a Japanese giant hornet pumps me full of venom, I'll be sure to come back and revise my opinion.

Though, all of the noise seems to have stopped all of a sudden for no apparent reason. That's nice.

I'm not a fan of cicadas either, because I hate noisy things, but I do hate all the insects in summer here!!! Horrible!!
A few weeks ago, I saw this on a wall of our apartment building:

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd164...90987b.jpg

(Only click if you have strong nerves! You have been warned! XD)

Apart from crickets and grasshoppers, in the UK it's so much quieter insect-wise. But here in Japan I love the rhythmic sounds of the cicadas in the trees and the frogs calling at night in the rice fields. Then during the autumn the night is filled with the gentle trilling of the 鈴虫 (スズムシ) or bell crickets. These sounds are so much more restful than traffic noise, the roaring of 暴走族 (ぼうそうぞく) types and the din from election vans.

chochajin Wrote:I'm not a fan of cicadas either, because I hate noisy things, but I do hate all the insects in summer here!!! Horrible!!
A few weeks ago, I saw this on a wall of our apartment building:

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd164...90987b.jpg

(Only click if you have strong nerves! You have been warned! XD)

My parents-in-law live in the country. When I first came to Japan I stayed with them for a couple of months. I often saw the same creature. It's an アシダカグモ or huntsman spider. They're big and move very fast. Said to be harmless to humans but I wouldn't want to try handling one. I'm sure they eat a lot of undesirable bugs such as cockroaches.

While at the in-laws, I walked into my bedroom and turned the light on only to see a げじげじ or house centipede on the wall. See http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2608/3923...e054d1.jpg

At first I thought I was hallucinating. The mother came in and explained that it was harmless (but again I wouldn't fancy trying to pick one up) but warned me to be wary of the むかで or centipede. She told one bit her once and it was very painful. During my stay, all three of these delightful creatures would make an appearance. I don't like killing them so I would always catch them in container and put them some distance away from the house. The mother has a long pair of tongs which she uses for removing mukade.

I also heard that the huntsman spider cannot harm humans and I also am not afraid of "normal-sized" spiders. But THIS IS JUST TOO BIG!!! ;o; .....
I completely freaked out when I saw it so close to my apartment!! I already saw one last year IN my workplace and nobody was brave enough to kill it XD
The one in the photo clearly has a sack with eggs. Luckily the spider was gone the next day (x__X)

Some "mukade" (centipedes) can be very dangerous for human beings here in Japan. Well, they can kill people. Usually only kids, adults only if they shoot their poison into a vein directly, but still .....
And let's not talk about the terrifying "suzumebachi", the monster hornet ;o; ....

Apart from having some dangerous insects, there are also just TOO MUCH of them in summer: http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd164...190914.jpg (that's no sand, but millions of dead small insects/flies/mosquitoes/not sure) YUK!

bodhisamaya Wrote:About half the instructors at the Kyoto branch are making 400,000yen per month. If you break it down per lesson taught, it might be less than other Eikaiwas, but they are one on one lessons so much easier than teaching groups of three or four. There is a lot of pressure to get high evaluations from the students though. I got two negative ones my first month due to an unfamiliarity to the texts. One more and my six month contract is not renewed. That would be a shame because I enjoy working there.

That's rough! Did Gaba hook you up with a year long visa or did you find other means? Is it hard to move up through the "belt" system- and do you get to start higher if you have experience teaching/certification/etc?

40万/month seems reasonable, especially if you're working 6 or 7 days a week.