Jhenn In Japan

2008-10-29T21:31:00.003-04:00

Hahaha well I haven't done a very good job updating this for all of you have I? I do think about it often, I just haven't done it yet!

I am going home in a few days. Very bittersweet. After things calm down, I will be putting up installments of awesomeness (hopefully. November IS National Novel Writing Month and I'll be busy smashing the keys away...)

Free Willy

2008-08-19T08:31:00.007-04:00

I was sad to leave behind my first garden at home, which was blooming readily and giving us many goodies to eat.
So I took it upon myself to have another one! We have a rare and lovely little plot instead of a plain balcony behind our apartment.

So I bought a little shovel and rake and put all my energy into making a nice little area.

I know it is a little late to plant things, but since weather is a little milder here, I'm hoping for the best. In the meantime, I have also planted some of them indoors to keep them growing.

In the garden I have: Cosmos, Marigolds, Morning Glories, Mini tomatoes, Mini carrots and one potato.
The indoor pots are: Cosmos, Marigolds, Mini tomatoes, Mini carrots, and basil.

It's been 3 days, and the Cosmos have 4 sprouts indoors and one in the garden. It's very exciting!

Also in the garden, there is a little brown lizard that hangs around, comes and goes. I see him about every two days and then he scurries off. I've named him Willy.
Last night, Ed and I were watching a movie when he says something very quickly and looks toward the wall. I look and see a flash of something big and brown before it dives behind some shelving. Thoughts of a cicada or other horrible exoskeleton-ed creature flashed through my head. Before I could scoot away and quell a scream in my throat, he said it was a lizard.
A lizard I can deal with! (It's only the creatures with over 4 legs that want to eat your face!) I assumed it was Willy, a three inch long little lizard with curious black eyes. He must have come in earlier when the wash was being hung up. Roles were reversed and Ed brought me some tupperware and stood a small distance away. I scooped him up and set him free outside. I freed Willy!

Where's Willy?

Pictures

2008-08-15T22:16:00.001-04:00

I've added a slide show of the current month's photos to the side. You can click the link underneath to see older photos too!

Back in the saddle again...

2008-08-14T23:59:00.006-04:00

Well, I made it to Japan a week ago today. It is very hot and muggy.
Organizing the apartment is coming along fairly well. I will put up pictures and a video when everything is where it should be!

I am now living in Nabari in Mie Prefecture. This is about 2 hours south from where I was living before in Komono. I now live in an actual city (a small city, but still, there is stuff actually around) and conveniently right next to the train station. Although I have left my gorgeous mountain scenery behind in exchange. There are some mountains here however. I can see them if I peak over our balcony between the other buildings. Still, all is well to be surrounded by friends, a social life, and my boyfriend whom I’ve been away from for a year.

Friday all our friends were here- saying goodbyes to the couple who we took over the apartment from and giving greetings to us.

Saturday was the welcome beach party to all the new JETs in Mie. Everyone (so far) seems actually nice and normal- a welcome change from the many socially inept weirdoes that have come over the past two years.
After the beach party, a bunch of us went to an onsen- a natural hot spring. The ritual of going to such a place is: men and ladies go to the respective separate areas, get naked, take a shower, then once you’re clean you may enter the hot water and relax. We were sort of on a hill and had a nice view overlooking the area while lightning flashed in the background. I stayed in too long and compounded with the fact of seeing the most naked people ever at once, I nearly passed out. I barely managed to dry off and get dressed without falling over, and grabbed the closest fizzy drink to get my blood sugar up. That happened to be a grape Fanta. It was completely disgusting, but I drank it and I did perk up.
After this adventure we went to a small Chinese restaurant. I ordered a tofu stir-fry, asking if there was any meat in it. She said it’s just tofu, I reconfirmed it by repeating “only tofu?” and she says yes. Of course it had bacon in it. Bacon is considered ok for vegetarians here. Oh Japan… We spent the night at a friend’s place- 7 of us in one room.
Sunday I saw a few more old friends, went home and had a chance to relax with Ed alone in our new place.

This past week has been lots of cleaning up, rearranging, doing domestic chores and getting some must-haves for the place. I also bought a mini-sewing machine and will be making new curtains!

Tuesday we went to my favorite restaurant, Moku Moku.

It is an all-you-can-eat organic buffet, and it has soy ice cream. It’s a little expensive, but well worth it for the variety of fresh food. After we ate too much, we went to the Melting Pot. This is a bar that was holding the JET welcome party, so I was able to meet some more new people there too.

Thursday we went to the Nara lantern festival for Obon. Every year spirits return home and the lanterns help them find their way back to their families.

Ed and I bought & lit candles at the Big Buddha (daibutsu) and I saw one of Nara’s prominent deer population ambush a small child’s shaved ice. Just snuck beside him and stuck her muzzle right in his cup! The family let her eat it in the end.

That is about all for now!

I'm baaacckkkk

2008-08-03T22:44:00.003-04:00

So... I guess I'm a liar!
I am going back to Japan for a minimum of 3 months! I leave in three days!

*doki doki*

"Doki doki" is the sound of your heart pounding in Japanese. That is your culture for the day!

I am nervous because it is approaching so quickly, but after not seeing Ed for 3+ months, I am happy about it too! We will be living together in a new apartment in Mie Prefecture (about 2 hours from where I was living before, but still in the same prefecture).
I'm going to play it by ear, but probably end up teaching English again and doing chocolates on the side. Write me!

The Store is now CLOSED

2007-10-01T10:58:00.000-04:00

No more updates here, hope you enjoyed the year-long ride.

My new blog is here: http://dayofthewanderer.blogspot.com/.

~Jhenn~

The Rest!

2007-10-01T10:42:00.001-04:00

Empty train! I couldn't believe no one else was on it!

Autumn time food I conveniently bought!

Cool buildings in Osaka

Us

Going Home:

Kansai International Airport is an island

A sprawling Osaka city

The patch of green is Osaka Castle grounds. The rest... a cement jungle!

We were 35,000 ft up and Mt. Fuji was poking out of the clouds to see me off.

BYE BYE JAPAN!

For all photos click here, or browse by month off to the side.

Final Countdown

2007-08-23T00:56:00.000-04:00

I have a little over a week left in Japan. I have just finished polishing up my resume to send out to a few places. It's crazy to be stepping out of one phase of life into another.
Recently Ed and I have been enjoying NHK a lot (Japan's public broadcasting ie-PBS). The kids shows improve our Japanese in the morning, and at night there are segments to learn English, French, German, and Hindi. Even the English learning shows are interesting because we reverse-learn what the Japanese phrases are.
Although, I did opt out of NHK news in lieu of watching "How much my sex change operations cost." That is a little more interesting.

Ok, I WILL organize my stuff to see how big another bag I need to buy will be. I bumped myself up to business class on the flight home, I wonder if I can bring extra ^_^

August

2007-08-15T22:57:00.000-04:00

August is here. (and so is the new Aug 07 photo set!) I am now unemployed and living with my boyfriend until September at which time I will be returning to the motherland, probably still unemployed (but I hope not). It's also super hot and humid.

I saw the best fireworks ever in Osaka. 45 minutes of non-stop environmentally damaging eye candy! And the there were sooooooooooooo many people.

Videos of the finale!

Aug 13-15 is Obon, a time when spirits come to visit. Lanterns are used to guide the spirits home, and on the last day bonfires are made to cast them back. Nara had a huge beautiful light up. I went with some friends and brought the new JETs along!

There was also a beach party to welcome the new JETs.

AUGUST PHOTO SLIDE SHOW

Baseball and Bootcamp

2007-08-15T22:48:00.000-04:00

Right now, Japan's national high school baseball finals(?) are going on and clogging up the airways. Also clogging up the airways is Billy's Boot Camp. it's the Tae-Bo guy's new thing, Japan can't get enough of his great big foreign-ness.

To help everyone, I have included a slideshow link of all the JULY photos. This includes the tour with my mom in Komono, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Tokyo, amongst other Japan-esque things.

CLICK HERE!!

One year

2007-08-06T20:59:00.000-04:00

It's been one year and one day since I moved to Japan.
And it feels like it. It didn't fly by at all!

I have moved out of my lovely apartment into one about 1/3 its size. With my boyfriend. It's tight living quarters! But I did find finally find vegan ice cream here, so everything will be ok!

I am jobless now. I miss the people I worked with, but don't miss the insaneness of it. Glad to be able to relax with Japan for a month until I go home. Then I do need a job. I'll go anywhere, any openings?!

pictures still pending.

2007-07-31T07:29:00.000-04:00

I've been noticing zucchini a lot in the discount bin lately. I don't think Japan knows what to do with it.
Mom went home yesterday, will post pictures later. I've been cleaning my apartment like mad. Everything but the kitchen is clean. But the kitchen is still 60% done. I'm attempting to pack now. wow. it's tough!

Last Day

2007-07-18T18:34:00.000-04:00

Well, yesterday was my last day of being a teacher. I was sad, but also felt a weight lifted, but also unemotional about it all at the same time. I have 2 more official work days left this week, where I will be going into the Town Hall at the Board of Education and sit at my computer all day. Exciting I know. I will be finishing the plans for Mom's trip. She gets in tonight, I will ask to leave early, and do it anyways. I even cleaned all last night.

It was weird this morning to think, "Ah!!! I get to sleep in til 6:30!!!" Sleeping in until 6:30.... AM? I've entered adult life...
I'm so excited about this extra time I even made a smoothie, a small bowl of oatmeal and some french toast!

2007-07-12T03:55:00.000-04:00

So I'm here! Sorry for the lack of postings, been pretty busy what with going on beach vacation and having parties and whatnots.
After a lovely week at the beach, arriving back in rainy season, and nearly having a heat stroke on the train back home, I get to see this guy flailing about on his back in front of my door.

Japan, and especially Japanese kids, are obsessed with any and all bugs, especially these giant beetles. A very popular pet. I screamed and ran inside before it ate my face.

As I said, it's right now is rainy season. Wednesday is also my last day of being a teacher. It's kinda sad, but I'm glad to be doing it at my favorite school, even if I have to walk 20 minutes through the rain every morning to get there.

Proof:

Last weekend I went and saw sumo again with Ed and his friend from home Jonny. It was a good time. The gym in Nagoya was smaller so even our seats in the back were great!

On the way out there were these guys at the top of this giant wooden structure (traditionally made, no metal in it!) playing drums and chanting as everyone left. I'm assuming it has something to do with Shintoism, since everything else associated with sumo has to do with it (such as throwing salt to purify the ring before they enter it).

Next week my mom is coming to visit for a week and a half! It's gonna be non stop action of touring I think.

Here I am looking masculine with the elementary baseball team:

Side of Komono Elementary:

At the schools, there is lunch. then cleaning. then break time. Cleaning involves landscaping:

Here are some of my socks I've purchased here:

Yes, it says "Love Tomato" and has a vampire on it.

In front of most every restaurant there is a display of (sometimes quite real looking) plastic food to show what they offer.

Displayed: waffles and pudding, hot cakes, pizza, curry and rice, spaghetti, omelet and rice, fried pork, etc.

The best bento (lunch container) ever:

And finally, what kind of mysterious land am I living in?

I get to see variations of this landscape everyday. love it.

Only in Japan

2007-06-06T02:07:00.000-04:00

Last week a girl erasing the chalk board turned around and bumped into her friend’s white shirt leaving a chalk mark. She felt bad and offered to mark her black uniform up with chalk as repentance. Thankfully the chalk came out really easily, but what an offer!

Last weekend I went to Tokyo with some friends.
Friday night we took over a bar. And then some yakuza showed up. I never knew gangsters loved Red Hot Chili Peppers so much. The bartender’s friend laughed hysterically for way too long when we said we were from Mie Prefecture.

(Gangsters not pictured)

Cemetary

Saturday morning was spent trying to find a vegan bakery on a street that didn’t exist. We ended up at a café deli that sold the best veggie burger I’ve ever had. Freakin delicious. That evening was spent seeing Kabuki and eating some form of Mexican food. The man sitting next to us also laughed hysterically when he found out we were from Mie. Why is it so funny?!?!

Sunday was action packed, finding the only other letter box in Japan at the Meiji Shrine, and going to Harajuku (super pop culture district) and Akihabara (Electronic town). Then I went home, the end.

Just this guy and his boombox, dancing and singing, intensely.

No one could figure out what this guy was doing, just seemed to be getting ready to run a marathon...

Awesome dude

Train in Tokyo

Cloudy Fuji

In a temple back street by my place

Walking

2007-05-30T18:06:00.000-04:00

After the rain

How'd that get down there?!

Hong Kong bonus!

2007-05-30T05:53:00.000-04:00

So I finally found the program that lets me use "Image stitch" where you can take a bunch of pictures, and "stitch" them together to get panoramic shots. Here you go!
You'll have to click them to get the full effect.

On Hong Kong Island

Victoria Habor

Victoria Harbour as seen from Victoria Peak

The mountains of Lantau Island.
(They are just so much bigger and better than Japan's!)

Osaka weekend

2007-05-30T01:56:00.000-04:00

I went to Osaka Friday night and went out and about all day on Saturday. Here are the sites!

Some baked goodies

T-shirt

Me and a big stuffed Kitty!

Kitty kimono!

Wooden Hello Kitty mermaid. $300. (Would make a great gift *cough cough*)

Then Saturday night we went straight to a surprise party. I was beat. Sunday I got to sleep in and went out to have a picnic on a lovely sunny afternoon with some friends. We ate food, and played in the grass, and played Scattegories. Some cats joined us.

Back!

2007-05-24T03:49:00.001-04:00

Ok I went back home for a few weeks, thus the absence. I'm glad 'fate' decided I should not stay, after I went home I didn't want to leave. I'll be going back in a couple more weeks for my real beach vacation, then back here for another 2 months (but only work for a couple of weeks=D ). A teacher asked me today if I could teach some 6th grade classes in my free periods. I looked at her in totally abject fear and said "maybe. I don't know yet, it depends". 4 classes is stressful enough, but 5 everyday? They've already started tacking some extra on in my last week there.

I'm outside on my porch now. The weather has gone from a steady 20C to 25 (mid 70s F) overnight and has been staying that way. I love it. It's starting to get hot and sticky and I will take that any day over the soulless cold that was here.

I'm noticing that I am admiring birds and flowers a lot more since being here. I think this has to do with the fact that my everday mode of transportation are my feet, so I can see things at a more leisurely speed. I also fashioned a DIY bird feeder. I wonder if any bird has eaten out of it yet.

On my way home a few weeks ago I saw the EvaAir Hello Kitty plane that goes to Taiwan. I think I need to go to Taiwan.

I took some photos today on my walk home from work.

A students shoe strategically placed on a hump of cracked blacktop... a block from the school.

Rice fields!

Komono's manhole covers. The antelope is our town's symbol, the ropeway is for our 'famous' ropeway... and I guess those are our 'famous' bird and flowers.

The man across the street has started his garden again. Although if I see any about-to-rot food, I'm jumping the hedge to get it! I watched too much fruit rot last summer there! I always think about stealing food from people's gardens when I see it's going to go bad soon. Why let it go to waste? I guess the gov't gives a subsidy if you use a spare lot for a garden, so to get the money people may not even tend it. grr!

Last night Farva was sleeping on his side, probably to keep cool. He was awoken with surprise!

The sun is slowing moving out of view for my tan, so I guess that means I will go in now. Until next time!

OH! It's known for being pretty windy here....

Nothing

2007-04-25T01:56:00.000-04:00

"What country am I from?"

"New Zealand"
"Canada"
"You from Australia"
"You are from Australia"
"You are from New Zealand"
"You are from Ohio"
"I am from Japan"
"You from Japan"
"She is America"
"She is from Canada"
"You are from New Zealand"
"She is from Australia"

Sorry. The correct answer is "You are from America."
Seriously, I mean... c'mon guys!

Not much going on lately.
Yesterday a 2nd year Junior High kid bit me as I tried to playfully cover his mouth during his very vocal version of charades.
Today a 1st year was curious about the “ph” in the spelling of “Alphabet” when it’s obviously an “f” sound.
Oh, the joys of teaching.

I got an international money order today. Took a while, but it was very easy and mostly just sitting and waiting while she typed up and printed things out. They have a set exchange rate though >.< 1 yen more than the current rate. Oh well, this a lot less hassle than sending it through a service and having to pay their fees AND bank fees.

As a surprise from my mom, I am going home for a week next week. I’m looking forward to it. I get to see my cats and eat tacos. Bliss.

Oh, and I found out my successor is from California. Maybe the America thing will stick in their heads after I go.

Ninjas, Earthquakes, and Gangsters

2007-04-18T04:51:00.000-04:00

Last sunday was Ninja Fest! I got to walk around dressed as a ninja, went to Ueno Castle and the Ninja Museum, and go to do some ninja tasks like throwing shuriken (throwing stars)!

Ninja Van

Ninja's hiding spots

Ueno Castle made form postal stamps!

Ninjas wall climbing and picnicing

JUST THEN...

There was a BIG EARTHQUAKE!

It was a 5.4 and the center of it was about 25 min by train away, so really really close! I was on the ground having my ninja picnic, and it struck! It's weird because everyone is quiet and it sounds like thunder, but from everywhere, not just a place in the sky. A tremor occurred about a minute afterwards in which I screamed a little from nerves, and got laughed at a bit. I don't understand how people think something with such remarkably easy potential to hurt and kill is fun.
I came home to find things knocked over, the extreme things were my TV stand moved, my smoke detector was in the next room, and my coaster flew 7 feet... but my tall thin bottle of moisturizer had not budged!

As if there weren't enough violence as of late, I wake up to find the mayor of Nagasaki had been shot by a yakuza gang member from Japan's top gang. Mayor Ito "was a liberal and a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons... and urged Japan to get out from under the American nuclear umbrella."(Time) He was shot over not approving that the goverment pay for the gang member's car damage.

Today my supervisor showed me a picture of the ninja fest that was in the newspaper, asked if I was a certain person and if they were all foreigners. It wasn't me.. but the girl in the background had a purse very similar to mi--- wait a minute! That's me! I was in the photo after all!

I also placed my first letterbox there. woo!

Cherry Blossom viewing

2007-04-10T05:44:00.000-04:00

Friday was another school party. This time the Junior High. Many of the teachers spoke to me for the first time. Alcohol lets you become friendly! I think they may like me more, now they know I do know some Japanese and they don't have to use English. The new English teacher is very bubbly and young, I hope we can hang out after school. I was invited to THE AFTER PARTY. Apparently, it is rare for JETs to be invited to these, so I was thrilled and of course I accepted! The BOE has asked Chris and I to do karaoke afterwards, but I'm not sure if that counts. Here, I chatted with the new principal and got a couple of cell phone email addresses and a new surfing buddy. I even sang a karaoke song in Japanese in hopes to impress.

After party:

The new principal wanted me to drink whiskey with him, thankfully, that was not on the all you can drink menu that came with our room rental.

After being immobile on saturday, cut to sunday:

Cherry Blossom viewing!
Osaka-jo (Castle) is one of the best places to see sakura (cherry blossoms) in all of Japan. You bring a picnic or even a grill, and set up under some trees and watch the petals fall.

VIDEO of the scene:

I'll leave you with the cute photo of the day, Farva eating a carrot:

Enaki

2007-04-04T20:14:00.000-04:00

Last night was an enkai (drinking party) for the Board of Education to welcome the new people and give thanks to those who are leaving.
Before:

During:

It is customary to never pour your own drink. So everyone goes around to chat and pour drinks for each other. Even if your glass is full, they will top it off, or wait for you to drink some so they can refill it. I had a small glass of wine, probably a big bottle of beer, and 1.5 bottles worth of sake in total. Usually sake isn’t that great, but this was warm and very smooth. I was talking with some people in my department and my supervisor came over and someone says "Hello" in English to him. He shakes his head and says "I don't know, I don't know. uh, This is a pen." Which is THE standard learning English sentence, so even people who don't know any English know that (even if they don't know the meaning). That was the funniest thing ever that night.

Here is a picture of my supervisor and I, drunk.

The Japanese turn red when they drink, and I was surprised to see bright red faces appearing so fast. The former Jr High principal was getting pretty red (and even worse later) so I made sure to get my picture with him. At first he refused, saying “No. No. I am tako. My face …tako.” Tako means octopus, which is often portrayed as a comical small red cartoon.

The girls:

Terumi poked a crab eyeball on her plate and I literally screamed because it was so disgusting.

