The Witless Clunkery of a Third-Rate Mind

Merry Belated Christmas and Happy New Year

2011-12-27T22:35:00.000-08:00

So Christmas passed without any major disasters here, and I hope you had a nice holiday too. Christmas is always a bit of a bummer in Japan, I've found. Christmas is of course highly commercialized in Canada, but I always felt that, on some level, people were a little bit friendlier to each other, too. It always seemed that most people were taking the whole "goodwill towards men" thing to heart.
In Japan though, Christmas is a commercial nightmare of flashing lights and screaming hawkers in Santa hats, and there is none of the underlying gentleness or goodwill. I guess they don't know it, because they've never experienced it.
Back home, I feel like there was always a sense of decorum and an appreciation of Christmas as a time of peace. Music, for example, was at least somewhat tasteful (as I recall). Here (as I've mentioned before) you go shopping and you just hear Mariah Carey and some awful synth version of "Last Christmas" by Wham on repeat. You almost never hear any of the Christmas music that I like, which is of the more somber, old-school variety like "O Come All Ye Faithful" or "Good King Wenceslas" - the kind of music that highlights Christmas as a time of light in darkness, warmth in a world which can be literally and figuratively cold.
So anyway, Christmas was fine, but I've come to expect almost nothing from Christmas in Japan. The only way to avoid feeling depressed, I think, is to lower your expectations and treat Christmas as "just another day", basically. I did go to a friend's house though, and had dinner and drinks with a few people from work, so that was nice.
For New Year's, I am going to Nagoya for a few days. New Year's is a much bigger deal in Japan than Christmas, so maybe I will be able to get my fill of festive feeling in a few days' time!
Meanwhile, here's wishing you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! All the best in 2012.

Update ... ?

2011-10-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a bit of pressure to update this Blog, but I don't have a lot of news to report. The one thing that did happen recently is that I passed my 5th-dan in Jodo on Saturday. Is 5th-dan a lot? Well, it's supposed to take you about 11 years or so to get to 5th dan, and it's taken me about 17 ... a lot of that delay is due to the fact that when we started doing Jodo in Guelph, there were almost no other people doing it in Canada, and so there were no gradings for the first few years. And the other problem is that I was always moving when I was in Japan, and missed grading opportunites time after time. Oh well. I passed, and everyone said we did really well.

Otherwise, no news. The weather is getting cool, which I love. The leaves are starting to turn. Halloween decorations are everywhere, which is a new thing in Japan in the last few years. A woman I work with said that 10 years ago, there were no Halloween decorations to be found, even in Tokyo. (I wouldn't know because I was out in the sticks 10 years ago, and it's probably still like that now!)

I have a week's vacation coming up after next week, and so I'll probably go to Kyushu, if I can get myself organized. I'll post pictures if I go.

I don't know whether you are still getting "disaster news" over there, but radioactive hot spots have turned up near Tokyo. I had long been predicting that places where rainwater accumulates would end up being radioactive, and that seems to be what is happening. But it's still no cause for alarm ... the levels aren't high enough to be really dangerous ... but it does show that people are still checking these things and the clean-up continues.

I'm just doing my thing ... swimming from time to time, working a lot. Business as usual!

Weather

2011-09-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

It has been hot and muggy here for a while. I don't generally watch the news much at all, so I didn't pay much attention when I heard vague reports that a typhoon was coming. They always seem to be coming, and nothing much ever comes of it.
But it seems that a large typhoon struck Japan west of Tokyo, and caused enough damage and flooding that 80,000 people were evacuated in the Nagoya area and another million (!) people advised to leave their homes for safer territory if possible. Wow!
The storm was headed pretty much directly over the capitol region, and this morning it was raining heavily at times. Mid-morning it was announced that our afternoon meeting would be cancelled, and then it was announced that the entire university would be shutting down and all staff and students sent home at 1 p.m.
I dutifully went home (reluctantly, too, since I had a lot of planning to do) and as I did, the storm was clearly intensifying. My umbrella was popped open by the wind, bending a bunch of the vanes and turning it to garbage. I was quickly soaked down to the skin by the rain, which was coming at me from all sides, it seemed.
Once I got home, I had absolutely nothing to do, so I tried to take a nap, but the gusting wind was making too much noise, so I couldn't sleep. The storm got more and more intense, but it didn't top some hurricanes I've been through when I was in Kyushu.
Anyway, the storm has passed now, without any major problems for me. (A lot of trains were temporarily stopped, but luckily I was already home by that time.) If you hear about a hurricane or typhoon "blasting Tokyo" or some other hyperbole on the news, don't worry. I'm fine!

Jan Svankmajer Exhibit in Harajuku

2011-09-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

I still have a few days off before I start back to work (lucky me!) so I met up with a friend from work and we went and had ramen at our favourite ramen shop. Real ramen is so different from the pre-packaged stuff that I kind of feel sorry for people who have never tried it. (I know that sounds obnoxious ... but then again, last year I had Peking Duck for the first time and I remember thinking, "Wow! Why have I never eaten this before? This is amazing!") In fact, there was a poll recently on "the best foods in the world". Ramen came in at number 8, which is perhaps a little bit high, actually, but I agree that, when you're in the mood for some rich, salty pork broth and noodles, there's nothing quite like it. (And remembering my experience with the Peking Duck, I am looking forward to trying some of the other foods on the list that I have never eaten.)

After lunch, I decided to go to an exhibition of some works by Jan Svankmajer. He's a Czech surrealist filmmaker whose movies I have really enjoyed in the past. His films usually have a lot of stop-motion animation and puppetry, and he is not only a painter and a photographer, but a sculptor who makes all kinds of strange, organic looking objects to use in his films.

Most of his pieces are really bizarre and creepy, which means I find them really interesting! It was cool to be able to see the pieces up close, but I was left wondering how he made a lot of them. Because they are to some extent "movie props", I was surprised how good they look up close.

Any time I see a really good exhibition, I feel a little bit sad that I haven't kept up my art. I used to draw a lot in high school, and at one stage I considered going to art school, but I went to university for physics instead. It seemed like the more responsible thing to do, but I wonder what my life would be like now had I pursued that direction.

I think it's one thing to do art as a hobby, but life seems to intrude, and you never devote enough time to the art. But if you are a full-time artist, I think one thing inspires the next; you get drawn deeper and deeper into your work, and projects spawn other projects. Certainly, that seems to be the case with Svankmajer, who is extremely prolific and is still active and pursuing new directions now at age 77. One of the most interesting parts of the exhibition was a series of collages on the theme of Japanese ghost stories. Really cool!

Back in Tokyo

2011-09-11T22:27:00.001-07:00

Tony brought me to the airport from Fergus (thanks Tony!) and I got on my flight without too much difficulty. It was actually about half-empty, so I not only had an emergency exit seat with lots of legroom, but I didn't have anyone sitting beside me. That makes a big difference and I was quite comfortable. Unfortunately, the movies were the same ones as when I came over, so I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find something to watch. I saw "Win Win" though, which I wasn't really interested in at first, but which turned out to be quite a nice little movie. I highly recommend it! (And I see it's scoring 94% on Rotten Tomatoes!)

Canada had been very cool before I left, (downright cold at times) and then the plane was of course very chilly ... so I was in for a shock when I left the plane and immediately upon setting foot in the gangway (is that the right word?) got hit with a blast of hot air like out of an oven. Wow. The airport itself was also quite warm, as they are trying to save energy in Tokyo and have the air conditioning set at about 28 degrees or so. I was sweating as I stood around waiting for my suitcase to come off the carousel.

I got home with no difficulty and Yoshie came over to see me. She enjoyed her presents from Canada, I think, and was happy to see me. Unfortunately, I was tired from my flight and a bit jet-lagged, so I fell asleep at about 9 pm. I got up for an hour or so, but then fell asleep again at around midnight.

Today is my birthday (very mixed feelings about that!) so Yoshie has gotten reservations for tonight at an interesting-looking Thai restaurant we saw in Akasaka a couple months ago. There is a Belgian beer bar next door, so I am looking forward to having some expensive, delicious Belgian beers after dinner. Tonight is just the two of us, but I will probably go out with some friends later this week for a post-birthday get together.

Oh, in other news, when I got home, my score from the Level 1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test (I took it in July) was waiting for me. The whole time I was in Canada, people were asking me, "So how's your Japanese? You must be pretty fluent by now, right?" I never know how to answer this question. First of all, as a language teacher, the very word "fluent" conjures up a concept which is very slippery and hard to define. In fact, I have been reading academic papers about the very topic of measuring fluency, and it is by no means agreed-upon or easy to do. But even in general terms, I never know how to respond. Can I order food in a restaurant? Usually, yes. Can I discuss politics or philosophy like an adult? Not a chance. So does that mean I'm fluent? I usually say no. This answer is supported by the results of my test. I failed pretty dismally (69 points out of 180) ... although it is the highest-level JLP Test going, and the one that, if you pass it, you are eligible to study at Japanese Universities. So, if/when I ever pass that test, I will say, "Yes, I'm fluent." Until then, I don't think so ...

A Week in Ontario

2011-09-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

I went back to Ontario on August 31st. Because my holidays are slightly shorter this year than they were last year, I only had a week in Ontario. Although I was fortunate enough to see some friends...

I didn't get to see some people. I only have myself to blame because of my poor organizational skills. Sorry about that.

It was also the first time I've been back since my father died, so we had a burial and memorial service in Bond Head where my grandparents are also buried. The service was simple but very touching and it went as well as could be hoped, I thought. I got to see my cousin Garnet for the first time in I don't know how long. 15 years, maybe.

Dad wasn't a big drinker but he did enjoy a shot of rye whiskey from time to time. We had a drink by the grave and reminisced together.

One week in Ontario went by all too quickly. My sincere thanks to everyone who was able to take time out of their schedules to visit with me and/or put me up at their place and/or chauffeur me around the province. It was appreciated.

I'm hoping to update this blog a little more often ... but I've said that before! I'll do my best to keep up to date and to stay in touch. Feel free to drop me a line or give me a call on Skype or something! Talk to you soon.

Tokyo Bay Cruise, and Home to Canada

2011-09-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

After finishing work for the summer, I went with a bunch of coworkers on a Tokyo Bay Cruise. This is great fun and I wonder why I haven't done it before now. You go down to the harbour and buy a ticket for the 2-hour cruise, which is all-you-can-drink. (Wheeeee!) The cruise attracts mostly college-students and people in their 20's, and many Japanese people tend to dress up in their yukata (colourful summer-weight robes) and sandals. It makes for a very fun atmosphere.

There were about 10 of us, and of that number, 5 or 6 of us wore Japanese-style clothes. (I didn't, because when I dug out my jimbei - a kind of casual, summery shirt with short pants - it was hopelessly wrinkled and needed to be washed.) We made a funny group because a number of us are really tall. I'm about 6'4" but my coworkers Rob and Matt are even taller than me! And then there are a couple guys around 6'. So when we were all standing together, we made quite a group, and attracted a lot of stares (and friendly smiles).

The cruise just sort of goes out into Tokyo Bay, floats around for a while, and then turns around and comes back. Tokyo is very pretty at night, although my photos (taken with my crappy iPhone camera) don't really convey that very well.

That orange thing-y is actually Tokyo Tower.

A bit after the Tokyo Bay Cruise, (or perhaps it was before, I don't recall) I went for a picnic beside a river outside of Tokyo with my friend Tyler and some of his Japanese friends. It was quite enjoyable to splash around a bit in the river. I didn't actually dive in, but some people did! Here I am goofing around with Tyler ...

Before long, it was time to go back to Canada. This time, I flew into Toronto and then directly on to Moncton. My flight to Toronto was delayed, and I was worried I would miss the last flight to Moncton, but it all worked out in the end.

It was great to be back, although to be honest, I do feel a bit out-of-sorts when I am home. It is hard to explain why, exactly, except to say that after 6 years away, everything is rather unfamiliar. And at the same time, there is something weird about one's sense of time. Although I have been away for a year, it feels like it has only been a few months. Japan and Canada seem like different worlds, and time flows at different speeds in each of them, somehow ...

Anyway, going back to New Brunswick is my summer ritual, and is something I have done almost every summer since I was a little kid. It was great to be back to the cottage and to see everyone enjoying themselves. David and his kids love oysters, although I don't partake.

Although it's very small, the cottage is always full of friends and family. It is amazing to see the kids getting bigger every year.

We celebrated cousin Kate's, and her daughter Lily's, birthdays...

Rob had us over to his cottage for a lobstravaganza...

Before I got to NB, I heard that the weather was lousy, but it seemed to clear up around the time I got there. Coincidence? I think not.

Rob had some flippers, snorkels, and masks, and I learned how to dive for quahaugs. You have to look for 2 little breathing holes, and then dig down quickly before they have a chance to dig themselves in deeper. I was quite successful, I think!

What am I supposed to do with these things now?

All too soon, it was the end of August and time to go back to Ontario.

Cherry Blossoms

2011-04-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

It has been cherry blossom season for the past couple weeks. This is a precious season that always goes by so quickly that it feels like it only lasts a few days, but it does actually last about 2 weeks from start to finish. I was lucky this year in that I had a lot of free time to get out and enjoy it, a few times and in a few different places.

Taken near my place, on about the 2nd day of the season.
One day there were only buds on the trees, the next warm day, suddenly everything was white.

These 2 photos are the view on my street...

One of the cool things about cherry trees is that the trees themselves are so ugly: rough black bark, twisty limbs ... but then suddenly they explode in these fantastic blossoms.

A week later, we went to Shakuji Park, a couple stops away from my place. A lot of the blossoms had fallen already, but depending on the species, some blossoms start later. These trees were in full bloom.

Then about a week later, I went for a walk around Shinjuku and ended up in Shinjuku Park. It was also nearly finished, but it was still beautiful. When it is in full bloom, it is stunning.

Random picture of a cool building: this looks like a pickle to me but I think Japanese people call it "the coccoon".
It's actually a college of art and design, I guess.

The park wasn't very crowded because it was near the end of flower-viewing season, because it was a bit cloudy and rainy, and also because the governor of Tokyo called for people to hold off on hanami (flower viewing parties) this year because of the disaster. Although I understand his sentiment, I think it's counterproductive to tell people not to celebrate life. Also, the sake-makers from the northeastern areas, who have already been hit hard, have been imploring people to drink and make merry and keep buying their products. These good people are doing their part...

One month on ...

2011-04-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

One month has passed and we're finally starting to get a handle on the enormity of this disaster. About 27,000 people dead or missing; 150,000 people displaced. Before-and-after pictures, as well as videos of the tsunami itself, show the incredible power of nature.

Aftershocks have been continuing almost daily. Some of them are almost too weak to even notice; they feel as if the house shivered a little bit. Others last over a minute and are quite strong. The ones in the week or so following the quake were the scariest. These constant aftershocks, plus all the scary news out of Fukushima concerning the failing reactors, was making it a terrifying, nerve-racking situation.

One week after the quake, I decided to get out of Tokyo. In the wake of the disaster, it seemed as though foreigners were splitting into 2 camps: alarmists who eagerly reported every bit of bad news and every panicky rumor, and the pacifiers, who insisted that everything was going to be all right, without providing any evidence whatsoever. I went back and forth between these two extremes about 5 times a day, believing deep down that everything was going to be fine, but unable to stop thinking about how bad it could ultimately get.

At times, the alarmists seemed like they hoped the worst-case-scenario would come true, so they could say "I told you so!" Meanwhile, the pacifiers were turning it into a big show of their manhood - if you joined the other foreigners who were leaving Tokyo, you were a big pussy.
But more and more people - not just foreigners - were getting out of Tokyo while the getting was good, and the real criterion seemed to be that, if you could leave, you left. The people who stayed, despite all their claims of being unworried and unafraid, really stayed because they couldn't get the time off work, or their Japanese families would have looked down on them and been terribly disappointed, or they just had no place to go.

The pressure from both sides was really stressing me out, and ended up leaving me really disappointed in a lot of people who I had considered my friends. And in the end, March was supposed to be my vacation time. I had nowhere to be, no responsibilities ... so, as planned, I left Tokyo. As you can tell by my lengthy explanation, I felt guilty about going, and wanted to justify it to somebody ...

On Friday, one week after the intial quake, we got on a bullet train for Nagoya. As soon as I got on the train, I felt a lot of stress dissolving. I was happy to put distance between myself and the reactors, but also, I felt like I was beginning my holidays.

Japan has a lot of groovy, futuristic architecture.

Nagoya was nice, although I admit I spent a lot of time parked in front of the TV watching the news. We just sort of laid low and relaxed, but one day we went to the Automobile Museum in Toyota city. I'm not overly interested in cars, to be honest, but Toyota has spent a lot of money acquiring and restoring historically-important cars and displaying them in perfect condition. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this must be one of the best collections of old cars in the world. These photos are only a small fraction of what they had on display.

First ever automobile? By Karl Benz, 1885.

Most magnificent automobile ever? Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. The engine was so quiet it was said to pass by like a ghost.

The Stanley Steamer - an automobile powered by a steam boiler! The BetaMax of automobiles.

No idea what this is - except I seem to recall it's Italian - and it's super cool.

Is this Honda the smallest car ever? I dunno, but it's pretty damn small.
It seriously looks like a toy car that a rich kid would get on his birthday.

Most beautiful car ever? My vote might go for the simple, elegant but shark-like lines of this Jaguar E-type.

From Nagoya, I caught another bullet train to Okayama, and then a normal express train across the Seto Bridge to Shikoku, the smallest of the 4 main islands that comprise Japan. It was my first time in Shikoku. I went to Matsuyama city, in Ehime prefecture, and stayed with my friend Mike, who is a former co-worker. Mike is starting teaching at Ehime University, but he had a few weeks off before the semester started, so I stayed at his place for a few days.

Matsuyama is a really lovely, smallish city with a beautiful castle in the middle of town. The castle is one of only 12 original castles in Japan. The others were either torn down in the wave of modernization that swept Japan following the restoration of the Meiji Emperor, or were burned during the bombings in WW2. In fact, Matsuyama castle burned down after being hit by lightning in the late 1700's, I believe, but was rebuilt in the early 1800's, so it qualifies as being an "original" castle.

It was built by Kato Yoshiaki, whose statue stands on a side street near one of the castle entrances.

One of the nice things is that they have an interactive exhibit where you can try on some samurai armour. I've been to quite a few castles and this is the first time I've seen something like this. I wish more museums and historical sites would let you try things like this. I was at the castle by myself, so I had to snap this picture from the hip, reflected in a mirror. Oh, the helmet was WAY too small for me too. Very painful.

Speaking of samurai armour, I went to an annual demonstration of samurai fighting arts back in February. These guys demonstrate their sword skills in full armour. Very cool!

At some point prior to the earthquake, I went to an exhibition hall in Odaiba, Tokyo and saw some of Toyota's prototypes and concept vehicles incorporating their robotics technology. One is a mobile platform for people with disabilities, that can walk up stairs, etc. and across rough terrain.

Another area they are developing is the "personal urban vehicle" sector - something which the existence of the Segway scooter proves there is a real demand for. They had a number of small scooter-like devices, but they also had this cool chair-car-thing which was shown zipping along the road at about 50 km/h in an accompanying video. Cool!

Anyway, this was a super-random post, wasn't it? Earthquakes, nuclear reactors melting down (almost), samurai and castles, walking robots. Practically a typical month in Japan ...

3 days after...

2011-03-14T00:52:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I'm okay!

I was about to launch into a long and tedious description of my experience in the earthquake, but then thought better of it. Long story short: I was in a coffee shop on the 3rd floor of a 10-storey building. The higher up you are, and the taller the building that you are in, the more you get shaken up, as a general rule. The building started shaking like crazy, people started screaming, I threw decorum to the wind and got under the table like everyone else. We just waited under there for a couple minutes, praying and waiting for the earthquake to subside. Afterwards, we decided to go outside. The streets were full of people and traffic had stopped.

We figured that a park was the best place to be, away from any tall buildings. We went to a small local park and on the way saw a few buildings which had lost windows, or which had panels coming off. One building had a burst water pipe on the 8th floor or so.

At the park, a lot of people had gathered. The general atmosphere was a combination of nervous laughter and genuine fear, with a few people taking pictures. Everyone was checking their phones, wanting to contact loved ones and seeking information, but nobody could get through. A few aftershocks struck over the next half hour or so. You could see buildings shaking, especially when two buildings were close together and you could see the space between them opening and closing. A few army helicopters flew overhead, and at one point a jumbo jet flew quite low over us, probably diverted away from Haneda airport.

We waited at the park until it seemed like most of the immediate aftershocks were over. Then, seeing as how all trains were stopped, and buses and taxis were impossible to get, we decided to walk home. I was quite lucky: I live only 2 hours away from Ikebukuro so I got home while it was still light. Some of my friends walked for 5 or 6 hours and some people I know had to spend the night in their offices.

Now I am back home, and things are surprisingly normal, at least for now. I have electricity (which, apart from my computer and my refrigerator, I am trying to conserve) and hot water. I have food and drink. It is worrying, however, that most places have little or no drinking water (other drinks -beer, pop, juice, milk - are available) and there has been a run on bread and other ready-to-eat foods like instant ramen. Overall though, at least for now, there is still food and drink available.

This might change, though, because gasoline seems to be impossible to get at the moment, and I'm sure this will impact shipping and distribution of food and other supplies. Hopefully this situation gets rectified soon, because it is a bit worrying. I don't want to go and hoard all kinds of food, but I wonder if that is the smart thing to do now...?

The next worry is the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. There are 4 of them side-by-side that all seem to be having trouble. There was an explosion at #1 on Saturday, an explosion at #3 today, and now they are reporting that the cooling system at #2 has failed. This can't be good. Well-meaning friends are kind of fanning the flames of panic by suggesting that we all go and get potassium-iodide pills to protect ourselves from radiation poisoning. I don't know what to make of that, frankly...

Another worry is the increasingly obvious fact that the government is controlling the media, limiting what they can and can't report. This is evidently to control panic, but I think nothing causes panic quite like mis-information, rumors, and the feeling that you're not getting the full story. They have an obligation to tell us what is really happening, but it is obvious now that they are waiting until events are no longer deniable before confirming them. Scary.

Train service seems to be sporadic, and they have announced scheduled power outages for lots of places. On top of this, the meteorological agency (also responsible for earthquake predicting and reporting) is saying that there is a 70% chance of another quake of magnitude around 7, in the next few days.

In other words, everything is okay right now, but there is a lot of anxiety about the immediate future and the next couple weeks. I'll try to stay in touch.

Update, at long last

2011-02-13T03:41:00.000-08:00

Wow, I wasn't intending to leave things this long, but I guess I lost track of time!

It wasn't a particularly eventful autumn. I injured my knee doing iaido, and so I was forced to stop practicing both iai and jodo for a while (I have since resumed jodo). I couldn't walk without being in a lot of pain for a long time, but I'm pretty much okay now.

Fall was very pretty on campus. The gingko trees turn a really wonderful, bright yellow colour that would look even more impressive if this picture had been taken on a clear day instead of a cloudy one.

Rikkyo is one of the few university campuses in Japan that is old enough to look like what I consider a university to look like: ivy-covered, church-like brick and stone buildings. Most universities in Japan are fairly new and most buildings are concrete.

So autumn went by pretty quickly. Christmas came and went without too much fanfare. For New Years, my friends Ed and Miki were in town visiting her parents, so we went to the National Museum in Ueno to see a performance. Here is Ebisu, god of fishing... he's got his little fishing rod ...

And here is Daikokuten, god of wealth and commerce. Why he has a mallet, I'm not exactly sure. To crack open sake kegs to start the celebration? Does he symbolize carpentry as a representative trade? No idea. A quick check of Wikipedia says something about a "magic money mallet" ...

There were also lion-dogs dancing. After the performance, people tried to get the lion-dogs to bite them, as this is evidently good luck.

After the performance, we wanted to go to a shrine, because I hadn't been yet. I suggested Yushima shrine, because I had worked in that neighbourhood before, and was familiar with the shrine. I didn't realize, though, just how crowded it would be! Look at all the people lined up to get in! The wait must have been 3 - 4 hours, at least. There was an almost-equally long line behind me, inside the shrine gates.

So anyway, we said forget it. I ended up going to a much smaller shrine, a couple days later.

In mid-January, a friend and I went to see an exhibit of some Albrecht Durer etchings and woodcuts. They are insanely detailed and surprisingly small. I'm sure he had a lot of assistants, but even so, producing even one of these pictures must have taken hundreds of man-hours. And he produced quite a volume of them in his life. We wouldn't think of making something like that without a computer, nowadays. How strange... technology has made us helpless!

Outside the museum is a cast of Rodin's "The Thinker". Wikipedia says that there are actually dozens of "Thinkers" around the world. I had no idea.

I'm on vacation now, and doing very little. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm taking Japanese classes once in a while, meeting friends, going swimming, going to jodo practice, reading lots of books, going to galleries, going shopping ... and I may get a short little trip in. I don't want to spend too much money, though, so we'll see what happens!

Lots of Photos

2010-11-16T04:19:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone. Well, it was a hell of a September and October. My deep gratitude to everyone who helped in any way, shape, or form. Thanks for helping me get through it.

Without further ado...

A couple weekends ago I went to the Tokyo Design Festa at a convention center called Tokyo Big Sight [sic]. An appropriate place for an art and design show, the building itself is interesting architecturally. I felt it somehow takes inspiration from traditional Japanese building styles, but re-imagines it in steel and glass. Kinda cool, I thought.

It is hard to say what the Design Festa is all about, except that there don't seem to be any real rules. There were a lot of things that I would describe as "whimsical".

One of the really nice things about the show is that, over the course of the weekend, artists were working on things. Not only does it keep them from going crazy with boredom, but I think it is part of the attraction. People enjoy seeing artists at work.

Alongside the weird/graphic/whimsical/un-categorizable stuff, there was quite a lot of traditionally-inspired arts and crafts. Calligraphy was popular, like this fellow's very appealing, chunky style of writing. Samurai-themed stuff was also in abundance.

This guy had built this strange sci-fi mech-looking vehicle, and was driving it around the show. He occasionally let other people (particularly if they were cute, and female) drive it too.

Ummm...

A lot of artists had plain white backdrops and were painting them. If I had've had more patience, I might have tried a few shots spaced out over the course of the day to show the progression from blank wall to finished work ... but alas ...

One young guy caught my eye with his highly-detailed, unique painted sculptures of alien creatures. His stuff really reminds me of Wayne Barlowe's "Guide to Extraterrestrials".

I can't tell you how great it was to go to this event. Everyone was in a great mood, chatting, smiling, and laughing. It sounds terrible to say it (and it will give ammunition to everyone who keeps telling me, "Get out of Japan, already") but it was really weird to see so many happy, friendly Japanese people. When your main interaction with people is on the public transportation, I suppose it is easy to develop a negative view. But here, everyone knew that, at least on some basic level, everyone shared the same interest in art.

As an example, I thought the following scene was funny - mother and young child laughing and playing right beside a painting that seems to be a more depressed companion-piece to "The Scream". They caught me looking so they gave me obligatory "peace sign".

These girls were just posing for photos and giving away bookmarks. I struggled with my Japanese but finally just decided to be blunt and asked them, "So ... what are you selling?" Their answer: "Nothing!" I guess they just like hanging out and having their picture taken. I happily obliged them.

There was a lot of weird-ish stuff, and that tends to get the most attention (for better or worse). I liked this woman's pop-ish pictures of pregnant schoolgirls. I have no idea what they are supposed to mean, but they seemed fun, and combined with her wearing a schoolgirl's outfit ... (No, I don't have a thing for school uniforms, honestly.)

