Query Responses

In other news, here are the top results for how people search to find the blog. The majority of people just straight to the address ([my name] + ".com" + "/japan"), but a good percentage of people gett here by completely different methods.

Percent	Terms
21.9%	maiko
9.4%	monkey
9.4%	japan the land of only two prongs
6.3%	judo choke out
6.3%	rice cooker

But some of the best things are the completely random ones:

frawress victoly	what is kouhai mean
mcdonalds english menu japan	japan america land area
butterfly seek hdd	how to buy a bike in japan
japanese camera bag	bicycle drum brake japanese
ramen museum+tokyo	okonomiyaki utensils
Okayama farm picking	tikimee
japan 3 pronged plugs	soap japan
sex shops in oomiya city

I'm going to do my best to satisfy the searches that actually make sense.

• Maiko - Maiko are like the oh-so-famous geisha, but are in training. Maiko tend to wear brighter clothes, and have more colorful decorations. In my experience, maiko are more likely to be attractive, probably because they're tend to be much younger and in better shape.
  My post "Jeff" has some pictures of actual maiko, and my post Maiko'd has my friends getting dressed up as maiko.
• Monkeys - I've run into these while hiking to the east of Kyoto, and at the monkey park.
• Judo choke out - There are lots of different ways to choke someone out in judo, and honestly, if you manage to get someone into a choke hold, they deserve what they get. For more information on the chokes in judo, please see JudoInfo's page on the topic.
• Rice cookers - I use my rice cooker almost as much as I use my computer. It's constantly either keeping rice warm or making it warm. I paid $60 for mine at Joshin's, an electronics store, when I first got here. I would recommend anybody staying in Japan longer than a few weeks to look at getting a rice cooker. You can probably find a small, cheap one at a recycle shop for $20 or so.
  The cheapest rice cooker I've seen was $47, and was a total waste of money. It held 1.5 cups of rice, and had no warming feature, no timer. Switch on, switch off. Same thing in the States would cost $10 and hold twice as much rice.
  The most expensive rice cooker I've seen was priced at about $1,200. It was a 10-cup contraption with stainless steel casing. Presumably, it makes rice taste better?
  
• Frawress victoly - Uh, I guess I used this once? It's just "flawless victory" with the Rs and Ls flipped, as per the basic rules of Engrish.
• mcdonalds english menu japan - The McDonalds here in Kyoto have Japanese menus, then on the back of those menus are English versions. Same in Osaka and Kobe, so no worries.
• Japanese camera bag - Don't buy camera gear here in Japan. Just don't. I mean a bag isn't usually a really expensive piece of gear, but in general, it's cheaper to fly to America and buy it there. Nonetheless, I did buy a small camera bag here for $27. It's an American brand, though, just like nearly all camera bag brands are. I mean, LowePro, Tamrac, National Geographic...
• ramen museum+tokyo - See my post on the ramen museum. You should be warned that the museum is in Shin-Yokohama, and not Tokyo. It's probably a half hour out of, say, Shinjuku, but don't quote me on that.
• Okayama farm picking - I guess this is a common thing? I haven't heard of anybody doing it except our trip to the strawberry field. If anybody seriously wants me to research this, drop me a line via email and I can look into it.
• japan 3 pronged plugs - Key word here is konsento, which, while pronounced like the English consent ("permission"), means an electric plug. Almost all plugs here in Japan are only two prongs, hence the name of this blog. If you're wondering if your American electronics will work here, they should be fine. My laptop had no problems in Yokohama, which is in Eastern Japan, and thus uses 50Hz. Neither did my cell phone charger or Bluetooth headset charger.
  If you're looking for a converter, you can probably get by with some obscene gestures involving fingers and holes. People who work in shops here often don't know what their store sells, so don't believe any employee of a large store who says that they don't sell a particular item. This happened to me and I got a little upset, and proceeded to show the Joshin employee where they keep the converters.
  
• sex shops in oomiya city - ... I've never been to Oomiya city, but there's a part of Kyoto called Oomiya. The only sex shop I know about in Kyoto is over by Kawaramachi, though. If you're looking specifically for sex shops, I'd look for a larger city like Tokyo or Osaka. Osaka's less than an hour away, though, so...
• what is kouhai mean - All criticism about grammar and the formation of effective search queries aside... kouhai refers to someone you are senior to in some kind of organization, be it a club or a company or school. The term isn't used very often, though you hear its opposite, sempai, quite often.
  Again, people with less rank than you are your kouhai, and your superiors are sempai.
  
• japan america land area - The entire Japanese archipelago (377,873 km²) has roughly the same land area as the state of California (423,970 km²), and that's pretty much the best comparison I've seen between the two. It's worth pointing out that while California is mostly habitable, Japan has something around 7% arable land, and in spite of that, has over half the population (127,433,494) of the USA (estimated at 305 million).
  
• how to buy a bike in japan - Go to a used bike shop with $60, and buy a bike. Point to the one you want, and wave the money around. New bikes start at $100, and go up through $400 for normal ones, with battery-powered ones at about $900. You don't need to bring anything with you except for some kind of proof of identity, but to fill out the bike registration card (required), you will need to know your address, and they prefer it if you have a telephone number as well. There's a $5 for buying any kind of bike, new or used. If you don't have to fill out a registration card, there's a chance the bike was either stolen, or that there's some other questionable thing going on. Keep in mind that if you get a bike from your buddy who's leaving the country, and the cops stop you - I've heard they stop foreigners a lot, but I've never been stopped on my bike - they're going to wonder why you're using someone else's bike.
• bicycle drum brake japanese - Japanese bikes tend to use drum brakes instead of the pad- and disc-type brakes common in America. They consist of a band of metal that compresses around a central cylinder, probably made of something heat resistant like arsenic. They're loud and squeaky and often used instead of the bell on a bike. "Drum brake" in Japanese is, unsurprisingly, doramu bureeki.
• okonomiyaki utensils - Okonomiyaki can be made with any generic turner, or even a spatula if you must. Okonomiyaki shops tend to have little metal spatulas ("spatulae"?) that you use to cook and murderate the okonomiyaki. You should be able to buy them at any supermarket or someplace like Jusco.
• tikimee - That's the name of the guy that tagged my site on StumbleUpon. I guess he does this a lot?
• soap japan - Soap is soap. There's nothing special about soap here as far as I know. They have a similar selection to what I've seen in the States. Prices are decent.
  

And that's the end of that. I've been meaning to do this post for a few months now. I wish I could email these people somehow, but you can't really send emails to IPs, and with XP SP2, NT Messenger Service was disabled by default...