Here are pictures of me and Chris's specially prepared meals:

At the end of the night the organizer was trying to calm everyone down to say thanks and to yell “bonzai” three times and then leave. But the former principal asked me what tako was in English.
Whispering
Me: “Octopus.”
Former Principal: “Oc-to-poose.”
Guy beside him: “Octopus. Ah! 8. Like October. Hatchi-gatsu (eighth month).”
Me: “Octo is eight, but October is ten.” (I hold up all my fingers to mean "10th month")
Guy: “Oooh!”
Organizer: “JENIFAA!”
Everyone: laughter.

Felt like I was in Kindergarten! Everyone is waiting and I kept on talking.

We were done at 8:30 and I was in bed at 9:15 and up at 6:40. Mysteriously, I can’t move my right index finger without pain this morning.

We also saw an old man peeing with the door open. Oh Japan!
Oh, and I get to do this Friday too.

Sand from China

2007-04-02T23:03:00.000-04:00

So remember my lovely mountains? Where are they?

Staring since Saturday and ending today (by the looks of it), sand from the GOBI DESERT has made my little town look like a smog-fest. So every year about this time, a dust storm in China blows over the Sea of Japan. I guess it is the "marker" that Spring has come.

Hmm, I thought all the cherry blossoms lining the street told me that?

Japanese Puzzles

2007-04-02T00:38:00.000-04:00

Japanese Puzzles are taking over my life.

Sudoku

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

The day I left for Japan I bought a sudoku book. After a couple failed attempts at the ones in the newspaper, I decided to take it on and start easy. On the airplane, I figured it out and did a few puzzles. Soon I was mastering techniques and battling and winning against the more challenging. I even got a game for my Nintendo DS to play it on trains. I thought it would keep my brain sharp.

Nonograms
(aka Gridders, pict-o-puzzles, picross)

The object of the puzzle is to figure out which of the squares should be coloured in, and which should be left blank (or an X), based on the clues given for each column and row. The resulting pattern of light and dark squares then makes up a picture, which is the solution to the puzzle.

One day I decided I wanted to try something else. I saw these nonograms, stared at the instructions, but could not figure out how to do them. I read about how to do them on the internet and went out and bought a book. This proved very handy as I soon came down with the flu and spent my nights in bed filling in these little squares. I dreamed about the squares in my sick-induced night sweats. They have been my poison of choice for the past 1 or 2 months.

Slitherlink
(aka fences, loop the loop)

The objective is to connect horizontally and vertically adjacent dots so that the lines form a single loop with no loose ends. In addition, the number inside a square represents how many of its four sides are segments in the loop.

I had seen these kickin’ around in papers and puzzle books. As I had just gotten into nonograms, I wanted to exhaust that interest first before moving on to another puzzle. Yesterday I saw a Nintendo DS game for it. Brand new, but marked down from 2960yen to 980 yen (about $7.50ish). That’s a really good price so I bought it. I learned the basics last night and am ready to tackle more!

Sadly, once I am infected, the current puzzle virus is contracted by my boyfriend to feverous degrees. Who will be next?!

Oh no, while gathering this info, I found a new one called Bridges that looks pretty fun.

Get-o!

2007-04-02T00:15:00.000-04:00

One of the main roads here, and the one I walk to the Town Hall, is lined with cherry trees. They are in the midst of blossoming so I will get a picture of the pink lined-street when it is in full swing.

Saturday Ed and I met with a woman I work with and her sister who studied in England for lunch at Denny’s. The feel of Denny’s was pretty standard (sans grease) but the food was distinctly Japanese family style. I was a little nervous about the meeting, but it ended up being really nice and I hope I can hang out with them again. Japanese people are always surprised you like Japanese things like food, music, culture, etc… I told them I like Japanese rock group Guitar Wolf and they were shocked. Apparently they did not view me as a rocker kinda gal. Oh, ps- I saw Guitar Wolf this past Tuesday.

Sunday was nice so we walked down to the shopping center. I bought a cheap game for my Nintendo DS (more on this in my next post) and saw an old Xbox for sale. The debate still rages in my mind about getting it.

We also stopped in a little arcade there that I had never been in. I thought it was mainly little kid things, but it ended up being a decent place! I do not play crane games because I might as well throw that money out of the window (although I have seen some Japanese use amazing skill and technique to fish things out of there). What I play is not at all arcades (although this one had three!). I don’t know what it is called, but because I have won 3 times now, I feel you have a lot better chance at winning.

I can’t find a picture of this. The internet has failed me.

What it’s about:

There are usually tubs with the prize sitting in them. You put your money in and choose the prize you want to try and win (usually out of 8-10). There is a Wheel Of Fortune type wheel, with positive and negative numbers. You land on a 3, your tub moves up 3 spots. You get a -1, it moves down one spot, etc. On most of them, when you get to 5, the tub flips over and your prize falls out for you to get. Hurray! When you have to get 5, most of the time you get 3 tries for 100 yen. There are bigger ones, with bigger prizes too. Huge stuffed animals, big detailed figurines, a giant box of snacks, rare neat things, etc. These ones usually go up to 7, and you have only one try per 100 yen.

So I’m walking along, looking at the various prizes, seeing if any of them are worth trying for. I see that in the giant prize version, there is a big bag of various Gloomy Bears.
It is lit up to 3, meaning, I only have to get a 4 or higher to win it! Seems like a deal. I decided I will spend no more than 300yen trying for it. I put in my 100 yen, and select the Gloomy Bear prize. I watch the number wheel spin and smack the button when it feels right to stop it!
-2.
I hang my head and sigh. I am not even going to bother trying to win since the light is now at 1. I start to walk away and turn around JUST IN CASE I do get an extra spin. I see the 4 light up. I see the 5 light up. I see the 6 light up. I see the GET! light up and my prize falls into the bottom. I am in a state of confusion and look down at the number wheel.
7!
I guess it had stopped at -2 and clicked over one more for suspense. I hit the jackpot number in one go! I was more than excited to say the least.

So now I am the proud owner of 2 Limited edition fuzzy Gloomys, 2 little Gloomys with hats, a solar powered head-rocking Gloomy, and 10 bean bag Gloomys. Rock.

Today is the first day of all the office and teacher position changes. We have 2 new people in my dept and a new director (yay!! I could not understand the last one). A good part of my morning was spent bored in a room full of the new teachers, rather than my normal, bored in front of my computer. At least I didn’t have to feign looking busy, just give a quick intro.
Right now there is some mass panic (not really). People are changing desks, so there are drawers moving about, pulling out of desks and cleaning, and trying to plug all the wires back in to the correct place (and hoping they work).

Chaos!

Ms. Bandou obviously sees the humor in 6 people trying to figure out cords behind a desk.

The desks have been change and now the lady that was diagonal to me is now right beside me. This would be no problem if she didn’t have the worst job ever. Besides stamping things and other official work, she some how also has the job of cutting the windows out of old envelopes for recycling. She also has to remove staples from packets and putting them in a jar. This creates a metal-on-metal-on-glass sound that hurts my teeth. The staple-remover also makes an awful slicing sound when the staple is on it. And then there is that damn binder with metal spokes holding it together. Sliding it on and off, on and off. Metal-on-metal is like nails-on-chalkboard to me. One more week, one more week, one more week…

Less and less am I able to "roll with the punches" when I don't understand things. As my ability to understand increases, my frustration also increases when I don't. Four more months, four more months, four more months...

Alcoholic Frieman Biker

2007-03-29T23:32:00.000-04:00

What have I gotten myself into?

Today the town’s CIR from 3-4 years ago (Kate) came by to say hello to everyone. Her and I and her old supervisor went to the work cafeteria to have coffee and was joined by another man. He had a hangover. Kate’s ex-supervisor tells us he drinks all the time, calls him an alcoholic. Kate does not drink and I was asked if I liked sake. I said yes and gained approval. I was asked what my favorite Japanese food was, I said Curry Udon and the man was very impressed indeed. Turns out he is a firefighter. He tells me he has something wonderful to show me. After some suspense, it turns out to be his Harley. I gave a big smile and reaction to this because 1. I could understand it and 2. There is a Harley shop down (and verbally let that be known) the street so I often see motorcycles. Now he’s going on about how fast it is, how pretty it is form polishing it, how fast his friend’s goes, and oh, what’s this?! He has a second seat on his bike.

*Gulp*

I said I had never ridden a motorcycle before and he seemed surprised. While the prospect of a motorcycle ride is a bit thrilling, I think I’m more on the terrified side. Especially after all the stats on how fast he can go. Well, no matter. I’m barely in the office except for this week, in fact, I will probably never see him again! Phew! Oh wait… her old supervisor just told him where I live.

*face slap*

I did say I didn’t eat crab and he seemed pretty offended. Maybe that will be enough to make this 55 year old former “playboy” to not hunt me down for this ride.

Hobbies in Japan

2007-03-29T00:20:00.000-04:00

A couple days ago in Tokyo a British English teacher was found murdered. It's a really tragic story, (with weird twists and contridicting info as the story continues to come out). I didn't want to mention it, but it shouldn't be ignored if it can help someone. It doesn't make me nervous, so please don't be nervous for me. I'm not going to strangers' houses (although some reports say it was her other boyfriend) and my town actually has never had a recorded murder case. These terrible things happen everywhere. Even though Japan is really really safe (albeit quirky)- I still keep my guard up.

In happy news, while Japan is a dry spot when it comes to letterboxing, it is rockin' out with geocaching! I found and fell in love with letterboxing the beginning of last year. Let me tell you why:
1. It's free
2. It's gets you outside
3. See places and wildlife that you have never seen
4. Adds zest to an out-of-town trip
5. You feel like you're a part of a secret society
6. You can pretend you're a pirate on a mission
7. It encourages you to leave the place better than you found it.
Thus the term "Cache-In, Trash-Out"

I went out to find Japan's only known (that is listed) only to find it MIA. Now I have everything ready and assembled to make Japan's only known letterbox. Perhaps I will carve the stamp tonight! UPDATE: There is a new letterbox in Tokyo, placed a mere week after I was there!

Geocaching is much like letterboxing, except you use GPS to find the hidden treasure instead of clues (mostly). As just mentioned, there is also treasure. Take something from the box and leave something. There is also no use of hand-carved stamps.

Well... this means only one thing. I have to buy a GPS!

Another occasional hobby I had was http://www.wheresgeorge.com where you can track and follow American or Canadian money. I used to see a lot of stamped bills at the dry cleaners and I would always enter them in. Most are still local, but one made it to PA and one went to TN!

Smorking Room

2007-03-26T21:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday at lunch, the office workers sitting with me were discussing how much they hate smoking. The only man pointed to the smoking room and said “Lung Cancer Room!” in English. The break room is called the “refresh room” and there is one table. Next to it is a small room for the smokers, with vents and the machines to suck the smoke out. So every time someone goes in or out, an awful smell wafts through the table. Last week I went in there real quick to give my supervisor a banana-walnut muffin I made. It was beyond disgusting (the room, not the muffin). I came out and felt like I had tar on my tongue and was still feeling the effects a half hour later. Grosssssss.

That is my supervisor in the smoking room. He is not gross though. He loves Dragonall Ball Z and 24.

The locker room.

Outside our apartment

Your brains could not handle the insane recycling sorting we do.

My clean apartment, a glimpse: the living room.

Yesterday Chris and I busted out the new grill. Flames!

Thanks to Chris for all the photos- sans my room.

In other news, Japanese keyboards are really messing my hands up when it comes to html!

Everyday Japan

2007-03-25T22:28:00.000-04:00

Like I said, this blog is nothing special, just some insight into everyday life.
This morning I wore a short sleeve short to work, as they keep the heat cranked up and it's getting nicer out. The office people found this funny. "Aren't you cold?" "Oh, because it's spring!" "Oh, because you don't have a cold!" (a few people are sick) and "Wonderful!".

Yesterday I was dreaming I was running away from a tornado then WHAM! I woke up to an earthquake (news) that lasted probably 20-25 seconds. Despite the statistics in the article, Japan knows it is an earthquake country, and all new buildings are built with this in mind. The bottom of our town hall as many different types and shapes of pipes going through the building to keep it safe.

I forewent a weekend in Osaka to stay home and relax. Next weekend will be mostly relaxing, but I needed it NOW. Spring is here, the weather is becoming reasonable, and I am feeling super peppy. I bought a grill for my balcony, and I can't wait to use it. I also bought a glue gun, clay, DIY Shrinky Dinks, pieces of wood, wire, twine, ceramics, laquer, etc. I started painting. I attempted to make a coaster (I apparently bought the wrong sealant spray). I cleaned, tidied, and organzied my entire apartment. I also made a bank. I made pasta, spring rolls, and whipped cream for some strawberry shortcake.
Sunshine brings these things out in me ^_^
I guess I didn't upload my clean living room photo (you could even see the new fabric I bought at the Temple Fair on the couch!) but here is a picture of the kitty bank I made with the wire I bought. It even has a little green bell collar! and 2 yen in its tummy.

Its butt unhinges to get your cash!

If it's not the Health Minister calling women "Baby-making machines" or the Foreign Minister saying the US cannot solve problems because they have Blue eyes and blond hair and not "yellow faces" or even the massive bullying problems (that people think if you are being bullied, you deserve it!), then it's not a typical day in Japan!

Dear Teacher

2007-03-22T22:11:00.000-04:00

Last Tuesday I found a little letter on my desk. Turned out to be from a 2nd year (8th grade). It says:

"Dear A teacher,
Hello, I write a letter to a foreigner for the first time today. Therefore I do not understand it while I should have written it how but want to try to write it to oneself. The study with a teacher was very pleasant every time. And I thought that it was very wonderful that study be a game. For this one year, thank you. It was a very pleasant class. I try English study hard from now on."

I wrote her a very encouraging letter back. Said she should travel the world.
For some reason, only half the students seem to remember my name (thus, "a teacher").

Chocominto?!

2007-03-21T22:29:00.000-04:00

It’s a long one, so sit back and relax!

Intro:

1. It’s spring break for school. While some JETs get the time off and are traveling, I get to go into the Board of Education in Town Hall EVERYDAY until schools starts in early April. Lucky me. However, upon my arrival this morning, no one seemed to know that I was even supposed to be here. I could have probably stayed home a few days before they realized anything thing (maybe). Bleh. But it does give me time to plan and revise my elementary lessons though July.

2. The Japanese elderly are probably the rudest people alive. I would say 90% of them fall into the “need to be pushed” category. Maybe it’s just old folk in general. It could be they’re just bitter they only come up to my armpit, if that. Or maybe it’s just their horrible drab clothes and horrible patterns, is there no market for lively colors for them?

OK, let’s begin! (I usually say this in class and throw up my fist, most kids eagerly mimic it too!)

White Day ad (see previous post)

Karaoke aftermath: no cabs at 2am

Watching and laughing at Wallace and Gromit

A 2nd grade class

Saturday March 3rd we held a St. Patrick's Day kids event:

We had Leprechaun bean bag toss, musical chairs, and made leprechaun doorknob hangers.

An amazing "English" menu. Funny thing is, those are practically direct translations from the real Japanese menu. It really did say "Edamame (soy beans): The best friend of beer!" (it doesn't sound like it, but Edamame really is a tasty lightly-salted treat! love it!)

End of year activities the 6th graders put on for the teachers.

How much do I love my mountains?

On a mountain. Aoyamacho and it's wind power.

March 16 (friday) I was able to use the hours I put in for the kids event to take the day off! I went to Kyoto to go to a couple temples (and to wander around) to view Nehan-zu, paintings displayed generally for 3 days a year which depict Buddha entering Nirvana. What's special about this particular detailed painting is it has a cat in the corner. Cats were not painted back then, and thought to be harbingers of bad luck. Rumor has it that the artist was visited by this cat and chased away pesky mice? so he put it in. Also, even though Buddha had said to not cry when he dies, as it is just a part of life, everyone around, humans, animals, spirits, are all sobbing. All except the cat!

First up was Tofukuji. I was there exactly five years ago that day with Andy. There is a giant 16m Nehan-zu painting there. There is also a giant dragon painted on the ceiling. I remember the painting being huge, but it wasn't as big as I remembered it. The dragon however, seemed massive. I wanted to take a picture, last time I know I did. I didn't see any signs saying not too, but no one else had a camera out, so I didn't.

Tofukuji's surrounding area is filled with small temples, little paths, and monks' living quarters. The scenery itself is reason enough to go.

I knew there was ginger sake there, but it was not in the forefront of my mind, Only later did I realize one of the buildings I passed was serving it. Doh!

All moss.

Typical Japan. Blossoming plum blossoms, a concrete pillar, and stylized tree.

I then walked to Sennyuji Temple, where they have the largest Nehan-zu. This painting was certainly much bigger, however, the large thick brush strokes makes it look rushed when compared to Tofukuji's fine lined detail. Almost as if they were just trying to have the record of "largest". I was listening to a monk talk about, and what was interesting is this painting has no animals at all! Just humans and "gods". Also, no ones eyes were open, and Buddha's mother was painted by his feet. He was talking about a cat and mouse, but I wasn't sure what he was saying about it.

Where I ate lunch, look at those flat topped trees.

Raked rocks

Sights from wandering up and down two mountains:

In the last one you can see Kyoto city sprawling below.

Then Saturday it was off to Osaka to see sumo wrestling!

Afterwards we went out to eat at an Iranian restaurant. yum!

Yesterday was the first day of spring and a holiday in Japan. I went to a temple fair in Nagoya .

I bought some fabric, a purse, and a necklace. I was going to get some lovely dried fruits and things, but the man selling them was smoking a cigarette OVER them. I don't want ash in my almonds, thanks!
A wandered aimlessly and browsed around, met up with a friend and had some dinner and got home at 10pm (about bed time) wide awake. And now I'm at work. The end.

Random: Here is a picture from my desk at the junior high. Where did all the teachers go?

Ps- I usually title my posts with some Japanese saying I heard, but today I had nothing. Until after lunch. My supervisor comes into the break room and starts sniffing, saying something smells good. Chris and I had just eaten some Anna's Swedish Chocolate Mint cookies (I will plug them because they're good, vegan, and well priced!). I wasn't sure what he was smelling or how to answer so I made up something in Japanese "Choco-minto...?" "CHOCOMINTO?!" He replies enthusiatically. I'm glad I made up a word that is actually a real thing.

OK Very Much

2007-03-15T01:35:00.000-04:00

Today’s update will be picture free, but the next one should be only pictures. Ok? Ok.

Seven months down, 5 to go. Well, I’m going to visit home in 3 months, but that is still so far away!
One thing I will not miss about Japan, however, is the stupid keyboards.

The past few days, school has been good rather than mediocre/ok. I have been playing a cross between Pictionary and Charades with the 2nd years (8th grade), and they have been pretty excited about it. Winners get some SpongeBob stickers I found. Woo.

My predecessor left a couple of Harry Potter books in my desk so I have been sucked into that. Even though I have read it before, it’s just so addicting! Plus I need a refresher for when the final book comes out in July.

My predecessor must have also brainwashed the kids as when I show them a map of the US and ask “What is this?” they promptly reply “New Zealand.” (Curse you Alana! ;p ) Other answers have included: Russia, Canada, South America, Spain, Australia. America is probably their 3rd guess on average.

Yesterday was White Day. The boy’s version of Valentine’s Day- their turn to return gifts to the girls. My Principal and Vice Principal gave me cookies and candies. As well as the men at the Board of Education. It was a nice surprise.

Week before last, I strolled into my main elementary to find about 1/5 of the staff and students wearing face masks. This prevents spreading germs when someone is sick. Being I had just battled something not too long ago, I thought I was immune, and went about all week perfectly fine. And then Friday came, and the weird guy next to me starts coughing everywhere. By Friday evening I got “the cough”. Not a normal cough, but the cough you get when you know you’re getting sick.

Saturday, still with the cough, I attended a kids’ St. Patrick Day event and I was in charge of leprechaun door hangers. It was very tiring. Sunday was gorgeous and had a long jacket-less walk. Monday it was freezing cold again and it was evident I caught the flu. My body just doesn’t know how to defend against Japanese germs! Of course I was at my other small elementary, a 20-25min walk away, it was just so cold and dry, and my nose like a faucet. Turns out they had to cancel some classes due to flu there! They also cancelled some classes at the junior high, where the stomach flu had an outbreak. I am fully recovered now though.

Because it was my last elementary class for the school year, most of them were spent watching Wallace and Gromit short films, depending on their grade. It was a big hit, so I am going to use it in my “special” learners class in the junior high as well.

Last Saturday was just a quiet weekend and went to see Ed’s adopted Japanese mom and we made tenpura and filled ourselves silly. This weekend, I am taking Friday off and doing my pilgrimage to Tofukuji temple in Kyoto to see the Nehan-e, a giant painting of the Buddha passing into Nirvana. (March 15th is the actual anniversary of this). SuiGeneris and I skipped class* and went 5 years ago to see the magical painting and the special cat in it. The temple itself is beautiful, I just hope the weather’s nice!
Saturday I will be in Osaka to see sumo!!