I talked with this girl for a while about her art and its resemblance to "Rat Fink". Neither of us could remember the artist's name, but I looked it up when I got home. Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, of course!

Some stuff just defied categorization. Middle-aged salaryman / schoolgirl hybrid as Buddhist statuary (complete with halo) ... ?

My friend Rob got his portrait drawn by this girl. Her sign is hard to translate without it sounding awkward, but it basically amounts to "I'll draw you but it won't look like you." For a dollar (I think that's how much it was...), who could possibly refuse?

So I talked to more strangers in one day than I have in a year, and saw tons and tons of stuff that I didn't photograph, because I just wanted to spend time enjoying things and not taking pictures of everything. It was a lot of fun - the atmosphere alone guaranteed that I'll be back again.

And soon I'll be back to work

2010-09-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

It has been really hot (it was 38 - or 62 with the humidity - the other day) so I've been hiding out and not doing much, but this weekend I took a quick trip down to Nagoya and Gifu to see and stay with a couple friends of mine. One of my friends is a teacher I worked with before, and the other guy is a martial artist I met through iaido. I went down Thursday, stayed in Nagoya Thursday night, and then on Friday went to Gifu and stayed over until Saturday. I didn't get up to anything too crazy; just visiting and went out to eat a couple times. Saturday afternoon I came back to Tokyo. From Tokyo to Nagoya is about 2 hours on the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) so it's pretty convenient.
Sunday was my birthday, and a lot of people sent messages or called, so thanks. It was nice to hear from people. Yoshie took me out to a Hawaiian-Asian-Japanese restaurant on Sunday night. It was excellent, and not outrageously expensive, so we both enjoyed it a lot.
I haven't bought a camera to replace the one I stupidly lost (on almost my last day in Canada - grrr!) so no pictures, but when I get something, I will post what I can.
I go back to work on Wednesday. After being off for almost 2 months, it's pretty hard to imagine going back to work. I really don't like these long, long holidays; you get bored and at the same time, accustomed to doing nothing, and very lazy. I think everyone I work with would prefer to only work 5 days a week in return to correspondingly shorter holidays, but that is the lot we've been given, I suppose. Last semester was tough because we had a 7-week (?) stint with no extra holidays (just Sundays off). This fall semester is much better because we have a few public holidays to break things up. We actually have a few "weekends" in there, I believe, i.e., a Sunday-Monday combination. Then, we have a week or so off around New Year's, which will be very welcome.
Tomorrow is my last day of freedom for a while, so I'm going to enjoy it by doing as little as I can. Maybe - just maybe - I will go for a swim tomorrow, but that's as far as I'm likely to go.
Talk to you again soon!

September already

2010-09-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

I'm back home in Tokyo now. I got in last night, after a trip that was probably the smoothest I've ever had. I stayed at my friend Tony's place in Fergus, got up at a totally reasonable time, had a relaxed breakfast, went nice and early to the airport without any difficulty (thanks Tony!), checked in (almost nobody in line), went and had a coffee, and sat and read my book until it was time to board the plane. I was quite comfortable in the extra-spacious seat I had booked. There wasn't even anybody in the seat beside me, and I was actually able to sleep a couple hours. I watched a few surprisingly good movies (no problems with the video system this time!), and there was nobody was kicking my seat. Upon arrival in Tokyo, I got through customs in about 5 minutes, and picked up my suitcase 15 minutes later. I took the express train home and was eating dinner about an hour after I left the airport. Simply amazing how smoothly everything went - but it is precisely these event-free trips which make us frustrated when things DON'T go smoothly, so I will try and be thankful that I didn't have any problems rather than the other way around.

Canada was great, although it was too bad I couldn't really see people more. Maybe next summer I will have more of a chance to spend time with everyone. But, until then, please remember to send me a short e-mail, or to try and hook up with me using Skype.

5 Months?? Seriously?!

2010-05-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been 5 months since my last post! Whoops! Sorry about that.
I finished up January with my old employer, and then spent February and March unemployed. I got a new place in Nerima-ward, Tokyo, which is kind of in the northwest of the city, close to where I have started working.
At the end of March, the best season of the year, cherry blossom season, started. Yoshie and I took a few pictures in a park towards the start of the season, so the blooms aren't really full yet.

(Eek! Where's my hair?? Oh well.)

About a week later, we went to the Meguro River in Tokyo, which is a nice spot for blossom viewing. A long stretch of the river is lined with cherry trees overhanging the canal. It's really beautiful.

Aside from the beauty of the blossoms themselves, though, the nice thing is the festive atmosphere. Everybody is drinking calmly and laughing with friends. There are food and drink stalls set up everywhere, so you can buy all kinds of "festival" food - meat on sticks, sweets, fried noodles - yummy!

After a leisurely stroll up and down the length of the river, we decided it was time for dinner. Yoshie found a highly-rated restaurant in the area, so we went to check it out. This is the door to the place, my right hand indicating the height of the door, and my face indicating my unwillingness to go in on my knees:

It's actually a nod towards traditional Japanese tea-houses. These were designed with the radical notion that "everyone is equal" so the door was made extra-low (even by Japanese standards) meaning that, whether you were a high-ranking noble or the meanest peasant, you would have to bow upon entering. Well, in my case, it would be more like crawling in on my hands and knees. Fortunately (?) the place was full, so we couldn't get in. Whew! Disaster averted.

We eventually found a place to eat, but not before the bathroom situation started to get pretty desperate for both of us. We had to duck into a Pachinko parlour to use the facilities, and so I snapped this picture of some die-hard gambling addicts. The trays of balls represent their winnings. The guy towards the end of the aisle has about $1000 worth of winnings stacked up behind him. He probably wouldn't be happy if some clumsy oaf kicked them over.

When we went blossom-viewing, the trees weren't actually in full bloom. The thing about cherry blossoms is that the trees are in full bloom for about 7 seconds, and then it's all downhill from there as the blossoms start falling. I suppose that's why they are such a strong metaphor for the brevity of life in Japanese culture. I took this shot on the street near my apartment. It's as close to full bloom as I could find. Pretty, huh?

Interesting how some of the trees are white, some are pinkish, and some (which are further along in the blooming cycle) look minty-green.

Have you seen "American Beauty"? Remember that scene with the plastic bag being carried aloft by the wind? Towards the end of the blossoms, it was a very windy day. The wind was blowing the flower petals off the trees, and also picking up the piles of petals from the ground, and creating these mini-tornadoes of blossoms everywhere. It was like it was snowing! Really, really incredible.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of April I started my new job at Rikkyo University here in Tokyo. It is one of the top 6 or 7 private universities in Tokyo, and is very well-regarded. They have a new "experimental" English program, where every freshman student takes English in a small class (up to 8 students per instructor). The goal of the class is to teach discussion skills. It has been really enjoyable teaching it so far. The students are great, the directors are extremely knowledgeable, and the other instructors are great. It's probably the best job I've ever had, all things considered!

Meanwhile, iaido practice is going fairly well. My knee hurts at the moment, but this has been a passing thing in the past, so I'm just waiting for the pain to go away. I was signed up to join the Tokyo Iaido Tournament ... but long story short, I had to work in the morning, rushed to get to the tournament in time, didn't make it, and ended up just taking pictures of the Sensei demonstrating. Here's one picture. It was pretty depressing not to be able to participate, but oh well.

Today is the Sunday of Golden Week, 6 days (or so) of national holidays all in a row. Most people travel of go back home. Yoshie has gone back home for a couple days, and I have no plans. Today I'm just relaxing, cleaning the apartment, and catching up on things (like Blogs) that I have been meaning to do. It's a fantastic day, though - sunny, and warm - so I should probably finish this up and go outside! Next update will be in fewer than 5 months, I promise.

Christmas in Japan

2009-12-26T20:13:00.000-08:00

... is kind of crappy, to be honest. This is because the Japanese have transplanted all the obvious things about Christmas (buying presents, stringing up lights, putting Santa hats on everyone and everything, etc.) while leaving behind all the intangible things (family, peace, hope, goodwill toward men, etc.) that actually make Christmas pleasant, and something to look forward to.
I heard my first Christmas tune playing over the speakers in a bakery on November 1st. One day after Halloween! This invoked a shudder of dread as I thought, "Oh no ... 2 months of awful Christmas music to endure." And it is truly, TRULY awful. Sorry to paint the Japanese with a broad brush, but their taste in Christmas music is utterly appalling. First of all, "Last Christmas" by Wham and "All I Want For Christmas" by Mariah Carey are in near-constant rotation. I would like to point out that, before I came to Japan, I was barely aware of the existence of these songs. Now, I have probably heard them about 1,000 times each. If you're not trying to ignore the original version, you are trying to ignore the dance remix, the bossa nova remix, the slow jazz remix, or the steel pan drum remix. Which brings me to my next point: the Japanese seem to have absolutely nothing against taking a beautiful, tasteful, atmospheric Christmas carol, and perverting it utterly by making a J-Rap version, or a Euro-beat remix. Imagine the Club mix of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Makes the gorge rise, doesn't it? If you or I heard any one of these songs, we would immediately rip the needle off the record while screaming, "That is an abomination!" and then break the disc in half over our collective knee.
The whole idea of "peace at Christmas" seems to be lost on them, as does the idea of "taste" or "simplicity". It's funny that these ideas are such a central part of traditional Japanese culture. Perhaps because Christmas is a foreign holiday, and everyone knows that foreigners are brash, loud, and tasteless ... so Christmas must be too! And thus, barkers stand outside of stores in ill-fitting Santa suits, screaming "Irasshaimase" - the equivalent of "Come right in, come right in!" at the top of their lungs. I've never seen anybody with an air horn, but frankly, it wouldn't surprise me. Meanwhile, they are standing beside a neon-pink Christmas tree decorated with strobing multi-coloured lights, while (you guessed it) the marching band remix of "Last Christmas" blares in the background.
And forget about "goodwill toward men". I took the train on Christmas eve, and again on Christmas day. Maybe it was just me, but I really think everybody was actually a bit grumpier than usual. A buddy of mine told a similar story: he was riding the train with another foreign friend. The friend, feeling a bit of yuletide gladness, suggested, "Why don't we start singing a Christmas carol?" but my buddy sized up the situation and told him, "Are you kidding? Look around - everyone is miserable. They'd lynch us." And they were miserable. Perhaps they were resentful that they had to work on a day which, on one hand is hyped as a big holiday, but on the other hand, is just another day at the office.
In Japan, Christmas isn't really for kids, or for families, but rather, it's for lovers. Grab your sweetie, go for a nighttime stroll around some flashing lights, whisper some sweet nothings, slip her the necklace you were coerced into buying her, eat a bit of Christmas cake - done! Time to take down the decorations. And believe you me, on December 26th, there is not a Christmas decoration to be found. The same uncompromising efficiency that keeps the trains running on time is applied to removing all traces of Christmas cheer. So much for "the 12 days of Christmas".
But fair enough - they're getting ready for New Year's, which is the REAL celebration. It's a time to get severely drunk, to eat traditional food, to commute vast distances to be with your whole family, to give children presents, to go to the shrine and pray ... all the things we do in Canada, at Christmas. With so much overlap, I guess it's understandable that Christmas pales before New Year's in Japan.
(But still ... why is everyone so damn grumpy at Christmas?)
Hoping everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and wishing you all a Great New Year!

Catching Up

2009-11-23T02:13:00.001-08:00

A few things happened in the past couple weeks that I wanted to share. Yoshie and I went to Oktoberfest in Yokohama. It was held at the Akarenga or "Red Brick" buildings, which were warehouses constructed by the port of Yokohama at the end of the 19th century. It's kind of funny that, in a country with buildings that are a thousand years old, these 100-year-old buildings are considered "historical". I guess because they are among the first buildings constructed in the "Western" style in Japan ...?

The Oktoberfest itself was kind of fun, although the beer was expensive, it was really crowded, there were long lineups to get food, to get beer, and to use the bathroom, and there was no place to sit down. Okay, on second thought, it sucked and I probably won't go back next year. Yoshie and I sat on the ground to drink our beer and eat our sausages. After 20 minutes or so, a couple of seats came open at the table right by where we were sitting; we jumped up to claim them, and another couple tried to grab them at the same time. It was a staring contest for a while, but eventually they relented, I guess because they could see that we had been sitting there before they arrived. Once we had a place to sit, it became a lot more enjoyable. Oh, did I mention that there were people dressed up like Nazis in the crowd? In the above photo, you can see a guy wearing a military costume of some sort. Well, there were also people dressed up like Nazis ... it just doesn't carry the same anti-social stigma here that it does, well, basically everywhere else in the world. Weird.

After I took that picture, I turned around and took this picture:

Which is just to say that Yokohama is an interesting place. Huge skyscrapers beside Ferris wheels beside sail-shaped hotels, beside Red Brick buildings. Lots of interesting architecture in a very small area.

The next week, I went to the Ramen Museum in Shin-Yokohama with a few of my former students. That was fun; you can order half-bowls of ramen so that you have enough space in your stomach to sample the noodles from 2 or 3 different shops. We went to three shops, so that equals about 1.5 bowls, so I was pretty full by the end of it.

Yoshie and I went to Zenzoji in downtown Tokyo one gray and cloudy afternoon. I still find the clash between old and new, as cliched as it is, to be pretty interesting. Here's an interesting contrast shot, kind of crappy though, because it was taken with my phone.

On November 3rd, I went to see a demonstration of traditional martial arts on the grounds of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. This particular school of martial arts dates back at least 500 years:

There was also a display of Yabusame, or archery from horseback. It is a ritual offering to the gods, asking them to give a bountiful harvest. It is believed that it has been conducted for 1000 years or so. Archers wear the full regalia from the 1300's, including doe-skin chaps.

I was wandering around in Tokyo one afternoon, when I spotted this balloon. I approached for a closer look, and got this shot of them firing up the burner.

A couple weeks ago, I went to a huge sword show. Hundreds upon hundreds of amazing swords, costing anywhere from about $500 (for a small blade in rough condition) to over $100,000. The average price for a sword was probably somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. Too rich for me. It was fun looking around, though.

Back to Enoshima!

2009-11-04T04:18:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we had a nice time in Enoshima, but we felt kind of rushed, so we decided to go again while the weather was still nice. We went back a couple weeks later (which is now about a month ago!) It was a weekend, again, so the place was really busy, but instead of being annoying, the crowds gave the whole place kind of a festive atmosphere.

We went up to the temple near the top of the hill where you arrive from the mainland. There is a special "knot" which is supposed to give you good luck (or fertility, or a long life, or something good, anyway) if you pass through it 3 times in a designated way. If I recall correctly, you go through once and go around to the left, again and go around to the right, and one last time, around to the left.

At the very top of the island, there is a pavilion with a garden, where a British merchant established a botanical garden in the late 1800's. Apparently, he was the person who introduced Darwin's theory of evolution to Japan, and he set about cataloguing the flora and fauna of the area. More importantly, there's now an observation tower up there.

From the tower you can look out over the ocean, and back over to the mainland.

Climbing up to the top of the island and then up the observation tower (who am I kidding; we took escalators and elevators the whole way!) gave us quite an appetite. Never ones to take a chance, we ate the same thing we did the last time - little fish on rice. It was just as delicious the second time!

We had a great time on Enoshima. The weather has really been cooling down the last few weeks, so I'm glad that we got there while it was still warm. Further updates to come...

The Stuff I Eat

2009-10-09T04:31:00.000-07:00

After my next-to-last post, I was thinking about the kind of food I eat here. I had a few questions like that over the summer: "What's an average meal for you over there?"
Average would be a bowl of rice with some meat on top; either shredded fried beef and onions, or a deep fried hunk of chicken or breaded pork. In the west, Japanese food has a reputation for being healthy (sushi is low-fat, at least) but everyday food is just as bad as in the west. The traditional diet used to be better until everyone started eating meat.
Anyway, you sometimes get more exotic fare. This was an appetizer at a little bar I went to a while back. It was pretty tasty. Pate of pork heart, with a dollop of salmon roe on top. The pate is mixed through with green peas, and the whole thing has a little bit of sauce. When I was a kid, the peas alone would have made me retch.

I Survived the Typhoon

2009-10-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hi! The typhoon came and went. To my experience, it wasn't a big deal, although I turn on the news this morning and see that 2 people are dead and one missing; the entire train system in Tokyo was shut down for hours yesterday morning, stranding hundreds of thousands of workers and basically bringing the city to its knees.

We knew that a big storm was coming, and people were bracing for impact. The newspapers were blaring headlines about the impending "morning commute panic" which was expected to happen. We learned from some other teachers that the high school was to be shut down for the day, but the university side of things was going to be "business as usual". This despite the fact that all of our students were assuring us that they had no plans of coming to class...

So I woke up a bit early yesterday morning, braved the hurricane winds, and went to the station. There were noticeably fewer people on the platform, but the trains were running. It was actually kind of pleasant because the train was less crowded than usual.

The bus to school was absolutely deserted - it was just me and another teacher, but no students. We walked through deserted hallways and opened up our classes. About 2 minutes before 9, the professor in charge came around and told us that all classes were cancelled for the morning. I later learned that this information had been on the university website for some time, but telling us that wasn't high on our company's To-Do List, apparently.

So, we sat around and amused ourselves for a few hours. The weather that morning was very odd. It started out rainy and windy - typical stormy weather - but the clouds soon blew away and it was a strange mix of sun and high winds. It was actually kind of pleasant being outside, because it wasn't cold at all, but the wind was whipping everything around and making it difficult to walk.

By noon, the storm had faded completely and it was just a nice, warm, sunny day. People who had taken the whole day off must have felt a bit sheepish - although they had a beautiful day to enjoy from home. A few of our students changed their minds and actually showed up for afternoon classes.

The trip home was also very pleasant, with the buses and trains only half full, I'd guess. It kind of made me think what a nice place Tokyo would be if about half the people moved away.

Weekend Update

2009-10-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Hi. It was a good September, overall. The weather was generally good, and I was especially happy that it wasn't too hot. We've had a few storms, but I think the sunny days have outnumbered the rainy ones.

I think I mentioned that I'm living in Yamato city now. Yamato is actually the ancient name for Japan; the name that Japan gave itself before it adopted the name that the Chinese had for it. The sun rises in the East, which, from the Chinese perspective, is where Japan was; hence "the land of the rising Sun", which is more or less what "Nihon" means. Yamato means "great peace", which is kind of ironic when you think about it.

Anyway, commuting into the center of Tokyo (the far side, actually!) from Yamato was kind of taking its toll on me. It was a 90-minute commute, which meant getting on a train at 7:12 every morning, and then not getting home until about 8 o'clock at night. Some people do this every day, and have done so for 40 years, which is probably why there are so many miserable-looking people on the trains here. But I'm back to work at school now, so my commute is only about an hour door-to-door, which is manageable.

I had to work both days last weekend, which meant I worked 11 days straight with no holiday, so I made sure to get the most out of the last weekend. I went to Jodo practice Friday night, and went out for drinks with everybody afterwards, which was fun. I don't understand a lot of what's being said, but people at least try to include me, which is nice. Mr. Matsui, one of the teachers, is a retired newspaper man; I asked him about the change over to computer-based publishing that happened in the 60's and 70's, and he happily told me all about it. I missed a lot of what he said, but I did pick up some interesting tidbits.

Saturday I slept in and that alone made my weekend. I did a bit of laundry and was off to iaido practice. I pay $50 a month for iaido, and it's not pro-rated ... if you attend for one week in September, you have to pay for all of September. So it was good that I went the first week of October. Hopefully I'll get my full money's worth this month. Practice itself was good, although I was really feeling the 2-month absence.

I hurried home and went shopping for Saturday night's dinner. I promised to cook for Yoshie, so I got the ingredients for chicken parmagiana. Of course I forgot a few crucial things (for example, I only had one plate!) so I had to rush back to the store again. By the time Yoshie arrived, I hadn't even started cooking.

Dinner turned out okay; not great, but okay. I cooked waaaay too much food. One chicken breast would have been enough for both of us, so if I make it again, I'll be sure to cut the chicken in half. It'll cook faster, too.

Sunday, we decided that, since the weather was nice, we'd go to Enoshima. This is a small island that has been a vacation spot for Tokyo-ites for centuries. You can see Mount Fuji from the island too, which is very nice. The most famous woodblock print of all is Hokusai's "Great Wave off Kanagawa" which could be set somewhere near Enoshima...

The island used to be accessible by boat (of course) and on foot at low tide, but now there's a bridge connecting it to the mainland.

It's kind of a funky place. It has a really nice "vacation" feeling about it. There are lots of tourist shops and restaurants, and the place is thronging with surfers, jetskiers, people with dogs, and families with kids. Yoshie had heard about a famous restaurant selling shirasu, or baby sardines. These are just tiny little fish with very little actual flavour. I gather that they swim around in big schools, and they are harvested using fine nets. She got raw shirasu with pickled ginger on rice (the far dish) and I got a kind of deep-fried seafood cake with salad on rice. The white stuff on top is a pile of steamed shirasu. It was really, really good. We also had a locally-made beer each. Yoshie's was made with salt water and was kind of interesting.

Yoshie asked me if we eat any kind of similar fish in Canada. I told her No, most people don't like the idea of eating fish whole - eyes, guts, and all - even if they are tiny.

Stuffed to the gills, we walked around the island for a while. Pretty soon the sun was going down and the full moon was out. It's not much of a photo, but you get the idea.

We really enjoyed our afternoon on Enoshima, and decided to go back, possibly next weekend. There seems to be a lot more to explore, so I'll take my camera next time, and hopefully have some better pictures to show you.

This Won't Last Long

2009-09-08T05:25:00.000-07:00

Although not as bad as some countries (Italy comes to mind) Japan has had kind of a revolving-door when it comes to Prime Ministers. The last few PMs have only lasted a year or so each before resigning (I could look it up, but there are few topics I care less about than politics).

Anyway, this guy made headlines when he and the Democratic Party toppled the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power in Japan for ... well, forever, basically. Now there are tons of novice politicians who will be holding office for the first time, (including a woman who has never really had a full-time job before) which is sure to be a recipe for scandals and political disaster. I predict that this government is not going to last long.

And this isn't going to help:
PM's Wife Is a Frigging Nut

In Japan ... Again

2009-09-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

Hello and thanks to everyone I was able to meet up with while I was home. My visit was far too brief, but everybody really did their best to make me comfortable and happy while I was there.

My flight back to Japan was good. I changed my seat and got an excellent spot behind the bulkhead (so, about 10 feet of legroom in front of me!) and nobody to my left. On my right side was the aisle, so I got brushed, bumped, and jostled by every single person who went by, but otherwise, it was a great seat, and I actually managed to get a couple hours of sleep. The crappy part was that the entertainment system wasn't working again (it didn't work on the flight to Canada at all). Or at least, I thought it wasn't working because mine wasn't, and nobody I could see could get theirs to work either. Well, at some point while I was listening to my iPod, I guess they made an announcement that some seats didn't have a working system, but you could move to a vacant seat (the flight was only half full) with a working entertainment system if you wanted. I didn't notice anybody moving seats, either, so this whole thing was lost on me. Point being, I complained towards the end of the flight, and the attendant looked at me like I was an idiot and told me I could have changed my seat. Whoops. So, no movies and no 5% discount by way of an apology (which is what we all got on our Tokyo-Toronto flight). Oh well.

My new apartment is okay, but a bit far from the Tokyo office. It takes the better part of 1hr45 to get to work, but at least I only have to do that for the next few weeks. School starts on the 25th, so after that, my commute will be much shorter. 10 minutes walk to the station, 30 minutes on 2 trains, and a 15 minute bus ride. About an hour in total, which doesn't sound great, but is fairly manageable.

Topic change:
When I go back to Canada, I spend a lot of time defending Japan and talking about why I like living here. But let me tell you about something I absolutely despise: bosozoku. We don't have an English word for these people because we wouldn't tolerate their existence in Canada. They are usually young men, who buy crappy motorcycles and remove the mufflers so that they are ear-splittingly loud. They like to ride slowly through residential neighbourhoods revving their motors, waking people up and generally creating as much noise as they can. I am sure that there are anti-noise laws in Japan, but for whatever reason, the police tend to ignore these jerks. Maybe they feel that they are just rebellious youngsters who are getting out their anti-social feelings in a (relatively) harmless way. But they make me see red - the thought that somebody is deliberately going out of their way to cause as much random irritation to as many people as they possibly can is incredibly annoying to me.

In Canada, I think neighbours would tend to put a stop to this sort of thing. If you lived next door to a kid who fancied himself a bosozoku, the kid would find his tires slashed, or a brick thrown through his window. But Japan being the (otherwise) incredibly polite society that it is, somehow these people continue to operate. When I hear one go by (and one has gone by 3 or 4 times since I started writing this) it makes me want to climb up onto the roof with a sniper rifle. As those tend to be pretty hard to get your hands on in this country, the next best thing would be to wait patiently on the sidewalk with my sword, and decapitate him the next time he rolls by. But then I'd be the one getting arrested, right? I tell ya, life just ain't fair.

Oh, Japan

2009-07-30T02:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes this country can be incredibly frustrating, and later the same day, incredibly gratifying.

Today, I had to get my re-entry permit. This is Japan's way of squeezing 3,000 yen (about 30 dollars) out of every foreigner who'd like to leave the country and then actually get back in. I imagine most other countries have a similar "bureaucracy tax", i.e., a pointless fee you have to pay for something which, in principle, costs the country nothing. So I'm not really complaining about the permit itself.

The first set of hurdles came in the form of an inscrutable procedure, involving standing in line, getting a form, standing in another line to get a number, waiting for your number to be called, finding out that you are in the wrong line, going to a different place, getting another number, having someone look at your form, and then hand it back to you.

While I was filling out my forms, there were a few blanks that I didn't know how to fill out, exactly. I decided that, rather than fill them out incorrectly, I would leave them blank, and the staff could write in the correct information for me.

Well, it doesn't matter how trivial it is, it seems that paperwork in Japan must be completed by the applicant. Even if it's just checking a box, they won't do it for you, they always seem to hand the paper back to you, point, and say, "Check here".

It seems that there must be a rule; clerks are not allowed to fill in any information that should be filled in by you or me. Perhaps this is the result of a past incident; maybe somebody was asked, "Do you waive your rights to blah blah blah?" and not fully understanding the question, said, "Sure, okay." The clerk ticked the "I waive my rights" box for the customer, but then later, the customer must have changed his mind, and as an excuse said, "Hey, I never checked that box! I've been swindled!" And hence the rule.

Once you've got your form filled out, you need to pay for your permit. Rather than do something sensible like, I don't know, giving the clerk some money, you have to go to a separate place, and buy a "stamp" which costs 3000 yen, and then stick that on your form. God knows why they need to do this little sidestep. Presumably there is a rule that they are not allowed to handle money directly.

It reminds me of the whole Pachinko nonsense. Gambling is basically illegal in Japan, so the way Pachinko gets around this is that you buy little metal balls, and use them to play a game similar to slots. If you win, you get a whole bunch more balls! Whoopee! Of course, the balls themselves have no monetary value (ahem ahem) so it's not gambling, as such ... but it just so happens that, beside every Pachinko parlour, there is a separate-but-I-strongly-suspect-somehow-related business that gives you cash for those little Pachinko balls. So it's a ridiculous little extra step that gets around the rule, and everybody has to do it.

