Yello Everybody,
Sorry for not doing a mid-week post, but i've been busy with an training seminar this week(and with going out with the other native teachers from kumamoto and kagoshima afterwards). Today in my series of posts on small things about Japan I thought I would cover the concept of the hodai(pronounced Ho(as in santa clause Ho Ho Ho) and dye(as in hair dye etc.)). In Japan many restaurant bars have this concept and the simple premise is "All you can ..." for a certain period of time. The most common ones are nomihodai(nomi being drinks) where you can drink all you want for a set period of time and tabehodai(tabe being foods) where you can eat all you want for a set period of time. The usual length of time is for 1 hour, however 1 and a half or even 2 hour periods do exist in someplaces(for instance this week after the 1st day of the seminar all the teachers went to a tabehodai + nomihodai at a restaurant which lasted 2 hours). The cost varies but 1500 yen - 2000 yen for 1-1.5 hours for either tabehodai or nomihodai seems common, a combined tabehodai and nomihodai seems to cost 3000 yen - 4000 yen for the same length of time(the one I went to this week was very cheap at 3000 yen to both and for 2 hours). One of the basic rules for doing a nomihodai/tabehodai is that all the members in the group eating at the restaurant must participate, the restaurants won't do a partial one with 1 or more people ordering seperately. This rule leads to the social politeness of if the majority of the group wants to go for nomihodai/tabehodai, regardless of if you're not very hungry/thirsty you should agree to it as a matter of course. Gaijin(foreigners) get a good deal out of hodai since we tend to eat and drink a lot more than your average Japanese person does, some very rare places actually refuse to do hodai for Gaijin customers, and almost all places seem to dislike us doing it and won't bring up the possibility unless it is directly asked for. As for other hodai, some cake and sweet places to special cake hodai with all the cake and chocolate sweets you can eat.
As an add on to todays post Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate it(although it's a few days late), here in Japan there is some recognition of halloween, in terms of special halloween themed products or toys with products and some places do halloween themed decorations(more Gaijin bars than normal Japanese places though). My company also does a special fun Halloween lesson for all the kids(although for some reason it's taught by the Japanese teachers now(wasn't always the case)). As an Australian myself I personally have never really been all that involved or interested in Halloween although I do find it interesting that there is much more recognition of Halloween than there seemed to be of Easter. In Tokyo and other bigger cities I hear Halloween is being used as an excuse to do scary cosplay(costume play, which i've previously posted on, wiki it or check out my previous posts if you cannot remember).
The picture today is a range of rather comical Japanese halloween goods, found from the Tokyo Times. To make up for a lack of posts in recent times, i'm planning to do a post both tommorrow(saturday) and sunday in addition to my usual monday weekly wrapup post.
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