I should study a little Japanese, but I think Harry Potter is going to win the "what to read now" battle.

*This was pretty normal. We would go to our language classes in the morning (couldn’t miss any of those) and then high-tail it out of there to do cultural activities. We figured living life and experiencing culture first hand was much more important than class. It was the best.

Tokyo weekend

2007-02-28T01:34:00.000-05:00

Ah Tokyo. Japan’s capital and most expensive city in the world.

We had a 3 day holiday weekend so I decided to surprise Ed and take him there for his birthday. The weekend was meticulously planned with sealed envelopes and hints of what adventure awaited us!

Friday

After work, we caught a late bullet train into Shinjuku, wandered to our hotel, then to the convenience store for some nibbles and call it a night!

Saturday

Saturday morning started out very magical as we headed into a “forest” park to go to the Ghibli Museum. (Studio Ghibli has made movies such as: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, etc). This was by far the coolest museum I have ever been to. Constructed like a giant house, with tiny caged spiral stair cases and little hobbit half-doors weaving you in and out of half levels and real floors. There was no set route, and your reserved tickets guarantee it won’t be that over-crowded as well as getting you a free strip of film of a Ghibli movie. I think I had a big dumb open mouth grin the entire time there, it was just so fun.

Tall guys!

After that was free time. I attempted to find the possibly only letterbox in Japan. It was placed in a poor area, so it was gone (so now my soon-to-be letterbox will be the only one in Japan!). We wandered around Shibuya, home of the busiest train station and crosswalk in the world.

And this is a light flow!

Afterwards we ate at a pub back in Shinjuku.

Sunday

It was an early start on Sunday, I had planned many things!

First we stood inline for about 40 minutes to make sure we got tickets for Kabuki at THE Kabuki-za theatre. For a cheap ticket, you can watch one-act of that day’s performance from the nosebleed seats on a first-come first-served basis. Because it was the first of the day, the scene closed with someone about to be stabbed!! The tension made us want to be another ticket, but alas! There were more things to do!

Next it was to a (less than impressive) flea market. But it wasn’t in vain as a bagel shop was right by it and we indulged! Getting a bagel in Japan is a big deal in the first place, but getting them fresh and watching them being made?! Well geez! It’s wonderful!

Across the street was the Imperial Palace. Even though you couldn’t get anywhere near it and the gardens appeared to be closed. It was still a nice, albeit windy, day to enjoy a stroll.

Having a Sunday free in Tokyo basically means you have to go to Harajuku. Every Sunday, the youth hang out by the Meiji Shrine dressed in all sorts of costumes and get ups and nonsense. Pikachu out fits, looking like a doll, poor cross-dressing, or merely a couple of guys holding signs that say “FREE HUGs” you will find them here. They all just dress up, hang out with their friends and wait for people to take pictures of them.

You can go from one end of pop culture to traditional culture at the MEIJI shrine just by crossing the street. And this is not an uncommon scene anywhere in Japan. The Shrine itself is set in a big wooded area. A lot of people are walking with you on wide gravel path, but you don’t really notice them as the big old trees around you dwarf them and you.

Once at the shrine there were a few weddings going on.

The white head covering represents covering the horns or jealousy that the bride will have when their men would have mistresses (back in the day).

Taking in the tranquility in a bustling place seems impossible, but it really wasn’t! We left to shop the vibrant streets of Harajuku. I resisted a $200 Hello Kitty and Gremlins.

We ended up at a place called AMIGOS DEL TACOS. It was Japanese Mexican food, but they had hard tacos, so I’m not complaining. It’s hard to find any Mexican food, and this was semi-passable. Yum!

On our way back to the hotel we decided to do some late late night karaoke! And this place had blacklights too!

Monday

Hotel Tateshina, the small hotel we stayed at was priced pretty cheap, the rooms were decent (not too small) and the staff was really nice. You could buy a Western or Japanese breakfast in the mornings. Ed got a Japanese breakfast and I brought my blueberry bagel I purchased the day before to have with some coffee and steal some of Ed’s giant bucket-o-rice. The nice food lady brought me some green tea and miso soup and another plate for the rice... for free! How nice!

We started out our lovely warm clear Monday morning with a visit to another famous temple, Asakusa. It was here in 2002 I had gotten a “bad” fortune. For 100 yen, you shake a bunch of sticks, a stick will pop out with a number on it, you find that number’s drawer and get a fortune (in numerous languages). After my bad fortune, I tried to cheat fate by getting another one and redeeming myself. Wrong. I found myself with a “worse fortune” (and that’s what it actually said-along with the sayings, “The person you wait for will not come. The sick person will not get well. The lost item will not be found.” Etc…). And when you get a fortune you do not want, you tie it on a post in the temple, and “leave” the bad luck behind.

So there I stood, years of revenge in my soul. I paid. I shook. I got another “bad fortune”. Angered (as my life outlook had taken an extreme turn from bad to good since previously living in Japan), I tied the fortune to the post and went to have a chat with Buddha. Feeling refreshed, I decided to get a bag of these wonderful little fried filled-donut things. Ed gave me 100 yen and told me to get another fortune. I got a “better” fortune. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t horrible either. I’ll take it! Success!

Wanting to reminisce about Hong Kong, I took us to Yokohama’s Chinatown. Unfortunately, we were short on time. This warranted us enough time to eat at a restaurant even if it, and everywhere else, was pretty expensive (but it did taste like Hong Kong). I also bought a lil cute sleeping panda.

On our way home, I finallllyyyyyy got to see Mt. Fuji out the window of the bullet train!

Gorgeous! I couldn’t believe it! What a perfect ending!

Happi Barentainsu Day

2007-02-15T05:00:00.000-05:00

I'm skipping ahead a bit before giving my Tokyo rundown of the weekend. It's super windy out right now. I have a craving for grilled cheez, and luckily I bought some soy cheese in Hong Kong. Now the problem is bread. I was going to whip up a quick batch of beer bread, but it always comes out real small and dense. But thankfully, I have now learned that the kanji for "lecithin" is similar to the kanji for "milk", so all the things I have passed up have not had milk in them, just thickeners! So, I busted out my lecithin-filled yeast to make some real bread. It smelled so good when I was kneading it. I also have the very last of some vegetable soup, which I am saving to eat with the grilled cheez. I have been hungry for a good 2 hours waiting patiently with this bread. not long now!

note: I know how cheese is spelled. I use "cheez" to mark the difference of a non-dary cheese.

I told one of my teachers I was going ot kabuki over the weekend and she brought me a kabuki calendar AND Edo-period firmen in woodblock print style. Awesome!!!

Another teacher told me Tuesday that she and her husband had a heart-shaped chocolate cake for Valentine's Day. Today she told me that yesterday (Wednesday, V-day) they had some more cake and this morning her husband told her she got fat really quickly (!!!!). She gave me some advice:
"Be bery strict to you husband, in the future, ne? Very important."
(ne= alright?)
I gave Valentine's candies to the Jr High staff. The Principal and Vice-vice principal both said exactly "I am bery happy!" It was cute.

As you can see, its fun to listen to the Japanese.
bery= very
Barentainsu= Valentine's (as seen in the title)

and a lot of my students seem to want to go to Australia and pet a "coara" (Koala).

Ding! Bread's done!
More pics are up too!

The half way point

2007-02-08T03:12:00.000-05:00

Six months down, six to go. I've made it over the hump!
Yesterday I turned in my "I will not recontract for another year" paper with a note for my supervisor. I was very sad as everyone is so great. For 2 days I really thought about staying, but I don't think my sanity could handle it. I texted my supervisor "Sorry" and he said "ok! Don't worry! but in fact, i am a little sad =( but I want value what you decided. because there is it for five months more, we will do our best!" My rough plan from here is to get my TEFL/TESOL certification (to teach English) and then travel around doing that!

I have been having waves of sickness, I'm on the better end now. In the morning office notes it stated something about influenza, so I figured thats what I have. A lot of the students and staff have a terrible cough. Thankfully their cough syrups do not have caffine in them like the ibuprofen does, so I can sleep at night.

One thing that has bugged my since getting here is when you leave the office, you say a specific phrase and then a specific phrase is given back (like a "I'm going"/"Thank you, Take care") type thing. So I use this phrase, and you can tell who likes you (they use the correct corresponding phrase) and who doesn't care about you with this- by saying "sayonara" which is "good bye (I wont be seeing you for awhile"). Maybe they say sayonara because they think I can understand it, I think theyre jerks for not treating me as a fellow teacher.

Over the weekend I went to The Chocolate Show in Nagoya with a bunch of friends. I bought a Chocolate gorilla.

(Currently, the Gorilla only has his torso remaining)
The police also hit us up asking for our ID (they were checking to make sure we were here legally). So once they saw we were ok they asked if we were shopping and I said we went to the Chocolate show. He asked if I bought anything and I pulled that out and went "CHOCO GORIRA!" He was amused. (Remember there are no "L"s in Japanese) and "Gorira" is actually really fun to say.

Last week, I bumped my arm on my piece-of-crap iron (it barely works, I don't understand how it could be so hot!). I ran cold water on it and forgot about it. At school I noticed it was quite raised so I went to the nurse to get something for it- maybe some aloe or something so it wouldn't scar.
The nurse is approaching middle age and wears purple and gold eyeshadow. She eats very daintily and is more of a germaphobe than me. I imagine she has many cats.
Anyways, she tells me you can't put ointment on a burn, but you can put gauze on it. so she gets the gauze and cleans my arm and puts a square gauze patch on it and tapes it up, ok fine. She then proceeds to open a little box of rolled gauze and starts to wrap it around my arm.. and wrap... and wrap.. until almost the ENTIRE roll was used. Keep in mind this burn was thin and barely an inch long...

That's right. She wraps half of my forearm up. Thankfully this was after all my classes (with the PTA watching!) so they wouldn't have thought I was suicidal or something.
Also in this picture is some shark jaws. This is on the counter right behind my desk so for two days I heard passing conversations of: "What's that?" "I don't know" "I think its a shark!" "I don't know" "Who's is it?" "I don't know". So appearently these shark jaws appeared and no one knows where they came from or why. Someone said they were worth 20,000,000 yen which is about $180,000, and you watch all the little kids holding it (cringe).

And to wrap it up, for your viewing pleasure: Guns N Roses karaoke with my friend Lincoln.

Black hole towns take your money

2007-01-27T23:48:00.000-05:00

There is a stop not too far from the main hub train station by me. You can only take a local train to this little stop. But becareful loyal readers, this stop is a black hole for your pocket book. Why is that you ask? Because. Beacuse of two stores known as BookOff an Amica.

Book Off is a used CD/DVD/book/video game store. With 250 and 500 yen sections of CDs, you can't hold out for long. I managed to survive this time around. My purchase was a hard-to-find CD for a friend, and a video called (translated): "Love Those Animals vol 3: Cute Cats! Full of very cute cats!" This 25 minute video is just videos of different breeds of cats and kittens being cute (for the most part). A bargain at 250 yen (about $2). Ed did not make it out alive however.

Amica, the name is a double-edge sword. The name invokes feelings of excitement and poverty simultaneously. Amica is a large foreign food and bulk restaurant food grocery store. Sadly, I fell to its wrath. I am now the proud owner of a giant bag of dehydrated mushrooms, amongst various other morsels.

At Amica, a girl was skating around the store. As we were leaving, she comes up to me and says cheerfully, "Hello!"
"... hello. How are you?"
"I'm fine thank you, and you?" (the stereotypical Japanese response)
"I'm good! Thank you!"
She held back a big grin and gave herself a "I-did-it!" fist pump. I think she was really pleased to communicate, that I understood and responded, and she understood as well. It was really great.
Walking out of the parking lot she yells, "SEE YOU!" I say, "Bye-bye! See you! Nice to meet you!" which causes her to erupt in a spastic case of jumping-jacks. Everyone was in smiles.

Kids

2007-01-17T04:10:00.000-05:00

Kids are the funny ones. They LOVE saying "see you!" Then a few of the first graders I was hanging out with thought my lame joke of "ABC-you!" was HILARIOUS.

This week we brain-stormed winter things, and then made a scene of winter things on paper mittens I passed out. They practiced writing their name in English (which they don't start learning until 3rd or 4th grade), colored their picture, cut it out, brought it to me and we made kind of a mitten garland.
My favorite picture was of a bunch of snowmen blowing ice "fire" on humans, capturing them in blocks of ice.

The kids inspect everyone's pictures

Here are some second graders at lunch.

Tomorrow with 4th grade, we will learn shapes and then make a winter scene using ONLY those shapes. Here is my example:

I hope it goes well.

**FACT** In Japan, snowmen are only made with 2 snow balls (called Yuki-Daruma). So when I tell them in America we have THREE snowballs, it was a big deal! (This inspired a few drawings of snowmen with 7 snow balls! ) Kids tried to figure out WHY 3, and some thought because we have more snow. A teacher reasoned it was because we are taller, thus can build a bigger one. I should really find out, as a teacher flipped out when they found out we used carrots for noses. Hahaha! I don't know why!

Last weekend I went to a surprise party. This photo is blurry, but it really captures the surprise and streamers.

Surprise!

Last week, I noticed a weird light coming in my window in the morning. I went outside and saw this:

Then I looked the other way:

WOW!
I must have leprechaun neighbors?

(close up)

Let's learning Japanese!

2007-01-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

I’m studying honorific and humble verb-forms (which are completely different words to the original) and I really hate it. Maybe it’s just the book, but it is making me hate the language (I’m pretty sure it’s this crap course book). My supervisor saw this and told me that even “Japanese [people] can’t use” these forms (but he thinks it’s wonderful I’m learning). The middle-aged lady in the office started laughing nervously saying she didn’t know how to use them, and to please teach her.

It’s good to know even the native speakers have no idea what’s going on.

The EPIC: Hong Kong

2007-01-04T06:22:00.000-05:00

Japan; 5 months down.

HONG KONG EPIC.
For winter holiday, Pat, Ed and I went to Hong Kong!

WARNING: This is very long. Pictures are small to conserve space. Click on the HONG Kong photo button to the right to view ALL photos.
Stay tuned for more photos, videos, and panoramic shots.

Dec 21 Thursday
It was only a 4 hour plane ride to Hong Kong. And before you know it, you are seeing the coast light up.

Pat is Canadian, but has family in Hong Kong and his ex-cop uncle graciously picked us up from the airport. On our way to the hotel, I was saddened. This is not what Hong Kong is supposed to look like… this looks like Cleveland! Just cement highways and green shrubbery and trees and some construction. Then we went through a long tunnel, and much like Pittsburgh, when you come out the other end WHAM! City! We drove over a long suspension bridge, the apartment and business buildings all lit up in the evening, all sorts of colors bouncing off the water fronts (Hong Kong is a series of islands, collectively). I think I could only count jaw-dropping moments on both my hands, and I could add another one.
There is nothing to compare it to. Yes, it is a big city. But big cities are not this crammed with high rises. Hong Kong has nowhere to build but up, so everything is tall and amazing. The streets have the scent of Chinese food (for the most part), and its busy and noisy and everything that is great about big cities. After getting to the hotel (which was in Kowloon, the southern tip of mainland China- still Hong Kong)

Hotel day & night

I wanted to go out straight away despite it being late. Stores didn’t start to close until 12:30 am, some not at all. I went to the 7-Eleven across the street and made my first purchase. Hello Kitty juice and Skittles (I can’t eat American Skittles, for some reason there is gelatin in them, but not international versions of them…).

Things about Hong Kong.
--> Hong Kong IS international. Everyone speaks English (even a little bit), everything has English interpretations, and international foods are everywhere and easy to buy or dine with.
--> Hong Kong understands what vegetarianism is* due a population of strict vegetarian Buddhists and (probably) some Western influence. I was very happy to see the largest selection of fake meat I have seen in my life. I also purchased fake cheese and fake mayo. I was super happy.

*Japan thinks as long as there are is no meat chunks or if it’s “only a little”, it’s ok. Also, fish is not a vegetable.

-->The weather, was amazing. Late spring/early summer feel. Sunny everyday but one, only needed a light jacket, and no wind!
--> HK is duty free. No taxes!
They still use bamboo scaffolding, and their toilet paper is THREE-ply.
--> Octopus Card. Used like a debit card, you “beep” is for using any transportation (subway, train, bus, tram, ferry…) you can also use it at places like convenience stores to pay for stuff. Super convenient, and you even get a small discount on the transportation fees. It has a microchip in it, so all you have to do is wave it over the scanner.
--> Public Transport fees. Super-duper cheap. It cost me 30 cents to cross the Harbor on a ferry. 30 cents!! Nothing really cost me over $1.50 , and most trips were less than a US dollar. In Japan, it takes me $3 just to get to the city over. Bah!
--> I rode in a private car, train, subway, tram, cable cars, private boat, ferry, people movers, & escalators. I also walked a ton!
--> One of the first things I saw on TV was for new fitness equipment that simulates riding a horse. This isn’t the exact commercial, but it’s just as ridiculous:

I actually saw a bored fitness equipment employing sitting on while while it was on, just sitting there with her arms crossed waiting for customers...

Dec 22 Friday
Ed and I went out for our first real Chinese meal at some place not too far from our hotel. I had mushroom noodle soup, stuffed veggie buns, and veggie-stuffed tofu skin. Num-num.

Next it was off to Kowloon Park. Like most parks in Hong Kong, there was some odd balance of a refreshing green park, with skyscrapers gracing the background. Ed got a grape juice from the vending machine, and along with it popped out 2 mango juices! Rad!

We wandered over to the Pier at China Hong Kong City and took in the view.

Then off to Victoria Harbour for the sunset!

Walking around, we got some toiletries and Ed discovered he got a FREE Christmas moose in his shopping bag! I went to Hard Rock Café to pick up a pin to add to my ever-growing collection.

We later went back to Victoria Harbour for the nightly light show. The Harbour was gorgeous lit up by itself. Then the laser light show started and the buildings would flash different colors in sync to music.

Daytime & nighttime Harbour comparison

After that we had too-spicy Indian for dinner, and went to the grocery store. There I bought real granola cereal (cheap!) and a bag of apples (cheap!!) and a little bottle of soymilk. When I got home, I sniffed the soymilk. Smelled like tofu, “OK” I thought, “I’ve had worse, won’t be too bad.” I took a sip and it tasted like there was a pepper aftertaste! How odd! I looked for ingredients for an explanation and found none.

Dec 23 Saturday
I opened my wonderful cereal and embarked on eating it with this pepper milk. It was hard to taste the cereal with my mouth feeling spicy. After I finished, I checked once again for ingredients, and found them on an over looked sticker! They read:
“Water, non-GMO soyabeans, sugar, ginger.”

GINGER?! No wonder my mouth was a-flame! Mystery-solved.
After breakfast we met up with Pat (who was staying with family) and went off to Hong Kong Island and could mingle with the big buildings we were viewing across Victoria Harbour the previous night.

We walked around and got some coffee and found a (packaged) sandwich at our table someone forgot. Hong Kong has been treating us well with all these free things!
For lunch we stumbled upon a vegetarian restaurant. Prices are a bit cheaper than the states, and for being a fancy-looking veg restaurant, it was super cheap. I had sweet and sour “pork” since I have never had it in any form and it was love. Plus, check out our view:

We then took a bus to the top of Victoria Peak, which is where you see most pictures of Hong Kong shot from. It’s best to go at night and it gives you a birds-eye view of the city. Many famous & rich people live on the mountain, like Jackie Chan. I didn’t have my coat and it was pretty chilly and my nose was running, but that’s OK as I bought a fleece-hooded jacket for $6 up there. Rock.

Dec 24 Sunday

On Christmas Even we thought it would be most excellent to go to Ocean Park, Hong Kong’s conservation amusement park, which also offered a fantastic view.

Being from Ohio, the capital of roller coasters and theme parks (and home to the never-ending rollercoaster record-breaking park Cedar Point ), other coasters have a lot to live up too. These rides were way too short, but still fun.

We also saw sharks and pandas and Ed bought me a panda purse I was eyeing. ^_^

All animals are protected, all funds go to conservation, the park is about awareness of the environment and education, which is cool.

There is two parts to the park, upper and lower, and you have to take the cable cars to get there. I think they look like gum balls. What do you think?

The nighttime brought about closed roads and an ocean of people back in our area (called Tsim Sha Tsui). Christmas is brought in like New Years the TV told us later. Stores were having super sales, crowds of Santas were singing, and there were even fireworks! Even though there are all sorts of people in Hong Kong, everyone seems to say Merry Christmas. No one thinks anything of it, and everyone is just happy.