Later in the day, I discovered that bureaucrats are not supposed to talk to one another directly, for some reason. I had an issue with my tax refund. The problem was that I was living in one place, (which was supposed to issue my refund) but then moved to a 2nd place. The first place didn't know that I had extended my visa, so hadn't issued me the refund. The 2nd place knew that I had extended my visa, but couldn't pass that information on to the 1st place. When I phoned the 1st, they told me to go to the 2nd. When I went to the 2nd, they said it was a problem for the 1st. Typical bureaucratic runaround. When I asked people at the 2nd place to get on the phone to the people in the 1st, they explained that I would have to call, that they couldn't do it. So, I got on my cellphone, and then handed it to the slightly shocked woman behind the counter, who talked to her counterpart in another ward office, and they worked it all out between them. Amazing! What is the purpose of that rule? Japan is full of them.

And you'd better believe that Japanese people love their rules. In the west, I think we're pretty good at looking past a rule, seeing the guiding principle behind the rule, and then breaking the rule (when it suits us) as long as it doesn't violate the fundamental principle. Here's an example. You might have a rule that says that, in principle, employees should wear a shirt and tie to work. Why? Because it looks nice and impresses the customers. But if you had some employees who didn't come in contact with customers, or who were working without air-conditioning in 35 degree temperatures, you'd relax the rule, I'm sure. After all, if you're drenched in sweat to the point where you dress shirt is translucent and is sticking to your body, you really don't look that impressive. But here in Japan, despite the fact that some of our classes don't have air-conditioning, and we have no contact with "customers," AND the fact that the other professors at the school can wear jeans or sportswear if they like, we are required by our company to wear ties at all times, even (technically) when commuting to and from school. My habit of taking off my tie the moment I get on the bus is actually against the rules.

So the Japanese are rule sticklers. It can be extremely annoying, but it reflects an attention to detail which occasionally serves them really well.

You probably already know that Japan is one of the cleanest places in the world, because the people who are paid to go around picking up garbage actually do it with an incredible attention to detail. Service, even in a 7-11, is outstanding. The trains run on time because the drivers actually watch the time like a hawk, and close the doors when they are supposed to, and get moving when they are supposed to. Food is tasty, and meals are cooked properly, because the guy doing the cooking is actually paying attention to what he's doing. In Canada, the bored teenager behind the grill couldn't care less about what he's doing ... and if you're really unlucky, he's already dropped your steak on the floor once, or (maybe) spit in your burger for kicks. My friend worked at a GM plant for a summer, and told me stories about workers getting drunk and stoned on the assembly line, or sleeping in the cars they had just assembled, while their foremen covered for them. Somehow, I don't think this happens much in Japan. Nobody need wonder how Japanese cars came to beat American cars in terms of build quality.

I had to have some of my belongings stored for me while I go back to Canada this summer. The company had arranged to come and pick up my things sometime between 6 and 9 pm - kind of a wide window. After my ordeal at the immigration office, and then at the ward office, I was just anticipating problems. Things couldn't possibly go smoothly, could they? But no, the man showed up promptly at 5 minutes past 6, with his cart; he loaded all my belongings into his truck (wearing nice clean white gloves, of course), counted my receipts, counted my boxes, thanked me for my time, and was off like a shot. I have every confidence that he will unload my belongings with care, and that they will be stored safely until I need them back.

Contrast this to Canada/the U.S. In Chicago, I personally witnessed a hulking mental-deficient flinging suitcases off of a baggage carousel with a dim-witted glee, trying to damage them as much as he could in the process. My luggage was subsequently lost, and delivered to me at the most inconvenient possible time, at 4:30 a.m., 3 days later than they had told me, and about 2 minutes before I needed to leave to catch another flight. The man who did eventually deliver my bags was using his family minivan, crammed to the ceiling with suitcases randomly piled in the back. The airlines obviously find it is more cost-efficient to use "freelancers" than to hire a reputable delivery company.

So which is worse: anal-retentives who won't bend a rule, no matter how absurdly ill-fitting it is? Or people who don't give a shit, and do the absolute minimum with no regard for standards? I don't have the answer, except that there must be some sort of happy medium - a place where people do their jobs with pride, but have enough common sense to bend the rules when it might actually help somebody. Simple enough, right?

Update

2009-04-19T06:08:00.000-07:00

Hi! It's been quite a while since my last post, so it's kind of hard to sum up the last 4 months, but basically:

-I finished the 2nd term at university and told my students I wouldn't be coming back; they were quite disappointed to hear that...
-started working in the Tokyo office, a 90-minute commute from my place. Fun!
-debated whether or not to take another job, and in the end, for various reasons, decided to stay with my current job
-got busier and busier at work; did 5 trainings in about 2 weeks!
-smack dab in the middle of that, moved out of my apartment, into a hotel for a week, and then into my new apartment
-enjoyed the cherry blossoms as much as I could while being unsettled and insanely busy
-started school again at the same university as before, much to the shock of my old students, many of whom honestly said (I feel like I'm bragging to tell you this) "You're back? Oh no! I decided not to take English again because I thought, if Jeff's not teaching it, I don't want to take it! Now it's too late to sign up for your class!" That made me feel good about myself and sad at the same time.

Things are very different this semester; we have 8 teachers, up from 4 last term. It is sometimes tricky sharing a room with another teacher, and a teachers' room with 7 other people, but so far so good. I'm enjoying my new classes, loving my new apartment (write me for my new address), looking forward to a visit from Guelph iaido club members, studying Japanese sporadically, going to the gym occasionally, and jodo once a week. Iaido has fallen by the wayside for the moment, as I only have weekend practices and I seem to have had something else to do every weekend for the past month! But hopefully, I'll get back to it before I forget everything I know.

What else is new? Today I saw "Slumdog Millionaire" (it just opened in Japan a couple weeks ago) and it filled me with a determination never to go to India.

I hope everyone is well. Write if you have time!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T01:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! So much for my idea that I was going to try and keep this Blog updated more often...

It has been a fairly uneventful autumn, which is good if it's true that no news is good news. I've just been chugging along in my happy little rut, teaching, eating, sleeping ...

I had a bit of knee trouble, that turned out to be osteoarthritis. It comes and goes, I've been told, but the nice thing is that right now, it's mostly gone. I have resumed doing iaido and going to the gym, and so far my knees are pretty happy. I need to go on a diet and drop a few kilograms, and now I have the added incentive of helping my ailing knees.

Work is fine, more or less. The students still have no enthusiasm for learning English, and I'm pretty much okay with that. If I have a problem, it's that the university seems okay with that too. With the population of Japan drastically declining, there are fewer young people, so fewer university students, so fewer asses in seats, which means less tuition money. Universities are (and this is incredibly sad) relaxing their already lax standards, and doing everything they can to keep students enrolled. In the case of my course, it means teaching university students stuff they learned in their Junior High School English classes. Imagine, for a moment, that you were going to university for something not directly related to math, but you had to take a math course anyway, and it turns out that it's on the level of "2x + 5 = 11; What is x?" I can imagine that you would consider it a joke, even if you weren't very good at math and could actually use the review. My students struggle with forming basic sentences, but they still don't think they need what they are learning. Oh well!

I'm on holidays now, have been for almost 2 weeks, and will be for a few more days. This is the upside of teaching: generous holidays. I'll teach for a few more weeks, then give my scholars the final exam. After that, I'll be in the Tokyo office for a couple months. I always look forward to the change of pace that working in the office brings, even if the office environment gets quite boring after a week. In the end, I prefer teaching, but the office is a nice change for a short time.

As for my holidays themselves, I haven't done very much, except relax, read books, surf the web, sleep ... you know, the preferred activities of a true sloth like myself.

I don't really have any New Year's Resolutions, as I know that I don't keep them. But, if I have any hopes for the New Year, they are typical things like, "I hope I can keep going to the gym on a regular basis" and "I hope my knee stays relatively pain-free" and "I hope I can continue to have a job I enjoy". With the economy tanking the way it is, I guess we shouldn't take it for granted.

So, Happy New Year, everyone! Good Luck in 2009!

Mount Fuji

2008-10-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

My friend's family has a cottage in Yamanashi, near Yamanaka lake, which is quite close to Mount Fuji. A few of us from work went up there last weekend. The weather was good, and the best part was that there was really nothing to do except eat, drink, talk, listen to music, and go for little walks. Oh, we also went to a really nice hot spring resort, which we got into for half-price. It was a very, very relaxing weekend!

It may seem really stupid to say, but Fuji is really, really big. Unlike most other mountains, where there are foothills or something getting in the way, Fuji is a big volcanic cone rising up out of flat land all around. When we were driving up, most of it was obscured by clouds and haze. But at one point, my friend said, "Oh, you can see the sides of Mt. Fuji!" I looked, and all I could see were what I took to be blue-gray cloud banks way up above the horizon; suddenly, I had this shift of perspective where I realized that those were the lower slopes of the mountain! The next morning, I woke up kind of early to go and take a picture before it got hazy again. When you finally see it, it dominates your entire field of view. It really is enormous. This picture can't do it justice, because you don't get a sense of how far away the mountain is. It looks like a small mountain that's kind of close, I think. But I just kept thinking, "That thing is 7 times taller than the CN Tower..."

It was the first time I'd ever really seen Fuji (not counting seeing it from the train or from a plane). I was quite impressed.

Last but not least, some huge thistle-looking flowers. It's really nice weather here, finally. It has cooled down, but it has been sunny and clear for a few days. We usually get typhoons in the fall, so I will try to enjoy the sun while I can.

First Class, and Training

2008-09-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

I had my first class on Friday. Most of my students were pretty happy to see me again, and to find out that I would be teaching them. But of course, some of them groaned and said, "Him again?" I'm not sure if these geniuses have realized yet that I'm the guy who decides what mark they receive at the end of the term.

Then, on Saturday, I helped with our company's big semi-annual orientation. There were about 130 teachers, and I had to lead an information session for about 50 of them for an hour in the afternoon. It's the third time I've given that talk, so I was afraid it would be really stale, but it went over well. I think it was about as painless as it could be. It's funny; sometimes I don't mind public speaking (like at this hour-long session) but other times, I get really nervous. For example, at the beginning of the day, we had to get up on stage and introduce ourselves. It was only for about 10 seconds, but afterward my heart was hammering! I wonder why...

After the orientation, I went out with some of the other teachers and the Japanese staff for a bit of food. We went to an "Asian" place, meaning they had stuff from random Asian countries, but no one country in particular. (For some reason - I'll let you speculate on what it could be - the Japanese don't consider themselves "Asian".) The people I was with seemed to enjoy ordering weird stuff, so they got pig's ear (Wikipedia says: It can be first boiled or stewed, and then sliced thin, served with soy sauce or spiced with chili paste. When cooked, the outer texture is gelatinous, akin to tofu, and the center cartilage is crunchy. Pig's ear can be eaten warm or cold.) We had it sliced thin, with chili paste, and cold. It was pretty good, but I wouldn't order it for myself.

We also had something the Japanese were calling "piton" which is also called a hundred-year egg (Wikipedia says: a Chinese cuisine ingredient made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice straw for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing. After the process is completed, the yolk becomes a dark green, cream-like substance with a strong odor of sulfur and ammonia, while the white becomes a dark brown, transparent jelly with little flavor or taste.) I have to confess that the image was so disgusting, I didn't even try it.

This week classes start in earnest, so I'll let you know how everything goes... until then, take care, and watch out for hurricane Ike.

No News Is Good News

2008-09-20T19:20:00.001-07:00

Not much has been going on, but I promised to try and update this thing more frequently. Let's see if I can remember what I've been doing this past week:

Working in the office has been nice. It requires a long commute, and it's kind of boring, but the highlight of every day is surely when we (the 3 or 4 other foreigners working in the office and myself) go out to one of the local restaurants for lunch. Every conceivable cuisine is represented within a 4-block radius, so before lunch we always sit around and discuss our options: "Basement Italian? Thai? Cheap Japanese? How about the Good-curry-but-bad-salad Indian?"

That will all come to an end when I go back to teaching next week, as the university has 2 very mediocre cafeterias. Our only choices are dingy-but-uncrowded cafeteria, or nice-but-crowded cafeteria. So I'll enjoy the food around the office while I can.

We had a small training session for 25 of the new teachers this week. I was supposed to deliver a short presentation during the first part of the session. Well, as it turned out, the trains were severely delayed that morning. We got on a train at 8 a.m., and didn't get off the train until 2 and a half hours later. That was a horrible ride; probably the worst congestion (compaction, really) I've ever experienced on a train. When the train gets that crowded, most people don't have a strap or rail to hang onto. Furthermore, nobody has enough floor-space to stand with their feet wide apart. So, you put your feet right together like a soldier at attention. It makes it almost impossible to keep your balance when the train starts or stops moving. People who have no strap to hang onto just end up leaning onto the person beside them. No big deal, as you are jammed cheek-by-jowl with the next person, but the effect gets transmitted to the people at the end of the train car. If you are at the end of the car, you literally have the weight of a hundred people leaning against you. You can't fight against it; I've seen people trying to, and it just doesn't work. Your hands will get pried off the bar, no matter how strong you are. You just have to try to get a breath when you can, and then hopefully not have your ribs broken. It's awesome!

Anyway, two and a half hours of misery, and I managed to get to the conference room halfway through my own speech. A co-worker was bravely trying to do it, but when I arrived, he just handed the mic over to me and I had to pick up from where he was. It was kind of confusing, to say the least, especially since I was shell-shocked from the train ride.

Other than working, I haven't been doing very much. I was planning on driving to Kyoto this weekend with my friend Mori, but a typhoon was coming, and I had visions of Hurricane Ike - roads washed out, or at the very least, tourist sites closed due to torrential rain. So, I decided to stay in Tokyo this weekend. As it turned out, the weather hasn't been too bad; the typhoon seems to have changed course, but I can still go back to Kyoto next month. Maybe the leaves will be turning by then. Ahhh... Kyoto in the fall. If I go, I'll have some pictures for this thing.

1 Week Back

2008-09-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

So, after having an all-too-brief 4 week visit back to Canada, I have come back to Japan. My flight was great, actually. The plane was about 1/3 empty, so right after takeoff I was able to change seats and move into a vacant spot right behind the bulkhead, with no-one beside me. The extra room meant that I could stretch out and actually get a couple hours of sleep. There were also a few good movies, so the 12-hour flight only felt like 8 hours or so.

I was really struck by something at the airport. Here in Tokyo, 2 middle-aged men were carefully picking up every bag on the luggage carousel, and putting them back down with handles facing outwards for easy retrieval by the owners. There were also shifting them together, so as to make best use of the available space. They were performing their job (which I'm sure is no picnic) calmly, professionally, and with care.

Contrast this with the scene at Chicago O'Hare, where a hulking young man was snatching bags off the carousel and heaving them down in a pile on the floor. I'm not exaggerating when I say that his face had a kind of dull meanness about it as he flung people's suitcases much harder than they needed to be thrown, as if he took pleasure in the thought that he might be damaging the property of strangers.

This episode encapsulates something about Japan, and goes a long way to explaining why I like it here. If Japan and the US are opposite extremes, I would say that Canada is somewhere in the middle, although tending toward the American end, I'm sorry to say.

After the airport, I had to stop in briefly at the Tokyo office to pick up my apartment keys and the map to my place. Now that I'm a "seasoned veteran" I no longer get an escort to my apartment, the assumption being that I can figure things out for myself. Well, let's just say that what looks simple on a map looks an awful lot different at night, in the dark, in an unfamiliar area, and when you're shockingly sleep-deprived.

Following a long train ride to my station, I wandered around for quite some time before giving up, going back to the station, and getting a taxi. Even with a GPS navigation system in his taxi, the driver couldn't find my place, so he dropped me off by the nearest recognizable landmark (the local elementary school) and I walked around until I finally found it.

And I went inside, right? Wait, one more slight hurdle: an electronic gate, which I had not been given the combination to. It was 10 pm by now, so a few moany phone calls later ("Sorry to call you so late, but I'm just FINALLY getting to my place NOW ... yeah, I know, it's been like 3 HOURS since I left the office ... it's REALLY FAR from the station and REALLY HARD to find...") and I was given the code. I dropped my stuff on the floor, got my bed set up, and slept like the dead. I was so tired that I had no trouble getting to sleep, and I woke up the next morning around 6 a.m., jet-lag defeated by sheer force of exhaustion.

For the next couple weeks, I'm working in the Tokyo office, which is a horribly long commute on a packed train, but I suppose I can endure it for 2 weeks. After that, I'm back to the same school I was at before. That's okay, I guess.

So, am I glad to be back? Umm, hard to say. I feel a lot less excitement and enthusiasm than I have in the past. My school is nothing to get excited about - the students are decent, but dull, and lazy. My apartment is far from work, and in the wrong direction from Tokyo. So, I don't know. It's hard to see any advantages this time over last time, but I have nothing to really complain about, either. So we'll see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'm hoping to keep this thing updated more regularly, so we'll see how that goes, too...

New Brunswick - I hate planes

2008-08-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

I went to New Brunswick for a couple weeks. It was great, because I did next to nothing. Ate a lot of good food (thanks to the culinary ability of other people!), watched a lot of TV, did a tiny bit of studying, laid on the couch. It was extremely relaxing. I'm so relaxed right now that I don't know how I'm ever going to go back to work.

Anyway, it was a nice visit. Also, I found out that my cousin in Texas had her baby, which was great news that has everyone quite excited. We're all looking forward to seeing some baby photos soon.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and I had to leave Moncton yesterday. But it seems that my bad luck when it comes to planes hadn't quite run its course*. Just after takeoff, I noticed that the plane wasn't gaining any altitude. The plane seemed to be banking around over the city in some kind of holding pattern. I remember thinking to myself, "This doesn't seem right..." Pretty soon the captain came on and announced that there was a problem with the instruments and we were going to have to go back. We wheeled around again, and came in for a landing. Because we were in a small, regional jet, we were being buffeted quite a lot by the winds, and the plane was bouncing and yawing around. I was sweating and feeling quite nervous, to be honest. We got closer and closer to the runway, when suddenly we powered up and started taking off again. If you've never experienced this, I have to tell you that it's fairly nerve-wracking. We gained some altitude, came around in a big circle, and (much to my relief) finally landed.

We then sat on the tarmac for another 45 minutes or so while technicians tried to fix the problem, and refuel the airplane. What with all of our messing around, we no longer had enough fuel to get to Montreal. We finally got off the ground over an hour late, so I knew I had missed my connection.

In Montreal, I tried to contact my sister-in-law, who was waiting for me in Toronto, but it was basically futile. I think that airlines need to have some way of notifying relatives of whether or not individuals got on a certain flight or not. The system is entirely computerized, so I'm sure it's feasible ... and people could select, at the time that they book their flight or something, whether or not they want that information made public.

Anyway, I finally got into Toronto about 3 hours late. My sister-in-law had been patiently waiting, with 5 kids (!) for me all afternoon, not knowing when I was going to show up. As you might expect (because, really, aren't airline people notoriously unhelpful?) she didn't get a lot of information from the staff at the airport until she had asked and asked and been directed to several different places.

And they say that air travel is just going to get worse. With rising fuel costs, airlines are cutting back on flights, so the remaining flights are going to be more congested AND more expensive. Service will likely decline; customers' tempers will get shorter, and there will be more conflict in the airports. The whole experience is going to become more unpleasant.

I also learned from a friend that Air Canada is no longer going to have any direct flights from Toronto to Tokyo after this fall. Let's hope I'm not doing much travelling after this year.

*Let's hope it has now, since I'm flying to Tokyo in 2 weeks!

The Ghastly Ordeal of J.H.B.

2008-08-02T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Canada, but just barely. Things started bad and just got worse. Allow me to explain...

My first problem was a mistake in booking my ticket. I had to book it quite a long time in advance, so maybe I wasn't thinking very clearly, but I made a mistake and booked my flight the day AFTER the last day of my contract. I had to move out of my apartment on the last day, which meant that I had nowhere to stay for one night. I got a hotel with convenient access to the airport, but it cost me $80. Plus, my company only re-imburses travel to the airport if it's done on the last day of one's contract, so I had to shell out $20, putting me $100 down because of my own stupid mistake.

I got to the airport with plenty of time, hoping that I could get a good seat on the plane. Well, as it turns out, United Airlines now charges more for seats with extra leg room, so I was stuck with a regular seat. [Aside: economy air travel is getting to be so unbearably awful, while business/first class is so luxurious, it sometimes seems to me that the airlines are actually trying to make economy travel miserable in order to drive more people to pay for the better class seats.]

We were only about 15 or 20 minutes late leaving Tokyo, as I recall. The flight was pretty bad. As soon as we got up to cruising altitude, the captain warned everyone to stay in their seats, and we began experiencing heavy turbulence. At some points, the plane would lurch upwards and then plummet down like a roller coaster to hell. Some of the more excitable passengers were screaming; I wanted to scream, but couldn't because I was clenching my teeth too hard. We did eventually clear the turbulence, but it kept coming back. As it was, we were forced to remain in our seats for almost half the flight.

The other nice thing was the woman in front of me, who rammed her seat back onto my knees. I tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to raise her seatback. She did, but half an hour later, she tried to lower her seat again. I tapped her on the shoulder again, showed her my knees, which were brushing the back of her seat even with me sitting bolt upright. A couple hours later, she did it a third time. I tapped her on the shoulder again, and asked her to raise her seat; her answer was a whiny, "But I'm tired..." I just kept picturing the headlines: man decapitates woman on international flight using plastic knife.

I'm completely unable to sleep on planes, so I entertained myself by imagining her murder, with Sudoku, and by watching "The Chronicles of Narnia" three times (there were no other good movie choices). In this way, the 12 hour flight only felt like 18 hours.

When we landed in Chicago, the captain informed us that another plane was in our berth, so we would have to wait until that plane was cleared out of the way. That took about half an hour. Let me tell you, sitting in a plane on the ground is way more tedious than sitting in one that's flying. And because you're taxiing, you still can't leave your seat, no matter how much you might have to go to the bathroom.

We finally got off the plane. I hurried to try and be the first person from our flight to get through US customs. I was 5th in line off of our plane, but it made absolutely no difference because there were about 1000 people in line ahead of us. I had 2.5 hours to make my connection to Toronto, and I thought maybe, maybe I just might make it, but no luck. I was in the line for about 3 hours. In 3 hours, you get to recognize a lot of people in line, and I started to notice that some people like to try and jump the line. They make some excuse to leave the line first: maybe they have a small child with them, and keep going in and out of the line, ducking under the cordon, as if they are taking their kid to the bathroom. Or, they hold up a paper and sigh in exasperation, as if they mistakenly took the wrong customs form. They make it so that everyone is used to seeing them moving in and out of the line-up, but every time they come back to the line, it's ahead of where they started. In this way, the woman who had been sitting in front of me ("But I'm tired...") went from being about 50 people in the line behind me, to about 100 people ahead of me.

And then there was the loud, unwashed group of about 10 French-speaking men who were about 100 people behind me, and whom I kept passing as the line snaked its way through the hall. At some point, I noticed one of them starting to try and pass me. I said to him, "Hey, you weren't behind me before!" and he just said, "Okay, Okay." I insisted: "No, it's not okay. You have to go back!" and he muttered, "Okay, buddy. Okay," but stayed in his place. The young Japanese man behind me, who he had butted in front of, politely said to him, "Why don't you go back to where you were? You passed all these people. It's not fair." The man just sneered at him, stuck out his chin, and said, "Speak French!" Va te faire foutre.

The airline officials were almost as bad. A psychotic-looking man with a clipboard was jumping around by the entrance and angrily yelling, "Aer Lingus! Aer Lingus! Are there any Aer Lingus passengers?" and practically fell into a rage at one point, yelling, "I have no idea, because I DON'T WORK FOR THAT AIRLINE! Now are there any Aer Lingus passengers?!" A girl with a heavy Russian or Polish accent was checking our customs declarations card and berating anybody who had filled it out incorrectly. I hated her immediately as she began abusing the Japanese kid behind me, who hadn't filled out some blank field somewhere. But then she met up with the filthy Frenchmen, and they got into a shouting match with her, so I was reluctantly forced to take her side.

Tensions in the line were pretty high, and I guess that the majority of people who had connecting flights missed them, given that the wait was 3 hours. The problem is that customs and the airlines are completely independent of each other, so they don't make any effort to work together.

Having finally cleared customs and dealt with a year's worth of ignorant, angry, rude people, I had to find my bags. They told us to go to carousel 9, so of course, I found my bags in a heap beside carousel 8. I had to avoid being struck by a flying suitcase (I'm not making this up) which was being violently flung, along with all the other baggage, off the carousel by a drooling, 6'7" (possibly lobotomized) airline worker, who seemed to be the only person in the airport enjoying himself.

One man - a grown man, mind you - was having some kind of temper tantrum or emotional breakdown, and was yelling to no-one in particular, "Goddamnit, damnit, damn, you can't trust anybody anymore!!! Just go back to China then! Goddamnit! Where's my suitcase?!" About a second later, he grabbed a suitcase from the pile (I do hope it was his) and screamed, "Finally! Goddamnit!" and stalked off.

I couldn't find where I was supposed to go, so I just followed the angry cursing to a knot of bored-looking security officers who signed my customs form without looking at it or me, and then I proceeded to a baggage receiving area. A very nice man took my suitcases, told me where I should go next, and then passed my bags to a couple of distracted looking young men who were discussing "that bitch" and "what she done did" and what "I'm about to do to her" and the like. I knew that I would never see my suitcases again.

I went and got in line to get re-booked onto another flight. There were only about 20 people in line, so I was quite surprised when it took 2 hours to get through it. The woman booked me on the 9:30 pm flight to Toronto (my original flight was supposed to land at 9 in Toronto) and made no apologies or comments about me having missed my flight. If you were looking for sympathy from anybody, this was not the place. Two men in front of me were re-booked onto a flight to Montreal that was leaving at 6 a.m. the next day; they told me that the airline wouldn't pay for their hotel for the night, because it was the fault of Customs, not the airline.

I went through security (again) and was yelled at by the guard: "Shoes OFF! Shoes OFF! All footwear comes OFF!" as if I was the dumbest animal he'd ever met. I thought to myself, a sign, prominently displayed and perhaps saying something like, "Please remove shoes" would be an awesome idea in a place like this, I wonder if anybody's ever thought of it? I removed my shoes, stuffed them into my bag, then was ordered to remove my laptop from my bag for inspection, and to present my passport and boarding pass (again). By this point, I was entirely discombobulated, and I was holding up the line, so I grabbed all my stuff, zippers hanging open, staggered off in sock feet to a quiet corner, and got my stuff together. At this point, I had a panic attack because I thought I had lost my passport and boarding pass, but it was just that I had stuffed them in the wrong bag in the confusion.

Once my heartrate dropped back to a sustainable level, I realized that I had better call the airport and leave a page or message or something for my dad because he would be waiting for me and I wouldn't be on the 9 o'clock flight. Let me present the following in point form:

-no money: find an ATM
-can't find an ATM: ask at information
-ATM down there, sir. I go down there, cards don't work.
-try another ATM. Card works! Withdraw $20.
-go get change. Can't get change. Buy a drink, get change from that.
-go to phone. Try to dial information to get number of Pearson Airport in Toronto.
-"Please deposit another $4.50 to continue with this call." Only have $3.
-Stick in credit card, enter credit card number, expiry date, security code, billing address zip code. This is 26 digits in total. (*)
-Get a number for Pearson. Go to (*) to make another call.
-Call the number; it is out of service.
-Go back to (*), call directory assistance again, get another number.
-Go to (*), call the number; it turns out to be a Fax number.
-Go to (*), call information for the third time.
-Say, "I'd like the number for Pearson International Airport, BUT...", woman connects me to automatic voice system before I have a chance to say anything. Get the first (useless) number I got before.
-Go to (*), call information, but explain that the first 2 numbers didn't work. Get a 3rd number.
-Go to (*), call the number, it is also not in service.
-Give up - I have been calling for 30 minutes and it's time to get on my flight.

