Crystal Balls

I’m teaching a Christmas lesson for many of my classes, as on Thursday I depart for holidays for a couple weeks to Thailand, Taiwan and possibly Cambodia. That being said, I don’t know when I’ll be able to update again, probably around Jan 9th.

Anyways, for the first 10 minutes or so I show pictures of Christmas back home in Canada, then feel a bit home sick as I miss my friends and family. It’s fun pointing out things like how my family likes cranberry sauce with their turkey, how we don’t do “Christmas cake” in Canada or eat ‘Kentucky’ (KFC. The Colonel has been decked out in his Santa suit for over a month now outside his stores, they make a killing this time of year.) I show pictures of the monstrous turkeys, our game of “grab bag” with the presents, what we do when Santa comes, my family, and my Grandpa playing Wii boxing with my sister Melissa among many others.

After the pictures, I lead the class in Christmas carols while playing a Disney CD in the background that they can sing along to. One class was feeling bold and we tackled “Rudolf” which turned out pretty good. The kids are cute and try hard even when they’re shy; music is great that way. I usually close the class letting them play some find-a-word and crossword themed Christmas games.

On Thursday I visited my handicap school for my bi-annual class. So, we briefly talked about Christmas for 40 minutes and the rest of the day was spent hanging out with the kids. I helped them cook a tasty Japanese dish, played games, and near the end of the day, sumo wrestled a student that worked his way up to the championship. I picked him up and tossed him out, it was quite fun. Although different teacher sumo-ed a smaller kid, throwing him to the ground, and then he snapped. Kicking him, submission-moving him, screaming wildly into the air and elbow-dropping him on the mat. It was hilarious watching this old dude grief on that 8 year old; I hope when I snap someday it’s half that amusing. (He was joking of course, the kid loved it too)

School aside, Tuesday night (or was it Monday?) Junko wanted me to teach her how to cook pizza after I made some for her a couple weeks ago. Well I don’t need much more of a reason than that to make pizza. I think the bottom line of my lesson was: throw in whatever you want. We made 2 pizzas; I was in charge of one and she was in charge of the other. It was fun; she made something more ‘traditional’ (if you count entirely too many mushrooms and a pile of corn) while I made mine a bit crazier, using Caesar salad dressing for the sauce to prove my point. It was absolutely delicious and we ate too much again. Maybe this is why I’ve put on a few pounds recently?

On Wednesday Neal cancelled out on our tradition again, but I ended up going for burgers with Richard instead. I ate a triple patty thing with cheese and bacon and other stuff, and felt so gross after. Burgers in Japan usually don’t have a bun so I was eating pure flesh, save for the cheese and grease. I knew my Filipino friends were leaving soon, so I called them and made the extra effort to see them off. I ended up walking almost an hour to their place and got them a cake for Christmas, and as a going away present. We hung out for an hour or so having a great time, they’re so much fun. I wish I spent more time with them while they were here; but that’s the story of life right?

When it came time to say goodbye I gave them hugs and well wishes, and some of the girls started crying. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes it’s still hard to believe I can have that strong of an effect on people; I think too much about society as a whole compared to the individuals that make it. I’ll miss them too, we had great times, and I should leave it at that I guess. Hopefully we can meet again someday; after seeing pictures of my family they want to meet everyone (and some want to marry my brother John).

I don’t remember Thursday night, but I remember Friday was spent with anime and relaxing. I was going to go to Tokyo with Neal, but he had a family emergency and had to cancel out. Either way, I think I needed the time off to be a hermit and closed off from the world for a bit; incidentally this was my Sunday as well. On Saturday though I dragged myself out of the house to visit Neal in Ina; we both needed to get out of our houses I guess.

We had a great day starting by eating at a Sri Lankan restaurant, a trip to the mall, renting a movie, going to the onsen (spa) and just relaxing and hanging out. The mall trip really stands out for me though, as they had a world-renowned fortuneteller there, I figured what the heck eh?

So this was my first time with a fortuneteller and I paid for 5 minutes. I got a translator in to help me out so I think she was flexible on the time limit because of that. I didn’t know what to expect but it was interesting, telling her (through the translator) to give me something basic and general, as I didn’t really know better either way.

She starting off with a piece of paper saying how my life would change quite dramatically in 2010. She told me other things, like how I should continue to live in countries other than my own to grow and experience things I never could back home. Later she went on to say how my first marriage…

Haha yea, I heard that and I was like “first?” geez that possibility didn’t even come into my mind for some reason, but like with many fortunes you get, it’s easy to bend your reality around making sense of it; not to mention it’s kinda changed the way I think about things again. We all think we’re superman and tragedy can’t befall us, but really no one is infallible. I’m temped to bring up that bad quote “don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive” story of my life though really, I gotta learn to relax better; learn yoga or something.

Anyways my first marriage ends in divorce for reasons the translator struggled with. Either way it sounds like it was the girl’s fault! Haha she nagged and didn’t like little mistakes I made and it became a bigger problem. Or something. Either way, my second marriage is supposed to be really happy because I sit down with her and explain who and how I am and she understands.

I was asked to make a question. Ok, “Do I teach another year, or do I go back and do some degree related work?” I don’t know if it got mangled a bit in the translation, but her advice was for me to study for my masters if I had the money to do so. Through more education she thinks I’ll be happier.