Outside the hotel, Hark The Angels being sung in Cantonese

Here is a video (not mine) of the Christmas countdown.

Dec 25 Monday
Had a nice sleep-in from the excitement of Ocean Park and staying out in the crowds.

We then went to Hong Kong Food Fest at the Expo Centre which was shoulder-to shoulder and then some. I do love me some free samples! There was a big booth of veggie food that was incredible. Most of the food was frozen so I couldn’t buy it, but it did get some shredded “pork” and a pouch of “Pure Vegetarian Rendang Meat (Malay Flavour)”. It was saucy and tasty though. I did get to try the best hot dogs, fake or real, squid (hey it is rubbery!), roasted eel, chicken nuggets, ham, steak, and lots of other fake things. Good and cheap. If only they weren’t frozen!!

I also found a new love of mine, I do not know its name but Pat’s uncle informed me it was a specialty of Guangzhou –SE China- (I think). It was made in a roll and then cut into piece. It has a chewy thick outside made from rice. The center is peanuts with sugar... like Snickers. Then the outside is rolled in coconut. Oh man, it is GOOD!

Then we saw Curse of the Golden Flower (by same person who did Hero and House of Flying Daggers) starring Chow Yun Fat. It was beautiful and intense. All movies have English subtitles, so that was good. This one also had Cantonese subtitles as the movie was in Mandarin (which I can now tell the difference by listening to).

Then I had some vegetarian fish for dinner. Despite having good veggie fish in Nagoya, this stuff was kinda weird.

Dec 26- Tuesday
Another laid back day. We planned our adventure for the next day, and set out to explore. We went to Hong Kong Park, which is very large and calm, again with the backdrop of skyscrapers.

We brought a little lunch earlier from the station and picked out a nice spot to eat.

We went to the “Mid-Levels” also on HK Island, a loose grouping of areas on a steady slope up a mountain. They have installed escalators (with no steps, just an incline) in small sections up this incline, so you can get on and off wherever you like if you pass a place of interest. The escalator ride, from top-to-bottom, is 10 minutes. They only go one way until late at night, and then they switch going down. But as I said, they are in mini sections, and the ride is usually 30-45 seconds before you have to walk over to the next one waiting (or get off and explore all the busy little shops). The cool thing is, at one part you can “beep” your Octopus Card, and get $2 HK off your next public transportation fee. Why? Because you are out walking around this area being healthy, and this is a reward. Love it.

Anyways, places in this area are Hollywood Road which is known for antiques, as well as Soho (like its arty counter-part) as well as Boho and Noho. And finally I was given a taste of what I imagined HK would be, street markets.

It was kinda late and the little street sellers were packing up their wares. We weaved in the narrow streets and down little brick pathways between buildings, the only thing that semi-resembles an old Hong Kong. We headed to a Mexican restaurant I had excitedly seen earlier in our escalator ride. Because Ed lives in that silly English land with no real Tex-Mex, I explained in detail the differences between tacos, burritos, soft tacos, tostadas, enchiladas, etc… I had a lukewarm burrito and yearned for Taco Tanto’s fresh baked burritos of yore. But I hadn’t had one in so long, I gobbled it up!

Dec 27 Wednesday
Today we were up and out to visit the island of Lantau which is famous for the Big Buddha, and more recently the new HK International Airport and HK Disneyland. Not anticipating too much because it was a weekday, we found ourselves in a queue for 2 hours just to buy a ticket to ride the 360 Skyrail (fancy name for cable car) that would take us straight to the Buddha. Buses were also available, but how could you NOT go on the 360 with its panoramic views? We shared the car with 3 other groups of people for our 25 minute journey through the mountains and over the sea.

For about $7 we had a communal veggie lunch. Despite its looks, it was very filling! Our meal stub also got us into the Big Buddha and into the special relics rooms where 2 pieces of Gautama Buddha (the most well known Buddha) is stored.

“The Tian Tan Buddha is the world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha. The statue is located near Po Lin Monastery and symbolizes the harmonious relationship between man and nature, people and religion.“

There was also a special Shaolin performance at the Po Lin Monastery.

We took the bus to another part of the island than where we came from. It was a gorgeous ride, as Lantau Island is the biggest and least populated main island in Hong Kong (there are many tiny inhabitable islands in HK, they don’t count ;) ). We took a ferry back to Hong Kong Island and went back to the mid-levels to drink a little and ended up a nice little health restaurant. This led to…

Dec 28- Thursday
Me being incredibly sick in the morning and nauseous all day. Thankfully I was well cared for. We made it out mid-day to the Chi-Lin Nunnery, closing a half-hour earlier than our guide book stated, probably due to the holiday. However the garden was open and gave us some beautiful things to look at.

Went back to the veg restaurant (hey it’s good and well priced!) for some hot noodles that made my belly happy and called it a night.

Dec 29- Friday

In college, in order to graduate, I took this course called “Economies of the Asian-Pacific Rim” and next to Phys Ed, was the bane of my college career. I didn’t live near campus and I had to be there at 7:45 until 9:30… AM. I had/have no interest in economy, most of the students were international business majors and the professor talked about money terms a lot- I had taken no finance classes, and I had no idea what was going on. My ability of being an honor student faded into the background and I knew my secret weapon had to be unleashed: the art of BS.

How I got a B+ in that class I will never know, I could only bank on the powerpoint presentations I had to give as my saving grace because it was something specific I could research and figure out. In one such presentation, I was assigned Hong Kong. I had no prior interest or desire or knowledge of Hong Kong. Upon doing research, and seeing all the pretty lights, Hong Kong seemed like a place I would actually like to visit one day. I saw a travel show on Hong Kong and then I learned HK has PINK dolphins. Two years later I am making sure I would be going to HK since Japan is not too far from it. So if it weren’t for that awful morning class, I may have never seen pink dolphins, which is what I did this day.

I had made reservations with HKdolphinwatch.com for Friday morning. The chilliest day of our trip, we met as a tour group and were bussed to the boat. On the bus they lady told us about the dolphins, what we can expect, how humans are impacting their environment, etc. And also, the biggest question, why they are pink! Because they live in between fresh and salt water, it is a bit murky, and they need less pigment to protect themselves from the sun. They are also making sure they are staying warm by flushing blood around their blubber. Babies are born grey and “fade” to pink. Unfortunately, because of all the toxins from the waters stored in the mother’s body, the first borns have a high fatality rate. Mama dolphins also baby-sit other baby dolphins! We received pink dolphin postcards. Did you know Pink dolphins are also only found in HK.

The boat was fun to be on and had plates of cookies and coffee for us. About 45 minutes or so the boat starts to slow down and dolphins were spotted following a fishing boat out in the waters getting some lunch! We were very lucky as our boat was surrounded by different groups of dolphins. Some got has close as 10 feet to the boat swimming around. You could see a few pairs together and a couple mama/baby pairs. They really are a light bubblegum pink! Of course, my camera died on the first photo I tried to take. I will try and post some of Ed’s (whose battery also died on the boat trip) later. It really was amazing. We watched them for maybe an hour before heading back.

PIX PENDING

example:

In the mood for crap, we decided to have lunch at the Hard Rock Café, and had some crazy big veggie burger which was also cheap (gotta love these prices).
Afterwards we checked out the HK Museum of Art, and encountered a marching band escapade of sorts. All these different bands were lined up and ready to go and started marching, then another group would go, etc. They went on for awhile, I could hear them in the museum! The museums contemporary showpiece was HAIR Dialogue. There were these little shoes made of hair. And giant curtains made of hair with things in different languages written on them with more hair. And in this curtain was a giant wooden table with wooden chairs that had TV screens on the seats that were just playing clouds. The level of creepy was too intense and I left. I think it had to do with hearing all the TV frequencies and the hair and the weird video, was just too much RINGU for my liking.

Dec 30- Saturday
We started off the day to see the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas. I guess there are actually over 12,000 there. It was very impressive, quite a walk up the side of a mountain, but it was really amazing.

PIX PENDING

example:

I bought a pretty stone flower bracelet and finally found a 108-bead string of prayer beads that didn’t cost a stupid amount (and as you may have guessed it was also stupidly cheap).

We met up with Pat and he showed us all the street vendor markets. We went to the Ladies Market, Shoe Street, etc. Pat had to leave and I went to enquire about a pair of adult Hello Kitty shoes I had seen. I hold the shoe up to show the guy and he says:
“For you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh really?”
He was shocked because my feet are so big and said they only have to a 36 (I need 42).

Another funny shoe story from that night: I am looking for a pair of shoes to go with my New Years dress. I see a pretty neat pair, and say it goes up to a 40. Hoping for the best, I try it on. I can’t do it. The guy (note: HK native) helping me had white-framed glasses and a blonde, permed afro. I look at him sadly. He says:
“Too tight?”

I nod. He then proceeds to do a “oh well” shoulder shrug/ arms raised motion… but does so, so that it is very pronounced and over extended, then brings it back in with the added sounded effect of “Wah-waaah.”
I think they really don’t know what to say in English, but the reactions that I got while looking for shoes were hilarious!

Instead of catching the MTR home, we decided to walk it and go to the Night markets and Jade market. I got a sweet sea-horse belt buckle for $5. We also stopped at a different veggie restaurant, cheaper and not as fancy, but there were super busy and 2 monks were eating there. That’s a good sign! Their sweet and sour “pork” was not as good, but still was a good meal!

Dec 31- Sunday
We met Pat in the afternoon for some last deal shopping. We split up and I could finally power shop. But still found no shoes, I was a failure as a shopper and I only ate a bagel as punishment. I still had to get accessories, and how could I do that if I didn’t know what color my shoes were?! We went to another shopping plaza. Flip-flops were my last hope, and I managed to find nice light pink ones with sea-shells and beads on them. They sales guy gave us a scratch off coupon and we got 25% off! It was worth not finding anything!

I then gave myself 15 minutes to get jewelry. I found a neat cat-shaped hair clip while looking, and the sales lady then proceeded to show me every piece of cat-related jewelry they had. I found cheap star barrettes, and some anchor earrings. No necklace caught my eye, so I was afraid I would be necklace-less. At the register, I find out my sale is US$2.50 short of getting a free Swarovski crystal necklace (which were pretty and not cheesy like most free things). She holds up a pair of neat cat earrings I had been debating and asks if I want them. Oh yes, she was good. So I ended up with a nice necklace after all!

We went back to the hotel to change, have a quick bite to eat, and then went out among the waves of people back in the street to meet up Pat and his friend Leo. We go to Hong Kong Island to Causeway Bay’s Times Square for a concert and countdown. We were a bit too late and couldn’t see anything. Finally we get trapped in a way-too-sober crowd and lights shaped like apples with numbers in them start lighting up going down the building and everyone starts counting down! But by the time I’m at “8” I realize it’s all in Cantonese and I start laughing because I don’t know Cantonese and just listened to the numbers and yelled when everyone else did!

We caught the tram and headed over to THE after-party central Lan Kwai Fong, where drunken foreigners were stumbling about because they know how to do New Years right! Around 2, Pat and Leo left. On the streets shops were offering deals on drinks. Also experienced my the 2nd worst mojito ever. Ed went to the bathroom and about 30 seconds later a cute Indian guy hit on me, only to have his dreams crushed. Good to know I still got it! A little bit more people watching later, we got some “kebabs” (pita wraps!) and went back to eat it at the hotel before passing out!

Happy New Years!

Jan 1- Monday
Did some last minute souvenir shopping for my office and schools and took the infamous Star Ferry across the Harbour at sunset. I once again became sick later (I finally narrowed down the culprit as a berry smoothie. Albeit, from two different places… it’s the only thing that matches). Packed all my goodies and slept well.

Jan 2- Tuesday.
Pat’s uncle took us out for some pre-departure official dim sum. Started watching The Departed on the plane, but the flight was too short and couldn’t finish it. I also barely touched my special meal because of being sick. Got back and relaxed!!!

Pre-vacation post

2006-12-19T04:09:00.000-05:00

Edit: Click HERE to see where I live. The cursor is on me! This feed must from awile ago as there are none of those big dirt spots left and the bridge is much nicer!

Ah, well Farva is gone to his new home for the next two weeks. My supervisor's son is going to take care of him. I miss the little bugger already!
Now I have to force feed myself the leftovers in my fridge!

Today, I made the best teaching tool yet. Tired of straining my voice over loud kids, I put my small staff locker keys in an empty aluminum bottle. And then I shake it. They stop in their tracks like dogs. Awesome, I don't even have to say anything.

I gave my supervisor a Christmas present of Jelly Bellys, blueberry tea, and candy canes for his family. I also wrote a ridiculous card saying things like, "Go to America and we'll eat Mexican food. Let's always be friends!" haha. but in Japanese, that's why it's so absurd.

This past weekend I went to Nagoya and ate at Hard Rock (oh yes finaly a veggie burger!) and added another pin to my large collection (it's a surfboard at that!). I bought an easy Christmas book to read to the kids, a book for myself, and a few things from the international food store, including Hello Kitty tea. It was just sitting at the register and was a complete impulse buy, how could I not?! I also saw my first James Bond movie, the latest one. It actually wasn't crap, and a good overall movie in fact. I did not care for the actress though, she was odd looking and didn't act very well. Anyways...
I also went to a vegetarian Chinese restaurant! I had 'chickn' and cashews, potstickers, ma-po tofu (with 'ground beef'), and snow'fish' and veggies. All was made with TVP. They even served brown rice, you could buy the TVP chunks there (and I did) and the guy was soooo nice. And the complimentary tea was great. My favorite was the fish, it was crunchy and blackened on the outside (looking like fish) and the sauce it was in was real nice to. The chickn was the runner up. I do love me some cashews. I am definitely going back. It is called Chien-Fu, although I also saw it written Chen Fu and Chan Fu.

I've taken a lot of photos, but mostly of food. Here are some recently;

From the Xmas party:

A seductive bird?

Sunset & cold mountains

Looks like a shrine used to be here, but now only the stone structures remain.

A 4th grader drew this for me:

pretty accurate I'd say...

I will have the internet while in Hong Kong... so maybe look for some photos in the next couple of weeks! Wish me a good trip!

E. Coli!

2006-12-14T19:36:00.000-05:00

Before we get into things, I would just like to offer a little enlightenment to all.
Sake is pronounced sah-kay, not sa-key.
Sushi is not raw fish, but it refers to the vinegared rice, in which you can place raw fish, egg, veggies or anything else in or on it (the Japanese love adding mayo). Thinly sliced raw fish by itself with no rice, albeit smoked, is called sashimi (sah-she-me).
Now you know!

Let’s start off with the most recent news shall we?
First, my infection was caused by E. Coli. Awesome.
Second, I am allergic to the cold. It’s a real thing, it’s called Cold Urticaria.

I figured out I feel like a cat or dog in Japan. Hearing Japanese has become very natural and even though I may not understand them, I can hear and predict the speech patterns and such. So while your dog or cat does know some English words (its proven), over all its just nonsense that sounds a certain way. Does that make sense? Probably not.

The other day, it was 10 degrees Celsius. I had on 2 pairs of socks including knee highs, leg warmers, long johns, jeans, 2 long sleeve shirts, a dress shirt and a cardigan. Ok, it was cold. The school is cold. Even the “heated” teacher’s room isn’t that great. I look outside and these poor kids have to run around the track in t-shirts and shorts. I was then informed I was not allowed to wear gloves in the classroom (I told them I break out in spots so they said it was ok- due to the cold allergy). The kids aren’t allowed to wear gloves, the girls drape their swishy jogging top over their legs to keep warm. And yet the windows are open in the hallways. What is going on here?!

Speaking of things that don’t make sense, I went out to buy a new pillow to sleep on last night. Not a big deal, so you would think. Lets see, feather pillows, therapeutic awkward shaped pillows, temprapedic pillows, pillows with rocks in them (I’m not kidding)… Ok… where is just a normal pillow? Oh here’s one. Oh, its $30. So I ended up buying a body pillow for $9 to just use as one whole pillow across the top of my bed. It is overstuffed and too big to be comfortable. Just like my other “normal” pillow. It’s giant and not comfortable at all. I'm going to perform "surgery" and give it a little lypo.

I did find some raisin bread I could eat and bought a couple of loaves of that. I also bought some greens that were discounted to 65 yen. When they rang up they came up as 0 yen. Awesome!

Last weekend I went to a Christmas party at a little restaurant that had been reserved for all of us and they made me special mashed potatoes and green beans and salad and mushroom pasta which was really sweet of them. I gave them chocolates as thanks. I gave out samplers of my chocolates and I think they went over pretty well. It was a good night.

Next Wednesday I leave for Hong Kong! I am very excited and look forward to a vacation and being able to buy fresh bread. The place we are staying can help get you a China visa in a day so I hope to hope across the border for some bootlegs, Taco Bell, and Papa Johns. I also have a feeling I may be out in the shops on my own at times. No one has been able to keep up the feat of staying with me for power shopping/browsing. I was gradually trained in to the marathon shopper I am today by a grand champion herself, Mom. And when I say “power shopping” this does not necessarily mean purchasing. It is the ability to go from shop to shop to shop non-stop. And Hong Kong is like THE marathon of shopping. Add on cheap shopping on top of it being in a foreign land, and I am in every shop exploring. Sorry friends, you can’t hold me back! (Actually, Jenise could keep up with me, but due to her having to try on and touch everything, the number of places to go dramatically decreases. But she’s not here so it doesn’t matter =p)

All photos pending.

Perfect Vegetarian

2006-12-05T05:52:00.000-05:00

First news:
I can pick up my camera tomorrow, AND it was covered by warranty! I am so happy. ALSO, I am allowed to take baths again! (I couldn't because of the infection) My back has been killing me, so it's my little joy. At today's checkup, the doctor said my pee was "clean/pretty" but I'm still on meds for a week just in case.

While on the subject, let us talk about Japan's medical field. If you have a cold, or a cough, people will say "Go to the hospital." And to me, that seems quite extreme. But I think in Japan, going to the hospital does not equal an emergency. Its just like doctor check ups, where you can or cannot have an appointment. So its "no big thang." It is so much not a big thang, that in fact, the hospital is closed on Thursdays (I cannot offer any more info, I have no idea).
I have also heard while studying here a few years ago, that when people got sick, the doctor just kinda gave them pills and didn't really say anything about it. I now have first hand experience. The lovely nurse told me to take pills 3 times a day. Ok! But when I got home and opened the pack.. what's this? little packets of powder. Luckily, Chris had seen a co-worker with a similar thing. You are supposed to put the powder in your mouth, then drink something. You are probably thinking what I was.. "uh-huuhhhhhh". So I did it, hoping that it wasn't one of those preservation/dry packets that come in shoes. The next time I mixed it with water, because, that makes sense. Oh-ho-ho readers! You have not been paying attention! Japan does not exist on sense. i mixed it with water, and it tasted like crap. I then asked one of the English teachers how to take it, and told me the same thing: pour it in your mouth. Still weird.

Last night was the end of year party. Now, everyone knows of Chris and I's diet, and I asked and was told that yes, there would be food for us to eat. As we arrived, we saw that there was some veggies and tofu on a giant plate, but what's this?! Oh, its covered by raw bloody slabs of death. Oh, an unappetizing pile of cabbage salad, but its something, but alas! covered in fried flesh! The salads and soup in front of us? Seafood, seafood, seafood. We ate some eggplant that may have been questionable.
The other co-workers nearby looked at us, and said, can you eat anything? We pitifully said "just the eggplant". The laughed at us saying "so sad!" and continued stuffing their progressively reddening faces from alcohol consumption.
About 20 minutes later of us complaining to eachother, we were actually checked up on. Oh no! no food for our international friends! Let me tell the staff!
A few minutes later, a giant platter comes towards us, Chris and I's eyes light up! Until it came down to eye level...

A giant plate of raw grated cabbage!! YUM!
(Thank you Chris's cell phone)

We pitifully had a small plate of of this. Five minutes later, we are brought some cold tofu and scallions. We were excited to have food, but we still weren't thrilled with having to possibly pay about $50-$80+ for cabbage and tofu. About 10 minutes later our lovely wonderful co-worker was appauled this was all we had to eat! The cook then felt sympathy and made us udon and tenpura. The end they served rice and pickled food and hot tea and I was stuffed! mmmMM!