I proceeded through O'Hare airport and found my gate. About 5 minutes after boarding was scheduled to commence, I notice that most people who were there before are gone. Where did everyone go? What the hell? Another passenger checks the board and notices that they have changed the gate without telling anybody! They changed the gate, and there was no announcement! Fuming, but too tired to actually be angry, I trudged to the gate. Of course (of course!) our flight was delayed, so I hadn't missed anything.

One poor woman was working the gate by herself, and loudly complaining about it. "Why I gotta do all this bullshit by myself ... it's always like this ... I don't know ... " etc. Finally, almost one hour late, it is time to board the plane. She screams at the passengers, "Open your passport to show your PHOTO! Have your passports ready! I am all ALONE up here! I have to do everything by MYSELF!"

By this point in the proceedings, I was absolutely exhausted, and the flight to Chicago was like a dream. It was absolutely smooth, no problem. Off to the east of us, we were treated to a spectacular light show from what was, without a doubt, the most active lightning display I have ever seen: constant lightning, 2 or 3 flashes every second, for 10 minutes or more, lighting up entire cloudbanks. It was amazing. I wish I could have filmed it.

We landed in Toronto, and the final insult: as I expected, they lost my bags. I came out of the gate at 1 a.m., 4 hours late, and found Dad waiting there in the empty arrivals lounge. I was expecting him to be in a bad mood, but he was just happy to see me.

As of this writing, I still haven't received word about my bags. I slept away most of the day today, so didn't phone, but I guess I'd better hassle them tomorrow.

Let me leave you with a last thought: America is a cess-pit. Too many Americans are assholes, and a lot of people from other countries are even worse. United Airlines definitely sucks. For all its problems, at least Japan is a place where you are rarely yelled at by customer "service" people, and other people know how to keep their place in line. I would rather ride a packed Tokyo subway train every day for a year than go through what I went through in one day of travelling by United Airlines through the U.S.

2 Months ... sorry!

2008-07-30T00:30:00.001-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything for 2 months. Some people were worried about me, so thanks. But I'm okay. I haven't been particularly busy, just not a whole lot of stuff to talk about.

School finished. It was a tough semester, in some ways. The students at the school are a bit of a handful sometimes - crazy, rowdy behaviour, but no enthusiasm for the material. Plus, teaching 6 40-minute classes a day is tiring, in a different way that teaching 3 90-minute classes a day (like I was doing before) is tiring.

I'm going back to the same school in the fall, though, and hopefully we're going to take some of the things we've learned about the students and the program, and make some adjustments, and make the whole situation a bit better. Plus, I know the students now, and they know me, so everything should run a bit better.

For the last week or so, since classes finished, I have been working in the Tokyo office. Although the commute is kind of miserable (90 minutes on a full - but not packed! - train) working in the office is actually kind of fun. Compared with the school, where there were only 4 of us stuck off on our own in a neglected wing of an underused, old building, the office seems like a very bright and cheerful place. There's a lot going on, there are other people to talk to; it feels more stimulating. And, it's a change from the school. For one week, that's pretty good. (I'm also going back to the office for a few weeks in September, when I come back to Japan.)

SO, the big news is that I'm coming back home for the month of August! It will be a hectic month and it's going to fly by, I'm sure. I'm aiming to spend roughly half of the time in Ontario, and half in New Brunswick. I'm REALLY looking forward to spending some time at the cottage, as I didn't get too many days there last year. But even one or two days this summer will be fantastic.

Other than that, I have no plans. I'm going to be lazy, study some kanji, read some novels, watch some movies, eat some real Canadian pizza and chicken wings (Japanese pizza tends to have a lot of corn, mayo, and tuna on it - I don't mind it, but it's just not the same, is it?) and just generally take it easy and try not to run out of money too quickly.

So, anyway, if you're reading this, I'm probably going to see you very shortly! I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you are too.

In the News

2008-05-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

Here are two news stories I read today that seem quite different at first, but are basically about the same thing.

Homeless Woman Lives For a Year In Man's Closet

Uncontacted Tribe Spotted in Amazon

Recent Events

2008-04-19T02:26:00.000-07:00

So, I moved from Kashiwa, into a hotel for a few days, and finally into my new place in Yokohama. Actually, I'm out in the suburbs. Yokohama is, I believe, the 3rd largest city in Japan, but where I am feels like a very residential small town. It's quite pleasant...

Last week I was traveling all over the place, doing sample lessons. It was fun, I suppose ... I got to visit a lot of campuses in the Tokyo area, and meet a lot of students. Then last Wednesday, I took the bullet train up to Fukushima for the day, which was also fun.

I had my orientation for the new university on Thursday, and yesterday was the first day of school. It was kind of crazy; we didn't know where we were going, or anything, and I was almost late for my first class, but it ended up being okay. The students are extremely low level, but very enthusiastic and nice.

But just to backtrack a bit, I had a weird experience Thursday night. After the orientation, I went out with some co-workers as it was my last day in the office. After some food and some drinks, we came out of the bar and started heading for the subway. It was about 10 p.m. at this point, and they weren't very many people on the street. We rounded the corner, and I noticed an old man lying on his back in the sidewalk about 20 metres ahead of us. "Crazy old drunk!" I thought; it's rare but not unheard of to see people passed out in the street at night. But this was a very strange place to pass out. As we got closer, I realized from the position of his limbs and the way he was lying, that he wasn't drunk. "This isn't good," I remember saying. I ran up and yelled, "Are you all right?" He obviously wasn't. I felt for a pulse at his neck and at his wrist. There was nothing, and in fact, he was cold to the touch. "He's dead ... you'd better call the police..."

My Japanese co-worker went off to get the police from the local station, and I stayed with the body. The man's eyes were open slightly, and there was a trace of blood around his nose and mouth. He had been wearing a medical-type bracelet on his wrist, but it had fallen off. His clothes were strangely askew. At some point, I realized that he had jumped or fallen out of the high-rise apartment we were standing in front of. It was starting to rain, and I had this feeling that I couldn't just stand there and let him get rained on, so I held my umbrella over his body. A small crowd of people gradually started to accumulate. The sight of me holding my umbrella over a dead body must have made the whole scene doubly strange. Within a few minutes, a pair of young police officers rode up on their bicycles. They felt for a pulse, didn't find one, and then radioed it in. My Japanese co-worker had to stay and answer a few questions, but I was free to go so I left.

On the way home, the train was full, as usual, with all kinds of people: taciturn salary-men, boistrous couples, sleepy high school students, housewives. I couldn't stop looking at their faces. A few people must have wondered what I was staring at.

More Hanami Photos...

2008-04-19T02:21:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some of the photos from the blossom viewing party a few weeks back.

If you want to see more, they are online here.

Moving Day

2008-04-06T05:14:00.000-07:00

You would think I'd be pretty used to moving by now. I've moved about 10 times or more in the past couple years, so I've had plenty of practice. I notice a few common things every time I move:

In the week leading up to the move, I look around and think, "I don't have that much stuff. It won't be too hard to pack up." As I'm in the process of packing, I think, "Where did I ever get so much crap? I'm going to have to throw half of it away." When I finally finish, and everything's boxed up, I think, "Is this it? This is the sum total of my belongings in Japan?? 1.5 cubic meters?"

I do the same thing with time. I leave the packing to the last minute, because I think it won't take too long. By the middle of my packing frenzy, I think I'll never get finished in time. But I almost always finish early, and then have to sit around for a couple hours for the courier guys to come get my stuff.

Maybe the worst part about packing up and moving out is that the apartment has to be absolutely empty; you can't even leave a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom or a coat hanger in the closet. So, you have to think "backwards" and pack those things which you might need at the last minute, last. So, working backwards, you want to be sure to throw away (this is backwards, remember...) the last toilet paper roll, the extra garbage bags, the paper towels, the cleaning products, that last can of pop/beer to get you through the afternoon, the cleaning supplies, the hand towel, .... I think you can appreciate how irritating it is when you've already thrown something into the garbage, and then suddenly you realize you need it. "Oh, I have to wash my hands... oops, already threw out the soap." Or, "Hey, I forgot there's a jar of jam and some bread ... oops, I already threw out my cutlery. Maybe I can put the jam on there with my fingers." Which is what I did today.

Anyway, I've moved out of my place, and I'm now in a hotel on the west side of Tokyo for a few days. It's funny; I've never been out here before, and it's so strange, I feel as though I could be on Mars. I don't know the trains, or how to read the station names, or anything, which is baffling. If you know where you're going, maps are so simple as to be trivial, but when you actually need to look at a map for information, they become pretty confusing. Most place names, for example, have some kind of non-standard reading. I was staring at a train map for a good 5 minutes today, and finally gave up and asked the guy where to catch my train. The reason I couldn't figure out which train to get on was because almost all the trains go to my destination (except one). Sure enough, I almost got on that one wrong train, but my nervous nature stopped me, and I finally figured it out.

I think most foreigners have a pretty low opinion of signs and maps in Japan. I don't know who designs them, or what kind of qualifications they have, but there seem to be a lot of really dumb mistakes. For example, those signs that say, "You are here" but the orientation of the sign is exactly opposite the way you're actually standing in relation to the real world, so you think you have to go straight ahead, but really you need to turn around first. Or signs that use 35 different colours to try to indicate 35 slightly different kinds of information, but the difference in colour is so subtle that you need to get paint chips to match up the map colours with the legend. Or, (like what happened to me today) the sign for the train says, "Bound for Karakida" and no matter how long you stare at the map, you just can't find Karakida, so you don't even know if that train is going in the right direction. God forbid they maybe put Karakida (and the other various final stops) in bold or something so you can find them easily.

Anyway, if Tokyo gets the Olympics (are they still in the running?) then maybe there will be a signage revolution. Until then, I make sure to carry my compass with me at all times - even in downtown Tokyo.

Blossom Viewing

2008-03-31T07:16:00.000-07:00

I think hanami, or blossom viewing, season in Japan is, in its own way, the closest thing the Japanese have to our Christmas. The reasons for the celebrations are totally different, the approach is different, the activities are different, but it's a special season that creeps up on you every year, when you sit back and take a minute to reflect on the good things in life, and how lucky you are, and how quickly time goes by. For us, Christmas has heavy religious meanings, but it's also the festival of lights, a time when we really appreciate the beauty of a silent landscape shrouded in snow. For the Japanese, hanami is a time to appreciate the beauty of the cherry blossoms, which come quickly and fade just as fast. Cherry blossoms symbolize the brevity of life; the tree is the most beautiful just as its petals begin to fall off; just as the flowers start to die.

Anyway, it's also a time to get together with friends, get a tarp and some food and lots of booze, and then go and sit in a park and get totally shitfaced. Because Japan is such an extraordinarily peaceful place, there's rarely any trouble or rowdiness. So it's really a very pleasant time, actually, especially if you're 'faced yourself.

My friends and I got together on Sunday for a hanami party. Actually, two of them planned it and took the extraordinary step of going to the park at 9:30 am to secure a good spot on the lawn. That meant that, by the time I got there at noon, they were already wankered, or whatever those damn Brits and Aussies say.

Apparently, a helicopter from the Asahi Newspaper was flying by taking a photograph just as I got there. That photo above is of me, (plus a whole bunch of other onlookers). It was on the front page of the Asahi Daily News this morning. Quite a nice souvenir of hanami this year, I must say.

Note: I had planned to zoom in and show you exactly where I am, but the photo I stole from the Asahi website seems to be really low quality or something. I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, you can speculate as to which one's me. Hint: tall, balding, pale.

Tsukiji Fish Market

2008-03-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated this thing in quite a while. I moved, and started working, and have been doing some martial arts occasionally, but that's about it. So there wasn't much to report on, but last weekend I finally got out of the house and did something.

Some of my co-workers planned a trip to Tsukiji, the fish market which handles most of the incoming fish to Japan. It's the largest fish market in the world, and is a bustling place full of activity that starts early in the morning and is mostly finished by noon. For some reason, it appears in almost every tourist guidebook to Tokyo as a great place to visit, which has always struck me as a bit strange. For one thing, maybe it IS the biggest fish market in the world, but honestly ... who cares? For another thing, it is primarily a workplace, and I always figured that tourists would just be in the way. It seems a very tourist-y thing to do to just barge in and watch someone (who would prefer that you weren't there at all) go about their livelihood. I can't imagine that tourists would want to visit the stockyards in Chicago, even though (maybe) it is the largest beef slaughterhouse in the world. Nor would they be welcome.

But anyway, I decided it might be interesting, and I really wanted to eat the sushi there, so I woke up early on Saturday morning and met my co-workers. 9 of us showed up, and off we went to check out the market.

As I said, it's really not an appropriate place for tourists. There is nowhere to stand, and everywhere you go you are in the way. If you try to stand in the parking lot, within 20 seconds, a truck wants to park where you are standing. If you stand in the aisles of the market itself, you are blocking traffic of these little one-man motorized carts that zoom around everywhere. Even if you just stand in front of a stall, if you're not buying anything, you will be shooed away with a call of, "Sorry, but this is a place of business!"

There was a lot of interesting stuff, to see though. This is where dealers auction off their tuna. A single tuna fish can go for a lot of money, as tuna is probably the most prized fish for sushi, particularly if it has a lot of fat on it. Personally, I don't like fatty tuna; I tend to prefer the cheap stuff.

The market itself is enormous, and stretches farther than the eye can see in every direction. Ironically, it doesn't really smell like fish. I guess it's because all the fish is so fresh that it isn't given any time at all to spoil. This is the best reason for coming to Tsukiji - eating the freshest possible sushi. (I will always assert that I ate even fresher sushi when I was living in Ikitsuki - fish caught within the hour, brought 50 metres from the boats directly to an expert sushi chef, and served on top of new rice, harvested right on the island, with connoisseur-grade soy sauce, also made special on the island. But I don't expect any Tokyoites to believe that better sushi can be obtained elsewhere!)

All kinds of fish and shellfish are one display. A lot of the clams and oysters are huge, and there are lots of varieties that I've never seen before, let alone know the English name of.

The orange stuff above is urchin, or "uni". To be more precise, it is the ovaries of a sea urchin. A lot of the urchin eaten in Japan is actually harvested in Canada, since we don't eat the vile stuff. You can also find little red squid about as big as your thumb...

And bushels and bushels of little white minnows, which are either served on top of rice or put in soups, I gather.

After the fish market, it was time for some sushi for breakfast. By this time it was about 9:30, so a beer also seemed appropriate.

The sushi was very, very good, and very fresh, but had a bit too much wasabi.

After breakfast, since it was such a beautiful day, we went to nearby Hamarikyu park. It was built by the Shogun centuries ago and was the private park for his own enjoyment. One wonders what he would think of the construction surrounding the park now.

The plum blossoms were in full bloom, which was wonderful. The Japanese really go crazy for cherry blossoms, but I think plums are almost as nice.

Just beside the park there is a very famous building designed in the 60's by a leading Japanese architect, (now deceased) named Kisho Kurokawa. All the modules are self-contained and are bolted to each other with only a couple fixed bolts. Each module is designed to be removable. Unfortunately, despite being a famous and historically-important building, the structure itself has fallen into disrepair and badly needs to be cleaned up.

I dunno much about architecture (especially not modern architecture) but I know what I like. Godzilla! Now we're talking. This statue was in Ginza somewhere...

I killed a couple of hours in Ginza, and then went to see "No Country For Old Men" which had just opened here. It was awesome! I guess Javier Bardem, who plays the inhumanly cold killer Anton Chigurh in the film, had been in Tokyo last week to do some publicity for the movie, and signed this life-size standup which was in the lobby. Pretty cool.

So anyway, weeks of activity and then, suddenly, a very busy day out of the blue. I managed to get a sunburn in mid-March, which really sucked, but it was fun anyway. I was glad I went; even if we weren't really welcome in Tsukiji, it was good to see a bit of history before it gets dismantled and moved. The plan is to move it somewhere else next year (?). Even so, at the rate the Japanese are over-fishing the oceans, the whole thing might disappear in a few decades...

Some HDR Experiments

2008-02-17T04:31:00.000-08:00

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and it's a type of photography where you take 3 or more exposures of a scene, (one underexposed, one normal, and one overexposed) and then feed the images into a computer which correlates the images and optimizes the contrast and colour. You can play around with the results to get really artistic if you want, (see below - boosting colours, getting almost surrealistic effects) but even the basic output is a picture which has a much higher dynamic range than most photos and so comes closer to capturing an image the way our eye sees it (keep in mind that the brain does a tremendous amount of image processing and enhancement of the limited signals it gets from the eye).

Anyway, I downloaded a trial version of Photomatix, and have taken a few HDR shots just for fun. Since it's a trial version, it leaves a watermark on the photo, but beggars can't be choosers.

Here are a few shots I've done recently. Some of them worked better than others. Since I don't really know what I'm doing, using the program is kind of unpredictable, and it's really not 100% What-you-see-is-what-you-get. Also, I didn't use a tripod with any of them, so they're a bit blurry up close, but overall I was pretty pleased with the results.

Here's a shot of Beppu tower. I like the way this one turned out. The clouds look really nice.

Even a plain old street scene like this looks warmer and more vibrant. (Also Beppu.)

I was a bit disappointed with the way this one worked out. I thought I could make the rainbow
really stand out somehow. Anyway, it captured the way the sky looked that day, despite introducing some
weird edge effects (the sky seems to "pucker" around the wires somehow).

I shot this one from the 45th floor of the Tokyo Government offices today.

This one looked much better on my computer screen before I generated the JPEG output, but
it's not so bad. I like the sky and the glow from the street signs, which is what I was going for.
This one is just a shot from Minami Kashiwa station.

If you want to see more (and better) HDR photos of Tokyo, click here. Keep in mind that they're photos ... some of them look like purely computer-generated images!

Moved

2008-02-11T03:31:00.000-08:00

Hi! I've moved, and now I'm living in Kashiwa. Is it stupid to publish my address on here? Probably, but here goes:

202 Leopalace TSD Minami Kashiwa,
41-1 Imayakami-cho, Kashiwa
Chiba 277-0074 Japan

It was really sad to say goodbye to my friends in Beppu, but I hope that I'll be back there soon.

In the meantime, it is good/weird to be back in Kashiwa, where I lived 3 years ago. Good because I am getting to revisit some places I used to know, but a little bit weird because I never expected to live here again!

My apartment is okay, but one of the older Leopalaces. I'm pretty familiar with all the various Leopalace configurations, and I must say they are getting more liveable as they go along. In other words, newer is better! Unfortunately, being in an older apartment means that I am living in a large "box" with almost no shelf space or furniture. This means that I'm going to have to waste some money on buying furniture, which I am going to have to either throw out, or pack up and move in a couple months (depending on how much I want to keep it, how expensive it was, and how hard it is to move). I'm currently looking for a desk and chair of the "easy to assemble/dissemble Ikea variety". I'm also looking for a bookshelf, I think. I was lucky to find some super-cheap ones from the home store when I was in Beppu before.

I also have to go through the frustrating experience of re-starting iaido and jodo training with teachers who teach the same "basic" thing but in a slightly different way. This happens every time I move and start with a diffrerent teacher. It's not that what they are teaching is really that different, just that everyone has a particular way of teaching, and set of things they think are important. The outcome, however, is that they will almost certainly look at me and say, "You're doing [this] wrong" whereas my old teacher wouldn't have much of a problem with it.

I start work tomorrow (today, Monday, was a national holiday) so I'm looking forward to that. One of the nice things about teaching is the human interraction, but one of the real downsides is that everything is a performance. It doesn't matter whether you're feeling happy, healthy and motivated, or not - you still have to get up and teach a class full of people. But working in the office, at least, is pretty low pressure. You just go in, get your instructions, and plug away at it. Kind of boring, compared to teaching, but a nice break, at least for a couple months. By April, I'm sure I'll be looking forward to getting back in the classroom!

Anyway, now you have my new address, so I will be expecting the presents to start rolling in soon. Or how about e-mails, at least?

All Hail the New Age of Technology!

2008-01-27T21:58:00.001-08:00

Technology is supposed to make things easier, but I sometimes wonder if our love for modernization is sometimes taken too far. Today, I went to pay my overdue fines at the school library, (I hadn't read the notification emails the system generated for me automatically) only to be informed that they had upgraded the system and they no longer did anything so "backwards" or "retro" as taking "cash money". I guess taking that filthy paper and those grubby little coins is beneath the staff at the library now. Plus, a "cash drawer" is so downright medieval ... So, this is how you pay a library fine in the 21st century, apparently.

1) Walk 5 minutes over to the student co-op store, and borrow a co-op membership card. This itself costs 500 yen (5 bucks) but is refundable. Then, load the little microchip on the co-op card with the amount you are required to pay. (Say, 100 yen in fines.)

2) Walk 5 minutes back to the library, and go to the Automatic Certificate Issuing Kiosk. Follow the step-by-step instructions on the computer screen. As none of these will actually work, much less make any sense whatsoever, call the human librarian over to help you.

3) Spend the next 5 minutes struggling through the menu system until you finally reach the option to "Print Payment Received Certificate".

4) Select the amount you wish to pay (100 yen) and press "Print Certificate".

5) You will be asked to swipe your (borrowed) co-op card. This won't work the first 19 times, but don't give up!

6) The 100 yen is subtracted from the card automatically, and a certificate saying as much is printed out.

7) Take this certificate to the human librarian, who will examine it closely, stamp it, and then place it in a very high-technology "certificate drawer" which I suspect used to be a laughably primitive "cash drawer" at one stage in the distant past (i.e., last month).

8) Walk 5 minutes back to the student co-op to trade in your now-useless co-op card and get back your 500 yen deposit.

9) Walk 5 minutes back to your office and wonder where you lunch break went.

So, in summary, an operation which used to have one step and took approximately 30 seconds (hand human librarian a coin, which is then placed in a drawer) now has 9 steps and takes the better part of half an hour. Ain't technology grand?

Merry Christmas Mega-Post

2007-12-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! Sincere apologies for not having done any updates for quite a while. And, more than likely, this will be the last you hear of me until after New Year's, so Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone.

I had a week off in November so I took a 3-day trip to Kumamoto, one of my favourite places in Japan. It's a city that is very proud of its prominent samurai heritage. For one thing, it has famous Kumamoto castle, a very large and well-designed castle that was once considered impregnable.

Kumamoto was also the final home of famous samurai wanderer Miyamoto Musashi. He is well-known throughout Japan because he fought more than 60 duels (many to the death), and never lost. He was thought to be a very brutal man, but in his later years he cultivated his artistic side and left a number of masterpieces of ink painting, sculpture, calligraphy, and design. His philosophy was that, if you pursue one thing thoroughly enough (e.g., swordsmanship) and penetrate to its very essence, then you understand all things. So, he was able to master anything he set his mind to, because he had discovered the universal truth in all things by unlocking it through one pursuit. I went and visited his gravesite...

...and the cave, Reigando, where he retired to meditate and compose his famous treatise on the martial arts, Writings on the Five Elements before he died.

The approach to the cave is surrounded by numerous Buddha statues. They all have a different expression and one of them is said to look like you.

Kumamoto also has a beautiful garden, called Suizenji. In the background is a miniature Mount Fuji.

Back in Beppu, I happened to see an interesting annual festival, called the Onna Matsuri, or Women's Festival. Now, I'm not sure that I'm right about this, but I gather that the festival is for any woman, but especially the women who work in Beppu's numerous bars, cabarets, massage parlours, clubs, and brothels. First up was a parade of women dressed as maiko, or dancing girls. People in the west usually refer to them as geisha, but this is somewhat incorrect; geisha and maiko are apparently "ranks" with maiko being the apprentices. Only after being a maiko for an extended period does a girl rise to the rank of geisha; the majority of "geisha" one sees are actually maiko. In any case, the majority of maiko work in Kyoto, and these women were just dressed up as maiko for the festival.

I think I love her!

Festivals in Japan tend to be predominantly Shinto affairs, and women do not usually participate except as spectators. The Women's Festival, however, is an obvious exception and we even saw women carrying Mikoshi, the elaborate, portable (but very heavy!) shrines which are thought to enshrine Shinto deities.

"Sisters are doin' it for themselves..."

Another very odd event was a parade of men, cross-dressing as maiko (or perhaps as court ladies). I can only speculate that they might work at gay clubs, and are therefore granted honorary status to participate in the Women's Festival.

Is this a man?!? I'm so confused.

Then, last weekend, Michelle, Helen and I rented a car for a day trip. The first stop was a little souvenir shop in Yufuin, which has a bunch of interesting statues of the Seven Gods of Good Luck. My favourite one has always been, Fukurokuju, the god of happiness, wealth, and longevity. Like me, he is fat, bald, and has an abnormally high forehead.

Our main destination for the day was the suspension bridge in Kokonoe. It was built last year (and seriously, I have no idea how!) and is the longest such bridge in Japan. I don't like heights but, even though the bridge sways a lot, it also feels very secure and well-constructed. It was pretty cold and windy, though.

The bridge passes over a gorge, which has a couple very nice waterfalls cascading down the cliffs. Japanese traditionally believe that dragons live behind waterfalls. I'd like to think so.

I was navigating, which meant that we got lost somewhere after the bridge. The real problem was that we had a paper map, in addition to our car satellite-navigation system (all cars have these in Japan) and the two didn't agree on very much. So I thought we were on one road, when actually we were on another road... Anyway, we ended up at this weird place where evidently somebody really likes making topiaries. Here's me with a kangaroo or something.

"High five!"

A lot of people think Japan is one big Tokyo from coast to coast: neon signs, traffic, skyscrapers ... but actually, once you get out of the big cities, Japan is beautiful and has lots of nature to explore. Here's a shot of Mt. Yufu, which is just back in behind Beppu. Pretty nice, huh?

So anyway, that's what I've been up to (plus the normal stuff like teaching, and iaido). I have no big plans for the Christmas/New Year's holidays ... I'll probably hole up with a few good books and videos, and get a sore back from sleeping too much. I hope you all have a great holiday. I'll be thinking of you and missing you! See you in 2008.

Fall Has Fell

2007-10-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody. No real news, but I realized it's been a while since my last post, and I had resolved to try and do these things more frequently ... even if it means rambling about nothing in particular! Yay!

The weather has gotten cool, which I love. Fall is my favourite season and I have to remind myself to enjoy it while it lasts. Actually, it has started to get uncomfortably cool, especially at school, which is on top of a mountain. Yesterday, here in town it was absolutely perfect -- sunny, about 22 degrees, a few clouds in the sky -- so I wore a t-shirt and proceeded to go up to the university to see the "Tenku-Sai", the annual student-run festival.

There were lots of bands playing on a stage, cultural events like dancing and traditional music, as well as a flea market and dozens of food stalls selling everything from octopus cakes to mini pizzas. It was a lot of fun, and I saw quite a few students, but it was really, really windy up there, and at least 10 degrees cooler than it had been down in the city. So I got pretty chilly, and didn't stay all that long.

