Day 09 – Favorite stores/shopping centers.

It's been awhile since I've written a "Japan 30 Day Meme" blog post, but I think this one is my favorite prompt thus far!

I think I can safely admit that I am a bit of a shop-a-holic. While I am definitely no where near clinically-diagnosed bad (shopping can be just as addictive as gambling or alcohol), I still do have the tendency to buy things I don't need and spend money that I really should be using on rent or food on buying a cute new dress. The thing about Japan, as anyone who has been to the country is well aware of, is that there are cute dresses, shoes, bags, and blouses exploding out of every shop front and crevice available for use. Styles and seasons change quickly, and once one thing goes in fashion it's everywhere and then no where in a flash. I love Japanese fashion, but I don't make that much money, and can only splurge on a few nice things every once in awhile.

The other thing about Japan that I like is their access to nice quality used shops. Everyone and their brother has probably heard of the chain "Book-Off" if they have any experience traveling or studying abroad in Japan. They've even started opening stores in the US! If you don't know, Book-Off is a used book store where you can find used (and in very nice condition) books, comics, magazines, CDs, DVDs, and video games (sometimes the consoles too). They have walls of 100 yen comics and books, and you can usually find what you're looking for in a Book-Off somewhere near you and at 2/3rds the cost (at the very least).

Now, something I'm not sure everyone knows about Japan. There is not only Book-Off. In fact, the "Off" chain of stores (if you can call it a chain...) has a bunch of different resale shops! Among the stranger include: Off-Garage (car stuff) and Golf-Off (...obvious?). My two favorites are the magnificent Off-House (used clothing, furniture and house wares) and Hard-Off (PORN SHOP!... no it's electronics, DVDs, games, CDs, and musical instruments). I have spent countless hours going through the racks in Off-House and coming across 300 yen adorable dresses and skirts. Not to mention the fact that half of the furniture in my house is from Off-House (4000 yen yellow couch, 800 yen lamp, 500 yen lamp, 3000 yen bamboo bookshelf.... the list goes on). On the Hard-Off side, I can thank them for my lovely blue acoustic guitar (6000 yen) and a number of fun film cameras I've been collecting (nikon FE for 6000 yen and toy camera for 300 yen that takes really fun pictures), as well as most of my electric guitar accessories (picks, strings, and input cables).

THRIFTING!!!!

On the same line as Off-House, I also love to frequent the two other used-clothing chains called "Jumble Store" and "B.J," which I'm pretty sure they have all over Japan (I've seen them in every prefecture on Shikoku at least). The clothing that they accept for those places is of amazing quality and basically brand new. While these type of "furugi-ya" can run a bit expensive, if you look hard enough, you can find cheap gems everywhere. The existence of these stores, and the high quality of clothing they provide, while maybe not the latest fashions, has made it rather difficult for me to resist the urge to spend my yen when I step foot in them. :P

Tokyo Photo Diary

I had such a fantastic week/weekend in Tokyo, that I really don't have much to write about it. I just want to share pictures. Being back in boring Kochi is also not really doing much for my mood... it's weird but taking the 11 hour bus back is better for the mental transition than a 1 hour plane ride. In the 11 hours, you dread coming back, but it's such a tiring ride that getting home feels like a relief. Riding on a plane takes no time, so the transition is stark. I went from big city lights, busyness, noise, movement back to dark, slow, empty fields and mountains... Meh, oh well! This December weather is gorgeous today, and I have dinner with my friends, so I really don't have a lot to complain about right now. :)

Advertisment in Shibuya.

Beautiful blue sky in Shibuya.

Antique toy store, one of the many weird shops in Broadway (Nakano) we went to with Shota

Shota on his giant computer phone.

Band called "Water Closet." An older band but really awesome!

My favorite Tokyo girls, ELMOC <3

With Kazue. She almost didn't make it to sing because she was hung over from her bonenkai the previous night.

More ELMOC <3<3

"Horse and Deer" recording a new CD. Matto got to do some guest vocals. It was fun hanging out with them.

Recording the vocals for another part of their song.

Oh Tokyo...