During the party everyone but us became increasingly drunk and red-faced and thankfully did not notice the karaoke machine. Chris's supervisor started talking to her condisendingly like a child, I started to feel like the foreign "pet". Like a little dog that is dressed and babied and cooed at and made to feel dumb (not on purpose, but that is what I felt like). So it was more than annoying.
The former high-school English teacher came up to us and said how happy he was we were here in Japan. Then he asked me if I hated Japanese (I said, "I like it but it is difficult." He seemed to like that answer). He we had this conversation:

Guy (to Chris): You are false vegetarian.. false? no...
Chris: I am not false.
Guy (to me): You are perfect vegetarian. (To Chris) You are false vegetarian.

He was just trying to use words for being vegan and vegetarian. But I loved being called that! Other jems of the night including jaw dropping gasps that people in America can use chopsticks (or as my supervisor said "chipstick" so cute) and not just Americans! But Koreans, Chinese, etc... WOW! Japan can be very wonderful, but they are very self-centered (not to mention intensely materialistic, patriotic, and stubborn, I would say even more than America, but that's another topic =p ).

Ok! time for my bath! ahhh!!!

Beer and Tea

2006-12-03T21:31:00.001-05:00

These past few weeks have involved me being sick, the internet breaking along with my new camera, cooking a big thanksgiving meal, going to meetings, and getting a bladder infection. And it’s pretty cold.

My thanksgiving dinner was Tofukey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cornbread, green beans, stuffed mushrooms and pumpkin pie with a flaky crust. Everything was homemade (except for the maple syrup I put on my cornbread=p). It was a weekend of gluttony and laziness.

This past Friday night was spent with Pat and Ed figuring out details of our Xmas/New Years trip. I think the final result is just to hang out in Hong Kong and Macau as going to Beijing would be a lot of extra money right now. So while I am intent on going to Beijing at some point while I’m over here, it won’t be now.

Saturday was an early start off to Kyoto. Ed’s adopted host-mom (Junko) was taking us out to some interesting events (along with her friend, her friend’s husband, and our friend Katie). First up was the Suntory Beer Factory tour! Suntory is a large drink distribution company (soda, coffee, etc) but is mostly known for their alcohols. We rode the bright yellow Suntory Beer Tour bus for free to the factory. Once there, we drank some tea, was shown a power-point presentation and got to eat barley and sniff bitter and “fine aroma” hops. The tour was basically all about one kind of beer, “The Premium Malts” which won best beer in all of Europe in 2005 and 2006, as well as prizes in Japan. They use all sorts of premium waters and don’t skimp out on hops and such, and other environmentally friendly things. We saw the factory and the giant vats and the canning process. At one point we walked through a section that smelled like whiskey, and my stomach didn’t enjoy that so much.
Finally, we come back to our original room and get a free glass of this god-like beer, draft-style. It was all right. They showed us how to pour the perfect beer for head. I could barely finish my first glass, I was starving and couldn’t eat the mixed nuts they gave us (cuz it had shrimp in it. Why? I don’t know). They gave me a free Suntory pint glass and a packets of ads to hand out to friends as a door gift. Their gift shop sucked.
Next we stopped for lunch and were off to a “tea ceremony” where you make your own “cake”. I say “cake” because that is misleading, as it was tea “sweets”or even “desserts” not cake. Anyhow, we made some wagashi (Japanese sweets).

The first one was cinnamon mochi (chewy sweet rice dough) rolled out, with some anko(red sweet beans) and a strawberry in the middle. We raised the sides of the mochi to the strawberry to look like a flower.
Kinda like this

The second was strawberry mochi with a strawberry sweet bean paste filling made into a triangle.

Like this, but pink.

We then MADE our own traditional green tea. 2 scoops of the greenest green powder, mix with hot water, and stir with this crazy looking whisk until frothy.

As explained in the “big tea” ceremony post, the sweetness of the sweets offsets the bitterness of the traditional green tea (macha). It was real good. I know the sweet beans sound weird, and I was skeptical at first, but they are really good. And now that it’s could you can find hot buns with the bean filling at convenience stores, it’s the perfect snack.
Then we part ways with everyone and Ed and I strolled around a busy Kyoto city night. We dropped our stuff at our hostel and went out for more adventure (which really just included arcades and drinking at a crazy Japanese rock bar). We did go to a “vegetarian” restaurant, which wasn’t all vegetarian, but had a load of options (Clevelanders- think of a posh Tommy’s). The best part was, EVERYTHING was fresh. Japan has so much processed food, this was so great to taste. They had fresh veggies lying on the tables, and great mood lighting for such a small place. I had tofu and avocado slices and a tofu & veggie burger for an appetizer. My main dish was a small Margharita pizza (tomato sauce, basil), with a crust made from brown rice smooshed together then baked, so the bottom was crispy and the top was chewy and even a bit creamy from the heat. You can tell it was hand made as there was no shape to the crust. It even had homemade tomato sauce! Yum! (can you tell I’m writing this when I’m hungry at work?).

Sunday morning I called my mom to tell her Happy Birthday (since it was still her birthday at home), and we set out for some coffee. We went to Nijo Castle, which was pretty amazing. The floorboards were specifically made to squeak so no one could sneak into the palace. They called them the Nightingale Floors because the squeaks were almost musical and sounded like nightingales. Check out this random persons pictures to get a feel.
We went and got Indian food for lunch, wandered around the shops, went to the foreign food store where I found candy canes and can now make peppermint bark! Then started the long, long train ride home to my apartment.

My apartment is cold (no central heating here) and my heaters are always on. I think this has been causing me to blow fuses, which always scare me (a loud pop and then plunged into darkness? Cmon, cheap scare).
Tonight there is an enkai for the office. Enkai being an obligatory drinking party with your coworkers. I am looking forward to eating its elaborate food.
I am pretty sure I am not going to stay another year. Japan is nice to stay in, but having to work and live con your own here isn’t exactly thrilling. “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” So if you know of any jobs that pay you to travel, please leave some hints. Maybe I could write articles and sell them or something. Wait, I suck at writing, nevermind! =p

Festa weekend

2006-11-20T04:15:00.000-05:00

This weekend was a nonstop “festa” of fun. I’m not sure what festa means, but Japan likes to use it, maybe they mean fiesta.
Friday I went to Nabari for a friend’s birthday party/dinner. Much eating, drinking, dancing, conversing, and noise making was had by all. I introduced a bunch of people to Ohio’s beloved candy, the Buckeye. Of course, they fell in love. I slept on the floor with 3 other people that night.
Saturday morning I hung out some (I intended to go to Tsu for an international "festa" but appearently it really sucked), did a little shopping and eating, then went back to Ed’s in the afternoon to clean up and to rest a bit before another extravaganza was had. It was another birthday get together at a restaurant for two people I had never met in Iga-Ueno. Many people came and it was a gathering of cultures, new and old friends, and a buffet of food.

Note: I could not eat any of this, but some other tasties were prepared for me later.

After filling ourselves, everyone departed and decided to go to Jazz Bar in the cold, wet rain. Ed and I, having not slept much the night prior, headed over to a friends house to get some sleep before another busy day. And a good thing too, as everyone that went to the bar then went to karaoke and didn’t get in until 3 hours before they had to wake up. I was glad to sleep.

Sunday morning came rolling around and it was the big day for the “big tea”. Practically everyone but Ed and I were a bit worse-for-their-wear having barely slept. All 10 off us hopped a couple trains to get on a big bus for our tour. Before this, no one had any clue what was going on. Turns out it was a guided tour, and for 2,000 yen (about $18) we got an hour bus ride to Nara, into 3 temples, lunch, and the big tea cup, along with some other various activities and free time before the ride back. What a deal! It was almost worth it, but the tour lady would not SHUT UP the entire time, the speaker on the bus was so loud, everyone was being loud to talk over her, and it was 8:30 in the morning and people just wanted to rest and imagine the hunger away from no one having breakfast or being able to eat for another few hours.

I took a video of a normal smaller town in Japan as the bus rolled on if you’re interested.

Here is some pictures from the first temple, Yakushi-ji.

Taking an illegal picture =p

Then we went to the second temple, Saidai-ji where we would have lunch and tea.

The most interesting part was I believe our whole lunch was vegan, to my utmost surprise. I was ignoring things I was pretty sure I couldn’t eat and just picking out what I could. Luckily, the supervisor of this meal was 1 person away from me, so I would ask if things had milk in it or fish. And he would just say “No, not meat,” or “not fish”. I then learned NOTHING was meat of fish, all tofu. Then he said “Looks like fish, but tofu. Look like egg, but tofu.” So I had a giant delicious lunch of tempura, chestnut candies, tofu meat, tofu “froth”, creamy tofu, rice and beans, yam jelly-like things, persimmons, mochi and miso sauce, broth with seaweed and tofu skin, potatoes, lotus root, something chewy, and a fried tofu veggie ball with unlimited hot green tea. This sounds like a lot, but it was all on one tray in tiny portions. And it was freezing out so it was nice to eat and have hot tea (the rooms weren’t any warmer, just drier). I wish I had taken a picture!
Then we had to go around and introduce ourselves. I’m sure the Japanese people in the tour group were surprised to see us all sitting on the bus, but they seemed happy! One little old lady (maybe about 70ish with red sparkly barrettes in her gray hair!) said in her best English that she was so happy there were foreigners she could talk with and thanked us for teaching English in their schools. It was really sweet.

Then, on to the tea!
This ritual is performed twice a year at this temple. When you are at a tea ceremony, you sit with your knees tucked under you as long as you can (which is really hard to do for a lot of people, and really hurts after a few minutes for the people who can), you are given a pretty paper to put in front of you and some sort of sweet is given to you. Ours was pressed sugar with red sweet beans in the middle (mm!).

You have the sweet to eat because traditional Japanese green tea is thick, foamy, and bitter, so the sugar offsets the bitterness. Also at a tea ceremony when you are given the cup, every time you take a sip you must turn the cup to drink from a different spot. In this case, we have to pass the cup down the line and you turn it so you don’t drink from where other people did (you can wipe it off with your sweets paper too).

Here they are making the giant tea.

Stirring

Then the drinking!!

Thassa big tea!

Gulp!

Going in or coming out?

We love tea!

A dedication to Hachiman Shrine, where the tea ceremony began 700 years ago

NOTE: The tea "cup" is 21cm tall, 36cm across, and 107cm around.

The third temple, Gango-ji Temple, was small, but another World Heritage Site. Since it was cold and rainy and small, not many people were there and we were allowed to walk around at our leisure as well as having shopping time in the area. I got in the temple and took pictures before I could get yelled at. It may have been allowed, but everywhere else it was a NO-NO.

After that the group went to get coffee or something and while that sounded quite nice, I really wanted to look around this area I had never been to. Ed found a used toy store and there was all sorts of toys from my childhood! The little plastic Gloworm toys, Ren and Stimpy Christmas VHS box sets, Ernest P World toys… it was pretty awesome. The owner was very nice too, maybe just because he was using easy Japanese and was very amused when I spoke in a Kansai-dialect.
Ed was pleased to find next door an English Pub that served beans on toast and fish and chips and all that other weird English food. He proclaimed we would return another time.

Then we got back on the bus, and they lady still yapped ¾ of the time, and then I went home to a cold messy apartment (I was in a rush to leave Friday).

This Thursday is also a holiday in Japan, so I get the day off, yay! I also have very few classes this week at the junior high, double yay! I am constantly working at the elementary, its nice to have a bit of time to think and relax. Thursday my supervisor is taking my up the ropeway on the mountain to see the Kamoshika (Antelope/deer) Center before it closes. Then this weekend is a mandatory LAZY weekend as there has been no time to relax and sleep in while taking in all the culture and fun the past few weeks. I will also prepare a GIANT feast including trying to make a tofu-turkey. I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving (insane slaughter of people and animals? No thanks) but I am a sucker for giant yummy meals. I will take Angeline’s hint and say it’s a late “Thankful Thursday”. Thank you for having cheap tofu Japan!

Booby's Golf Gallery

2006-11-16T04:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I passed Mr. Booby's Golf Gallery, along with the Liquor Barn (which is pitiful when compared to Liquor Mountain). Japan has the best names for things.

Today I had 3rd graders. We reviewed "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", they can't get enough. Even the kids who can't/won't sing the words still go mad to touch everything.
Then we learned the weather. We played Around the World (I show 2 students a picture, first to say the vocab wins) for the "weather champion" and "champion challenge" mostly for the bitter kids who were doing really well but lost in a rock/paper/scissors tie. Kids love even the tiniest stickers from America.
And then I spoke shortly on Thanksgiving and the turkey (as an icon, not a food). Japan does not have turkeys, and lots don't even know the word for turkey. I showed pictures of giant beautiful colorful turkeys and the kids went ballistic (most have not ever seen a turkey). "WOW!" and cool! and big! and pretty! and more "WOOOOOOW"s! And then I showed them how to draw a turkey by tracing your hand (and showed one I made). And when I said WE were going to DRAW turkeys (holding up a paper and markers) and they started literally bouncing up and down in their seats. It was great. And wow, I saw some colorful turkeys!

I just finished making buckeyes for a friends birthday party, and some Kahlua truffles for her. I even washed EVERY dirty dish I had. Very slowly the apartment is becoming very clean. My living room has not been cluttered since I rearanged it, yay!

Running Time

2006-11-14T06:20:00.000-05:00

Generalize Assumptions and Observations part one:
The Japanese are, in general, extremely nice and will go out of their way to help you if need be. The Japanese also, in general, have no manners. They will blatently butt in front of you, push you out of the way to get something on the shelf you are looking at, and also will not move when needed. When coming at eachother from opposite sides, either on the side of the road, in a station, anywhere where theres no so much room, they won't move. I get over because, we can both pass, as well as it's the right thing to do. Hey, if I get any farther over, I'm IN traffic, but they don't care. And old ladies are the WORST. Those types of ladies are called "obaa-tarian" obaa for "grandmother" and -tarian as the end of "authoritarian". They throw elbows. They're about 3 ft tall with big hats and hunched over from years and year of field and house work.
But all taxes are included in the price you see and you don't tip here. Things equal out I guess.

Now on to the photos!

If you're intereste in the Japanese workplace, here is my "time card" at the Elementary (the other schools are the same). I stamp my "name" stamp for everyday I'm there. It says Jennifer. duh.

Saturday I went bowling. Here I am on the winning team with a Canadian and Englishman. 3 Nationalities. 1 Country. All win.

We played MARIO Bowling!!

Sunday I went to Kyoto. Here is creepy statue.

Kyoto Station decked out (like most everywhere now) for Xmas.

I also went to an ikebana showing.

This week is "Running Time" where the little kids run around a dirt field, and the older kids run around the field and the school for 10 minutes. Everyday this week at 10:15. They warm up with happy kids music, then some jolly marching song comes on and they do start marching for 10-15 seconds, then it breaks into this mad fast rock song where they yell "We are running!" that they, along with the teachers and vice principal, proceed to run around for awhile. Then they cool down.
If I grew up in Japan, this would be the worst week of my life.

Look at 'em go!

WE ARE RUNNING (and the marching)

I miss you

2006-11-13T03:28:00.000-05:00

The past two weeks

2006-11-08T06:46:00.000-05:00

First and foremost! I cleaned and rearranged my living room:

Ok, two weekends ago! Friday Oct 27 I went to a festival in Nabari at a shrine. They were burning giant piles of sticks. Since it was a Shinto shrine, I’m pretty sure it has to do with cleansing and purifying. A procession came along with more flaming sticks, threw them into the bigger pile while a danjiri passed by. Here is a video of it.

There was a circle forming and we managed to get away from the skin-melting heat of the fires to a perfect position front and center for whatever performance was about to start. A guy put on a big dog mask and another guy got behind him under a cloth acting as his hind legs. I know it doesn’t really look like a dog, but I’m fairly sure it’s not a dragon and the way the performance went, I can pretty much guarantee it is a dog (Thank you Japanese theater class!). Here are some videos of the fierce dog dancing, and eventually being tamed by the guy in the red mask with the long nose:

Saturday morning I volunteered to do a little Halloween party in Aoyamacho. I dressed as a Ghostbuster, and helped do Pin-the-tail-on-the-black-cat. Here are some pictures of activities, card making, and girls dancing to “Thriller”.

Last Friday was a holiday, no school! Nintendo was holding a FREE Wii & DS expo in Nagoya (about an hour from me), so know where I was. FYI: Wii is Nintendo’s new console and had many many playable demos with its new “remote” controller that is motion sensitive. It’s amazing. Here are some pictures, I won’t bore you with the nerd fest, more are in my Photo album.

middle aged women playing WarioWare

And because, well, how could I not take a video of a fat guy shaking around?

Neat buildings from the train station after the expo.

The rest of the day was spent shopping and eating Indian food! Mm!

Saturday it was back to Nagoya to meet up with Ed’s friend from his Japanese class back home. We went to the TV Tower and from there saw some sort of big festival so we went there to check it out. It turned out to be a festival sponsored by companies, so it wasn’t so great. There was pro wrestling going on though!

Would you have a good time with these things there!?

Later we ate at an Okinawaian restaurant and went to see Nagoya Castle, famous for its “Golden Dolphins”. As you will see in the pictures, I don’t think they knew what a real dolphin looked like back then.

There was a lovely flower display going of chrysanthemums, as well as bonsai trees and other flowers. See for yourself:

Here are some miscellaneous pictures between then and now that you may find of some interest:

Obviously many more in the Oct & Nov photo folder (link to the right)

From today's lesson

2006-10-30T05:23:00.000-05:00

The rundown is that there are 6 groups playing a guessing game. one group puts up its clues on the chalkboard and I read the them. the other groups have to figure out what it is.

Me: "It is a human, that is scary, that is dead, that appears in the night."

kid: "Disco!"

The real answer was "ghost" but he did give a correct answer.

Spiders

2006-10-26T05:30:00.000-04:00

Let me first state that spiders do not bother me (as long as they are not scurrying furociousy towards me at terrifying speeds, their only goal to jump on my face). Sure, I may be startled if I see one when not expected, but thats normal.

This morning on the way to the potty, I was greeted by a spider by my toaster over. A smidge bigger than a silver dollar (mostly legs). As I aired out my futon on my balcony, its twin was hanging out in its web between the power lines. On the way to school, I saw a colorful monster spider eating a bug (about 1 and a half silver dolars.. but it had a big body). That's 3 spiders in 2 hours.

On the way home this circus freak was still there. i have never seen such a spider. It has to be poisonous with all that color. I was actually scared just looking at it. So of course I took a picture.

Because I am senstive, I am just posting a link to the spider, so no one has to see the spider if they don't want to. I certainly would not want to be reading someone's blog care-free and then suddenly a giant death bee.

If you would like to see this SOB, click HERE

EDIT: OH MY GOD. While trying to identify this beast I have basically scared myself by looking at so many pictures of terrifying giant spiders. Oh, but my quest has ended. It is a female Golden Orb-Web Spider Nephila clavata (Joro-gumo in Japanese). I do not believe it has reach maturity. HERE are many pictures of its different sizes and shapes. Each one terrifying. HERE is a little FYI about this colorful arachnid.

Nagoya weekend and such.

2006-10-24T06:32:00.000-04:00

Ok, I was sick last week, so I was recooping friday. I also cut a large chunk of my hair off. I also have put up another photo section (part 2) on the side where all new photos will be posted (until I run out of room and have to do a part 3!). I also posted a proper Nara write up previous to this one.

Saturday Ed and I went up to Nagoya to fill out more paper work for his stolen camera. It was a wonderful sunny day and little bands were playing in a little area, traffic was busy, and political dudes were making announcements from their car loudspeakers. Unlike in the states, you can drive down the street making very loud announcements about whatever, and its not noise pollution and no one calls the cops.

The band

HERE is a video of that band playing in the park. I took a video mainly of the ridiculous guitar player. Look at that hair. The way he moves and plays, he thinks he is tough stuff!

After listening to his ridiculous solos, we headed over to the brand new ROBOT MUSEUM! Here you can see robots through the ages and then buy robot-related things, such as Roombas, Robo-sapiens, robotic furry sea lions (that appearently are only for cheering up old people and people in hospitals according to the pictures...), robot turtles, robot watches, and high end robot-themed jewelry. Even a robot shaped toilet paper dispenser. I bought a pin.

When you first enter the museum, you can get your outline drawn by a robot! So we did!

HERE is the video of the robot actually drawing us. In the background you can hear a robot "playing" classical music. creepy.

Hallway of old robot book and movie covers.

Now this was interesting. It was a creepy looking wooden doll and book. It was a tea-serving robot and its plans. As it turns out, I believe it was made in 1658. Now THAT'S creepy.

Other neat things

Robots clean up traffic accidents in the future!

Cute robot lamps in the shop. They also appear on the shop bags.

No one can stop our new robot overlords!!
(so what if we were having a little too much fun!)