Iaido and Jodo are still going well, I guess. I feel like I'm not making much progress these days, but I guess I'm just on a bit of a "plateau" stage right now. I'm going to be demonstrating Jodo in the prefectural kendo festival (which I also did last year) sometime in mid-November or thereabouts.

School is fine, my classes are okay, and I'm feeling relatively healthy despite being surrounded by coughing, sniffling people. Having said that, I'm sure I've just jinxed myself and will be getting sick very soon.

In a couple weeks I have a week off school ("the quarter break") so I have to start thinking about where to go and what to do. Officially, we're not supposed to go anywhere very far away as we're still "in service" whatever that means (I guess it means that we have to be able to come into work should they inexplicably need us for something) so I probably won't leave Kyushu, but that still leaves me lots of places I'd like to go.

Take care and stay in touch!

Japan vs Canada

2007-10-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

My brother David sent me an article comparing Japan and Canada. I know this is something I do a lot on here, for some reason. I think it's because Japan is a first-world nation but it's still just so different from what we're used to. If I were living in, say, East Timor, or Madagascar, maybe the differences would be so obvious that they wouldn't be worth commenting on; but somehow, because Japan has McDonald's and Starbucks on every corner, just like we do, we are a bit more surprised at the differences.

Anyway, here is the article with my dumb commentary thrown in.

Nathalie Atkinson, National Post

Published: Thursday, October 11, 2007

In Tokyo recently, I retraced Scarlett Johansson's route from the Shinjuku Park Hyatt trying to conjure my own Lost In Translation moment, but it never came. I didn't experience the much-vaunted cultural disorientation of foreigners in Japan at all while I was there, perhaps because a few short weeks is barely long enough to glimpse each neighbourhood (and certainly not enough to see the less obvious downsides).

Exactly; plus, you're in Tokyo, for cryin' out loud. Try living on an island with 5000 farmers and fishermen.

But at the risk of sounding like a wide-eyed dilettante gaijin, it didn't feel like I was anywhere all that different so much as somewhere simply better, with more -- more people, more stuff, more choice, more neon lights. Toronto may be Ustinov's New York run by the Swiss, but Tokyo is New York run by the Japanese. Times a thousand. It's only when I returned that I experienced the culture shock, in reverse. Without all the thoughtful little Japanese details --like rear taxi doors that open on their own -- Western life's little urban annoyances and irritations seemed that much more amplified.

Here's a sampling of what both you and I are missing:

1. Lost In Space Even in cities where we no longer have vast spaces, like Toronto, we still have more than in any Japanese city. Tokyo, at 12+ million, is densely crowded, but people there have learned and honed over generations the way in which civility (and the many layers thereof) can create personal space. So it's disheartening to see how little we have. The level of noise of people talking amongst themselves becomes a dull roar. I'll take Japan's hierarchical, extremely polite codified language and strict social mores any day. The difference between the Tokyo and Vancouver airport is staggering, and my stereotype of us as the most polite citizens of the world was forever shattered by the succession of Canadians loudly yammering away on their mobiles the moment we landed.

I felt huge reverse culture-shock when I landed in Vancouver, too. People were loud, aggressive, and in my face. Some of the staff at the airport were so rude, I had to remind myself that, No, they're not actually working at being rude, it's just the way they are. It was very disturbing.

2. The Silence Menace I only heard a Japanese cellphone ring twice. For a nation where every one of the over 125 million inhabitants appears to own at least one mobile or PDA, you quickly notice that nobody is actually talking on them. Instead, they text, read or play video games silently -- and small signs posted everywhere remind everybody to keep phones set to vibrate, and not talk on them. The signs themselves are not miraculous -- the miracle is the extent to which they are observed.

If someone on a train or bus does actually have to take an important call, they always hunch their shoulders, trying to shrink down, as they cover their mouth to muffle the sound of their conversation.

3. In Transit Gloria The philosophies of just-in-time and continuous improvement, originally developed for Japanese manufacturing, are employed at every level ( just as there are health and safety committees here, there are continuous improvement committees there).
Public transit is well-integrated, inexpensive and ubiquitous. It's also quite literally on the dot -- dots on the platform show precisely where the doors will open.

I don't know where she gets the idea that it's inexpensive: a trip of maybe 10 km could run you over 10 dollars on the Tokyo rail lines; in Toronto it would be a flat $2.50.

4. White Noise Japanese construction sites are self-contained and keep the surrounding area immaculate. I noticed a strange device at one construction site and realized it was a pair of automatic decibel meters. The ever-changing digits are writ large for the public to read, measuring the construction noise against the ambient traffic and street noise, showing that the former does not exceed the latter.

This one is pretty laughable, actually. Japan must surely be one of the loudest cultures on earth. You go to the supermarket and some moronic jingle is being played at ear-splitting volume on an endless loop. You go to the electronics shop, and it's a different, but equally loud, stupid jingle. You go to the market, and people are yelling the Japanese equivalent of "Step right up!" at the top of their lungs, as if that's not going to make you run in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, political campaigners drive around with roof-mounted loudspeakers, inanely repeating their name. "Tanaka Koji! Tanaka Koji! I'm Tanaka Koji! Vote Tanaka Koji! That's TANAKA KOJI!" Again, I think I'm more likely to vote against anyone who does that... Except they ALL do it. And then there's the Bosuzoku, "Noise Gangs" ... young punks who remove the mufflers from their 2-stroke motorcycles and cruise around at 15 km/h, revving their engines wildly, for absolutely no other reason than to create ill-will. How do they get away with it? Because, apparently, there are no noise laws in Japan. The police literally follow them around in low-speed pursuit, at 15 km/h, until they make a mistake and break some other law. Oh, and don't forget the ultra-nationalists who drive around in black vans, making vaguely menacing statements via loudspeakers. Apparently, they are not so much a political party as a bunch of goons, who park in front of businesses, loudspeakers blaring, and refuse to budge until the business makes a "political contribution", at which point they move on.

5. Economies of Scale To deal with the sheer volume of stuff, everything is designed for efficiency, productivity and hygiene, from the individually wrapped cookies (which also goes hand in hand with the emphasis on presentation) to the near-compulsory, voluntary wearing of surgical-grade white masks in public when one has a cold, so as not to infect others. I wish the guy coughing and hacking on my flight home had worn one.

What, so individually-wrapped cookies are a good idea now? We really need to quadruple the amount of packaging that ends up in a landfill, just so that you can be absolutely certain that no human hands have touched your cookie (at least since they were pawed at the factory, anyway). Surgical masks, however, are an absolutely GREAT idea; next time you've got a cold, go out in public with a mask on and explain why you're wearing it to anyone who asks. Hell, why not write "I have a cold and I don't want to infect all of you" on the front of it? Maybe, just maybe, it will catch on.

6. Portion control The largest clothing size for women maxes out at about a six (though in most places, it's a four), which is tyrannical for an average-sized Western woman on a shopping expedition. But, if I had stayed long enough, I could easily have fit into them thanks to smaller portion sizes for food and drink (and I wasn't even hungry!) As a souvenir, I brought back a so-called "supersized" Kirin Stout glass, a dwarf that resembles a thimble when compared to the rest of my beer mugs. This difference is clearly a factor in why our size large and theirs are so different.

Um, no comment.

7. Convenience Stores The Japanese "just-in-time" manufacturing philosophy trickles down from the department store down to the corner convenience store. The 7-Elevens restock ready meals and fresh items like bread and delectable pain au chocolat just as they are about to run out of them. I already miss the phalanx of vending machines that helpfully gobble up heavy pockets of loose change and dispense everything from chilled lattes to warm meals.

I absolutely agree with this. I wouldn't even think of buying a hamburger or a sandwich from 7-11 in Canada, but in Japan, the food is fresh and delicious. As a result, everyone shops there. And so, the food is fresh and delicious. Vending machines, on the other hand, are just plain evil. There are something like a million of them in this country; so many that they need an entire additional nuclear power station just to power them. Japan is HOT; running a huge refrigerator in direct sunlight in the heat of summer is just stupid. And you certainly don't need "phalanxes" of them, often ruining very picturesque landscapes and historical sites. Nothing says "Japan" quite like a photo of a thousand-year-old temple with a whole bunch of Coke machines off to the side. I'd like to come out in praise of the Japanese summertime habit of opening up the front of your store, and then cranking on the air-conditioning to create a blast of cold air welcoming in anybody who walks by ... it feels really nice ... but the icecaps are melting, in case nobody's informed you.

8. Ablutions Once you have used the Japanese version of a Western toilet, it's hard to come home. In a pristine, quiet and privately enclosed space, complete with purse hook, bench and a gently warmed seat, they have built-in front and back bidets controlled at the touch of a button (like a car wash) and, for the toilet-timid, sound effects like faux-flushing, birdsong or chimes summoned with a wave of the hand. Western public toilets and their grimy bathroom stalls now fill me with dread.

I have to agree whole-heartedly with this. From a hygienic point of view, they are superior; also from an environmental standpoint, as you use less toilet paper. And the sound effects are a great idea, although I've never found them in men's washrooms. Just some muzak would suffice, I should think. Public washrooms are also much cleaner here. In 5 years in Japan, I have gone into a stall where the last person didn't flush ... maybe a dozen times, I don't know. In Canada, I would estimate the rate is something closer to 30-50% of the time. What the hell is wrong with us??

Hobby or Obsession?

2007-10-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

There is something very interesting about the Japanese psyche, and that is a full-fledged belief that, "If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right." You observe it at every level of society, from garbage collectors diligently picking up tiny paper scraps with long metal tongs, to convenience store workers who literally run to serve you, to post office employees who (enfuriatingly) won't let you proceed with a transaction if there is the tiniest little mistake or discrepancy in your paperwork. The garbage collectors hate their jobs, I'm sure, but they don't take it out on the job itself; they do the very best they can until they find a better job. And the postal employees don't do it to lord it over the customers; they do it because there are rules, and they have to be followed.

I think people in Japan are the same way with their hobbies. People pour their entire heart and soul into their pastimes. My friend Akiko says she plays tennis "just for fun" and she claims that she's not very good; I find that hard to believe as she practices between 6 - 8 hours a day every Sunday.

So it's not all that surprising that Japanese people dominate every kind of competition you can imagine (except for some sports where size is an unavoidable advantage). Some Japanese names in the news recently: (much of this taken from the Japan Times)

Mayuko Kamio, 21, won the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Violin competition
slender Takeru Kobayashi is the most feared competitive eater in the world, regularly devouring more than competitors who are twice or three times his weight
Yosuke Ochi has won the world Air Guitar championship two years running
five of the top 20 finalists in the world Yo-yo championships were Japanese, including the runner-up
Japan won the international Rube Goldberg machine competition this year
Japan routinely ranks highly in ballroom dancing
the world Rubik's cube champion is a Japanese 17-year-old who practices 5 hours a day and can complete a cube in an average of 10 seconds

Obviously, a lot of these competitions are in fields that are ... well, pretty weird. But I guess that's the point. There is little or no financial reward for most of these hobbies, and yet the Japanese people who take up these hobbies do so with the mindset that, naturally, they are going to try and be the best at what they do. And try damn hard! (5 hours a day doing the Rubik's cube??)

I haven't mentioned much about athletics yet. I don't know how to say this without sounding like an ass, but the Japanese are small. They have a real disadvantage when it comes to size. But, look at their accomplishments in any field where size is not a distinct advantage: Ichiro Suzuki is the record holder for most hits in a season; this is something that undeniably takes skill, not doping yourself with steroids. Japanese women excel at marathon running, despite being much smaller than their biggest rivals, the Kenyan team. Marathon running is clearly a discipline that is equal parts mental and physical. The Japanese are also good at gymnastics, synchronized swimming, diving, and most team sports.

I guess the downside is that practicing Rubik's cube for 5 hours a day tends to make a guy kind of one-dimensional. I like to think of myself as fairly well-rounded. I do martial arts (not very well, mind you); I can draw a bit; I'm somewhat musical; I can write to a degree (keep in mind I rarely edit these posts before publishing them!); I've been told I'm funny.

While I often think that it would be really cool to be the best in the world at something, no matter how obscure (at this point, you should go to YouTube and do a search for "cup stacking" ... no, those videos aren't sped up) I guess in the end, I'm pretty happy to be well-rounded.

A Video About Beppu

2007-10-04T03:16:00.000-07:00

Hey, if you want to know more about where I'm living, check out this video about Beppu's hot springs. (Click the link, then scroll down to near the bottom right, where it says "Warm Hearted Hot Springs - Beppu and Yufuin" or something to that effect...)

Kyushu Fauna

2007-10-02T03:50:00.001-07:00

That gross bugger there was waiting for me when I got home. As you can see, his legs span one of the bricks on my front steps, which are about 5 inches across. Blechh. And it runs like the wind itself, too. I didn't kill it because, supposedly, these things eat worse things, like centipedes, which in turn eat cockroaches. Unfortunately, I hate centipedes more than I hate cockroaches, and I hate spiders more than I hate centipedes. The whole world's topsy-turvy!

So anyway, I've done a couple days of classes now. Boy, I'm not used to this "working" thing. I'm exhausted! Good thing I don't have to work tomorrow. My schedule this semester isn't as favourable as it was last time, but it's not too bad. I guess I'll get used to it.

No other real news, I guess, except that I made the mistake of asking somebody to store a box of my stuff over the summer, and that person made the "mistake" of giving my stuff away to the Salvation Army, who have since doubtlessly distributed my belongings to homeless people. So, my hard-to-find and expensive kanji dictionaries are now serving as pillows to bemused Japanese hobos; drunks are guzzling my after-shave for its alcohol content; my bus tickets are being used as rolling papers; my sketchbooks are kindling; and my bicycle pump is ... well, probably being used as a bicycle pump. But for SOMEBODY ELSE'S bicycle! You see the problem. I'm trying to be philosophical about the whole thing ... not to be too attached to material belongings, and all that; what's done is done, etc. So far so good. "Serenity now ... serenity now ... "

Back in Beppu

2007-09-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Beppu now. I moved into my apartment, (which is another building from Michelle and Helen, the other teachers) and was quite pleased by the size and nice, high ceiling. Then I discovered that it has no internet! This was a crushing blow, to say the least. Fortunately, Helen dropped by a few minutes later and said that she'd be willing to trade apartments with me, because she doesn't use the internet at home very much. How nice is that?!

So we moved our stuff to our respective new places, which was easy because we hadn't started unpacking yet. My new place is the exact same floorplan as my old place, only mirror-imaged. This is fine, except that there are a couple places where it doesn't work. The table, for example, has a strut that I bang my knee on every time; last time, it was going the other way and wasn't a problem. And the fridge door opens the wrong way, so you have to reach into the corner and open it as you step back. Minor complaints, but irritating enough as daily occurrences.

We went to school yesterday and had a brief meeting with our university contact guy. The enrollment for our course is always low in the fall, but this term exceptionally so. It seems like we will have really small classes, like some classes under 10 students. Yay!

One of the big downsides that I'm a bit worried about is the national health insurance. There's some kind of new law that requires membership in the NHI plan (before, we were on a private plan from the company) and I might have to pay a lot of back taxes because I've been in Japan for so long. Hmmm. We'll see how it goes.

So anyway, I'm mostly unpacked and settled in. I still have to get a few boxes of stuff back from people who have been storing them for me, and I still have a big pile of unsorted stuff on my floor, but that will gradually get put away.

I went to practice last night, and delivered some of my gifts from Canada (maple syrup, icewine, dreamcatchers, cookies, etc.) and they went over really well, which was good. Now I'm glad I went to the trouble lugging them over here.

Right! Stay in touch, everybody!

Finished Training...

2007-09-23T02:10:00.000-07:00

The pre-service training orientation in Tokyo just finished up, and I think it went pretty well. The first day, I just stood around helping pass out papers, and herding people back into the room when breaks were over. Today, I had to lead a training session in front of 60 teachers! It was a bit scary but I think it went off without any major hitches. For one thing, the teachers were pretty interested in what I had to say, which is always nice. I didn't have to make any real efforts to keep their attention. Plus, I made a few jokes that lightened the mood and seemed to go over well ... I'm just glad they didn't bomb. Anyway, this will probably mean that they will ask me to conduct the same training session again next semester ... I don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing! A good thing, I guess.

Tomorrow, we fly out to Oita and move into our apartments. I barely got to do anything here in Tokyo. So much for big city lights! Soon it will be, uh, small town lights or something.

Oh yeah ... more good news ... all that standing at the training for the last couple days seems to have straightened out my back problems, at least for now.

Right now, I'm off for a drink with some of the staff, to celebrate a successful orientation. Cheers!

Dazed, Jetlagged, and Confused

2007-09-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Japan. My flight was okay, I guess, so I shouldn't complain, but I will anyway. The first problem was the time: it left at 8 a.m. Being an international flight, you are supposed to check in 2 hours prior to departure, so that meant being at the airport at 6 a.m. That meant leaving Linday at about 4 a.m., which in turn meant getting out of bed at about 3:30 a.m. You can imagine how much fun that is. I went to bed at 8:30 the night before, but didn't sleep very well. I kept having strange dreams where I was packing or trying to find things in my room, trying to fit things into my suitcase, or discovering I had gotten to the airport without some vital thing like my tickets. Occasionally I would think, "I'm going to Japan for a year!" and I would jolt myself awake.

I was sleeping so fitfully that I didn't need an alarm to wake up, which was good, I guess. But when I woke up, I discovered that my back was really hurting me. This was probably a combination of factors. The biggest factor was an almost complete lack of exercise for 6 weeks, combined with way too much lying in bed. The second factor was probably tension because I was nervous about moving. I tried to stretch my back out a little bit and ended up putting it into a mild spasm, which made things worse. (This is where the muscles in your back freeze up in an attempt to "splint" your back bones if there is pressure on a nerve somewhere. Like a giant, persistent back cramp.)

So anyway, the ride down to the airport was okay except for the back pain. Unbelievably, traffic on the 401 is actually fairly heavy at 5 a.m. but we got there in good time. The airport was fairly busy too, even at that hour. I was traveling on United Airlines, going through Chicago and on to Tokyo. So I had the pleasure of lining up with a bunch of Americans, and dealing with American check-in staff. I have to tell you, there is a noticeable difference in courtesy between Canadians and Americans! The first thing that happened was a guy lined up in the empty First Class line instead of the equally-empty Economy class line, and was promptly asked to move to Economy class. "Why the f%&k do I have to move when there's nobody in the f%&cking line?!" he roared. Then the woman tried to give him a customs declaration form. Rather than take one second to put down his suitcase handle, he just yelled at her, "Can't you see my hands are full, you dipshit?!" The check-in people, no doubt because they have to deal with people like him all day, were less than sunny.

The flight to Chicago was almost 2 hours late due to engine problems that were noticed and fixed before take-off. Some people missed their connections but I had a long enough stop-over that it made no difference to me. I had no problem finding my gate at O'Hare airport, which was good. It is a huge airport, as you would expect. There are also tons of shops and restaurants, so I had lunch. With the time difference, it was only 10 a.m. there, but I was starving. I noticed that the staff of the fast food kiosks were almost all black and hispanic. This is something I'm aware of rationally, I guess, but I have so little experience traveling in the US that it kind of surprised me to see it firsthand.

The flight to Tokyo was full. I had asked for a seat behind a bulkhead, or in an emergency exit row, but I was told that it would cost me an extra hundred dollars, so I declined. I wonder what's next. "Uh, miss? My seat has no seatbelt." "Oh, would you like one? They're twenty dollars." I was on the aisle, at least, which was okay. The guy in the seat next to me was someone I had noticed lining up for the flight in Toronto, a young hippy-looking guy in his mid-twenties. I tried to make some conversation as we were getting ready for take-off, but he was having none of it, and we didn't talk for the rest of the 12 hour flight. It's funny: you want to sit beside somebody that you can talk to a little bit, but not somebody who's going to talk more than you want to. I guess his "bar" was just set way lower than mine. Misanthropic weirdo! He slept most of the flight anyway, and at least he didn't get up to go to the bathroom a whole lot.

Surprisingly, I was able to sleep a fair bit, and in between sleeping, meals, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and the in-flight movies, 12 hours actually went by pretty quickly. I thought my back would bother me, but I took some pain-killers and was fine, actually. (Thank God for small mercies.) Just as the plane was coming in to land, the guy beside me pulled out a scrap of paper on which he had written some contact information - for my company! I didn't say anything because I was still insulted that he wouldn't talk to me, but he was surprised to see me show up at the Westgate meeting place.

Tokyo was really hot, about 30 degrees, but I guess it had cooled down a little bit. Even so, it was a shock to the system. When I left Canada, it was downright chilly and it had actually snowed in Toronto when I was there on Sunday two days before. (This story amused my Japanese friends to no end.)

I'm now staying in a hotel in downtown Tokyo. It's not the Ritz, by any means, but it's clean, comfortable, and centrally-located. My one complaint is that they have the world's worst complimentary breakfast. It's all-you-can-eat, but here's what it consists of: cold, hard-boiled eggs; shredded lettuce; cold buns. So just about the least appealing stuff you can think of, basically. Miso soup and rice are dead cheap, so I don't understand why they don't serve them, but anyway... beggars can't be choosers. Or never look a gift horse in the mouth. Or something.

Last night I went out with coworkers for tonkotsu ramen (Chinese-style noodles in a pork broth). This place has some of the best ramen I've ever had! Absolutely awesome. Ramen is something that people here get really excited about, and the difference between "good" ramen and "great" ramen can mean the difference between a restaurant that does so-so business, and a place that people line up to get into. (Imagine a place that has the "Best Apple pie in the state" or something.) After that I met up with some friends (3 cute girls!) and we went out to an Okonomiyaki and Monja restaurant. These are 2 related foods that are variations on the same theme. Okonomiyaki is a wet mixture of cabbage, and other ingredients in a batter, that's fried on a hot plate and covered in tangy sauce and mayonnaise. Usually, it has pork and/or seafood in it, and is somewhere between a pizza and a pancake. Monja is a more watery version that you fry up until it gets semi-solid and then you eat it with a tiny little spatula. It's fun because you cook up this stuff at your table and eat it together. It was good fun but I was feeling quite jetlagged, and so I probably wasn't up to my usual, scintillating self.

Ramen and dumplings from Ippudo, one of the best ramen shops in Tokyo. Yum!

Akiko makes Okonomiyaki while Satoko looks on; a fun time was had by all.

Yuko, your humble author, and Akiko in Ueno, Tokyo. Why is everybody so short?

I am involved with the training this time, so I don't have any time for sight-seeing or anything, which is fine, since it's too hot for me anyway, and if I did have free time, I'd just feel guilty for staying holed up in my air-conditioned hotel room instead of going exploring. This way, I have no choice, which is usually preferable. I'm blogging now, having gotten my fill of hard-boiled eggs, and in a minute I'll go get a shower, and go off to the office for a training session after lunch. Then it's more training tomorrow and Sunday (I'm giving a presentation on Sunday to 60 people, a bit nervous about that) and then we fly to Oita on Monday. I'll post something again when I get to Beppu.

As I expected, it's weird to be back in Japan but at the same time, it feels like I never left. (Going home was the same way.) It's hard to explain, but it's like I'm living two different lives on two completely separate timelines, like when I come back here, I just pick up where I left off. The only thing is that 6 weeks have mysteriously elapsed on the calendar, like I have been in a coma or something. Does that make any sense? Anyway, I'm already missing everybody in Canada, so I'll try to update this thing often and stay in touch.

O Canada

2007-08-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

I got back into Canada on Tuesday night. My flight was pretty uneventful, but I'm incredibly grateful that I got a good seat. The flight was looking quite full, and I was a bit worried that I would have to spend the entire time crammed into a tiny seat in economy class. (I have only had to do this once, and it was really, really awful.) But fortunately, I requested and was given one of the roomier seats behind the bulkhead between economy and business class. I could stretch my legs and everything. I felt a little bit guilty stretching out like that but ... well ... someone's gotta do it. (What kills me is when they put somebody who is about 5 feet tall into these extra-spacious seats. Meanwhile, someone like me is sitting behind them with his knees up around his ears. What a waste!)

On the way into and out of the plane, I walked through the first class section. The disparity between Economy and First Class, and the unashamed luxury of it all is getting absolutely ridiculous! The first class seats are placed diagonally on the plane so that the seat can recline fully into a bed, and each person has their own kind of ... well, I can only describe it as a "relaxation pod". They are almost fully enclosed by small walls on all sides, and they have their own little entertainment system and climate control ... crazy. At some point I am hoping that we will see a First Class section where the furniture is actually composed of Sub-Economy Class passengers. One person will be curled up into a ball to form an Ottoman; a couple of other people will be the seat; somebody else will have the First Class Passenger's tray on their head, and so on. Other Economy class passengers will be employed fanning them with huge fans made of peacock feathers, while others hold their drinks for them and feed them peeled grapes. Awesome! "Boy! Ready my bedpan!"

Anyway, my plan is to go to New Brunswick on Sunday, and spend a few weeks down there. I hope I will be able to go swimming a little bit; it was actually too cold last summer to do much of that.

In the meantime, I have to try and study Japanese, for the 2nd level of the Japanese Proficiency Test in December. I'll also have some work to do over the summer, which I'm not exactly looking forward to, but which will at least give me something to do. "All play and no work makes Jeff very lazy indeed."

I'm hoping to get jogging a little bit, too. We'll see how that goes.

Enough rambling. Hope to see you all soon!

Moving ... Again

2007-08-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hey. No updates in a long time, sorry. I'm just about finished packing up in preparation for moving out. The semester is over, the grades are all in, the student parties are (almost) all finished (one more tonight, unless the typhoon makes it impossible) and now it only remains to do the last thing we have to do every fricking semester: pack up and move out.

Packing is a huge pain in the butt for obvious reasons: it's a disruption to your life, it's stressful, and it's a lot of effort. But in my case, there are two things I really hate.

The first is having to throw things away. At the end of every semester, I have a whole collection of daily-use items, most of which were bought at the 100-yen shop, that I can't keep, even though they are still perfectly useable. So, into the trash goes about 20 coathangers, half a bottle of shampoo, 3/4 of a bottle of conditioner, an almost full bottle of dish soap (because I ran out last week and had to buy a new bottle), detergent, my laundry line, plates, glasses, bowls, cutlery, a water jug, tupperware, cleaning supplies ... the list goes on and on. It pains me because, not only is it incredibly wasteful, but I'm going to have to buy all these same items again in 2 months, and I will end up throwing these items away, too. This is the 6th time I've done this now! In my mind, there is an ever-increasing pile of junk which is getting thrown out ... and goes who knows where in the end. To landfills? To be incinerated? To be transported by ocean-liner to the Philippines? And flying around this pile of garbage, like flies, are cartoon dollar bills (or 1000 yen bills maybe) with little wings ... symbols of the money I have to spend every semester to re-purchase the same items over and over again.

The other problem I have is the increasing amount of STUFF I have. Most teachers here are smart, and live a spartan lifestyle for the duration of their contracts. They buy a few trashy novels which they don't mind throwing away at the end; maybe they pick up a few souvenirs or knick-knacks to take home. But me ... I am compulsively buying CDs, books about martial arts, or Japanese language materials ... it's gotten to the point where, in addition to my 2 suitcases which contain the bulk of my possessions, I have about 10 boxes worth of "other stuff". Now, what am I supposed to do with this stuff while I am away? I end up storing it with friends, but understandably, these kinds of impositions wear thin after a while. I am always looking for new friends just so I don't have to approach the same old people and say, "Uh, so, do you mind if I keep about 10 boxes at your place ... again?" I did a pretty good job of spreading my stuff out this time. A box here, a few boxes there ... but one friend still ended up taking the bulk of my stuff.