Every time I come here, my desire to live in this city grows. I suppose it helps that the number of awesome people I know who live in this city keeps steadily growing. :) I really hope I get into IUC with some financial support... If that happens, living in Tokyo will finally become a reality~

Yesterday afternoon we hung out with my professor in Kichijyoji and went to a really good vegan cafe and gilato place. I love hanging out with that prof because he always inspires me to keep reaching for my Tokyo dreams. Then, last night we got to hang out with Kana and Hikko from ELMOC. Along with some fun izakaya-ing, we were invited to play a show in May of next year!! Kya! Tonight, dinner and drinks with the guys from Balladmen and Takashi. Tomorrow, day tripping with Shota and a kick-ass live in the evening in Nakano.

Although yesterday was rainy, this weather us not terrible for december, and the second half of today was gorgeous!!! Love it love it here <3

Welcome to December

Awful three days of teacher's conferences this week. Not the best way to start off the last month of 2011 but oh well. Today was day one... lectures and workshops (kill me noooow!). Tomorrow is model lesson day and more workshops about English Pronunciation and story telling. :P BORING!!

HOWEVER, Wednesday night, I get to fly off to Tokyo and hang out until Sunday night! Can't wait!! Shows, delicious food and nights out with awesome people to look forward to~ :D Now, enjoy some photos.

Matto in Dino garb. His early x-mas present.

Fall happening at my mountain school.

We had to take a quiz at the beginning of one of the lectures. This is what boring conferences bring out of us. :P

Day 08 – Share a funny anecdote about living/working in Japan.

Today's 30 Day Japan meme prompt is a walk down memory lane! I have a number of funny/weird/uncomfortable anecdotes about Japan... but then again, if you're a foreigner living in Japan, how could you not have a dozen waiting to be pulled out for a cocktail party (because being a fancy foreigner in Japan, you also always go to fancy cocktail parties, am I right? haha). I feel like my life turned into one giant circus the moment I set foot on Japanese soil as a worker rather than a student. Of course I have some funny stories from my time abroad at Kansai Gaidai... but none of them are as odd or as uncomfortable as the ones I've collected trying to live a normal adult life in this country. Especially if you're teaching English in an elementary school or junior high school! That's where the best weird things happen. :)

I will never get over the fact that nearly every human being born in this country has ridden a unicycle.

 One of my favorite stories to tell is about one particular day of class I had at one of my larger Elementary schools, Ioki. As an English teacher in Japan, if you teach at a public school and have 5th and 6th grade students, you are probably familiar with the standardized textbook called "Eigo Note" and truly know just how awful it is (it's being updated for the next school year, apparently, but I have little hopes for the new one). The school district I work in enforces Eigo Note in their schools, and to top it off, I have to follow pre-made lesson plans that a non-native English speaker created for me to use in class (I won't even start with how irritating that is to me). Each of these lessons touches upon something covered in Eigo Note and includes extra activities as well as a "daily conversation" to start off the class with. To say these conversations are useless is an understatement. They are redundant and completely taken out of context. But I digress...

Not the 5th graders I'm talking about but my weirdest, most trouble-making classes.

The "daily conversation" that me and my JTE were supposed to be demonstrating that day was something along the lines of:

ALT: I'm Hungry!

JTE: Are you?

Poetry, I must admit. So, seeing that a drunk dog could probably spit out these four words, we decided that the 5th graders we were teaching could do better than that, and we came up with a different conversation: 

JTE: Are you okay?

ALT: My head hurts!

While it's not Shakespeare, we figured it was more useful than the previous tomfoolery, and a number of kids had already been complaining of aches and pains during the "how are you?" portion of English class without being able to properly express their complaints in English. Thus! We started class, with the specific goal of letting them know you could replace head with stomach, arm, back, etc. How useful!

After our demonstration, we always let the kids practice with three or four different partners so that they can play both roles and get the hang of the awkward sentences. At one point, one of my students comes up to me, holding his ass and asking, "先生、けつの穴って、英語で何?" ("Teacher, what is the word for asshole in English?") Stiffing a giggling (because I'm 4 years old), I told him we probably wouldn't reveal information like that in English anyway, so he didn't need to know. Of course, instead of giving up like a good kid, him and his friends decide they needed to figure this out and came up with the two wonderful options of "My hip-house hurts" and "My little black hole hurts." While nearly rolling on the floor with laughter from this exchange, a girl came up and asked how she'd say that her arm was itchy. Of course, this introduced "itchy" to the conversation and quickly, "My hip-house is itchy" was being thrown around the classroom. I don't think I've ever laughed so much during a class as I did during that one. Despite the ridiculousness, it's moments like that, that make my job feel fun and not nearly so bleak.