Sunday was a lazy day, and met up with some people to go to a Thai restaurant. I don't like Thai food, but I'm willing to give it another (3rd) chance... it failed... again. Anyways, two of the fellows who work there names are "god" and "porn" (the Thai spelling, I dont know). I just found that highly amusing.

This week I am back at my junior high. I ony have to give my intro presentation 4 more times an I'm done forever!!! (honest to god, that will make it 46 TOTAL times I have done it. If I have to do it ever again, I'm going to lose it...). In my last class today, a kid trying to be tough in the corner kept saying the F word. I ignored him as I didn't want give him any anger to work with. After about the 15th time however during our number review I said, "That's not a number, please stop saying that!" and kept on rolling. Later on in my presentation, I give out stickers to only children (they don't know it until that moment). Junior high kids think me excitedly giving out stickers is hilarious, and I think some are actually embarassed to get them. This interrupter in the corner happened to be an only child, and when I ran at him yelling "WOO! NO BROTHERS! NO SISTERS! ALRIGHT! YAY!" he was very surprised and the class lost it. Some had their heads down laughing hysterically, one kid actually fell out of his chair from laughing so hard. The kid didn't make a scene the rest of class. It was great.

I also had a special ed. class today, only 3 kids. Nothing as severe as the elementary school, I think they are just a little slower. We had a good time jumping around and drawing Halloween pumpkin faces and coloring Halloween pictures. It's kinda interesting, the slowest shy girl, has really great artistic skills. I really enjoyed it (and the smaller class), I hope I can work with them more.

I will leave you with some Engrish* from my kids today:

"I like hand!!!"

"I like TVgerm"

"I want to work for an airforce. I want to be an airforce to help many people. I want to fly in the sky. So in the future, I want to fry around the world. I like to fry."

*"Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design. Engrish can be found all over the world, but the vast majority of the really funny and creative Engrish is from Japan." from Engrish.com.

Nara

2006-10-17T07:25:00.000-04:00

Ok, the real Nara update! Sorry it's taken a week, I've been ill.

Saturday morning got up and headed out early to Nara. Nara was my first choice in picking a location to live in Japan, so I was eager to visit it again. Nara is a former capital of Japan and was spared during air attacks because of it's history. Thanks to that consideration, Nara now home to some of the oldest art, statues, and buildings in the Japan and the world.

At a train station I found an advertisement for an art showing to the public of old Buddhist art. It happened to be in Nara, near my destination. And it happened to have just started a few days ago! (I originally planned going this particular day because of what I thought was an art show from an ad on the train. Turns out it was for some traditional stuff you had to register and pay for.. oops!)

Ed and I began our trek to Kofukuji Temple, where this art/statue expo was happening, and where I wanted to go anyways. We passed lots of interesting shops and food stands, one of which was selling "Buddha Boogers" and "Buddha Belly Buttons" and "Deer poo" (in the same vein of selling "Moose poop" in Canada).

A building in Kofukuji

Day and Night. 5 story pagoda in Kofukuji. I believe this is one of the tallest pagodas.

We bought a ticket that let us in 4 different buildings, I think all but one are closed off normally to the public. Gorgeous Buddhist statues dating from 1000 years ago greeted us. No photos were allowed and I couldn't even sneak one! I ended up having to buy the postcards of a few amazing works. I bought a book in Kamakura about Buddhist sculptures and their meanings. It was already a great read and helped me plan my Nara tour since it told where to find all these crazy statues. I brought it with me and used it a lot looking up demon kings, and Buddha's aids, etc. While admiring a large Buddha statue, the lady who kept reading the info about the statues to new visitors and keeping me from taking photos, came over to us and mustered in her best English, "Right hand... (motions holding it up) means 'I am always listening.' Left hand... (motions palm out) means 'I can help you.'" I've never heard it put so eloquently. (you can see the pose below in Todaiji)

After seeing history 4 times older than your country, I got hungry. We headed back to a little ma & pa place to eat called "Kame-ya" (Turtle Shop!). I had "oil vegetable", which was a lightly pan fried veggies and sauce. it was really good. After that, it was time to head over to Todai-ji to see the largest Bronze Buddha and largest wooden building. But first we went through Nara Park.

Nara City is famous for hundreds and hundreds of tame deer wandering around. They are believed to be benevolent and sent from the Shinto gods. This may have to do with the fact they will bow their heads at you (mostly to get food from you!)

This deer wanted my sweet potato BAD and kept following me!

We took a detour and headed over to Kasuga Shrine, a very big and famous shrine (linked to royal family in the past).

Mini shrine on the way there.

Entrance to the shrine. (I said deer were famous here!) Water is coming out of its mouth because you must purify yourself before entering a shrine. wash your left hand, then right hand, then left hand again, then drink.

the trek up!

Climbing the stairs to the main shrine.

In the main shrine.

After wandering around, we started our way to Todaiji.

Stone lanterns

Peek-a-boo.

To enter the Todai-ji Temple, you must first pass through the huge main South gate.

A deer at the south gate

A view from the South Gate to the outer part of the temple.

To my surprise, there was a ska festival that night at Todai-ji, so it was all decorated and being prepared. The temple and the buddha inside are both national treasures. This is my 3rd or 4th time there, and it never ceases to amaze me. you'll see why.

some info: Todai-ji Temple was built in the Nara period (710-794 AD). The object of worship is Vairocana Buddha (Buddha that shines throughout the world like the sun), so a magnificent temple was built to refect this importance. It is the largest wooden structure in the world. (160ft h, 187ft w, 165ft d) 33% smaller than the original structure (burned down a couple times).
The Buddha that it houses is made from cast brone and plated with gold. Its 49ft tall. Absolutely massive.

You don't even know how big this is.

"I am always listening"

Buddha companion, the Bodhisattva of Space. Very big as well.

One of two poses of the thunderbolt god. Crushes all evils of the world (note the evil entity he is standing on!) This is an extra housed in the temple. Both are also outside, protecting the temple from evils.

This random woman posing dramitcally for her friends, is crawling through a hole in a pillar in the temple. It is the same size as the statue's nostril (should give you an idea of size). If you can pass through the nostril-represtatve hole, you are guaranteed enlightenment (or at least into the Pure Land where its easier to attain enlightenment). I look at it and see complete-claustriphobia.. and I'm not claustriphobic!

After taking in the sheer size and beauty of everything, we had time for one more temple, and things were closing up. At the foot of Sangatsu-do (The March Hall), it looked bleak. But we pressed on, up a whole lot of winding stairs. Every corner started to present itself with more and more beauty.

Higher..

and higher...

and higher...

Until we could see the whole city at twilight.

Overlook.

Eventually we had to leave the city, and it was a perfet day.

City nights reflected in the turtle pond, with the heron taking it all in.

I have more photos of today in photo album 2, Oct ~ ??.

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OH! AND, I found this blog that has screen caps of a show I love. I didnt know the title, and Im in awe of one of the comedian gals. She's awesome. (Shes the "Chinese" girl)Talk about ethnic stereotypes!

Its actually a whole show of comedic skits, and when I first saw this come on, they were singing the names of the sushi with the Mickey Mouse song. I couldnt believe they were allowed to dress up like that on tv hahah!

Vitamin P

2006-10-11T05:41:00.000-04:00

Many kids at school have been coughing and hacking last week. I upped the OJ intake, but to no avail. I could feel my body crapping out on me. So I went to get some vitamins. Upon seeing the selection, I found some Hello Kitty vitamin C pills. I paid more for the brand name, than the actual product.. but it came with a free sticker! While inspecting these immune-boosters.. I noticed they were also fortified with Vitamin P. Uhhh.. what? With a little research, I found out Vitamin P is really a grouping of bioflavinoids, called a vitamin for ease. yea ok. the more you know!

Ok pictures:

The winners of PARTY DONKEY BINGO. 3rd grade.

My elementary office

My quaint tiny little train station

Friday I hopped a train to go to the middle of the prefecture to visit some friends. On the way there, I captured this:

That night I hung out with a bunch of other JETs. We made salad, pasta, and soup, and had some drinks together. It was very nice as you can tell.

I don't remember the conversation, but its not what you think!

Saturday I went to Ueno, birthplace of Ninjas and theres a ninja museum even! Unfortunately, I did not go. The town is full of Ninja-themed things, which is very entertaining!

a ninja lady train! there is also a pink one.

A window on the train

A disturbing ad on a train

A tree in Ueno

Later that night, a bunch of us went to Ueno-castle where a free Noh play was being performed. And free sake was being handed out on this chilly night!

Noh being performed with the castle in the background.

Other craziness seen:

A mohawk hoodie for weiner dogs

A giant pixie (oxymoron?) in a tree

Probably the best little kid PJs ever.

Arrested by Officier Sonic

Sunday I went on a shopping with Ed determined to find some sort of jacket as its getting colder at night. I ended up with "To's Mexican Food" Hoodie.

HAHA GET IT (To's, toes, see his toes?)

The tag that came with it. How could I not buy it? Reminds me of the singing hotdog from the short lived Perfect Hair Forever:

Lalaa laalaaa laa la la laaa

"LOVE BURGER" was a close second, but it was bright green, I can't handle that. I also bought a red hat and red scarf. I'm set for now!

I've been teaching the 5th and 6th graders slang. I think they enjoy it, even if they don't remember it. It practical English to use with friends, not BS lame English.

Here is my 5th graders playing the WEATHER BATTLE card game. They ask eachother how the weather is (pointing to different cards) and then they play rock paper scisors to win the cards off of eachother. how educational!

Tomorrow I got to my 3rd school. I have no been here yet. Ugh. I have to ride my bike up a big hill! It's probably going to be raining too. URG!

As always, more pictures here!
2 months down!

The weekend

2006-10-02T07:14:00.000-04:00

Friday some of the 2nd graders sang me happy brithday and presented me with large cards with flowers on them saying "Otanjyobi Omedetou" (happy birthday). Here is my desk at the elementary school with said pictures, monkey coloring pictures, and other obscure desk items.

2nd graders playing a game I told them to.

LUNCH TIME:

the long legs/tiny desk curse.

Lunch is interesting in elementaries. The period before lunch, all food and food serving/eating equipment mysteriously appears outside the classroom. Certain kids put on little chef outfits and hats and gloves and mouth covers so no germs get around. They form an assembly line and the other kids line up to get their milk and chopsticks, and 3 small plates of something unappetizing looking, poor kids. Other kids get the servers food for them and set them on their desk. No one eats until everythings done. If there are leftovers, kids are allowed to get more. I generally eat with whatever class I taught 4th period. One kid went back for some more rice, and dropped the metal rice lid making a very loud awful sound. I was right by it and said "OH NO!" in the same semi-amusing "oh no" voice I had been using in class earlier. Tragically, the student placed his hand upon his face and clenched his other fist and his knees slowly melted as he yelled "OH NOO!!!" Add to the fact that he kinda looked like a troll and I was laughing hysterically.

(on a side note, the kids also CLEAN the school in addition to serving their own food)

Its fall now, and even though the leaves have yet to change so much, these red flowers have popped up everywhere!!

Friday I went to a little noodle shop in Yokkaichi

Thassa long nooodle!!

Saturday I went to Nagoya with my friend Ed and ate at a Chinese place. The curse of the long legs/tiny table continued...

Sunset in Nagoya

Terribly, Ed's camera was stolen during some ATM panic. So while the poor guy filed reports, I took some pictures

From a shrine nearby

Its been raining the past couple days, and it just stopped tonight as the sun was setting.

RANDOM:
Here is a video of the produce section of my local supermarket, Mrs. Smart. Mrs.Smart generally plays very loud, annoying, rag time music, which causes me to get out of there as fast as possibly. But as I stopped in for a couple items, I noticed weird experimental electronica playing. I started laughing within 3 steps of walking in. Containing my laughter, I took the video. Sadly, it is barely audible. But you can see a little Japanese super market.

If none of my posts have convinced you to visit Japan yet, please let me show you my "Come to Japan!" campaign photo:

Tokyo Birthday Weekend Extravaganza 06

2006-09-28T05:53:00.000-04:00

The Birthday Weekend by Jhenn.
Starring: Guitar Wolf, Steven, Ed, Marissa,& Ryan
Appearances by: The bullet train, Tokyo Game Show, the Big Amida Buddha

Day 1- Sept 22
Friday I dashed off from school, jumped a train or 4 and made my way to Kawasaki.
I saw that bullet train coming and I got giddy. Good things were starting to happen.
The hotel I stayed at and its location were a bit dingy, but nothing terrible by far. The club I was going to was just a couple blocks away.

I went to Kawasaki that night to see the band Guitar Wolf. I saw them last year in Cleveland, and it was probably the best show I’ve ever seen. I had to relive it for my birthday. It was an all night show (until 5:30am) and they didn’t play until 1:20 so I went around 12:30 not knowing how exactly this club was going to be and if I was just going to stand in a corner all night. I paid 3500 at the door, I thought this included a drink (most cover prices like that do), but I had to pay an EXTRA 500 yen for a FREE DRINK ticket. Yea, that makes sense. It was actually like a 100 yen off coupon as most drinks were 600.

I get in there, its big and dark, so I can blend. I scoped the scene out, thought about finding the tallest Japanese boys and standing by them, but they were all unattractive, and the 3 foreigners whom I waved to could also be lumped in that category. I tried to look as cool as possibly with my one of two shirts, and I couldn’t get my hair in a bouffant, but I managed something as I heard different words for “cool” as I walked by (only a few times, it was dark!). Haha. So I watch a band that wasn’t too great, check out the merch booth that no one was at, and get my “free drink” and head to the front to assure a good spot.

Ug, the new bassist comes out with this cocky attitude walk, then drum wolf, then guitar wolf. Guitar Wolf just stares at everyone. He turns around, guitar slung around his back, and chugs a beer while Ug and Drum Wolf comb their greaser-hair. Insert more giddiness. I really couldn’t contain myself.

They play, and everyone’s rockin’ out. Ug kicks over his mic stand, sends the mic flying into the floor and dents it. “Tech Wolf”, as I call him, puts the stand back up, which Ug kicks over again for a second time. Guitar Wolf accidentally knocks over his stand, it gets fixed, Ug sees this decides to kick his over again. As his was getting fixed, he walked over to Guitar Wolfs and kicked his over. I laughed and laughed at this wonderful stage attitude.

I had a camera, but a bouncer was right in front of me. I wasn’t sure if I were allowed or not. There were 3 people filming GW (with nice cameras) for what I assume will be a on video one day. Then, Guitar Wolf starts grabbing people out of the audience, the bouncer leaves to assist them, and I see other people with cameras. Ok! I whip mine out. Guitar Wolf then makes these people a human pyramid, on whom he stands upon and sings.

I take some more pictures and even a video, and finally the bouncer saw me and told me NO. Then Guitar Wolf puts his guitar on top of two full stacks and begins to climb them. He stands on top of them and plays guitar (probably 12 ft up?) and then jumps off at a crucial moment in the song! Of course I had to sneak my camera out for that! Awesome!

(Guitar Wolf pulling a random dude form the audience to play guitar)

They end, and I stick around for the other bands because, hey, I paid 3500 yen for this. People were already passed out in the back. They were not ready to be power rockers! I bought an I <3 Guitar Wolf tote bag that’s nice and big and has pockets, and a pin for my traveling book bag. The guy also gave me a free poster as a “present”. It’s now displayed above my bed, as it should be. The other bands were crowd favorites, the played a tight set, but it was nothing special. As I began my stroll to the hotel at 5am (when it finished) , I pass the back of the club and I see Drum Wolf. He was with someone and I didn’t want to bother him so I said “sugokatta!” (that was cool!) as I passed by and clapped at him. Stunned for a half second, he replies “Thaaaaaannnnkkss” in almost a Jersey accent. It was great. I went to bed and got up 2.5 hours later.

I'm mad that this is sideways.. but look at that sweat!!!!

Day 2- Sept 23
Running late because of a shower, and forgetting my poster, I began my journey to Tokyo Game Show, a very large video game convention where I would eventually meet up with other JETs, Marissa, Ed, and Ryan (all from Mie) and Steven, whom I met in America before we left. But before that, I was in a mass of people, it was about 10 minutes after the show had opened and I honestly walked 50 minutes non stop (def over a mile, maybe 2), to reach the back of the line and then turn the corner and start my way back. It was really really crazy. People who came around 11 though, had no line problem. I guess this is what I remembered from 4 years ago. I also remembered getting a lot more free things, and cool free things at that. TGS gets bigger every year, probably cant afford it.
So, lots of demo-playing, getting flyers, and dvd-roms, seeing previews for new games and systems, etc. Nerdom ensued. Here are some pictures.

(160 min wait for XBOX 360 theater)

(some game)

(hahaha, sounds like thats gonna be a funny game)

(my uncontainable love of mascots coupled with liking cats and loving cute things.. it was a match in heaven)

(lots people like to dress up)

(lots of people in between the exhibition halls)

(that cat! so cute! those girls are honestly wearing about 80% more clothes than most of the hired models there. it was a perv paradise)

After the show, we battled the insane train station where everyone was leaving, and made our way to a nice little hostel in Asakusa (famous for the temple). We dropped our bags of crap off, and went out for food and a nice little Chinese restaurant and had wonderful little conversations with no meaning. Then we went to all-you-can-drink karaoke. Much singing and dancing and jumping ensued. Then came midnight and they sang me The Beatles birthday song, and a random Japanese woman in the next room sang me the regular birthday song while we all clapped along. We were there for probably 4 hours, and ended it with Guns N Roses and all was right in the world that night. We went to bed around 3:30am.

In the midst of singing me the Birthday song

this is probably the funniest face i've ever made. I have no idea what I could have been singing to do that.

I proclaimed, "This is the best brithday in Tokyo doing nomihoudai karaoke with a bunch of people I just met that I've ever had!" (nomihoudai= all you can drink)

Day 3- Sept 24. Birthday Sunday.
We left the hostel at 11 and at breakfast from a convenience store, and went to Kamakura, home of a very large bronze statue of Amida Buddha. I went inside it for 20 yen. When you touched it, it was very hot from absorbing the sun! I bought some nerdy Buddhism books and gifts. Amida is one of my two favorite Buddhas (the other being Kannon). In the western Zodiac you are ruled by planets and in the Chinese zodiac you are an animal. It's not common knowledge, but there is also ones for Buddhas. Amida-sama happens to be my ruler, so I think thats pretty neat.

the Entrance

One of the leaves behind the statue

Inside

His slippers

I then saw SOYMILK SOFT SERVE ICE CREAM. I knew this day would come! I even had a dream that my friend invented it four years ago while I was in Japan! Not wanting to risk it, I ask if it had any real milk in it. It did. Of course. Only a flavor I guess. One day my day will come! (A lot of the soy milk here has some sort of milk product in it. Weird/stupid).
Not wanting Marissa to miss her train home, we went to Yokohama where Ryan also left and Team DrinkDrankDrunk bid our farwells to eachother. Ed and I walked around a bit, found an anime store, then had a bite to eat (our only real food of the day) before catching our bullet train to Nagoya. I got home, and still, I was not tired!

A neat statue outside of Yokohama station

What a great great birthday weekend!!!

(there are more pictures fromt he weekend in the photo account on the right)

Random things

2006-09-21T04:27:00.000-04:00

Not much to report. Just packing and double -checking everything for my trip to Tokyo tomorrow.

I was hanging laundry out to dry and got this picture:

Here is a shot of my desk mid-day at the Junior high

And here is a video of the printing press copier. Because copy paper as we know it is very expensive there, newspaper-type paper is used. Most teachers use really big sheets. There are like 5 different sizes or more to choose from, its a headache.
So somehow, the machine thinks about it, copies it, and in printing-press style, shoots out copies way fast.

Heres the neat part. Say I had a work sheet I wanted to hand out. If I had 4 classes, each with 20 students, I would type in 4 x 20. "Great," you say. "Why the heck wouldn't you just type in 80?" WELL! This handy little machine now knows you have 4 classes. So instead of you counting & sorting out your pile of papers, it shoots a tab of paper in between your copies every 20 papers to seperate them, so you dont have to! Wow!

I know the resolution isnt perfect, I will fix it next time.

A Day in Nagoya

2006-09-18T07:22:00.000-04:00

Today on my monday off, I went to Osu Kannon Temple for their monthly flea market. I didnt buy anything and I didnt see the worlds largest wooden Kannon statue with 11 heads either, much to my shagrin. Kannon is the bodhisattva of compassion.

After lunch, I set out to Atsuta Shrine. This shrine is one of the top 3 most important shrines in Japan. It houses one of the three royal artifacts, the sword (the other two are a mirror and necklace). No one is ever allowed to see them, and you cant even get close to where it is. In fact, you cant even see the building its in! Its blocked by like, two other buildings.

i then ate a giant bowl of shaved ice to cool down. So with numb mouth and ice headache abound, I went to the Nagoya's TV Tower.