I am a packrat, which I think is some sort of psychological adaptation to feeling deprived as a kid. (I don't think I was deprived as a kid, but I may have felt that way, greedy little bugger that I was/am.) If you feel like you don't have a lot of stuff, you tend to hold on to the stuff you have, even if you realize that you don't really need it or even want it anymore. (I'm not sure if this explanation is necessarily correct, but I can't imagine that Britney Spears, who has always had everything she ever wanted, has any trouble throwing away her old possessions.) Yesterday I threw a couple shirts in the trash and it was agony, despite the fact that they were full of holes and were fraying at the seams.

But my special weakness is for books. I can't throw a good book away, because of the mere possibility, however unlikely, that I might want to refer to it or re-read it at some point in the future. I have this principle, too, that books should be treasured, and that, if you don't want a book, you should always give it away or donate it to someone, rather than chuck it in the trash. Well, over here, that's pretty difficult to do with English books! So I hang onto them.

My other psychological hang-up with books is the idea of "value". I used to collect comics as a teenager, with the idea that someday, I would be able to sell them and make a fortune. Now I know that's not true, but I still can't bring myself to liquidate my comic collection, knowing that I would probably get about 5 cents for every dollar I put into it. The same goes for my novels and paperbacks. A used bookstore might pay me 25 cents for each paperback ... that's just an insult! And so I hang onto them, and they gather dust and take up space.

One of my most treasured dreams is that someday, in the distant future, I will actually have a house of my own; a house with plenty of bookshelves. And on those bookshelves will be arrayed, in some complicated system of my own devising, all of my books ... and sometimes I will just stare at them and think: "It was worth it!"

-----------

On a related note, I've been reading about a very interesting guy (now deceased) named Gustav Hasford who wrote the novel that "Full Metal Jacket" was based on. He was a very clever guy who dropped out of high school and eventually joined the Marines and went to Viet Nam where he was a combat correspondent. He was very widely read on just about any topic and collected books compulsively: he had a library of over 10,000 books which apparently occupied a huge volume of storage space. As he lived most of his life in poverty, the bulk of his books had to be stored with friends, so he never actually had access to his own things. In fact, he served a prison term for stealing ("liberating") a large number of books from various libraries across the US, and then moved to Greece after his release ... so he never got to fully enjoy his collection. I feel like he must have been the same way - always dreaming of the day when he would actually get to unpack all of his STUFF. Very, very sad. So, point to remember: um, what was my point again? Oh yeah. Don't be like that guy.

---------

I'll be back in Canada on August 8th. I hope there's time to get together and see everybody.

I'm Okay

2007-07-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

There was a big earthquake yesterday, but it was far away, and I'm okay. Some of my friends in Tokyo felt it, but I didn't feel anything way over here.

I also survived the typhoon that hit Kyushu a few days ago. It wasn't as bad as the news was making it out to be.

And so a hurricane prompts me to update my blog

2007-07-14T04:20:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated lately because there hasn't been much news, except that I'm going home for the summer (August 7th - September 17th or so). But I've been stuck indoors today thanks to a typhoon ...

In this picture, it's pretty much smack dab over Kyushu. Things peaked around 3 pm this afternoon but have since died down.

I think I mentioned this before, but the main casualties in these typhoons seem to be elderly people who, for some strange reason, go up on their roofs (rooves?) and get blown off and fall to their deaths. Maybe they are trying to fix leaks in the roof or something ... but part of me wonders if they are actually just trying to commit suicide in a way that won't arouse suspicions of insurance companies ... or perhaps they are actually being murdered by their families in a way that makes it look like an accident. "Oh good, there's a typhoon coming! We can finally get rid of your mother!"

So I've been watching a lot of TV today. I am amazed and appalled at just how bad some of it is. Today, there was a show featuring a self-proclaimed "animal psychic" (an American woman, of course, wearing a leather jacket, no less) who visited some damn bear in some damn zoo somewhere, and then started to talk about how the bear was in mourning for another bear that used to live in the cage but died ... so the psychic starts crying, and the audience is crying, and the bear is reaching through the bars (trying to kill the psychic, I'm sure) but everyone takes that as a sign that the bear is thanking her for "telling its story" or some nonsense ... argh! That woman should be put in the cage with the bear and then we'll see what the bear is really thinking. At the very least, she (and that "Crossing Over" guy) should be made to take lie detector tests ... they might just pass, though, because they believe their own BS!

The next program was actually pretty cool ... it was all about how the human brain works to interpret images, and how a lot of things you perceive aren't really there. They had all kinds of cool optical illusions and explanations (that I really didn't understand) about how our brains evolved to see things in a particular way, especially movement and the timing of moving objects.

Anyway, TV here seems to swing from horrible to not-bad, but there are certainly no big budget dramas or serious TV shows. Almost everything features a panel of barely-talented comedians and pundits over-reacting to various news items from around the world. If you've ever seen "Hey! Spring of Trivia" you have a good idea of 99% of the shows here. Sigh.

Well, sorry for the boring post ... but now you can understand why I haven't written much lately ... no news!

The Endless Minutiae of my Daily Life

2007-06-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't written in a while. No big news: no more earthquakes, no promotions, wedding proposals, or anything else. So, I thought, why not bore you with details of my quotidian existence?

Currently reading: a few different books, actually...

-The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. I'm re-reading this one. It's fascinating, even if you're not "into" language. The theory is that our brains are wired, genetically, to work with language. De-bunks a lot of myths about language, too, such as the one that "kids these days don't speak properly" or "Our language defines how we see the world". Really, really good.

-The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Really remarkable, thought-provoking, and extremely optimistic book about the future. Basically, technological change is speeding up exponentially. (As a familiar example, the computational power of computers doubles every couple of years.) The mistake people make is to use the current rate of change to predict the future, but the rate of change is itself increasing! We are soon to approach the "knee" of the curve where we begin to notice explosive changes in technology, including but not limited to computation (Artificial Intelligence?), genetic engineering (the end of disease? the end of aging?) and nanotechnology (total control over matter on a molecular scale). Far from just being pipe-dreams, this book carefully charts the progress made in the past and provides tons of examples of emerging technology that will power the technological changes of the future. (If we don't all die of nuclear / chemical / biological / environmental catastrophes first ... ) Basically, the future looks pretty cool, and it's going to be almost nothing like the present.

-Killshot by Elmore Leonard. (I need some light reading!) Have you ever noticed how Hollywood movies (this goes for books, too) can be set in any old small town, from Maine to Alabama to Alaska to Utah ... they can even be set in Mexico, or some exotic place anywhere ... but they are almost never set in Canada? Why is that? (It's the second-biggest country in the world, for crying out loud.) This book is cool because it's set in Toronto, and in the Detroit area, so the action jumps back and forth around the border. The "good guys" are Americans, and for a twist, the bad guy is Canadian. Cool.

Work: more or less fine. My students have finally given up the pretext of being interested in what I have to say, and I have given up the pretext of caring whether or not they learn anything, or pass the course. So everything's copacetic. Not an ideal state of affairs, but a one-sided relationship (e.g., I care but they don't) just doesn't work.

The weather: Hot. Muggy. Rainy. Time to be on constant lookout for mold.

Love life: Um, non-existent.

Martial arts: Busy. Added another training night to my regular schedule. I'm kind of excited about it, but the style of iaido they do is almost impossible for me. I'm not going to give up right away, but it seems like it was made for small, limber, flexible people. And that ain't me!

Currently worrying about: finances, living arrangements, employment, taxes, etc. The usual.

Long term plans: Ha ha ha ha ha haaaaahhh! Ughhh.

Project: I have an idea about an iaido book, but this being Japan, it seems like it is going to be difficult to realize. I don't want to go into details here, but I'll let you know if anything moves forward with it.

Reason I'm happy I'm in Japan: Surely Western culture is a sinking ship, right? (Would someone just terminate Paris Hilton already?)

Reason I'm unhappy I'm in Japan: With all the earthquakes last week, Japan may be a sinking ship, (literally).

Dissatisfied with: My complete lack of progress in Japanese in the last, oh, 6 months or so.

Satisfied with: Hmmm...

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

2007-06-07T18:50:00.001-07:00

Beppu has been the epicentre of 31 earthquakes in the last 24 hours or so. Something like 5 of these have been Level 4 on the Japanese Seismic Intensity Scale (which goes from 1 - 7) and another 3 quakes have been Level 3. It's been quite an interesting day. They started around 11 pm last night. I was in my friend's car (a large SUV) and we were stopped at a red light; I thought he was pumping the brakes or doing something strange because the car was bouncing on its shocks. He made a noise of surprise and I noticed that the electric poles were shaking, and that's when I knew it was an earthquake. When I got home, I didn't have much time to do anything before another one came along, and then another ... I went outside, only to find my neighbour Keith lurking around outside, too. But apparently, the locals weren't too worried -- they were all still indoors. After a few more small quakes, we went back inside. There were a few more small quakes through the night, and a couple the next morning.

The next day, at school, the students (many of whom are from outside of Japan) were pretty excited. They all wanted to talk about the earthquakes, which would have been fine as long as they had discussed it in English! As it was, they had trouble concentrating on the lesson. It was made a lot worse by the fact that, during two of my classes, fairly strong quakes happened right in the middle! They only lasted a couple seconds, but the students were freaked out for a few minutes, and on-edge for the rest of the time.

The worst one came last night at about 9pm. It wasn't that much stronger (in terms of magnitude) than the others but it felt somehow more violent. Stuff fell off my shelves and onto the floor, and so I hightailed it outside pretty quickly. The thing about earthquakes (in my limited experience) is that they're pretty scary, and you want to run outside, but once you get outside, you realize that all the buildings are still standing (of course!) and so you feel kind of silly. Oh well, better safe and silly than sorry and squashed.

The Japan Meteorological Agency predicts that the quakes will continue today and tomorrow. I don't really mind that much, as long as they don't get any stronger ...

Here's how the JMA Intensity scale works:

1 - perceptible only to measuring equipment and dogs

2 - barely perceptible; some people think a heavy truck has driven by; unstable objects shake

3 - felt by most people indoors; noticeable shaking; foreigners run outside

4 - felt by everyone indoors and many outdoors; strong shaking; objects fall off shelves/walls; foreigners panic; some cowardly Japanese run outside; poorly-constructed buildings (e.g., sandcastles, card houses, etc) may collapse

5 - very strong shaking; even Japanese are frightened; people and 3-legged animals have difficulty standing; some old buildings are damaged; foreigners pass out and/or die of fear

6 - catastrophic shaking; even turtles have difficulty standing and may flip over; Japanese people begin to believe in God; supposedly earthquake-proof buildings are destroyed

7 - complete and utter devastation; the ground moves in waves; Spiderman has difficulty standing; bodies of foreigners and other objects are thrown into the air

Ahhh, Beppu

2007-04-29T05:47:00.000-07:00

Spring has truly sprung; the weather is beautiful, and Beppu is lovely. Ahhhh. We probably have about a month of nice weather to look forward to before it turns mega-humid and the rainy season begins.

I did my iaido 5th-dan grading today (passed - yay) and then, exhausted, trudged up to the Beppu landmark called "Global Tower". I've always been meaning to go up the tower, but for whatever reason have always put it off, until today. I was in the area, the weather was nice, you know.

The tower was constructed at God-only-knows-what-cost and stands 125 meters tall. There's an observation deck at 100 meters or so. You'd think it would be a pretty popular tourist spot, but for whatever reason, it's not. Maybe because it's just dwarfed by the surrounding mountains. In any case, it's pretty cheap to go up: about 3 dollars. (At that rate, the thing will pay for itself in about 150 years or so.)

Hideously ugly or kind of cool? I think cool.

The thing is essentially two tubes and a sheet of metal with a bunch of struts between them. One of the tubes contains an elevator, the other tube contains a staircase (for emergencies) and the sheet of metal is there for support. The design is rather high-concept. The sheet of metal is not straight but is actually an arc, representing the surface of the earth. The observation deck is located in such a place that it mirrors Beppu's latitude on the earth, if the ground level were the earth's equator. So the whole thing is kind of like a diagram of the globe with Beppu's location represented by the box at the top. I think.

Just to scare people more, the whole damn observation deck is cantilevered out into space. No glass floors, thank God.

It was a nice view, but it's basically an acrophobe's nightmare. Fortunately, it wasn't swaying in the wind or anything silly like that. I could just imagine being up there in an earthquake.

Here's a nice view of Mount Takasaki, which is known for being infested with monkeys. Oita city is off in the distance around the curve of Beppu bay. Much-loved Beppu park is in the foreground.

Rainy days

2007-04-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

It's grey and rainy today, and will probably continue for a few days. I'm holed up with a couple bad DVDs, but I still feel restless on the weekend. I always feel like I should actively "recreate" somehow. Hmm ... maybe I should take a trip into Oita city for the day. In any case, I don't think I want to stick around the apartment all day; it's election time, and the Japanese idea of election campaigning is for each candidate to get in a car, put a big sign with their name on the side, and then top the whole thing off with a big set of loudspeakers. Then you drive around the neighbourhood repeating something like this:

"Ito Hiroshi! I am Ito Hiroshi. I am Ito Hiroshi. I've been doing my best. Let's look forward to a great future together. Please vote for me. Ito Hiroshi! I am Ito Hiroshi..."

They drive really slowly, and their loudspeakers are quite loud. Plus, there are at least 50 people campaigning for municipal office here in Beppu, so everywhere you go, there's some dolt with a loudspeaker spouting pointless noise. It grets pretty annoying.

What else is going on? Not much, to be honest. School is going well, my classes are okay, and I'm keeping busy, but not too busy. I have an iaido grading next week (for 5th dan) but I suspect I will fail it because I didn't practice much for the last two months in Tokyo, and there haven't been any practices here this past month. I've been doing a bit on my own, but I really need some pointers from the teachers who will be on the grading panel. Speaking of inactivity, I have put back on most if not all of the weight I lost last term ... argh! ... so I am feeling a bit anxious to get back into jogging or cycling or swimming or something. I don't live very close to the park anymore, so maybe I will try cycling for 30 minutes every night; it's probably much better on my knees, too.

Well, that's about all I've got. Quite an un-eventful week, really.

(^_^)/

2007-04-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

Everything is going well here in Beppu. Well, almost everything. I had some problems at my apartment: no hot water, then no water at all; also, we are supposed to receive a box of supplies from our company but due to some oversight I didn't get anything, so for the first little while I had no toilet paper, no dishes, no garbage bags, etc. Anyway, it's all been ironed out now. Mistakes happen, I guess.

Here is a link to some pictures taken by Michelle, my co-worker. I'm too lazy to post my own pictures just now, and hers are really good, so please enjoy her pictures of Beppu.
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2093135600&code=27609020&mode=invite&DCMP=isc-email-AlbumInvite

In the meantime, here's a funny (well, laughable; is that the same thing?) story from the last faculty meeting here. (I manage to avoid these things by virtue of being a part-timer.)

Dean: So, are there any more concerns that need to be raised?
Professor: Yes, I have a concern I would like you to address.
Dean: Go ahead.
Professor: Does APU have a contingency plan in place in the event of an earthquake?
Dean: Yes, I believe we do; we have designated evacuation areas, emergency response plans, first aid supplies, and so on.
Professor: But aren't there lions nearby, in the African Safari Park?
Dean: Errr... yes, there is a Safari theme park a few kilometers away, and I believe they do have lions there, but ...
Professor: Well, what if there was an earthquake, and the cages broke open, and the lions were released? Does the university have tranquilizer guns on hand in the event of a lion attack?
Dean: A lion attack?
Professor: Yes, an earthquake, and then a subsequent lion attack. We need to have tranquilizer guns on hand!
Dean: I'm not sure if that's really necessary...
Professor: You should be prepared for any eventuality, and I believe a lion attack is a very real possibility, given that there are lions in the vicinity.
Dean: We will consider your recommendation, professor.

I'm not sure if the professor is aware of this, but there is also an Aquarium down near the seaside; if there were an earthquake, there could also be subsequent tsunamis, which might rupture the tanks at the aquarium, releasing sharks and other dangerous fishes; this tsunami might continue right up the side of the mountain, bringing said sharks into contact with discombobulated students and rescue personnel. One could even conceive of the possibility, however unlikely, that lions might escape from the safari park, and then get swept up by the ensuing tsunami -- the result would almost certainly be waves of lions riding sharks, both attacking unsuspecting earthquake survivors willy-nilly. Scary stuff indeed. I'm glad people are thinking about these things.

Sorry, More Soon

2007-04-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I've been busy; I moved to Beppu, and started a new term here at APU. I will do a better post soon, with some pictures. I got a lot of nice shots of the cherry blossoms in Tokyo a few weeks ago. Stay tuned!

Busy Couple of Weeks (Plus I Almost Died)

2007-02-10T04:25:00.000-08:00

So I've been pretty busy lately; sorry I haven't updated recently. Here are the highlights:

School finished, and we were rushing around preparing the final exam, marking it, tabulating all the marks, and then sending these to the academic office. At the same time, we had to do all of our end-of-term paperwork for the company, as well as clean up our apartments and start packing.

Of course, nothing takes your mind off the stresses of work like a breath of fresh air, right? Katie decided that she wanted to climb Mt. Tsurumidake, the mountain that overlooks Beppu and is prominently visible from our back doors. We had finished our work for the day at around 1:30pm, and were basically free to go; the weather was really nice that day, so just as a kind of spur-of-the-moment thing, we decided to climb the mountain. Tsurumidake also has a cable-car to the summit, but we decided that we had to do it on foot "because it's there."

Karen had climbed it in September; Katie claimed that Karen said it took about an hour to get to the top. So, we set out from school around 2pm. We had a few errands to do, so we went home, got changed into our "climbing clothes", dropped off a couple videos, stopped in at the 100-yen shop to see if they had a hat in case it was cold at the top, went to the convenience store for some drinks and snacks ... By the time we got to the parking lot at the base of the mountain, it was getting on 4 o'clock. But we had 2 solid hours of daylight. An hour up, 10 minutes at the top, an hour down - we figured we'd be okay.

"Who needs a damn cable car?"

We set out. The first 10 minutes or so were a relaxing stroll through a bamboo grove. I joked that "I never thought mountain climbing was going to be so easy!" Ha ha ha. It was just like those horror movies where the doomed campers make jokes that will seem all the more ironic when they finally die.

The thing about Mt. Tsurumidake is that it gets steeper the higher up you go. And it's pretty steep. The course is 3.5 km long, and in that distance, it rises about 1 km vertically. I quickly realized that it was actually going to be damn hard work, and I was sweating a lot within the first 20 minutes. Pretty soon, despite the cold in the air, my head was soaked, and I had sweat running out of my jacket.

"Let's climb a mountain! It'll be fun!"

I really want to drag this story out, and tell you in agonizing detail how long it took us, and how tough it was. But let me just say that it was tough, that the recent warm weather had cause the snow to melt and the ground was very, very muddy and slippery, and that it took us 2 hours to get to the top.

"No one told me it would be this rocky. Or this steep."

So there we were, triumphant at the summit. The sun was just disappearing behind some hills; we were being treated to a beautiful sunset. I took a few snapshots.

"Ahhh... let's just hang out here and enjoy the view. After all, we're in no hurry..."

We were, however, completely exhausted. There was no way we could possibly go back down on foot. "Oh well," we laughed merrily; "I guess we'll just take the cable-car down to the bottom! Besides, the sun is setting, and trying to get down the mountain in the dark of night would be suicide! Ha ha!" (Remember those doomed campers?)

"We'll just take the cable car down! Ha ha!"

Okay, okay, you know what's coming. We strolled leisurely over to the cable-car building, which was completely closed and bereft of human life. We started to panic. The enormous 20-foot tall thermometer was reading zero degrees, and a light snow was falling, as if to mock us. There was nowhere that we could possibly spend the night at the top without freezing to death, so we had to act fast, and get down the mountain as quickly as we could while there was still a bit of twilight.

"We are so screwed."

The top of the mountain had been the steepiest, the rockiest, and the most slippery. It was hard enough coming up; at some points we had been crawling on our hands and knees. But going down was ... well, absolutely horrifying. We were trying to go as quickly as we possibly could without hurting ourselves, and it was kind of like one long semi-controlled fall over rocks, boulders, and trees.

Katie (whose idea this whole thing had been) went first, and thank God for that, because she would slip and fall, or trip over a rock, or tree root, and I would hear her curse, and that would warn me that I was about to trip over the same rock in about 5 seconds. There was really no avoiding it. Within 20 minutes, the sun was down and the moon was coming up. This was a mixed blessing because while the moon provided us with some light, it cast all kinds of crazy shadows that made it nearly impossible to distinguish a rock from a hole in the ground from a tree stump.

I think you can imagine what it's like to stumble and trip, or stub your toe and almost fall head over heels. Now imagine doing that for 2 hours straight, in the dark, on a rocky 45 degree incline, beside a 100 metre dropoff. It was pretty scary. Imagine "The Blair Witch Project", only steeper.

The climb up had exhausted me completely, or so I thought. I was kind of amazed that my legs were able to support me on the way down. I guess part of it was adrenaline, to be honest, with some endorphins for good measure.

About halfway down, there was a shrine. I stopped to say a little prayer.

"If you have to take one of us, God, please take Katie. It was all her idea."

At one point, where the path was particularly dangerous (we had noticed this section on the way up: the path narrows to about a foot wide, and it's pretty slippery, and there's nothing but a 30 metre drop on one side) Katie pulled out her cell-phone, and literally used the backlight to illuminate our footing a little bit. But her batteries didn't last long, and it was soon pitch-black again.

Anyway, somehow, we managed to get to the bottom. We gave a weak cheer, and said a little prayer. Personally, I promised God that I would never go hiking again. We piled into the car, went home, and got drunk to celebrate having survived our brush with a death that would have earned us a place in the Darwin Awards for being stupid enough to remove ourselves from the gene pool. I could barely walk for two days.

"We didn't die! I can't believe it!"

And that was my Monday. Sunday, I packed up and came to Tokyo. I am now living in the most far-flung corner of Tokyo. Five minutes from here, there is a river which forms the border with Saitama. Even so, I'm only 15 minutes by train from the center of town.

The trains I take every morning and night are quite crowded, but they are nothing compared to the train I took the other night to get to iaido practice. I think you can judge extreme train crowding quantitatively by what I call the BSACI or "Bodily Surface-Area Contact Index". This is a number, from 0 to 100, which represents what percentage of your whole body's surface area is in contact with another person on the train. Now, in Canada, I would guess that the most crowded it ever gets is about 5. This is the case where people are standing close to you on all sides, and maybe somebody's elbow is poking into your back, and somebody else is standing on your toe. The other night, I think I was at a solid 60 to 70 BSACI. It was like everybody was playing a standing version of "pile on" because not only were people glommed onto each other, but they were actually pressing; squeezing even. It was crazy. The other thing you don't really realize is that the vast majority of people on these trains have no strap to hang onto, which means that the contents of the train (i.e., the people) just kind of slosh around. But you don't fall over because - well, you can't fall over! There's no room to fall over. It was fun, but I can't imagine ever getting used to it. And plus, it was way too hot. I was dripping with sweat after a few minutes. (Didn't I use that line already in this post?)

"This sucks. I wish I was freezing to death on top of a mountain right now."

My job is pretty boring. On the good side, the people in the office are really great, and it seems more relaxed than most Japanese offices. No one seems to mind if you're a few minutes late, or if you take a break from doing your actual work and jump over to YouTube for a few minutes. Which is essential, because "officially" my job is to sit and stare at a computer for 8 hours a day. I never have to talk to anybody, or get up and go to the copier, or answer the phone or anything... just stare at the computer. The absolutely astonishing thing is that, whenever I get bored and start looking around (every 2 minutes or so) the Japanese workers are diligently doing what they're supposed to be doing. I can't believe it. Are we really so different from them? How do they stay focused for 2 hours at a time? It's crazy. I think they actually appreciate us foreigners because we are lazy and we lighten the mood a little bit.

My job is to edit and revise the lesson plans that hundreds of teachers in our program will be using next year. When I was teaching the same course I always used to look at those same plans and think, "My God ... who writes this crap? These lessons are terrible!" Well, now I know the answer to that question. How very, very ironic. And the worst part is that I can't figure out how to make them any more interesting. I'm sitting there racking my brains trying to think of a fun activity, and I keep falling back on the same tired old games. "Warm up: Play charades for the fifth time this week. This is called 'reinforcement' and is a valuable pedagogical tool." Hah!

Anyway, it seems like I will have plenty of things to keep me busy. There is an iaido or jodo practice every night of the week, if I'm up for it; I might enroll in Japanese classes somewhere; and my co-workers always seem to be going drinking after work. So, in short, it should be a fun couple months - the key will have to be to try and stay well-rounded. (Speaking of which, I haven't been running since my near-death experience on the mountain, so I'm starting to gain weight again, I think ... I would go for a jog tonight but I'm afraid I hear the sound of rain outside my window ... hahahahaha!)

Hope all's well and I'll try to update a bit more often.

Calligraphy

2007-01-08T02:42:00.000-08:00

It's a common custom in Japan to sit down at New Year's and write something indicating your wish or your resolution for the new year. My shodo (Japanese calligraphy) class got together today and had a calligraphy-writing party.

First, we sat down for a lunch of traditional Japanese New Year's foods. The modern Japanese diet has a lot of meat in it, even the things that Japanese people themselves think of as "traditional," like sukiyaki. (Traditional to most people just means "pre-McDonald's".) But in fact, these meat dishes are quite modern as Japan was a vegetarian country before it re-opened to the West. The dishes they have at New Year's reflect the "real" traditional foods, and are things like soup with rice balls, dried fish, black beans, seaweed wraps, and sticky rice with red beans. To be honest, I don't like most of it. There was one point where I was munching a mouthful of whole, dried minnows covered in a hard, candy-like coating where my eyes were watering as I struggled not to gag. It's not that it really tasted so bad, but it was just the idea of what I was eating, plus the texture of hard, little fins poking my mouth and tongue. Blech. Well, it wasn't so bad. Here's our little group:

The teacher laid out big felt covers for the floor, and provided us with paper, brushes, and ink. (Lots and lots of ink! I was amazed how much ink we used.) Then, she helped us find something we wanted to write, and first wrote an example for us to copy from.

This scroll literally reads, "Intention like the highest clouds" or something to that effect. The actual meaning is more like, "It is my intention to rise up [morally, personally] like a towering cloud in the sky." As my teacher succinctly put it, "Aim high!"

Naoko, on the right, was making a scroll for her older brother, who just built a new home. Her scroll reads something like, "House full with nourishing spirit"; obviously reflecting her wish that his new home be a peaceful place where everyone can be happy and healthy.

These are two versions of the same scroll, as written by my teacher. The one on the left is more "artistic" or abstract, and the one on the right is slightly more formalist. I suppose that it might just look like scribbles, but I assure you that each stroke is carefully measured and considered, and that the finished product balances strict formalism with the uncontrollable randomness brought by a brush dripping full of ink. (That sounds like a load of bullshit, doesn't it?)

But seriously, good calligraphy is damned hard. It's awesome to watch my teacher write. She throws the brush down, causing a splatter of ink to spray across the paper; this makes you think "Oh, it's just like modern art, throwing paint onto a canvas!" But then the next stroke is slow, and exacting. Suddenly, the brush darts across the paper, flicks this way, then that; alternately light and heavy, fast and then slow. It's really remarkable, and the end effect is that a good piece balances weight with a feeling of lightness; strength and delicacy; control and chaos. I can't write about it without it sounding ridiculous, so I'll stop here.