No sports fest is complete without looking like a complete idiot at least once during it.

The Only Way To Spend Thanksgiving....

With other Americans :) No, but really.... No matter the nationality, you should spend thanksgiving with people you care about, especially when you're thousands of miles away from your family. Even if that means holding it on the Monday after the actual day.

In addition, this year's thanksgiving was completely vegan! Matto is vegan, so although we usually make vegan dinners together on Mondays as a group, this Monday funday (as we call it) was a thanksgiving edition, and included homemade bread, apple walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes (both regular and sweet mixed together), mushroom gravy, baked tofu, pineapple cranberry sauce, green beans (steamed and fried with onions and garlic), and a pumpkin pie with homemade crust that I worked on last night. To say that the meal was satisfying would be an understatement. We all enjoyed the post-feast comatose nap while watching "Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses." It helped to have the heated carpet for everyone to hibernate on too. :)

I'm thankful for my awesome friends, all my new adventures and an active life!! I'm ready to take on the last month of 2011!!

The thanksgiving spread. From left, baked tofu, mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, apple walnut stuffing, greenbeans, bread, pineapple cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie!

Yes, I did finish that. :D

And that. I must say, my first attempt at a pumpkin pie did not come out too shabby! Especially since the dish I used was wayyy too deep for pie.

Pumpkin pie Sunday night when it had just come out of the oven~

What I've learned about myself from being in Japan....

First day of ALT orientation in Tokyo.

 When I first saw this prompt on the blog, "Whoa... I'm in Japan" I thought, "No problem! This will be an easy post! I reflect constantly about the choices I make, the way things have turned out and what I want to do about the future! This will take 5 minutes..."

... and after 17 days of letting this post sit in the "drafts" section of blogger, I think I finally have something to say. For whatever reason, when faced with the task of physically putting words on paper (or type on screen, in this instance), I couldn't pinpoint exactly I've learned about myself in the past year and a half of living and working in Japan. I can always start with the obvious:

• I'm effing tall
• I've gotten better at Japanese 
• and worse at English
• I can play the guitar
• I have a higher tolerance for beer than I did in college
• I know how to pay bills
• and cook for myself

But those are just facts and skills. Things that come along with the act of living on your own and trying to fill the empty time between work, sleep, and the weekend. Not really things that have changed me as a person. Now at the same time, I can't say that I've changed drastically as a person either. Not that most people change 180 degrees when they have life changing experiences like living abroad, but I do know that I've gotten stronger in some regards. I can say with certainty that I've become a more confident person. While the simple idea of standing in front of people used to make my heart squeeze in anxiety, I am now ecstatically looking forward to the first live show with my band in January. Instead, I'll break it down into three categories.

Soccer event I went to last year around this time on "freedom island" as one of my stoner Japanese friends called it.

My first Kikusui zadankai (sake tasting)

Social: I am more of a "people person" than I ever thought I was. Not to say that I need attention 100% of my day. I'm the type of person who has a few super close friends, a couple of good friends, and a lot of acquaintances. No, I figured out that just the mere act of being around other people (being near people in a coffee shop/book store/shopping center) is enough to keep me from falling into some sort of depressed slump. I just never knew that the energy from being around people was so important to me. I think that's my biggest motivating factor for wanting to move out of Aki (the definition of countryside) and get to a bigger city.

DORKS <3

Lounging with his beer and cig in front of the venue.

 Tolerance: It will sound strange to say that my tolerance has gone down, but it is true. I am no longer the over-all tolerant human being that I used to be. To be more specific, I no longer have much tolerance for unadulterated ignorance. I used to smile politely when people would ask if I was able to eat rice, use chopsticks, or if America had TVs. That sort of ignorance I am no longer able to tolerate. It makes me cringe and I have to put a lot of effort into not responding in a snotty fashion. Especially the type of ignorance that won't stop asking the same question until it hears the answer that it wants to hear and expects. Instead, I have gained a lot of patience for curiosity. I appreciate questions that are asked out of a pure desire to learn about something/someplace/someone new. My friends here are those sort of people; the type who want to better themselves through knowledge and not remain ignorant to the outside world.