It was a very tiring day!

New camera

2006-09-17T05:24:00.000-04:00

I'll spare you the details of my camera epic. All that matters is I have a new one and the little camera store down the street has my business 100%.

Upon hearing of the demise of my fish, my supervisor told me we were going to get fish yesterday. lots of pretty goldfish there, some kinds I have never seen (ever heard of a Ping Pong Pearl fish?!)

So while I was mulling over which fish I wanted, what would be the easiest to care for, if I even wanted any.. I wandered over for the small animal section. I now have a hamster.

(new camera + new hamster= hamster pictures!)

He is a Winter White Russian dwarf hamster. This means his fur will change white in the winter! cool! The pet store obviously did not know this ( I guess they are often confused with a more common breed), otherwise he would not have been $4.
ps- the hamster, cage, food, accessories, etc, TOGETHER were about the same price as ONE of the easiest to care for fish.

I also saw pink Hello Kitty kitty litter there.

Wait, you want some culture? He is some chestnut trees across the street.

I went with Matsunaga (my supervisor) tonight to a recreation of an old Japanese street performance. I was under the impression that there woud be people cutting fruit with swords (maybe because he told me this?). no such luck. Still was entertaining though.

Here are two papers put ut by the 3rd and 4th grade about me.

(I may be changing my photo account, as I can only have 3 free sets. grr)

I am "High Tension"

2006-09-14T22:20:00.001-04:00

A lot has happened since this protagonist has last left her faithful readers!

I am now working at the Junior High. Junior Highs here are grades 7-9 (although they are called 1-3... first years, second years, etc). So far I have only had the 3rd years... get the toughest ones out of the way! They are generally quiet, shy, and have adapted to the group mentality and they must check with others before giving an answer.

Action photos:

Unlike elementary however, they are less than enthused to raise their hands. So I have taken the idea of handing out “dollars” for volunteers and such and then later I will have an auction for cool things. I have decided to make them “Akron Dollars” and have various things Akron is known for on them, such as the blimp, tires, soap box derby, etc. They are all worth 1 Akron Dollar. But for harder things, I have created a 5 Akron Dollars bill… with none other than an image of LeBron James on it. I am awesome.

Because I have no shame, I am doing basically an identical presentation for my introduction. The teachers appreciate me because of my loud voice and big expressions, so even the slower learners can understand. Because, in fact, I am acting like an idiot, there is generally a pause when I do something ridiculous, then they laugh with an “are you serious?!” tone. I ask them “What does a cat say?” They understand the question, but may be in disbelief as to exactly WHY I am asking it (why, to demonstrate the slight nuances between Japanese and American animal sounds of course!).

Some other teachers talk about me, right in front of me, without acknowledging me. Maybe they think I don’t know Japanese (as most Japanese people think about foreigners). But I digress, he was saying how down the hall, his class could hear a weird noise (it was me meowing). So now those students are looking forward to my class. With a compliment like that, why wouldn’t he have at least looked at me and gave me a thumbs up or something?

Students have to fill out this paper after class. In English or Japanese they can put down what they understood, or a question for me or anything really, and I read them. I can just circle it giving it an “ok” but I usually draw things on there and make a comment. A couple of girls have written how cute I am… ok? Someone wrote “GHOSTBUSTUR” because I told them about ghosts in Ohio, haha. Another student said I was “High Tension”... I didn’t know what to make of this, so I asked one of the English teachers if that was a good thing. She said yes. I think it may mean “very energetic”.

In other news, fish died, I got more fish, they died. I now have 0 fish. I went on a bus trip with some people from the Town Hall to a festival about 2 hours away. In Japan, as long as the driver isn’t drinking (and maybe the passenger) open container is ok. So, when Chris and I got on the bus, they handed her a beer. “Oh… here we go again,” I think. They never let you not drink. Then they hand me a tallboy…the obvious choice for giant girl (this just led to more being spill by the bumps in the road). And when that was finished? Oh… have a Chu-hai! A Chu-hai is a fruit flavored, I’m assuming, malt liquor (as it is clear), that has 0 alcohol taste and the lemon tastes like 7up. There may have been other chu-hai involved, I can’t remember, this was last week. Needless to say, I was doing pretty well.

Some pictures of (somewhere in) Gifu prefecture:

Later that night I saw the best shot for a picture. I was on a bridge and there were some rapids under it, some houses on the bank, a lit-up castle in the distance, and another bridge, colorful with people with umbrellas. It reminded me of France. So as I was taking my camera out, my supervisor came to help me, and I fumbled it. Screen broke, it will turn on, but it won’t take pictures. F.

So now has begun the hunt for the next better camera. I have a few in mind. The logical choice is when I am in Tokyo next weekend, go to the electronics district (Akihabara) and an insane camera for cheap because of the competition. However, I am going to a lot of places before I can get to there that I would really like a camera for.

This weekend is a 3 day weekend, so on Monday I will go to Nagoya to “Top Camera” (I hear good things) to hopefully buy a bad mama of a camera. I will continue to put a giant dent in my bank account by buying my bullet train tickets to and from Tokyo. I actually chose to go to Nagoya on Monday rather than Saturday or Sunday because there is a flea market at a temple there (FYI- because of the l/r thing, Japanese people think it is called a FREE Market- which actually makes more sense than “flea”…). When I went to Kansai Gaidai, Andy and I would skip class to take a trip to the largest flea market in Japan that happens once a month. I just want to fleetingly relive those good times.

Hopefully, nothing too awesome will be there because once I get to Tokyo in a few days after that, I need to pay for my hotels, concert tickets, and a ticket into Tokyo Game Show (a video game expo). Did I mention my “Tokyo Weekend” is also my BIRTHDAY weekend? Hopefully 24 will start out on a great foot by being there, or so great that in fact, I won’t remember a lot of it. Sunday (my birthday) will be my free day. I plan to go to Kamakura (to see the world’s largest Buddha statue) and Yokohama (Chinatown) before catching my train home.

Other than that, its been cooling down a bit here, had some rainy days. Some incredible mountain pictures I missed (GRR!) Things are well for the most part. Looking forward to sleeping in and taking it easy this weekend. I WILL clean up and do laundry.. at least that’s what I tell myself!

Here is a picture of one of the frogs that hangs out by my door, and a japanese toilet (most home toilets are Western style, and a lot of public bathrooms usually have one or more. but in general, these are just standard public toilets).

More pics in my photo account (link to the side).

Please watch this disturbing commercial of cartoon koalas taking off their noses and using them as cell phones and a mouse... (I believe its for car insurance)

Mostly about food

2006-09-07T06:33:00.000-04:00

The internet was giving me trouble, hopefully I've fixed it!

Theres a show on right now, where these 2 guys are eating the top 100 desserts in Japan. Thats all they eat, all day. They are now on dessert #15, day 7. The faces they make when they are already full and they are brought out a huge dessert, are so pitiful. You can see how tired they are getting. They sleep in the cake shop as well as eat there. The desserts are sooooo delicious looking, and actually priced really well.

The 3rd graders went well today. Tomorrow I wrangle 4th grade! I need to get to bed early! did I mention a 3rd grader today also came up and started rubbing my shoulders for a few seconds? It was kind of awkward, but it actually felt really good. his parents must have trained him.

I actually had a decent conversation with one of the 6th grade teachers, with minimal English. Things we studied in college, languages we studied, my future plans, my diet (of course- Japan is a nation in love with food). After a month, I am starting to talk again with a little bit more fluency.. well, less stuttering. And since Chris is not around, I am forced to pay attention and rely on myself. That, maybe people are using simpler terms with me, and I may understand the context better. I will say "it's alright/no problem" in Japanese, and people are dumbfounded. Even the simiplest sentences I am praised for, that I am so "skilled" at Japanese. They may just be saying that to be nice, sometimes its annoying, sometimes it really is a confidence booster.
I am also complimented on my chopstick use. They are once again floored that, yes, I do use them in America. But the number ONE thing I hear is "DID YOU MAKE THAT?" and its variations (Did you make that this morning? By yourself? Who made that? Really? Wow!) Yes, I cook. Yes, i made that by myself this morning. I cook every morning. They know I have diet restrictions, so maybe they are more interested in what I actually eat.
Or as Chris brought up, we're "so young" that they may just be impressed. It is very normal for people our age to be living with their parents until they are married (so it would be normal for Mom to make their lunch). This means disposable income.. which fuels Japan's incredible consumerism machine. I have no doubt in my mind that these are connected.

So the #1 dessert is some yummy-looking parfait from Tokyo. #2 was a pudding from Nagoya. This is very interesting, as most of the top ones were from Tokyo. Nagoya is maybe less than an hour from me. Japan placed 2nd this year behind France in the world Pastry championships, but has won top awards in the Chocolate and Sugar categories. I swore they won an actual Championship. but I can't seem to find any decent records anywhere. Anways, my point is, Japan is force at the top of progressive pastry/chocolate/sugar art to be reckoned with. With my love of these things, it makes living here really great. (Boy, if you ever want to drool all over your keyboard, type in "World Pastry Championships" in Google.. and all those links contain amazing pictures. Wow!)

Well Im still connected to the internet after all this! So I must be good! knock on wood!

One month anniversary

2006-09-06T07:50:00.000-04:00

I have been in Japan for one month exactly. Tonight, I finally got the internet. I also stabbed my finger pretty deep with a knife. Everything equals out.
As of last week, it felt like I had only been here a week.. but also been here months because of everything I've done. Now that I actually started teaaching, the days go by fast, but the dates crawl. Its only wedneday?! I'm so tired! It feels like I've been teaching for one and half weeks straight!
After class, I have an entourage of various students holding my hand, escorting me back to the teachers room, as I yell “Hello!” and “See ya!” to all the other students yelling at me in the hallway. Here are two groups of them:

Here are some pictures of me giving my speech and me in class.

The beach!
I’m ready!

Defeat!

The beach and into the mountains

3 videos!
1. Looking over Komono-cho with a cameo by Mr. Sasaki talking about how cool my sunglasses are.

2. The things I see on TV
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3. 360 degrees on the beach! Look at that mist down the way! and it's the Pacific Ocean.. from the other side!

The first day

2006-09-04T20:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my first day of class. I had 4 classes of first graders. Before yesterday, I really thought I was going to lose it teaching and want to quit as I’m not a real teacher and have no idea what I’m doing. I threw a couple of mini posters together in the morning, and whipped up a quick lesson plan over breakfast (more details on that below). As it turns out, I didn’t even need half of my plan! So now that the little children have identified me as a non-threat, they are very excited to see me. I am greeted with yells of “Hello!” “See you!” “Jenni-sensei!” and “Sensei!” from the shorties down the hall. I have been giving out a lot of high-fives in the hallway and in the classroom, so I started teaching the words “high-five”. So yes, today went very very well, I’m quite happy with the job now and hopefully everything will keep running as smooth.
It’s kinda funny, because I view “Japanese Jenni” as this genki (energetic/spirited), driven, professional humble girl... where as regular Jhenn is just in beserker mode. Y’know, me normally. Split personalities almost.

So the reason I didn’t have a lesson plans or any clean laundry is because I decided to go surfing Sunday at a far away beach. (I ironed wrinkled dirty clothes on Monday morning). This involved getting up at 4:15am, making sure I had a high protein and carb-tastic breakfast and lunch packed (to keep me goin’!) and getting out to the local train that left at 5:51am. I knew I had a lot to do, I even doubted going, but it was going to be great weather and I had a ride to the beach and I didn’t know when that may happen again. PLUS this great no-budget zombie movie was on TV when I got up. It had some cheap jump scares, but when its 4am and you’re in the dark half-awake, it makes you jump! Ha-ha.

So after a few train transfers and waiting and getting lost, we (my friend and his friend with a car) made it! The waves weren’t so big, maybe 4-6ft... but at times maybe around 10ft. A typhoon is coming, so the waves are better. The current was pretty strong though, so after fighting with that, we went a bit farther down the beach where it was pretty much current free. We didn’t rent any boards, so we borrowed Takeshi’s short board for all of us. I’m a long board gal, so it’s a little more difficult for me. Eventually I got on top of a 5-6footer, but my inexperience with short boards causes me to wipeout and do some cartwheels underwater and strain a muscle in my back. It’s only a little sore now, but my shoulders are the worst from all the paddling. I just noticed a bruise on my elbow, and my sternum hurts from the wooden piece on my swimsuit top. But other than that, a nice sunny day on the beach was great! I even got part of my tan back!

On the way back we stopped in Nagoya for some food. I went to an international food store (that I also went to in Kyoto... but smaller. Oh I miss Kyoto!!) and picked up some blueberry tea as well as some Australian oatmeal (mainly because it had a koala on the front. I’m a marketer’s dream). So I will be having oatmeal for breakfast! I found some real maple syrup on “sale” at my local store, add that with some frozen blueberries, you got some good oatmeal there buddy! I felt very weird buying syrup as I have been spoiled by Dad’s trips to Vermont and the gallons of fresh syrup he brings back. Did I mention I found pancake mix at another international store that I could eat? That in conjunction with the generic syrup I bought… made a pancake breakfast that tasted suspiciously like McDonalds. Being that I haven’t eaten at McDonalds for AT LEAST 6 years, it was a bit disturbing. I only use McDonalds as a rest stop. I went in one last week and I could not believe the normal smell in there is so… fake and dead. It was hard to breathe! Nothing fresh. Ick. Moving on!

So in general, girls tend to gain weight in Japan. I read a decent theory to explain this. Girls, in general, tend to eat better than guys and include more whole grains and fruits and veggies in their diets. In Japan, there’ aren’t really any whole grain products like breads or cereals. And fruit is really expensive (remember the $3 apple?), and veggies can only be bought in small quantities because the fridge is so small. I recently bit the bullet and hunted down brown rice, which I’ve only seen once, and paid the extra for it. I don’t really like brown rice by itself, but I know it’s healthier. Well, brown rice in Japan is way better than in the States! That coupled with my upped intake of protein and fiber to keep me full until lunch time, I can see the 3 kilos I’ve gained starting to come off. Hopefully with all my biking and walking, I can get back to normal and take a couple more off too. Did I mention Japan LOVES fried food? I don’t know how they stay so skinny (for the most part)!

There isn’t a lot of canned food in here, even though they recommend stocking up on it for earthquake emergencies. That, and ramen. So I’m kinda at a lost what to put in my emergency bag, other than maybe garbanzo beans. Right now I only have a flashlight and a big bottle of water. I also need a bag. I’m not very prepared.

Arrested Development season 3 is out on DVD. I’m very mad I cannot rent it (although with the internet coming soon…) . The only American series I have seen for rent (thus far) is Desperate Housewives and 24. I am afraid to watch 24 as the people who watch it are addicted and possibly obsessed. Plus, that’s a lot of videos to rent = lots of money. On a related note that may be of interest to my mom and Sarcoa, “Jack Bauer” has been starring in commercials for “Calorie Mate” (like a power bar?). He is in 24-type scenes, trying to do important things like disarm a bomb or such, and this Japanese guy in a suit comes up and starts talking to him about he must eat Calorie Mate in the yellow box! Jack hears “yellow”, cuts the yellow wire, and next thing you know they’re running away from a building exploding. There’s also another one where he pushes him out of a van for being annoying... but he takes his Calorie Mate before hand.

And of course, on my first working day away from Town Hall, they go to the Paramita Museum which I have wanted to go to for a few weeks now. It’s down the street a bit and mainly deals in ceramics and local artists, and has a noted garden. But on the other hand, I’m glad I’m still going to go by myself because I want to look at everything at my own pace.

Because I never got to at Kansai Gaidai University (because their class system was stupid) I have started to teach myself sumi-e, a type of traditional painting. I basically only know what Andy (SuiGeneris1) has told me and I try to access that 4 year old information in my head somewhere. So I went to the library armed only with the kanji for “sumi”. The library ladies seemed really busy, and I managed to hunt down sumi-e books by myself. The main mode of learning in life is by imitation, so I got a book on fish paintings so I could copy the techniques on how to paint goldfish until I can do it on my own. I accidentally bought orange ink at the store instead of black. But that’s ok! They ARE goldfish. I did a couple good ones, which I will post later. I picked up some black ink and long paper so I could make them look fancy. I have yet to try!

Biscuit and Wally are still doing well! Hopefully I will have the internet tomorrow night and I can put some more pictures and videos up!　Oh, and my hair is back to brown!

My sweet ride

2006-08-30T20:19:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to put up a picture of my awesome bike! Bright orange, and always the biggest bike in any of the bike lots. I guess they checked my height on the medical records because its perfect for me. A few days ago I installed the basket on the back for my extra purchases. On the 30th of every month, the local grocery store, Mrs. Smart, runs quintuple point day. So instead of 1 point for every 100yen, you get 5. I was running low on food anyways, so I racked up a bunch of points! I was not prepared for my stocking up on food, as I only brought one reusable bag (As seen in the back). I also invested in a bungee cord to hold all those goodies in the back in place.
Did I mention I also have a light and a bell? I may have to ship this baby home.

Hayku-yen Jhenn

2006-08-29T21:01:00.001-04:00

I have put up the pictures and video in the last blog, as well as added more not shown here to my photo account (link on the right).

I live out of the hyaku-yen store (dollar store). My nick name is started to be transformed into "Hyaku-yen Jhenn" (100 yen) AND it rhymes. It's meant to be!

I just want everyone to know I bought a $3 apple because I was desperate for some fruit. Fruit, is expensive. One giant apple is $3. For $3 I could ride the train into the next big city for some shopping or going to the movies or anything! While pretty good, it was not the world’s best apple, as it should have been. One night I went later (they’re open until midnight.. but the selection is slim) and got some fresh cubed pineapple for $1. I need to do that more often!

Soon I will be starting school. Should be interesting.
Oh! And Saturday night I experienced an earthquake! In Komono it was a 1, but the next city over (where I was) was a 2. I was sitting on the train waiting for it to leave (we had like 10 minutes) and it kinda moved a little along the tracks. I just thought the conductor was messing with the brake. Then Chris asks if I felt the earthquake when I returned. Well geez, I guess I had!

I found the international food store (where I stocked up on pancake mix and taco shells) and down the road from it is a Book-Off. Book-Off is like an Exchange… used books, cds, dvds, and video games. It’s a dangerous place because you never know what goodies await you. My friend pointed out the KILL BILL Japanese boxsets. New. I panicked.. but then remembered the “emergency” money I hid in my wallet. This was an emergency! I had been looking at the box sets on ebay for a long time… but they would go for $150 each. The boxsets are originally priced at $80 each. I bought both for $100. They come with T-shirts, replicas, toys, cards, pamphlets, and other neat things. It was like Xmas. Beside Book-Off is a drug store…

I bought a new big plastic tank for my 2 fish Biscuit (L) and Wally (R). With their new air filter, those are some happy gold fish! If I can find a pet store, I would like to get one or two more.

Yet another festival last week. LOTS of people in alleyways, lots of food, lots of games. We heard drums and smelled incense and eventually came upon a temple where people were playing taiko (traditional drums). Its really cool, check them out:

I bought a yellow sofa and an awful pink/orange shag “fur” rug for my living room. Its’ awesome. Soon I will do another (slower) apartment walk through, as I have more stuff now and it feels more like home. I’ve also begun to “pimp-out” my bike. I attached a basket to the back for my bigger shopping trips. I also have a bungee cord to hold future goods in place. I will take a picture soon.

Tonight I made a pitiful attempt at tacos that involved cabbage, onions, eggplant, tempura bits, tomato, taco seasoning and lettuce in a small soft taco. Hey, you’ve gotta adapt! I also made a bunch of buckeyes to take in to the office tomorrow. For those of you not blessed to live in Ohio (more specifically Classic Ohio, aka Northeast Ohio) a buckeye candy is a ball of peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla, mixed together and dipped in chocolate (looking like the buckeye nut). I did not have butter or vanilla.. but you know what? They’re still delicious! I hope it’s not too sweet for their Japanese taste buds!

I have picked up a card from the tiny local library. I’ve probably already taken out all their chocolate books, a book on how to speak Japanese better, and a kids book on the mythology surrounding the Buddha’s life. When I return the chocolate books tomorrow I will get a book about a kid pirate that looks like I could read it. I also got a video rental card. On Tuesdays and Thursdays its only $2 (as compared to $3 or 4 other days), so that’s when I go! They have a large selection of Japanese horror and action movies. I should be kept tided over for awhile.

Alright, that’s all the excitement, for now. Here are some more notable pictures that I haven’t put up yet.