Suffice it to say, you might look at it and think "My 5-year-old could do that." But then you try it yourself, and you look at what you wrote and you think, "Wow, now this is childish crap!" It's quite humbling. And, believe it or not, extremely exhausting! Your whole body becomes tense, and your face turns red; you break into a sweat, and you get muscle spasms in your back and shoulders. You don't realize it until you stop, but somehow when you really put your whole heart into writing, you feel like a wrung-out dishrag after writing a few characters. It's amazing! No wonder calligraphy has long been associated with religion here...

New Year's, Day 3

2007-01-08T02:03:00.000-08:00

Katie (one of the other teachers here) and I decided that we should go somewhere after New Year's. I wanted to go to Usa shrine, one hour's drive away, but had been warned that it would be very crowded. We decided to wait until the 3rd, in hopes that the crowds would be a bit thinner by then.

Usa shrine was built in 725, and is the head shrine of Hachiman: the Japanese god of war, agriculture, and the protector of Japan. As such, it's a tremendously important shrine, and it's famous throughout Kyushu, if not all Japan (although one suspects that, if it were located a bit closer to Tokyo, it would be even larger and more famous). It was bound to be a popular destination for New Year's travelers.

Sure enough, even on January 3rd, cars were lined up for 2 kilometres to get into the parking. We hadn't expected that. It took some time to finally get a spot, but it was worth the wait. Outside the shrine, there was a very festive atmosphere. People brought their families, and children were in a frenzied state, spending the money they had been given for their "New Year's gift" at stalls selling carnival-foods, souvenirs, and toys. Everyone was walking around with a big smile on their face.

Inside the shrine gate, things were a bit more solemn. Shrines are always built on places that are deemed to be "special" somehow. Perhaps there is a waterfall there, or a remarkable rock formation, or a particularly old grove of trees. So they are generally quite beautiful, too. There is a real sense of being "present with nature" somehow.

The Shinto priests were busily observing their various rituals. I'm afraid that I have no idea what they are doing, exactly. I took this picture, and afterwards, noticed that nobody else was taking photos. I don't know if it's considered bad taste to take a picture of somebody mid-ceremony, or whether it's just something that nobody else deemed picture-worthy.

Once inside, you proceed into the main shrine enclosure where everybody is praying, making wishes for the coming year, and throwing an offering into the coin box. As the traditional offering is a 5 yen coin (worth about a nickel) the shrine makes its real money by selling charms and various trinkets. A typical New Year's item is a special arrow that (I presume) is meant to protect the family over the coming year.

As I mentioned, shrines usually have some important natural object at their center. This shrine seems to have been built around this extremely ancient tree, but given the age of the shrine itself, I really wonder which is older, the tree or the shrine. This particular tree is thought to give good health to those who touch it, so people were eagerly placing their hands on the tree and then wiping some invisible residue of healthiness on their heads and faces. Of course, I also put my hands on the tree. (Actually I wanted to put my hands on the chick in the miniskirt, but I didn't want to get arrested so soon in the New Year. It's my New Year's resolution not to get arrested until at least March.)

All of that praying, offering money, and laying-on of hands is exhausting, so it was time for some refreshments. I went for the ever-popular meat-on-a-stick! Awesome!

Some kids saw me making stupid faces as I was eating my meat-kebab, so they were intrigued and came up to poke us to see if we were real, kind of like the monkeys touching the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey". But they were pretty cute, so I told them I'd let them be in the picture if they each paid me 100 yen. They agreed, once I had smacked them around a bit.

And a good time was had by all! Now I'm definitely going to have good luck this year!

Happy New Year, 2007!

2007-01-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody. Happy New Year!

Hope you had a nice Christmas and a good New Year's Eve. Christmas in Beppu was okay. There was a huge fireworks display down on the beach. The Japanese take fireworks pretty seriously, so even a "small town" like Beppu (150,000 people?) puts on a really good show that would put major celebrations in any Canadian city to shame. (I guess this is just a difference in opinion of how to use tax dollars...)

Anyway, the fireworks were on for two nights, Dec. 23rd and 24th. We went down to the beach the first night, and watched it up close. It was really impressive, choreographed to music and everything, with lots of interesting "effects" and a variety of different kinds of fireworks. It lasted about 40 minutes too, which is almost too long, actually.

The next night was Christmas eve, and we could see the fireworks from our balcony, so I took a few shots.

Here's a shot of the spectacular finale. You have to imagine the sheer size of this. It was huge.

The week between Christmas and New Year, I didn't do much. I am off work for this 2 weeks, so I just puttered around and went to Starbuck's way more than anybody should. I also wrote a bunch of New Year's cards. I made my own cards this year. 2007 is the Year of the Boar, so I made the kanji for "boar" into a caricature of a wild pig.

Writing New Year's cards is a bit of a chore, as you are supposed to send one to everybody you know. It gets to be pretty oppressive for small businesspeople who have to send them to all their customers. Fortunately, I don't have many friends. Ha. Ha.

Last night was New Year's eve. Katie (another teacher) and I sat around drinking and making fun of the annual "Red and White Show" (a televised New Year's eve singing program featuring all the top singers in the country) and how atrociously awful it is. Then, we went downtown for the countdown to midnight. They had some people hip-hop dancing, then the countdown and a couple fireworks, and then taiko drumming and traditional dancing.

After that, we went to the local shrine to make a wish and to get our fortunes for the year. In 2006 my fortune was "Very Lucky" (the best possible) but this time, it was "A Little Bit Lucky" which was kind of disappointing.

We came home around 2:30 and I slept for a few hours, then got up again at 5:30. We then drove down to the beach to watch the sun come up. This is a big Japanese tradition, so we weren't the only ones.

Here's the sun just peeking up over the horizon. This prompted lots of "Oohs" and "Ahhhs" and some applause. Note the garbage burning incinerator smokestack in front.

Within a few minutes, it looked like this (or I assume it did; after staring at the sun for three minutes straight I couldn't see much of anything.)

After that, I came home and slept most of the day away. I'm almost looking forward to going back to work...

Anyway, all jokes aside, here's hoping that everybody has a wonderful, happy, healthy, fulfilling 2007!

Well, I'm Still Alive...

2006-12-20T22:34:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went out for dinner with my friend Karen (one of the other English teachers here) and some of her Japanese friends. They are middle-aged people with an interest in English, so we spent the evening chatting in English and Japanese. This sort of thing is not entirely uncommon; foreigners often get invited out to dinner for an informal "English lesson". Some people don't like it because they feel it's exploitation, but I don't really mind it; after all, it's not like I can't use some more friends, right?

Anyway, it turns out that they had invited us to a very high-end Fugu restaurant. Fugu is the notorious puffer fish, and Oita prefecture is the best place to eat Fugu in Japan (according to most people in Oita, anyway).

Kind of cute, isn't it? Well, here's what Wikipedia says about the fugu (in part):

The fish is highly toxic, but despite this — or perhaps because of it — it is
considered a delicacy in Japan. The fish contains lethal
amounts of the poison tetrodotoxin in the
internal organs, especially the liver and the ovaries, but also in the skin and
the testicles. Therefore, only specially licensed chefs can prepare and sell
fugu to the public, and the consumption of the liver and ovaries is forbidden.
But because small amounts of the poison give a special desired sensation on
the tongue, these parts are considered the most delicious by some gourmets.
Every year a number of people die because they underestimate the amount of
poison in the consumed fish parts.
The poison paralyzes the muscles while the victim stays
fully conscious, and eventually dies from asphyxiation. There is
currently no antidote, and the standard
medical approach is to try to support the respiratory and circulatory system
until the effect of the poison wears off. The fish is also featured prominently
in Japanese art and culture.

Fugu is also horrendously expensive. I'm guessing the meal cost about $100 per person. It was special Fugu cuisine, so every dish featured Fugu somehow. (I really like saying "Fugu".) There was raw Fugu in Fugu liver sauce, with a side-dish of Fugu skin salad. This was followed by deep-fried Fugu and Fugu saute, with some boiled Fugu meatballs. Then, we had a type of sake with a Fugu fin floating in it, and then a Fugu soup. It was all delicious, but I kept a close eye on my dinner companions for signs of paralysis.

Anyway, it seems that I lived through it. As I said it was pretty good, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, especially at that price. If I'm going to kill myself by eating something, it will be a bacon double cheeseburger, and I'll die the old-fashioned way: of blocked arteries, thank you very much.

Sorry for the Long Absence

2006-12-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

I want to apologize for the long delay in posting anything here. Basically, I haven't had much news to report, and the other thing is that most of the news has been bad, so I haven't really felt like writing too much.

First, I've just been really busy with school, and also with extra-curricular activities picking up. The Jodo club here at APU became an official club, so we've been practicing more often, and I also had to prepare for my Jodo grading (which I passed!) and that meant going into Oita city twice a week. So basically, I haven't had much free time to write, or much of anything to write about, either.

Then, my uncle passed away last week. It was, on one hand, not unexpected, but on the other hand, much, much too soon. He had been physically strong and healthy and it was just one of those things you can't understand but have to accept anyway.

And now, I'm trying to deal with the fact that, just as I thought I had finally managed to get a girlfriend here, she has decided to break things off because she doesn't want a long-distance relationship. I'm trying to make sense of this, too, but not having much success. Lots of second-guessing going on just now.

In the meantime, I'm here at school, on a Saturday no less, trying to catch up with my marking and planning ... but instead, I'm procrastinating with this Blog. Okay, okay ... now that you know I'm still kicking, back to work! Hope you're all enjoying the lead-up to Christmas. In Japan, it's all very tacky and weird, but somehow it's nice to know that my friends and family are getting ready to enjoy a real Christmas just the same...

Beautiful Weather ...

2006-10-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

We've been having weeks of beautiful weather down here. Fall in Japan is usually the season when typhoons start rolling in off the Pacific; we've had a few, but they have missed us by a long shot. So we've just had day after day of sunny weather in the mid 20's.

Of course, the sun is still intense at this time of year, which I didn't really think about last weekend. I was practicing with the APU Jodo Club, outside at our Saturday morning practice. It stretched out to about 3 hours, and by the end of it, I had given myself a wicked sunburn on my face, neck, and particularly on the top of my head.

It has since healed, (a week of pain, then itching, then peeling) and now I'm feeling back to normal, but this must be the fifth time I've given myself a sunburn on my head because I still haven't quite come to terms with the fact that I'm going bald. Sigh. What an injustice. I have to get used to wearing a hat when I go outside.

I don't really have any other news; everything is proceeding smoothly. I am being pretty good about exercising most days, either jogging, swimming, or using the school gym. Work is okay, my stress level is low, etc. etc. All in all, so far so good.

My Day Out

2006-09-27T05:22:00.000-07:00

Today was a typical day in Japan: half frustration, half fun.

The frustration part was also typical: bureaucracy (and people being unable or unwilling to do anything except absolutely by the letter) preventing me from getting seemingly simple things done.

In my case, I wanted to transfer my Canadian license over to a Japanese one. Canada and Japan have some sort of reciprocal agreement, so it should be a simple matter of showing somebody my Canadian licence, giving them a photo, and presto-change-o, out pops my shiny new Japanese licence.

But of course, things never work like that here. I don't feel like going into detail, but suffice it to say that I won't be getting a licence any time soon.

On to the good stuff. I went for a hike with Karen, the other teacher. Since she is a seasoned trekker, it was more like a "short walk" for her but it was a hike for me. We went up a mountain in back of Beppu. There was a great view of the city from up there, and the weather was nice.

Below the look-out point was a quiet little temple, with a waterfall. It was quite striking.

After our walk, we felt that an onsen (hot spring) would be nice, so we went to a very old, traditional one. It has extremely sulfurous hot springs as well as a bubbling mud bath. The mud bath says "mixed" (i.e., men and women bathe together) but I was assured by the lady at the ticket counter that in practice, the men's and women's sections are separate. Well, imagine my surprise when, buck naked (having just put down my towel) I walked into the mud pool only to see Karen sitting there, comfortably immersed up to her neck. Oops. I usually try to wait a few weeks before exposing myself to my co-workers.

Anyway, no hard feelings, I guess. After that, we went for a walk in Beppu. This picture is kind of neat (I think) because it shows how steam just rises up in random locations all over Beppu.

We went for dinner at a "revolving sushi" restaurant, where the plates pass by you on a little conveyor belt. It's nice because you can see what you're getting. It also tends to make you eat a lot. I had 10 plates.

Of course, Japanophile that I am, I opted for only the most traditional dishes, like "hamburger sushi." It was delicious!

Japan, Day 2 (or 3?)

2006-09-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a "date" with a really cool woman that I met on the airplane from Tokyo to Toronto. We kind of hit it off, so we agreed that we'd meet again once I got back to Tokyo. We went out to dinner to a very interesting Chinese place, and had a nice time. It kind of made me sad to think that I don't live in Tokyo, because living in Oita means that it will be some time before we can meet again. This, in turn, got me to thinking about all the different places I've lived in Japan thus far, and all the nice people I've met, and how it's too bad that I can't see everybody. (Which also applies to everybody in Canada...) It would be nice to be wealthy enough to be able to travel around and visit everybody, wouldn't it?

After dinner, I was feeling a bit jet-lagged, so I went to bed at a good time and woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I think I'm over my jet-leg now, mostly. Today, I kind of hemmed and hawed about what to do. I had an appointment to meet another friend out in Abiko (where I used to live) around lunch, which left me a few hours this morning. I was considering going shopping for English books to tide me over in Oita (they're a bit harder to come by down there) but I wasted enough time to make that difficult, so I stuck around the hotel and then went out to Abiko in time for lunch. I had a nice visit there, and came back to the hotel.

The train ride to Abiko takes almost an hour, so I had a couple of hours to think about how weird it is to live in Japan. Well, perhaps "weird" isn't the word. I guess the thing I noticed is that I keep having the same thoughts when I ride the train. People in Japan scrupulously avoid making eye-contact with other people on the train. Staring at another person is rude, so they are careful not to look at all if they can help it. Often, they just close their eyes and try to fall asleep. Of course, as a foreigner, I just look around as much as I like, so occasionally I'll catch someone's eye, and they'll look away, but they'll always look back at me after a while to see if I'm still looking at them. ("Why is that foreigner staring at me?") That continues back and forth for a while... but I always feel kind of bad for Japanese people. I appreciate the overall level of politeness in Japanese society; the feeling of security, and so on; but by the same token, sometimes I feel like Japanese people are trapped by the elaborate set of rules they've created. Everyday, they travel on packed trains, and they try to make it as stress-free as possible by being completely non-confrontational (not even making eye-contact with each other) but when you think about it, what could be more absurd than a traincar filled with 200 people, all trying their hardest to pretend that the other 199 don't exist? If you've ever been in an elevator filled with strangers, you know the feeling. (By the way, elevators in Japan are even worse, because they rarely ever have Muzak, so it's so quiet you can hear a pin drop... or hear the other people breathing...) I think riding the train alone every day would drive me absolutely insane. In fact, I'm kind of surprised that more people in Japan don't snap and go on murderous killing sprees... to their credit, I suppose ...

Anyway, as you can see, I didn't do much today. Tomorrow is training, and then after that, we fly down to Oita. I won't miss Tokyo, but I will definitely miss my Tokyo friends. You can't have it all, I guess.

Japan, Again

2006-09-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

I arrived safely in Tokyo yesterday. The direct flight from Toronto takes about 13 hours, and I left at 1:30 pm, meaning I got into Japan at about 2:30 am, Toronto time, which was 3:30pm Tokyo time. I can rarely sleep on the airplane. Usually, it goes something like this: get on the plane, have a drink and snack, start watching the first in-flight movie and get drowsy and fall asleep for about an hour, then get woken up by the first meal. Then, try and fail to go back to sleep for the rest of the flight. Usually, I can't sleep because I am too uncomfortable, my back and butt start killing me, and I end up fidgeting for the entire time.

I was lucky to have gotten a really good seat this time, right up behind the bulkhead. It has extra legroom, and through some fluke of good luck, there were 3 empty seats beside me. I was tempted to lift the armrests and make a bed to lie down, but I couldn't bring myself to be that flagrantly rude. The downside of this seat was that it was near the washroom and the little room the flight attendants take their breaks in. So it was pretty much steady traffic the whole time, and people kept bumping into me. Oh well; as I said, I couldn't sleep anyway. There also always seems to be some moron at a window seat who insists on opening their window when everyone else is trying to sleep. When the interior of the plane is completely dark, the lights are turned off, 90% of people are asleep and the other 10% are watching the movie, what kind of ass opens the window? It boggles the mind. And yet, there's at least one on every plane; some sociopath who is unable or unwilling to even think about the people around them. Anyway, changing topics:

I just want to say at this point that I had a really nice visit to Canada. I saw *almost* everyone that I wanted to see, with a few notable exceptions. (You know who you are; I apologize for not being more organized and meeting up with you.) And without exception, I wished I could spend more time with everybody. There were a few people that I only met for literally a couple hours, which was really shamefully brief.

Many people commented that they read my Blog, which was news to me. But heartening news, just the same. It was nice to know that I'm not beaming these messages off into some sort of void or something. (If a Blogger blogs in the forest...) Also, if you read one of my blog posts, you don't have to comment on the blog itself, feel free to send me an email and let me know how you're doing. I do hope that this becomes more of a 2-way communication kind of thing.

I also felt, this last time around, that I experienced a lot less "reverse culture shock" when in Canada. In fact (maybe this is good news for those among you who hope I will move back to Canada soon) I felt kind of reluctant to go back to Japan this time. Part of this was a feeling that I just wasn't ready to go back to work, but part of it was a feeling that I am really missing my family and friends, even more than usual. Don't worry; once I get back to work, I will forget about you all again soon, haha.

Anyway, since I'm not working yet and have a few days free to do whatever I like, it feels good to be back in Tokyo. I am staying in a nice hotel right smack in the heart of downtown, so I think I will do a bit of sightseeing. I am at a bit of a loss as to where to go, since I have already been to most of the major attractions. I could hit the streets and see where I end up, but this is sometimes a bad idea. I'll let you know how it goes.

Bye everybody! See you in ... a while ...

Raincircle!

2006-08-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

I came back to Ontario from New Brunswick yesterday, and from the plane I saw something absolutely amazing that I have never seen before, and I don't think I have even heard of before.

I guess the atmospheric conditions as we were coming into Toronto were just perfect to create a rainbow BELOW the plane! The sun was pretty much directly overhead of us, and I suppose there was a thin (transparent) layer of moist air below us which was reflecting the light to create the rainbow. And it wasn't just a rainbow, it was a full circle! (Usually, the horizon cuts off the lower half of the circle.) And, since we were actually only about 5000 feet or so above the ground at the time, I could see the buildings and highways quite clearly, so I could also see this amazing bright rainbow moving along with us, sweeping across farms, highways, subdivisions ... it was really amazing. I realized that I may never see that again, but I hope I will ...

Anyway, I had a good time in New Brunswick. I'm back in Ontario where things are a bit quieter (!) so I will have to try and get some studying done. But I may not be able to write the damn Japanese test after all ... arghh... it's kind of a long story, but basically, I don't know if they will accept reasonable payment methods (like credit cards) or whether I have to do some stupid "only in Japan" method, like a postal wire payment or something silly like that. Grrrr.

Stress, Thy Name Is "Moving"!

2006-07-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's moving time again. What a wretched thing it is to have to move in and out of an apartment every 3 to 4 months. Why do I do it? I have no idea ... I suppose the real question is: Why do I continue to buy junk while I'm here? Why can't I learn not to buy unnecessary stuff that I will just have to agonize over later - whether to keep it and pay moving costs, or throw it away? I think the Buddhists were on to something when they said that an adherence to material goods was the root of all suffering. Or something like that. I can start to see the benefits of owing just "one robe and one bowl" now.

So anyway, I have enlisted the help of my calligraphy teacher. She is rich and has two houses anyway, so it's not a huge inconvenience for her to take some boxes of mine while I go to Canada for two months. But still ... I realize that I am just forestalling the inevitable. At some point I'm going to move more or less permanently, and I'm going to have to throw away (or maybe sell) a lot of stuff. And packrat that I am, that is going to KILL me!

One of the tough things about being a teacher is that, every semester, the students give you a whole pile of souvenirs and mementos - photo collages, collections of signatures with nice messages, cards and little gifts ... exactly the sort of thing that you really don't need but you just CAN'T bring yourself to throw away. So, what you do is, you lug it around for 4 or 5 years, until you have finally forgotten who was who anyway, and THEN you throw it away. (Don't tell the students that!!) I can tell myself that I will keep all the stuff they gave me this year (they really were a great class this year) but I know that, at some point, in an angry red haze of "moving and packing" frustration, I will throw it all in the trash.

Meanwhile, I have to deal with all the presents I have bought people. Since I am poor, (so very miserably poor) my presents are all mostly cheap crap. But unfortunately, cheap crap takes up just as much space - probably more - as nice stuff. So, I think at least half of my going-home suitcase will be gifts! It's not fair somehow. I suppose that I can always buy clothes to wear when I get home ...

Which brings me to my next point: if you are wondering whether I am bringing you something from Japan, I'm probably not. (Sorry!) And if I *do* have anything for you, just remember that, although it is probably cheap crap, it is cheap crap that took up a lot of valuable space in my luggage. I hope that's some small consolation ...

The HOT Before the Storm

2006-07-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

Hi folks! There is a huge typhoon (we call 'em "hurricanes") inching towards Kyushu right now. As it is very slow-moving and quite large, they are expecting a fair bit of damage. All week, they have been predicting landfall this weekend, so nobody wanted to make plans, but I had a party with my students last night anyway, and had a great time. We went to a restaurant, then down to the beach for some fireworks, and finally ended up in a karaoke box. Unlike North America, where Karaoke is typically something that happens once a week in a sports bar (and so you have to stand up and sing in front of a bunch of strangers) in Japan, Karaoke is usually done in a room with just your friends. Your friends, and a really, really loud sound system that you can crank up and then sing your head off. It's a lot of fun, actually. If you haven't tried it, you're really missing out. (For the record, if it looks like some people are bored, they are actually just exhausted ... I took this picture towards the end of the night and it was past 3:30am as I recall)

Anyway, I woke up this morning a bit surprised to see sunlight coming through my curtains - I was sure it would be gray and rainy.

I'm a bit of a slave to the weather. If it's sunny, I feel compelled to go outside, even though I am basically and indoor person and I get a sunburn at the drop of a hat. That is why I say it's a compulsion - I go outside even though I don't particularly enjoy it. So I put on a hat and some sunscreen, stumbled outside, and wandered around a bit. And let me tell you: it is fricking HOT right now. I walked a few blocks down to the station, did a bit of shopping (the air conditioning in the supermarket is turned up so high that it kind of hurts your lungs when you first step in from the furnace outside), then trudged back home. After my walk, I was so sweaty that I just had to take a picture. Actually, I don't look nearly as sweaty as I felt. It felt like my sweat was sweating.

There is definitely something weird going on with the temperatures between Canada and Japan. I checked the current temperature in Beppu on the internet, and it said it was 27 degrees, 29 with the "heat index". I guess that is like the Humidex we have in Canada. Anyway, I can vouch for the fact that it is WAY hotter than it would be on a day that they said it was 29 in Canada. It feels more like 35 or 37. So, I don't know who's lying, but there's something weird going on.

So apparently, this is the calm before the storm. I grabbed a current satellite photo off the web ... I am situated right in that tiny cloudless window on the east part of Kyushu.

But I'm sure there isn't anything to get worried about. The storm is scheduled to spin up the west side of Kyushu, meaning that my old town Ikitsuki is probably going to get hit pretty hard. But they are expecting Oita to be relatively unaffected - just rain and heavy winds, I suppose. I'll let you know how it goes... in the meantime, I guess it's time for a Sunday afternoon nap. Aaahhhhhhh....

My Life in Beppu ...

2006-06-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

Howdy! I thought I'd post a little bit about my town, Beppu. If you looked at this picture, you might just think that Beppu was a fun, exciting place with an active nightlife; the Paris of Japan, perhaps.

Well, you could be forgiven for thinking that; but you'd be a bit off the mark. Beppu enjoyed a lot of tourism (because of its numerous and famous hot springs) up until a few decades ago, but recently it seems that Beppu is a bit depressed. In any case, there's not a whole lot to do here. Nice picture, though.

Beppu has some interesting weather. Located in Beppu Bay (for a map, you can click here
) it seems that the prevailing winds have a tendency to blow clouds and mist in off the ocean, and up the hill. My school is located near the top of said hill, and so occasionally, we can see cloudbanks rolling in ... it's quite stunning.

Which looks like this on campus...

As for my everyday routine, breakfast in the cafeteria is cheap and delicious. You have to get used to the idea of Japanese breakfast (rice, miso soup, fish, spinach salad with small fry, etc.) but I like that stuff, so I go nuts for it. For a buck fifty, how can you go wrong?

Can't talk ... eating ...

In other news...

I have recently started calligraphy again. My teacher in Beppu is a very nice lady named Asoh Sensei. (No "Ah-so!" jokes, please.) She's really cool and very generous with her time. And she's very talented too, winning lots of awards and commissions from companies to do calligraphy for offices, buildings, lobbies, etc. Here she is with a big piece in her home.

Just don't ask me what it says.

World Cup

2006-06-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

The World Cup is on and, for a little while at least, I'm a soccer fan (sorry, FOOTBALL fan) again. I don't usually care much about sports but World Cup fever is pretty contagious. I'm rooting for England, mostly because I have some English friends who will be ecstatic if Jolly Olde wins. Also, England has a strong team this year with some of the world's best players, so it seems that if England wins, it will be a fair result. (I just don't want Brazil to win again!) My second choice is Holland, for my Dutch friend.

And as for Japan ... I really have mixed feelings. On one hand, I think Japan are underdogs in this tournament, and for that reason, I'm rooting for them. But, in typical Japanese fashion, the players and the public here seem to think that, if they just try hard enough, they will actually win the World Cup. It's nonsense, but it seems to be the prevailing view. Japanese news coverage (and especially sports coverage) is unbelievably Japan-centric, so the only thing the fans hear is how great Japan's team is. So naturally, the believe the hype.

This sort of thing happens in Canada too; before the Olympics, you get all kinds of profiles and predictions about "medal hopefuls" and people who are supposedly favourites to get the gold. Then, the actual event happens, and the "favourite" comes in 8th. So we Canadians learn not to take that hype seriously.

But in Japan, they really think they have a chance. More than a chance - they think they are sure to win! It's kind of sad.

So, when Australia played Japan the other day, I was kind of rooting for Australia at the beginning. Japan scored a goal, but it was an obvious foul on the Australian goalie. It should have been disallowed, but it went through. When the Japanese commentators failed to say a word about the clear foul, I got really angry and began seriously rooting for the Aussies.

I don't think you're supposed to do that to the goalie.

Even so, it felt a bit like overkill when the Australians scored three goals in the last 8 or so minutes. I felt sorry for the Japanese goalie, and for the fans who had travelled halfway around the world. But then on the evening news, they showed the Japanese goal (again, no mention of the fact that it should have been disallowed) and then the first Australian goal, but then they didn't even show the next two goals! Ridiculous! So I think the Japanese are getting what they deserve, somehow. Until they learn to have halfway-balanced coverage, I am happy when they fail at sporting events!