Screaming into the abyss is one of my favorite past times :)

Individual: I understand what it means to be an individual so much more now than I used to. I understand how it feels to be lumped into the massive labels that are "American" and "foreigner" while trying to fight against the sort of negative connotations that others automatically associate to both. I am me. I am not part of the mind-hive that some people think societies have. I am an individual with my own thoughts, beliefs, experiences and morals. Just like it's not fair to say "the Japanese are..." any certain way. I have met so many people while working here that step outside of the stereotype and "norm" of Japan. People like to look at the differences between Japan and America so much so, that they forget we have more similarities than anything else. All foreigners don't speak English, and all Japanese people don't like natto. It's that simple.

It's an appropriate time of year to start reflecting on oneself, with New Years coming up. I just finished a column for the local newspaper's (in Japanese) January issue about this as well. Hopes and dreams for the New Year. It's interesting how once we change our calendar, it really does feel like we have a bit of a fresh start. Even though the difference between the minute we are living in and the "previous year's minute" are no different. It's a good time to start making resolutions, writing out goals, and thinking positively for the new year we are going to face in a month's time. 頑張ろう！

Why Japan Wins At Public Holidays

Yesterday was the second public holiday this month! And really, what's a better way to get through a cold workweek than to have a holiday splitting it into two manageable halves? I do love my three-day weekends, but with how cold it's been getting recently, it was a relief to not have to wake up before the sun rose, as well as wear jeans. :x

 

Since it was labor day here in Japan, me and Matto packed up our gear and drove over to Tokushima to have band practice and see a live. Why they decided to have a live show on the actual holiday and not the night before so everyone could party.... I will never understand (but it was a fantastic show, nonetheless). We practiced for two hours in Torigoro's (practice/recording studio) nicest studio; it was soo spacious and fancy feeling, compared to the cramped old spaces they rent out here in Kochi. We finished a 6^th song together and finally decided on a band name: Leeway. It feels appropriate for our strange little group of four (our two Tokushima bandmates keep getting weirder/more interesting the more time we spend with them. I'm loving it).

Arase, our amazing teddybear-esque lead guitarist and my lyrics notebook in the spacious studio <3

Atsushi still in his work clothes. Isn't the studio fancy looking?!

After practice, Atsushi had to get to a show at another venue called Grindhouse, so Matto, Arase and I all went out to an izakaya/sushi-ya to eat, drink, and bond (I could not participate in the drinking part, seeing as I am always DD). Since there was so much time between practice ending, and the show at Crowbar beginning, we wandered over to see Thirsty Chords play at Grindhouse. They played amazingly, as usual, but for a crowd who was not thrilled to see them. Now that I've seen them enough times in enough live houses, it's interesting to see what songs they choose to play for which crowds. When they know that the crowd loves them, they play all their amazing songs from the “I Continue I...” album. Otherwise, they play either really old or really new stuff...

The band before them was a Sublime ripoff, and the guys after them (who were assholes) had this reggae/ska/rap thing going that I was really not a fan of. Thank god the tickets to the show were cheap, because we peaced out after Thirsty Chords finished and headed over to Crowbar to see anti-18, not for, Your Pest Band, Gleam Garden, and WHAT-A-NIGHT's. As usual, I love WHAT-A-NIGHT's and their perfect performances (they seriously sound like their recordings every time), but I was especially excited to see Tokyo's Your Pest Band again. I think the main vocalist got even more attractive since I saw him last time in Tokyo during the summer... and I forgot how tall he was too!

Your Pest Band

Spalding from WHAT-A-NIGHT's

Anyway, great way to spend a public holiday (even though I didn't get to sleep until 2AM): full of music and Arase's drunken kabuki poses. :D

Winter in Japan

I have a love-hate relationship with winter in Japan. I love how Christmas lights and holiday music start being used even before Halloween is over. However, I hate people's sense of design when it comes to putting up said Christmas lights (usually looks like Santa had a little drink-reverse all over a house/gas station/mall). I love mikan, strawberries, and all other winter food like nabe and sukiyaki. However, I hate how my schools keep the windows open even in the dead of winter in order to "air out" the building.