View from my balcony:

My awesome mountains yesterday after work:

While waiting for the bus, my expensive camera shows what it’s capable of:

A view from up in the mountains on my first day;

From a meeting room in town hall. Do I look like I am in an intense debate?

Me and my supervisor Mr. Matsunaga (on a hot morning!) with his spiff new Tribe tie. I taught Mr. Matsunaga the word “Dude” which he has amazingly picked up and properly uses practically by himself. “Dude, Where’s my car?”(ok I taught him that) “Good morning dude” “Dude!” “From dude Matsunaga” (text message) and more recently he’s learned “Dude… bummer.” He’s a very funny guy… and he LOVES Dragonball.

And of course.. DELICIOUS BANANA SOY MILK!

Oddly enough, the chocolate soymilk from the same brand has real milk in it.

PS- I made a folder in my photo account just for awesome photos of the Suzuka mountain range and Mt. Gozaisho (the biggest one). I have a feeling ill be taking a lot more throughout the seasons.

Until next time!

Cross-cultural interaction

2006-08-25T01:45:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, I was invited along for a day-long bus trip to see “important places of interest in Komono” along with 40 kids (grade 1-6) and 10 adults.

First stop was at a fire station, where we saw the “119” emergency call center, the workings of fire trucks, and all the equipment fire-people wear. We then got to ride in the crane/ladder thing on fire trucks and took us 30m in the air (about 100ft).

After that we went to some barbed wired off small building in a small forest. Inside were lots of clay pots and pieces of pots that dated over 1200 years old. While interesting, I was more concerned with what seemed to be old pieces of a shrine and big clay protectors.

Continuing up the forest road there was a shrine on the hill. Then we walked even further, uphill, in the hot hot heat. We finally arrived at an air conditioned building where we enjoyed our lunches and relaxed. Outside you realized we were up the side of one of the mountains and could see the whole town!

[VIDEO] -pending. Youtube is being mean.

The guy talking in the background is Chris’s supervisor. He’s really goofy and scattered brain and he was talking about how cool I look in my big (Elvis) sunglasses. So I captured him on the film as well. I showed it to him and he yelled KOWAI! (SCARY!). Indeed.

After that we went to a place that raises tanago which my dictionary translates as “a Japanese bitterling”. I have no idea what that is, we just saw a bunch of little fish and clams. Not sure why this place is significant, its in the middle of nowhere. but it had a cool name“God Forest”. UPDATE* Tanago are endangered. Thats why its important.

Then we went to the coolest place of the tour, a town cultural center 45 minutes away in the area north of Komono in Kuwana. (Yea, I thought it was about Komono too). We go and listen to a guy talk about the peninsula were on, and the rivers, and geographical stuffs, boring. THEN we get a ticket with a number on it and go to another stainless steel-clad room. We were going to MAKE our own NORI (the sheets of seaweed you use in sushi)!! A mix of water and seaweed was give to us in a wooden box and we dumped it on a mat with a wooden border. You pull up that border and presto! A perfect square!

Mine when it was done!

Then you put it in a machine than in 2 seconds sucks out all the extra liquid. Then we gave that to a lady and put it in these drying boxes with a big wheel to set them on inside. While they were drying, we watched a video of the history of the town and how people lived pre-and during the war. I felt really ashamed and hoped the kids wouldn’t come after me for being American. Then there was a walk through tour of old tools and old houses, before and after tsunamis and earthquakes, etc. We were then led outside, into rows of plants. What is going on? WE’RE GOING TO PICK PEANUTS!

Peanuts grow underground, so we rooted a section and picked all the peanuts. They aren’t really ripe until October, but we can still roast them. Chris gave me her bag of peanuts, so now I have 2 bags of peanuts I don’t know what to do with! I may have to buy a food processor and make peanut butter!

I was very obviously tired and hungry by the end of the day. I was about to go to bed at 10 when I caught glimpse of a ridiculous show called “Choui Waru”= “Very Bad!”. This group of too-cool tough guys called Lincoln(?) are given 2 situations where they can do whatever they want. One of them will go in and be “bad” and the others watch backstage and hit a button on how “cool” they are for being bad. The rules were the people in these situations had to act like they weren’t even there.

The first situation involved an important business meeting. A large oval meeting tables and probably 12 important people discussing important things. Things that happened included:

Playing guitar in a guys ear, rewriting on the wipe-board, spitting marbles, licking faces, placing pants on their important papers, cutting holes in their clothes, napping in the middle of their meeting table, laying the business men on the table, and my favorite, a guy coming in in a Speedo with a Golden Retriever, doing stretches on the table in front of peoples faces, then having the dog lick his chest. How they could not laugh or be disgusted is beyond me.

The second situation they upped it. It was in a men’s shower room. Let me explain the set up of Japanese locker rooms and etiquette. There is a main room you come in, with lockers and benches and maybe a small area of snacks. You disrobe here, then enter another section where you wash down. You sit on a little stool (like an upside down bucket really) and you have a little mirror, shelf, and a shower hose next to that. Just rows of them. There is also a couple of Jacuzzis in there, and you MUST shower before getting in one because it’s shared by the community.

So the set up is, a couple guys are in the locker area, about 5 or 6 guys washing, shampooing, and brushing their teeth.. maybe before a trip to the Jacuzzi, maybe after swimming.. etc. There is one guy relaxing in the hot tub. Did I mention EVERYONE IS NAKED. What went down:

Throwing pies at people.. then taking a picture with his cell phone, placing all the milk on its side, looking up the locker-men’s towels, cannon-balling straight into the hot tub, Placing a tea bag in the hot tub, slapping people, flipping toothbrushes around so they were brushing with the wrong end, throwing underwear, lubing up in shampoo and placing the stools at the other end of the shower, then being a human bowling ball/slip-n-side into them (he was going really fast actually and crashed into the tile wall!!) and my favorite: Turning all the stools around so all the guys sitting were facing in a circle (still scrubbing, they have to keep doing what they were doing) then this “cool guy”, hands on hips, standing proudly in the middle of them.

I really had to go to the bathroom while this was on, but I couldn’t go. I hadn’t laughed like that at TV in a really long time and really almost peed myself. I only wished I had a VHS to record it on, obviously it was important enough for me to share on my blog. I really hope these guys are on next week!

Obviously pictures and video coming next week.

Here`s the opening sequence to the show:

UPDATE: I have found out that it is different every week. It is made by entertainers, for entertainers.

Festivals and the weekend

2006-08-20T21:45:00.000-04:00

Thursday night (8/17) Christine and I were invited to a local temple Obon festival. Obon is a big summer festival (all about Obon). The temple is actually the street parallel to ours, so as we turned down this tiny dark alley, you could see faint white and red lights lining the temple walls. The office ladies found us walking down there pretty quickly (being the tall foreign girl, I’m pretty easy to spot). They took us to the actual temple, where a priest was chanting and lots of people were sitting behind him. We went up a couple wooden steps, took off our shoes, and were ushered to the “kids corner” to sit on the tatami (rice mats). Some kids were being noisy and playing with the giant prayer beads on the floor, so we were probably sat there so if we were going to be a distraction, we were with the rest of the group. There were giant wooden prayer beads in the middle of the floor, in which no one sat. It was explain to me later that each bead was from a family for prayer for a member. The priest and two laymen did chants and rang bells and song bowls. Since I study Buddhism, I could actually understand the priest and the iconography surrounding him… but I still haven’t mastered my washing machine. Haha.

Afterwards, they gave rice crackers to all the kids (and us) and were led to a small tatami filled room on a dark winding path. We were going to be blessed with a tea ceremony with the head of our department, Kacho, and office lady Kawaguchi, her 3-year old grandson and another elderly lady. Elegant young girls dressed in yukata (summer kimonos) came in and presented us with a marshmallow fish (the other ceremony I was in it was a cracker). Then out came the tea they make on the premise. It’s a little thick and foamy and bitter, but it’s authentic! They set the bowl of tea in front of you, turn it, then you pick it up, turn it, then drink. There’s more turning involved, but I’m not sure, I should really read up on it.

After putting our shoes back on outside, we headed towards the drums and music! A large stand was in the middle of a clearing, with someone playing a taiko drum to old prerecorded music while people in yukatas danced around it (think high class line dancing… in a circle –video soon-). It was on a few minutes before the head of our department pulled us in to dance dances we had never seen, much less practiced. Lots of clapping, and arm movement and foot taps. I seemed to be getting the hang of it, but poor Chris! Everyone seemed to really enjoy us at least trying and making fools of ourselves.

Watch a video of Obondori:

After 5 or 6 dances I was pouring sweat and had to stop. Soon after, people ran up to us with ice cream cones. I had to tactfully decline, but the head of the department was more than happy to take it for me! Then cold tea was being given out in little ceramic cups. A random old guy came up and said, Why are you drinking tea?! You need to drink beer! As this happened, I was finishing my tea, but he grabbed Chris’s tea cup from her, and gave us both plastic cups of beer. And we never saw him again. It’s funny, people give me a hard time here saying it’s SO hard to be vegan in Japan (those people just don’t know how to cook!), but honestly, I think it would be harder for someone who didn’t drink (at least in the working world I’m now apart of). It’s constantly offered and the more you accept, the more you’re loved.

We take in the scene and try to cool off in the humid night, and Kacho says LETS GO! And we follow him out of the temple, not sure where we are going. We go into a little mom and pop restaurant with about 10 barstools. Every time someone comes in, everyone else has to scoot down to make room. Everyone is nice, some are goofy, some may be a little apprehensive, but all nice. There is a spot on the other side for maybe 2 traditional sit-down tables on tatami mats, but bento boxes (lunch trays) are filling them up. They’re about half full, and the staff of 3 is working to fill them up. They’re going to take them to the temple. Kacho-san orders us two large mugs of beer and food. We don’t really want to drink or eat… but it falls on deaf ears. We chat a bit with the chefs and the locals. Kacho tells me to drink faster and orders us 3 things of spinach (have I mentioned I don’t really like beer and I hate cooked spinach?) We even say, “We’re really full!” I choke down about 4 bites of spinach and I have to stop. A woman walks in the place, I look over because its natural to look at people who walk in. We lock eyes. Her head starts to shake with like 4 million double takes. I really took her by surprise! We definitely want to go back and hang out and become locals!

Friday night was filled with shopping adventures with 2 other JETs who just happen to be from the Kent/Akron area and live about an hour or so from me here! We found an arcade and we played Taiko drum video game, Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova, and Mario Kart! Earlier in the night along with Chris we went to hunt down a rumored Indian Restaurant called Majarahja. We found it, although the sign said “Mach Raja”. Not a lot of choices food wise, but the lady who ran the shop let us in early because it was raining and served us coffee. The food was good and the naan huge. What else do you want?

Saturday (8/19) came the real town Obon festival. Hundreds and hundreds of people. The office ladies dressed us up in yukatas and geta (traditional wooden shoes…. That hurt). Amazingly, I think they’re cooler than if I had been wearing a tshirt and jeans. Maybe because they absorb sweat? Free tea and balloons! More taiko drums and lots and lots of dancers, including mentally challenged which I found endearing. Did I mention we had to give a speech in front of these hundreds and hundreds of people? I botched up real bad, I’d rather forget about it. It didn’t help that when I started talking more cameras came out (Chris’s heritage is Korean, so she can blend in.. but me! A sore thumb!) Hopefully they thought it was cute and weren’t disgusted. After that horribleness, we did a few more dances with Kacho and everyone, and then got some shaved ice (I got the flavor “Blue Hawaii”). Everyone also liked to point out how big my feet were (hanging off of the geta in the front and back) and how long my toes were. I told them I had monkey toes. Lots of laughs.

I played a game where you try to win goldfish (like little koi goldfish.. not the goldfish at fairs we know). I failed miserably, but she gives losers 3 fish anyways. I have named them Tudor, Biscuit (both white with red splotch on their heads), and Wally (all light gold). I bought them all sorts of cool fish things and probably are living better than 98% of their kin..They’re just getting the hang of trying to figure out how to eat the food from the top.

Not the best picture, but fireworks, fish, and shaved ice!

Then of course, the fireworks!

Sunday was just full of a relaxing day of shopping. No time limits, no place to be… it was really nice. I got a couple Indian curry mixes. Yum! And a folder and notepad, other cheap life necessaries. It’s actually Sunday night right now as I’m typing this to post tomorrow, and I must say, I really miss watching Adult Swim on Sunday nights. Only the news is on now… I put that on in the morning and try to make some sense of it.

In other news , I bought some nice little speakers to play my MP3 player though. They were the most expensive, but had the best sound, and with how much I listen to music, well worth the investment. I put them in the kitchen, since that’s where I am the most! I met a guy that has worked in Komono for the past 4 years (we actually have the same Supervisor), so he gave me some tips for the schools. And I bumped into another JET not too far from here at the 100yen store (dollar store… but so much better)

Japan’s women’s volleyball team is in the world championships (from what I gather) so the TV nation is pretty volleyball crazy right now. You would think it would be boring, but it moves really quickly and with high velocity balls getting smashed in people’s faces, it’s pretty exciting.

My birthday is in a month, and I am planning on going to Tokyo Game Show for it. It’s a really big video game convention, its only about $10, you get loads of free things, get sneak peaks and stuff, and get to play new, old, and unreleased games! I am looking forward to playing with the Nintendo Wii. Oh, and if you bring your DS you get tons of free games. Wee!

Here is a video walk-thru of my apartment:

Address update and more

2006-08-14T20:03:00.000-04:00

Address update!
Mie ken Mie Gun Komono-cho Komono ####-##
Tokiwa no Gaaden Haitsu A-2B
###-####

Obviously fill in the proper numbers. ITs all the same, I just didn't have the A-2B part. ANy questions email me (email is in my "Profile")

Just another scene riding the train home.

So far in Japan I have had NO Chocolate! Not too many sweets either. I don't know how I'm still alive!

I love my bike. Its brand new, bright orange, has a bell, a light for night time, and a big basket I put all mky goodies I buy in. Its smooth ridin'.

Japan is full of weird smells. Mostly bad. Raw fish, dead fish, sewage, and unidentifiable stank are often wafting along the road. In the morning my kitchen often is filled with a weird smell. The humidity is only amplifiying maybe these smells that wouldn't be so bad.

Japan is nuts about recycling, which is great. Regular burnable trash, plastic bottles, plastic (including the wrapper around the plastic bottles), paper, cardboard, glass, electronics, cans, aluminum, etc all get their OWN special bag and each come on a DIFFERENT DAY. I am often checking if that morning is a certain trash day.

However, everything is prewrapped. Things that are wrapped have more wrapped items inside. Its really ridiculous. If they didnt waste so much with so much prepackaging, maybe they wouldnt have to recycle as often. It kind of defeats the purpose.

My first week!

2006-08-10T23:04:00.000-04:00

Well I made it! The flight was a smooth ride, about 11-12 hours long.
The 3 day orientation at Tokyo was very tiring. I didn’t really get out much, except to a nearby park and for a rousing couple hours of karaoke.

Wednesday I finally got to my new apartment in Komono-cho, Mie, and shown to the office to meet everyone. My neighbor Christine is also with the JET Programme and works a couple rows over from me at the office, so it’s nice to have her so close. No one speaks English, save a few words, so I just roll with it so I don’t get frustrated. Everyone has been incredibly nice and helpful, taking Chris and I to get cell phones, bank accounts, and basic everyday needs. My diet also seems to be a subject of much interest.

My apartment is pretty nice in Japanese terms. 2 bedrooms, big kitchen, a living room, toilet, bath/shower, and a small laundry room. For those of you who had been to my apartment in Akron, its just a tad bigger than the 2 living rooms combined. But I have air conditioning and a pink toaster oven (along with lots of other things). The apartment is brand new so today I bought some shelves and a small coffee table. Hopefully I can get some sort of couch soon.
The whole town is dwarfed by the majestic Suzuka mountains. We live at the base of them, so the scenery is really nice. There is also an “antelope” center at the top of the biggest mountain (Gozaisho).. actually their name is “Serow” and its some ancient cross between an antelope and a goat. Anyway, it’s the town’s mascot, and little cartoon antelope adorn many things. Chris’s supervisor drove us up into the mountains as far as we could, its really amazing.

Last night was my first enkai (obligatory work drinking party) as a welcome party for Chris and I. We had to make impromptu speeches (ugh) and then had something like a 5 or 6 course meal with no less than 5 types of alcohol sitting at each of our individual tables. No one at the office can hold their alcohol so everyone was very happy and wanted to talk to us and kept trying to pour us more drinks, no matter how full the glass already was. Somehow during the night I learned the word for “ghost”, amazing what people say.

At work, I work 8:30-4:15 Monday through Friday at a big office. I have my own desk and now a computer with internet! School is out, so I won’t be actually teaching for about a month. I kinda fill out paper work or write speeches or non-exciting things (I’m typing this in Word actually, so it looks official to everyone and not playing on the internet! Haha). Like I said, everyone is very friendly, and often take us out to do things during company time. I think they like an excuse to go out and not work!

I don’t have internet at home yet, so I don’t have any pictures or videos up yet. But soon! Hopefully by mid-next week.

One week to go!

2006-07-29T09:36:00.000-04:00

I am anxious, nervous, excited, happy, sad, impatient, scared, and stoked all at once! It's my last week in the States so its been very busy with packing and saying goodbyes. On top of the humidity, none of these tasks have gotten easier!
Soon I will start posting pictures and videos for all of you to see. I will also put a link on the side that will be exclusively just for pictures (and maybe video too)! I will also put up a "count up" in trade of the "count down" for how long I've been away.
Well, the rest of my stuff isn't going to pack itself!

More info on living in Komono

2006-06-02T13:40:00.000-04:00

I received my contract in the mail today. Along with it, I received more information on where I will be living.

Komono town population is about 40,000. In summer the temp is about 28-25C and in winter its 7-4C and has little snow. 1 hour from Nagoya (third largest city in Japan). The train station is less than a 10 minute walk from my place. Within a five minute walk there is a supermarket, convience store, restaurant, and a library. More shops are a 10-20 in bike ride down the road.

Workplace:
When not at a school I will be at the Board of Education, a new building that, on the top floor, you can get a bird's eye view of Komono. It is a 5 min walk away from my apartment.

Accomodation:
I pay 37,000 yen for an apartment that's "fantastic, really big (for Japan) with two bedrooms, one lounge, a big kitchen, bathroom and toilet. It's a second floor apartment in a block of for, is sunny, in good condition and all together a really nice place to live." I get a washing machine, TV, AC, oil stove, bedding, bed, refigerator, bicycle, gas range, microwave, kitchenware, etc. The apartment is called Tokiwa's Garden Heights.

Schools

2006-05-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

Today I accidently met my sort-of predecessor, Alana, on a Mie JETs forum. I found out I will be teaching at a Junior High and visiting elementaries.

Update: I will be teaching at Komono Junior High School, Komono Elementary School, and Chikusa Elementary. It looks like I also get to have a hand in making lessons and teaching aids. I like to make things, and it sure beats the "tape recorder" job some other JETs have.

Location Location Location!

2006-05-17T11:44:00.000-04:00

Last night I found out my new home for the next year will be Komono (-cho) Town, Mie Prefecture in Japan.

Here is a map:

Here is a little more info on Mie, and Komono-cho:

Mie Prefecture:
64.8% Forest
Famous for Spain Village, Amusement parks, Ise Shrine, and where the Ninja was born.
MORE

Komono Town:

As of 2003, the town has an estimated population of 38,584 and a density of 360.97 persons per km². The total area is 106.89 km².

"Mt.Gozaisho-Dake/ Yunoyama Spa(Komono-town)
Mt. Gozaisho is the highest peak in the Suzuka range. An aerial rope-way allows visitors to climb to the peak from Yunoyama spa, at the foot of the mountain. Mt. Gozaisho-Dake is noted for its splendid autumn colors, which can be viewed from the facilities at the summit. The visitor will also find the Antelope Center, featuring antelope from around the world."

Yunoyama Hot Spring Sohei Festival- Oct 6.

Shopping & Waiting

2006-04-26T22:13:00.000-04:00

I've been buying new socks and breathable clothing for the humid summer days. I also bought some Motivational Stickers from Big Lots with easy English sayings on them. Plus there are holiday stickers too. I hope I have young students. Not knowing where I will be living or what ages I will be teaching is driving me nuts!

Introduction

2006-04-20T18:56:00.001-04:00

Hi! I recently got a job teaching English in Japan throught the JET program. This blog is a gateway to let friends and family and other weirdos to live vicariously through me. It also will follow my day-to-day life before and during the move to live halfway around the world. I did it once, surely I can do it again?