Mini-Vacation

2006-05-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

I have a week off this week. There are no classes at the University, and officially we are supposed to stay close to Beppu because we are "on call" but we know and our employers know that there is no chance that we will get called in. So although they can't officially tell us to go on vacation, they have been kind of like "Enjoy your home study week!" Wink Wink.

I went back to Hirado to visit some friends. First stop was to drop in on my old calligraphy teacher, Mr. Tateishi. He's a very funny old guy who chain smokes, drinks about 50 cups of green tea a day, dabbles in all kinds of fine art (but is a master potter and calligrapher) and speaks his mind with a distinct country charm. He's always been really kind to me and always gives me some kind of present when I go and visit him. Of course I enjoy getting stuff (doesn't everybody?) but I always worry that he thinks I only visit him because of his consistent gift-giving. On the other hand, it's easy for him to take a couple minutes and make me a calligraphy plaque like the one he's making in the picture. For him, it's two minutes, but for me, it's something I'll treasure for a long time.

That night, I stayed at my friend Jeroen's place. He's a Dutch guy who speaks fluent Dutch (obviously), English, and Japanese. Now he's married to a Japanese lady and has two incredibly cute little kids. He's very into Japanese cultural stuff, particularly tea and iaido (which is how I know him). He had a big tea event in Hirado so we went to it together.

It was an annual remembrance ceremony for William Adams, a British pilot who came to Japan just after 1600. He became a trusted advisor of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, and established a trading house in Hirado. His story was fictionalized as the novel "Shogun" by James Clavell. Here's a shot of Jeroen by Adams' grave stone, which has a Christian cross and his Japanese name, Miura Anjin.

At the ceremony, there were a number of speeches followed by a special tea ceremony performed by the headmaster of the ChinShin style of tea, Lord Matsura Akira. He is the 39th (?) lord of Hirado and a direct descendent of the local daimyo who used to rule this area in feudal times. He currently lives near Tokyo and if Japan were England, he might be described as an Earl or perhaps a Baron. (Does England have Barons?) I spoke to him at some length and he is a very cool guy who speaks fluent English.

After the ceremony, we went back to the tea house on what used to be the Matsura family's mansion, and is now the local historical museum. I and a number of other guests received tea from the masters of ChinShin tea style. It was a very cool experience.

The next day, I met my friend Kazuko and we went to Nagasaki and Glover Gardens. It's quite a romantic place (when you're with the right person!) and the view was great. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a nice breeze off the bay. We wandered around Nagasaki for a while together ... it was a very nice, relaxing, laid back kind of day.

The next day, Kazuko had to work, so we said goodbye and I decided to head off to Kumamoto. I really like Kumamoto because it has a strong samurai tradition, with a great castle and a legacy of a lot of Miyamoto Musashi stuff. I have seen it all before, but I wanted to see it again and take a load of pictures.

Unfortunately, my Kumamoto trip was basically a disaster from start to finish. The bus from Sasebo takes 2.5 hours, so I arrived around noon, called some friends and met them for lunch. On my way to meet them, I took one picture out in front of the castle, of the castle's builder, the famous general Kato Kiyomasa.

I met my friends and over lunch, we checked some tourist pamphlets. I discovered that the museum I had come to see was closed until October of 2007! So there was half my itinerary gone. After lunch, I went off to the bus center to find out about going to the famous cave where Miyamoto Musashi wrote the Book of Five Rings. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon, but I was informed that, if I took the next bus to the caves, I wouldn't be able to come back because the last bus returning from the caves would have already left. Great system! So, the second half of my itinerary was gone, too. I asked them when I could catch a bus back to Beppu, and the lady informed me the last bus was leaving in 15 minutes. So I couldn't even go and take pictures of the castle! In the end, I think I was in Kumamoto for something like 2 hours, and I took one picture.

So in conclusion, Kyushu's a nice place, BUT YOU NEED A CAR!

I'd kind of like to go back (learning from my mistakes and all) but the memory of my recent failure is just too fresh. Maybe in the fall.

It's Wednesday today, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of my week. On one hand, I won't be too sad if I end up doing nothing much, but I know that I'll feel a bit jealous when I hear everything the other teachers got up to. Must make a plan ...

Date To Hell

2006-05-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I had a date. (I can barely believe it myself!) I won't go into too much detail but suffice it to say it's someone that I first met when I was living in Nagasaki. I've known her for something like 5 years, but I haven't been living anywhere near her until lately, so we finally had a chance to meet again on Saturday.

We had a great time! First, we went up to see the most famous of Beppu's "Hells". These are places where thermal vents open directly in the ground, and produce some bizarre and various effects. There are 8 famous Hells (some of them bubbling mud pools, for example) and others have different colours depending on the chemicals in the surrounding rocks, and so on. The Hell we went to was called "The Sea Hell" because of its blue colour. It was really impressive, with massive amounts of stinky, sulfurous steam hissing out of the ground. Apparently, the water in the pool itself is something like 98 degrees Celsius. You wouldn't want to fall in.

The Sea Hell has a very nice park around it, as well as a greenhouse which I imagine is heated geothermally in the winter. There were some beautiful flowers in there of all inscrutable varieties, but I liked these lillies the best. Supposedly, they have a variety of lilly-pad that grows so large that a small child can stand on it. (There were some that looked like they were already two feet in diameter.) So, in August, they have some event where you bring your kids and get their pictures taken standing on the lilly-pads.

After visiting Hell, we went to the local aquarium. Beppu is a cool place because it's a tourist town. It's quite small, population-wise, but it has a disproportionate number of tourist attractions, including a safari park, an amusement park with roller coasters and rides, two viewing towers, a ropeway to the mountain-top, and the aforementioned aquarium. So far, I've only seen the aquarium.

I really can't remember the last time I went to an aquarium, so this was actually a pretty cool trip for me. I felt like a kid again, especially seeing the large mammals. You can't really appreciate just how enormous a walrus is until one is swimming two inches away on the other side of a piece of glass.

Or a huge, 300-pound grouper.

Or an enormous sea-lion. I was reminded of the fact that they mostly used sea-lion noises for Chewbacca in Star Wars when I saw this guy. Apparently, sea-lions spend most of their time trying to intimidate each other.

What visit to the aquarium would be complete without leaping dolphins?

Anyway, it was a great day. The only downside was that I got a bald-head sunburn. I have to get used to the fact that I am going bald, and start wearing a hat whenever I go outside. Sigh. Somebody should make a special spray-on sunscreen specifically for people who have some hair on the heads, but not enough... Or better yet, a pill that safely and reliably grows hair.

Nagasaki Trip!

2006-05-07T06:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of the other teachers and I were talking and we decided to rent a car and take a road trip. I had been thinking out loud about how I'd like to visit Nagasaki again, as I hadn't been back there for 4 years or so. They had never been to Nagasaki and thought that was a splendid idea. Before long, all 6 of us were in for the trip.

We booked a hotel that was right on the water of the harbour, and rented a minivan. As I was the only person with a valid driver's licence (my international permit) I was to be the driver, which was fine with me; it guaranteed that I would have a good seat for the entire ride. We set out early Saturday morning. The weather forecast had called for rain, but as is often the case in Japan especially, it was completely wrong. The weather for the whole weekend was nice and sunny.

It took about 3 hours to get to Nagasaki, done at a brisk but reasonable pace. We settled into our hotel and found out that, as luck would have it, we were in town the same weekend as an international tall ships festival. Good timing! First, we had some lunch in a pizza restaurant overlooking the harbour. Then it was off to the Peace Park and Atomic Bomb Museum. These are very sobering places to go, but they are a must-see for every visitor to Nagasaki. I have been there 3 times, and I have cried every single time. (The same for the one time I've been to Hiroshima.) I think because I have taught Japanese children, I can't help but imagine what happened to the children of Nagasaki when the bomb was dropped. No matter what you think about the war, and the possibility that the atomic bomb hastened the end of the war, it was a horrible, inhumane, and unforgivable thing to drop it on a civilian target. We now have evidence that the Americans chose the targets they did because those cities had up to that point in the war been spared conventional bombing, and would be "fresh" as a way of measuring the effects of the new bomb.

Anyway, the main feature of the Peace Park is a rather striking figure of Peace ... he holds one hand up to the sky to warn of the ongoing danger of nuclear weapons, and holds the other out in a gesture of peace. A lot of people think this statue is ugly, but I kind of like it.

The other striking thing is the corner of Urakami Cathedral, which was left standing after the blast. It was a few hundred meters away from the center of the blast, and has since been moved to right beside ground zero.

After the sobering experience of the Peace Park and bomb museum, we headed back to the hotel for a nap (all pretty tired from the ride over) and then went to dinner in Chinatown. Nagasaki has a pretty nice little Chinatown; it's a bit touristy but not so bad. And the food was good.

Then we headed over to Dejima wharf, where the tall ships were moored and where they were having a fireworks display. This picture isn't the greatest, sorry.

The next day, we went to Megane Bashi (Spectacles Bridge) which someone said was the oldest bridge in Japan; I'm not sure how that is possible since it was destroyed by a flood in the 1970's. Maybe at THAT time, it was the oldest bridge in Japan. Anyhow, when the water is just the right height, the arches are perfectly round and it really does look like a pair of glasses. We got there a bit late (or perhaps a bit early).

Finally, we went off to Glover Gardens, the home of a wealthy British industrialist who settled in Nagasaki and lived there during some very interesting times in the late 1800's and early 1900's. His estate commands a particularly nice view of the city and the harbour.

Nagasaki really is special somehow; there is something different in the air there. I hesitate to use the words "romantic" or "exotic" but perhaps those aren't so bad. It's just a really unique place where Japan allowed itself to mingle with the rest of the world, if only for a little while and on its own terms. It was a great weekend; one of those rare trips where you really can't think of anything at all that went wrong. Let's hope our next trip is just as good.

Beppu and APU

2006-04-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I have settled into my new place here in Beppu City, Oita. Beppu seems to be a wonderful place so far. It's the most famous hot spring resort in Japan, and has somewhere around 100 hot springs; some of these are traditional springs (bathing in hot water); others are boiling mud pools that are interesting for sight-seeing; others are basically just steam vents; there are also special places where you can get buried up to the neck in hot sand. Everywhere you look, you can see plumes of steam rising naturally out of the side of the mountain. The city itself has a population of about 150,000 people but it feels a bit larger, actually, because of all the tourist facilities. My apartment is very nice and new, and is extremely close to a beautiful tree- and flower-filled park, and has a great view of spectacular mountains.

Asia Pacific University (APU) is a very well-regarded university and is kind of unique in Japan because of its international character. Every day, I see students from all over the world and hear tons of different languages being spoken on campus. It's nice not to have people stare at me because I'm "the foreigner" but at the same time, I miss that uniqueness I used to have! Oh well. The university is built on top of the mountain, so I can look down and see the town and the ocean, as well as the beautiful mountains off in the distance. It's quite breathtaking.

The facilities here are really new and high-tech, and our office is great. Very spacious. The other teachers are really cool to work with, too. So, all in all, I think this is the best teaching assignment I've ever had! (Now, I haven't met the students yet, so give me time to revise that statement if necessary!) But I am really excited about the next 4 months or so.

I'll post some pictures when I get a chance. Until then, you can see APU's webpage here. Stay in touch!

Tokyo in Bloom

2006-03-31T01:12:00.000-08:00

I'm staying at my hotel in Tokyo now. The great thing is that it's very central and that the rooms have internet! So, without further ado, a few photos.

This one is from Manmanji temple in Matsudo city. This guy is one of the "Nio" or two kings; in Buddhism, he is commonly a guardian of temples. This particular example is 700 years old or so, and is a national treasure.

The cherry blossoms are in bloom in Tokyo now, so everyone is going crazy. I suppose they are very beautiful; they create an effect of a light-pink cloud floating over your head when there are enough of them. Japanese people like to sit under the blossoms and drink with friends.

While everyone is looking at the cherry blossoms, the azaleas (like these ones) are also in bloom, but strangely, everyone ignores them. I'm not sure why. When I questioned the single-minded obsession with cherry blossoms, my Japanese friend made a remark to the effect that I just don't understand the Japanese mindset. This is a standard response when the person in question doesn't understand the significance of something themselves, and it irritates me a bit. But anyway, the flowers are nice.

Quick Update

2006-03-28T01:05:00.000-08:00

Hey! I'm currently homeless (again) having moved out of my place in Nihonmatsu. I'm spending about a week in Kashiwa and Tokyo for training, before shipping out to my next assignment which is in Oita (on Kyushu, where I lived for the first couple years in Japan). It's nice to be back in and around Kashiwa; I've been able to catch up with a few friends already and should have a couple more reunions over the next two or three days. After that, my company is going to put me up in a hotel in downtown Tokyo. That should be fun! The first time I was in Japan, with the JET program, we were all put up in a very fancy hotel, the Keio Plaza Hotel, which is located right in the heart of Tokyo on some very prime real estate. That opportunity was mostly wasted on me, however, because I was exhausted from jet lag and also because I was frankly intimidated by the scale of Tokyo and the prospect of getting lost in the megalopolis somehow. When you don't speak Japanese, it can be really unnerving wandering around with no clue of where you're going or where you've been. (Has everyone seen "Lost in Translation" yet? I watched that again a couple weeks ago -- what a great movie.)

So anyhow, I just got paid and I'm getting 4 days in Tokyo courtesy of my new employer, so it should be fun. I'm going to be in Oita on April 4th, so I will post my finalized address and stuff for anybody who wants it. Wish me luck!

A Few Photos of Me and Students

2006-03-05T01:31:00.000-08:00

It's been so busy here that I haven't had much chance to update my Blog. I have a computer and the internet at school, but I literally don't usually have 5 spare minutes in the day, so it's impossible to do anything at work, and I don't have the internet at home. Poor me.

Here's a photo from a few weeks back. The students in the Math and Science Program (they will go to Africa and teach these subjects in schools there) got together for a party. It was quite fun, except that it was a "sit on the floor" party, which I find physically uncomfortable and don't like much. Before this picture was taken, my feet had completely fallen asleep and I had to stagger and limp my way over behind the table to pose for the picture.

Then, a couple weeks ago, my Home class (consisting of 4 students) had a field trip. It didn't serve much purpose except to let the trainees leave the center for a while. Here we are, pretty tired but hiding it well, upon our triumphant return to Nihonmatsu station.

From Left: some guy, Chika, Hiroya, Ai, Fumiko

Shrimp Women

2006-02-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

I was in the post office this morning (unusually, I have a Thursday off, giving me a chance to do things around town) and I saw a "shrimp woman". This is an elderly woman who has such severe osteoporosis that she can't stand up straight. She walks around with her hands on her knees, bent over at a complete 90 degree angle, as if she were searching for something she had dropped on the ground. Consequently, she has a spinal curvature resembling a shrimp. I use that phrase flippantly, but it's actually extremely sad. These women are quite common in Japan - I suppose it is an unfortunate combination of a long lifespan combined with a life spent planting rice in the fields by hand, and a diet that doesn't traditionally include much calcium. If you go for a walk during the day in a semi-rural area, you will almost definitely see a woman so bent with age that she can barely see where she is going. Sometimes they get around with the assistance of a small shopping cart that they push in front of themselves for support.

Anyway, this particularly woman looked like she was 100 if she was a day old, and she had the worst back I think I've ever seen. She could barely shuffle her way up to the counter, and even then, her head was below the level of the desk, so she had to twist her neck just to look up at the teller. I wanted to help her somehow, but I had no idea what to do for her; I assume that most of the other customers felt the same way because, in true Japanese fashion, they were pointedly ignoring this embarrassing situation. Eventually, she got what she came for and shuffled her way out of the post office. All I could think was "Man, I don't want to get old." That and "Sit up straight."

It's Like the UN Over Here

2006-02-17T23:51:00.000-08:00

One of the really interesting things about this job is the international character of this place. We have English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Portugese, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Thai, Khmer, Malay, Swahili, and Indonesian teachers all working in the same building. Walk down the halls, and students will say "Hi" or "Es salaam aleikom" or "Nihao" or whatever their target language is. I must admit that I feel a little bit lame when a student says good morning in their language and I don't even know for sure what language it is, much less how to respond.

And I even admit that I felt a little bit (just a little bit!) of rancour when students say their greetings in Arabic. It's a reflex reaction that shows I still have some deep-seated resentment toward the Arab world. Why? It boils down to prejudice ... and yet, the Arabic teachers here are incredibly kind people. It's confusing to feel this general hostility towards the Arab world and a sense of affection towards some individual Arabs ... but it's a good thing. It clarifies in my mind just how stupid prejudice is, and how dangerous it is to think of people en masse. As it turns out, everybody is an individual. Imagine that! I think it has been very valuable to me, in general, to meet people from other cultures. That sounds really obvious, but when I think back on life in Canada, my friends and acquaintances are pretty uniformly caucasian. But here ... It's kind of like a mini-UN here.

I'm always telling my students what a great, multi-cultural country Canada is. We're so lucky that we can walk down the street in Toronto and meet people from any country in the world. The problem is ... do we? Do we have a lot of friends who are recent immigrants? Do we actually make the effort to learn a couple of words in Korean from the Korean grocer, or how to say "Good morning" in Hindi from the guy down the hall? Usually, no. And I think it would make a huge difference to that person to know that we care enough about their culture to at least acknowledge their language to the tune of 1 or 2 words. I certainly know how happy the teachers are here when I ask them about their home countries.

By default, the common language of communication here is English. It's completely an issue of practicality ... but it also enforces a kind of "status quo" whereby the native English speakers work comfortably in an environment that everybody else has to struggle in. And we English speakers rarely even have to think about it. It's "fair" but it's also completely unfair, as we are the minority. And it seems to me that the world is like this too. We're lucky that we were born in an English speaking country, but that's all it is: sheer luck.

Of course, I've been studying Japanese pretty hard, but hearing all these languages around me has really made me want to study other languages ... starting first with French. I studied it for 13 years and I've forgotten 99% of what I learned ... but actually, I think most of it is just buried. I only need to start digging a little bit...

Au revoir, mina san!

Update, at Long Last

2006-02-10T22:48:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a while since my last update. Work is going well, I suppose. I am now in a bit of a quandary. I have already agreed to work in Kyushu (southwestern Japan) starting in March, taking up a contract with my old company. In fact, I have already signed the contract and everything.

My current job was just meant to be a temporary time-filler between contracts with my other company. But, much to my surprise, this job is kind of fun and moreover, I get paid around twice as much as I would at my other job. It's hard work, and living in this town is pretty awful, but the money is good and the perks are also considerable. So my quandary is a pretty familiar one: do I go for the money, or for the quality of life? I feel pretty strongly that life in Kyushu will be better (more fun, more freedom, more friends) but I have a lot of debts that need to be paid off and the money I could earn here would be awfully useful. I just don't know what to do. I am leaning towards going to Kyushu for a few reasons. One is that I have already signed a contract and breaking that would permanently burn my bridge with that company, if nothing else. On the other hand, there is always a chance that I'll be able to get this job again in the future. Argh.

Other than that, not much is happening. Oh, I bought a computer recently! It's my first computer, and nominally, I bought it for work, but I also figured it would let me do a lot of other things such as use Skype to call home cheaply and so on. But I haven't got the internet at home, so it kind of defeats the purpose... (if I move to Kyushu, my apartment will have free internet...)

Anyway, sorry to have gone so long without an update. I've been busy and at the same time, haven't had much news. I'll try to do this more regularly over the next few months.

Hope all is well and that everyone is happy and healthy.

Crazy Snow

2006-01-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

Japan has apparently been making the news internationally because of the crazy amount of snow that has been falling in and around Niigata prefecture. They have 4 metres of snow in some places. I don't have a TV but I saw a picture in the newspaper of guys from the army digging out houses and rescuing people. Just so that you're not worried about me (I've been flooded with worried calls and emails... okay, I got one) I'm in Fukushima and we haven't had much snow.

Today is Friday but I have the day off, which is nice. I have to work tomorrow, but then I have Sunday off again. They seem reluctant to ever let us have 2 holidays back-to-back, which is kind of strange, but I'm so thankful to be off today that I'm not complaining. I finally met my students, and they are really nice and very smart. I have 2 groups. My English class has 4 people, and their English is quite high. My technical class (the group I am trying to teach how to become teachers) is also 4 but is considerably less fluent. But, they are also a bit more fun because of their personalities.

Nothing else to report. I'm really just working, planning for my lessons, and sleeping!

First Week at JICA

2006-01-07T01:20:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a pretty crazy week. I haven't done much "work" per se but I have been bowled over with tons and tons of information during this week-long orientation period. I have been trying to sort out which fraction of it I can ignore, and which part I need to remember, and then trying to remember it. Also, the experienced teachers have been looking quite busy making preparations for their classes - they all seem to be making print-outs, copying things, making up spreadsheets, picking textbooks to use, etc. etc. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there listening to how absolutely, insanely busy I'm going to be over the next 10 weeks, wishing I could actually understand enough of my duties to go ahead and make some preparations.

Anyway, the other teachers I'm going to be working with are really great. They have kind of put me to shame ... they have amassed huge quantities of books, photos, games, toys, and other useful classroom resources over the years, and I showed up with ... um, nothing, I guess. But they are very generous, it seems, so I will be able to share resources with them.

It's kind of scary to have come from my last job (where the objective was, firstly to have fun, and then hopefully to teach them something) to this job, where we are preparing young people to go off and live by themselves in some village in rural Africa for 2 years. If I do a lousy job, my students are *really* going to suffer for it. So the pressure is on to drive these guys to really achieve a lot, and I have to make sure my lesson plans can keep up with them! It's a very new experience for me.

Anyway, it all looks pretty daunting because it's just the first week, but once I start actually working I think things will get better. I will try and keep everyone updated.

Exploring Nihonmatsu

2005-12-18T19:53:00.002-08:00

I'm going to have to make this short because I've been hogging the public computer here at the city hall for a while now, and I'm starting to get some "looks" if you know what I mean. Maybe I'll take a break to let somebody else on and then come back later.

Anyhow, I haven't been doing much lately, but I have been managing to get out and go for quite a lengthy (3-4 hour) walk every day. The other day it was up (and up, and up, and up a bit more...) to the top of the mountain to see the ruins of Nihonmatsu castle. There is nothing left there but the stone foundation, but it is still impressive to imagine the way this castle must have dominated the surrounding territory from its vantage point at the top of the hill. When I was there, I was all by myself for quite a while, but just as I was leaving, three middle-aged Japanese folks came by and tried to tell me about the history of the castle. I'm afraid I didn't understand most of what they were saying but I guess the castle played some important role in the collapse of the Shogun's government toward the end of the 1800's.

Yesterday was Christmas so I treated myself to dinner at Denny's ... kind of sad, but it's just about the only restaurant in this town. And for some reason, the Denny's franchise in Japan seems to be trying to go "upscale" ... it's not cheap by any means, and the food is actually quite tasty and "gourmet style". So, anyway, it was quite a nice meal and a fine Christmas treat for myself. It was a rather lonely Christmas but I didn't let that bother me too much. I thought of all my family and friends, and I knew that (some of them at least) were thinking of me...

Anyway, I'd better go. More later?

Important Correction!

2005-12-18T19:53:00.001-08:00

Forgot to mention in my last post: there was indeed something slightly wrong with my address. Here's the corrected version.

Smile Heights Sampei #101
Mukaihara 261-2
Nihonmatsu-shi, Fukushima-ken
964-0916
Japan

Roughing It...?

2005-12-18T19:53:00.000-08:00

Where did I leave off? Anyway, it's been a tough couple days so far. I was told that I could move into the apartment ahead of schedule, which was a lifesaver since I didn't really have anywhere else to stay, given that I had to leave my Abiko apartment on the 17th. So I picked up the key for the new apartment, got all packed, moved out of my old place, shipped most of my stuff by courier, and boarded the train for Nihonmatsu.
With me, I had my backpack with a pillow and my toiletries, a briefcase-thing with my important papers, my sword (I didn't want them to lose that) and my foam mattress which folds up. All in all, it was manageable... but just barely. I got onto the train and, much to my displeasure, saw that there were no seats. I piled all my junk in the alcove? vestibule? (the space between trains) and stood with all the other losers who couldn't get seats. It was pretty awful, and that lasted for about 1 hour until enough people got off the train to free up some seats. I finally got to sit down for the last hour or so.
I got into Nihonmatsu around 6 pm. It was dark and the wind was incredibly cold and strong. I couldn't believe the difference 2 hours made in terms of temperature between here and Chiba. I took a taxi to the apartment. As expected, it was absolutely freezing inside. They had told me that the bedding was at the cleaner's so there wouldn't be any blankets. Indeed, there was just a bare mattress. The apartment itself is huge, especially for one person. I turned on the kerosene heater, setting it to full blast. There was absolutely nothing to do, (all my stuff was in transit so I didn't even have a book to read) so at about 9pm I tried to sleep on top of the mattress with all my clothes on. With the heater going at top speed, the apartment began to feel approximately liveable so I drifted off to sleep...
But then at around 3am, the heater started beeping to tell me it had run out of kerosene. Great. I looked around for another tank or something, but there was none... Japanese homes idiotically have no insulation whatsoever... it's like living in a tent... so within 5 minutes the inside temperature had dropped back down to about zero. I eventually hit upon the idea of sleeping underneath my foam mattress... this worked halfways well but was pretty drafty. (Imagine you are a hot dog trying to sleep between two pieces of bread... not exactly ideal.)
Anyway, I have since purchased 60 L of kerosene which should last a while. I have also been informed that the blankets won't arrive until Wednesday. Sigh. I shouldn't complain, I suppose. They weren't expecting anybody to move in for another week, at least. So until the other teachers start arriving, I am kind of on my own. It's not an exciting prospect, spending Christmas by yourself in a cold, drafty apartment, but it could be worse. I'm not sure how, but I'm sure it could be. Well, for example, I could be in jail in Malaysia facing execution after having been framed for importing 3 kg of heroin. That would definitely be worse. Warmer, but worse.
By the way, if you would like to try calling me, I received an international call the other day so I know it can be done. You have to follow the international calling instructions in the phone book which means you dial either 0-1181-80-5008-5333 or you dial 00-1181-80-5008-5333. The difference is whether you put one zero or two zeroes at the beginning. I'm not sure, so look it up and give me a call. Be forewarned, it's probably really expensive.
I don't think there is any way I can call anybody. I am currently using the internet on what appears to be a Commodore 64 here at the city hall. At least it's free. So I can check my mail and everything, and update this blog once in a while. Once I start work, I don't know how things will go but with any luck, at least some of my neighbouring teachers will have a laptop that they will let me use occasionally. So.... stay in touch and I will try to do the same. Send warm thoughts to me!

Address

2005-12-12T22:10:00.000-08:00

Here's the address I've received from my employer. It sounds a little bit strange to me (like maybe something's in the wrong order?) but presumably they know what they're talking about. I hope.

Smile Heights Sampei
Mukaihara 261-2, #101
Nihonmatsu-shi, Fukushima-ken
Japan 964-0916

I think moving shouldn't be a problem. Fortunately, they are letting me move in early, before my contract starts, and they are also charging me a very reasonable rent during that time. (Once my contract starts, I can live there rent-free.) So I should be able to pack, send my stuff with the movers, arrive there myself, and receive my stuff the next day. This was the simplest (and most obvious) solution to my moving worries, but I have just come to expect that things are never as simple as they could, or should, be. Pessimist me. So anyway, I'm happy about things. I'll let you know how things work out!