What I hate most, is how effing cold my house gets during this season. I have a very strangely arranged apartment with high ceilings, no neighbors, an empty shop below me, and doors on loose hinges that make it sound like elephants are trying to break in when a strong wind blows. At the same time, I favorite thing about winter is the type of products that Japan provides in order to fix these problems. Last year I survived the winter by gritting my teeth and hiding under my kotatsu. This year, I can live in luxury with my new electric blanket and heated carpet!! Doesn't it look cozy?! All I need to do is set up a tent and portable stove and I can live on my heated carpet aaallll winter :)

Heated carpet, cup of hot tea, my kotatsu, and computer... what else could you need?!

A Night Out at Hirome Ichiba

This month's J-Festa Blogging theme is "Dining in Japan," so I thought I would share a little bit about the "hottest spot" in all of Kochi Prefecture: Hirome Ichiba. Lonely Planet even ranked the restaurant as the 5th most interesting thing you should waste time doing if you ever drunkenly stumble into this prefecture (since we are #1 in that department). But in all seriousness, Hirome Ichiba is the hangout of Kochi City. You will only find the place empty during the afternoon, and even then you can find people scattered about drinking beer and eating katsuo tataki. The establishment takes up the first floor of a two story warehouse-esque building made of solid grey concrete and filled to the brim with gift shops, bars, and small food "stalls" (parking on the 2nd floor). The rest of the space is filled with picnic tables and benches that you need to circle like a hawk in order to nab on a busy Friday/Saturday night.

People pack like sardines onto those benches on most Friday/Saturday nights.

The back of the building where the best bar tender ever resides as well as some amazing ice cream.

Since there are so many different shops and stalls lining the interior of the building, it's hard not to find something everyone wants to eat. A number of places offer standard, cheap, izakaya food like korokke, yaki-tori, assortments of fried finger food and beer. Other places are more specialized, and offer a specially made gyoza, ramen, takoyaki, karage, or donburi as the main draw to their particular shop. There are even a few non-Japanese food shops that offer Chinese, Korean, Indian and a shop called "Kei's Cafe" that offers a slightly more western-style menu including Jerk Chicken and Taco Rice. Of course, out of all of these things, the almighty Katsuo Tataki reins supreme and has one especially large shop near the front of Hirome.

This shop sits front and center in the Hirome Ichiba complex and serves only Katsuo Tataki (along with the standard white rice, miso soup and tempura-fried kimpira) in about three main flavors. They even have the kitchen area set up with a huge pane of glass so you can watch as they freshly sear the Katsuo you'll be eating over a roaring straw fire. Flavoring options include salt, tare, and yuzu, and each order of Katsuo Tataki is garnished with slices of garlic and a sprinkling of green onion and grated daikon.

Raw in the middle and perfectly seared on the outside. Yum.

Katsuo Tataki (#5) would rank in my top 5 Hirome Ichiba food choices. Along with it, I think I would have to add:

• bacon wrapped onigiri (#4)
• Hirome korokke (#3)
• cheese nan (#2)
• macha soft-serve in a waffle cone (#1)

I apologize that I don't have pictures of each thing..... if you tasted them I think you'd understand why I can never wait to take a picture. :P

Best bar-tender in the world, A-chan.

Last but not least, booze! If anything, Hirome Ichiba is the place that everyone in Kochi goes to relax, unwind, and down a few beers before the week ends/weekend starts. Every store in the place sells one of the following: cheap beer, chu-hai, nihonshu, or wine. The exception would be A-chan's middle bar, which remains as one of the few places that sells liquor and has such an adorable tender to go along with it (there's another bar that sits on the outside of the back of the building, run by an American). No fail, every time me and Matto go to visit him he will have shots of free whiskey and vodka waiting for us (and will subsequently take a shot himself). He's a dangerous man. Everything he sells is 500 yen and he's the one bar tender that fully understands that Americans don't like foam on their beer (and god bless him for it).


That about wraps it up for my post on Hirome Ichiba. If you ever find yourself lost and in Kochi Prefecture (because unless you're doing the 88 temple pilgrimage... why would you ever visit Shikoku?), come on over to Hirome Ichiba, located at the end of Kochi's shopping arcade "Obiyamachi," and find a tired salary man or drunken college student to share a beer with. :)

Day 07 – Which Japanese words do you use in English? (hanami, shinkansen, etc.)

I already briefly went over this prompt in the "mannerisms and expressions" post, but I think I'll go into more detail this time around~

As I said in the aforementioned post, I use a lot of Japanese words in my daily conversations with other foreigners. The degree to which I try and sensor myself varies, of course, from person to person. People who have a good grasp of the Japanese language (which most of my friends around me do), I usually don't sensor myself at all with. After studying Japanese for five years, living in this country for two, and texting/interacting with my Japanese friends on a daily basis, it gets difficult sometimes to come up with the English word first (yes, this does prove to be a problem teaching English sometimes) and instead, the Japanese word comes flying out. Even when I'm having "I-just-can't-speak-Japanese" days, common words and phrases will still come flying out of my mouth. With people who know a little Japanese (most other English teachers in my area that I see frequently), I try to hold those words back (though sometimes to no avail). At the same time, these friends seem to understand when I slip up and have to backtrack with the English word. They also usually know enough Japanese to not always need an explanation.

I can't think of the English word!!!!!!

The hardest is when talking to friends and family back in the US on skype. I want to use Japanese so badly, and I have to repeat over and over in my mind, "NO, YOU CAN NOT USE KOUSOKU WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE HIGHWAY" so that I don't use a completely incomprehensible word while talking to my mother or best friend. I find that the pauses I take to search my brain for a word have gotten longer, and I use simpler words more often than the concise, intelligent-sounding words that I went to University in order to learn and use.

Now, without further ado, here is a good sampling of the words I use on a daily basis:

Undoukais never fail to make a non-Japanese person feel like they are at a child-run circus

:General:

uchiawase: business meeting (used when meeting with teachers about lesson plans)
enkai: drinking party (this includes shinenkai-new year drinking party and bounenkai-end of the year drinking party too)
nijikai: 2nd party. The party you go to with your co-workers/friends after the initial party was held, and all the sober-debby-downers have shuffled home. this means it's time for karaoke or a bar!
undoukai: sports day
bunkasai: culture festival
hanami: flower viewing
shinkansen: whoever uses "high-speed train" or whatever else is going out of their way to not use Japanese
nihonshu: sake or any other type of Japanese alcohol
gokon/konpa: is there even a word for this in English? It's a set-up group date
purikura: because "print-club" sounds stupid
chu-hai: because "canned cocktail" is also really stupid sounding

Purikura! We look so glowy in this picture <3

:Me-specific:

kousoku: highway (here in Kochi, I need to take the highway if I want to get out of the prefecture quickly).
horenso: spinach. for whatever reason I can never get the word "spinach" out. ever.
negi/mame/piman/satsumaimo/hakusai: leak/bean/green pepper/sweet potato/Chinese cabbage. a lot of my problem words end up being food words :P
nonbiri: leisurely. one of my friends used this a lot and I ended up picking it up.
gorogoro suru: to lay around the house. I just feel like this describes that action so well.
bimyou: strange/off/questionable. one of my ex's used to say it when I would make faces at him. it stuck.
betsu betsu: usually said when splitting a check. Even with my English-speaking friends, we usually say, "Do you wanna best-betsu this?"
uchiage: afterparty! I get invited to a lot of these after shows. Way more fun than any enkai will ever be.
dorama: Japanese dramas are such a unique thing, in my opinion.... drama isn't just a genre for dramatic acting. it has become something completely different and absurd in the Japanese hands.

::Ways in which Japanese has messed with my English::

live: a concert/live show. It's not terribly off from English, but saying "I'm going to a live tomorrow" is considerably off for standard English....
4th month/5th month/etc: This is seriously just my own weird problem. I've always had issues with coming up with the names of months. Japanese has it laid out so logically with the number... so I just English-ify the Japanese and come up with, "Hey, aren't we going to that meeting in 7th month?"
guitar: ever since a Japanese friend told me he was taught that the pronunciation of guitar was "gu-wii-tar" I can't help but think about it constantly and sometimes accidentally say it. Just like thinking of island like "is-land" when you spell it out...

The aftermath of an uchiage.... same as most enkais but co-workers are at least kind enough to pass out at home/the nijikai

I'm not counting formal names, places, dishes (okonomiyaki, takoyaki), or objects that are specifically Japanese. English is the most plastic and adaptable language in the world, so it'd be unfair to say that "kendama" or "udon" isn't as much English as other words we've adopted (or to say that ramen and bi-ru isn't somehow Japanese at this point).