All right so that was an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while now, but finally it has been shoved into the limelight like it deserves. Should I get my masters? I think next year what I will do, is first move to a bigger city; Tatsuno is killing me. Second is to try and get an Engineering job. Should that fail, just teach in a bigger city and start studying for my masters. I’m thinking of doing it as a research project on applied fiber optics. (again, it’s been in my mind for a while) I’ll send some emails to some profs in my university for basic inquiries and stuff; I never thought I’d be doing this 2 years ago when I graduated, but now it kinda makes a lot of sense to me. It’s good to be out of school for a period of time. Maybe I’ll be Dr. Tony yet! Muhaha

So back to the fortune, I don’t think there was too much other than take care of my back and to never worry too much because god is always watching out for me. I thought that was pretty cool, I could always use some kami-sama in my corner (kami = god). I’m glad I went and I’d probably go again, it was a good experience getting me to think about things I should be in the first place.

But in the meantime, I’m leaving for Thailand in a couple days and I got a future divorce to start worrying about… if I don’t post in the meantime, Merry Christmas, Happy New Years and Happy Holidays to all of you (^_^)ノ it’s been a hell of a ride so far, I’m not getting off anytime soon.

"If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself." -Norman Vincent Peale

Anthony Don Schoenroth

Smelling Burnt Toast

I honestly can’t remember much about last week, as I sit here and ponder. My brain has perhaps scorched such memories as it ran the Gauntlet yesterday. I wrote the Japanese test, and I’m not sure how much I’m legally allowed to “write and publish online” about it, but I’ll share a bit that I think is probably safe. Long story short about that one though: statistically I can’t do worse than 25% given how it was all multiple choice.

Uh, at some point in the week I had great conversations with my students, cooked some lemon chicken with Junko that I overcooked and it became dry even though it was immersed in liquid, ate lunch with Richard at a tasty BBQ restaurant again. I might have had the super spicy ramen too; it’s almost frightening how little I remember from last week. Oh ya and Jessie’s birthday Friday night.

I do remember Saturday though, trying to go through some listening examples for the test. The more I studied these examples, the more freaked out I became. They spoke at a normal speed and they only spoke once. Here’s an example on the website concerned buying movie tickets roughly translated: One person says the separate movie ticket prices for adults, students and children, where the other person then said how they wanted 1 adult and 2 student tickets. You had to add it up and mark your answer. (4400 yen) Even if they asked me that in English I’d want them to repeat it at least once. Rattled, I ended up not studying too much at this point and played video games for the rest of the day to try and relax for the next days’ massacre.

I got up early Sunday and traveled over an hour to the test site. It was a bit eerie to be on a train full of foreigners; I guess I’ve been here too long to feel that way. The type of people and languages varied like the colours of a rainbow, even if it was a predominately Asian rainbow. One dude from Malaysia started talking to me, but I wonder if it was his accent that had me completely fooled; I totally didn’t understand him for the most part. I.e. I heard him say “irei” instead of “kirei” which is a huge difference.

Anyways, now that I looked like I was screwed on this test to him because the most basic level of communication was now broken “kanada wa kirei” (roughly: Canada is beautiful). Enough about that, I had my taste of a Japanese university and those kids got it rough. I hardly fit in my seat because of my size and my feet were numb all day from the temperature. It was broken into 3 parts with breaks in-between, and I didn’t know if I was shaking from the cold or my brain being rocked after a while; it was one hell of an ordeal.

I then understood why the listening part was only played once because I would have died if they did it a second time. There were hardly any questions but the level of stress involved probably shaved some time off my life expectancy. I was really happy with the first part of the test I guess, even if questions boiled down to “either you know it or you don’t” which I guess is the case when you’re looking at a Chinese character; that would explain the punishing time limit.

It was great to look at a question, and remember exactly where I learnt the answer from; most were from my kanji textbook, and some from my listening tapes. I love it when things click. This however was not a common thing, and I did what I could to try and piece things together as the obvious gaps in my level prevented me to understand a lot of what I was looking at. Forget looking at the question instructions too; I could maybe understand half of it, and waste 5 minutes deciphering it. Well that’s enough on that, again I’m not sure how much I can talk about the test without getting in trouble so that’s enough about the test.

I went home, ate fast food and drank pop and played video games until midnight in a deep funk; I hardly touched the computer. Today I feel a bit better, although I don’t know if I could feel worse than yesterday. There WERE questions I did know and it was a good feeling. I have come a FAR way in just 2-3 months; I can’t imagine writing that test before that time. Now that the storm has settled and the “get the hat out of Tatsuno” feelings have passed again, time to start planning my long-term future.

Short term though, what I want to do now (after Christmas break of course) is get a car, then drive to a real city regularly. Somewhere where I can see a tutor that can teach me, and possibly start going to a gym while I’m at it and meet new people; all this recent cold has me hibernating and starting to gain weight again. I’m wondering if I’d be able to survive in Canada anymore as I’m much more susceptible to the cold. Either way, time for me to relax for a short respite; although Neal talked me into Tokyo this weekend and then on the 18th I’m gone to Thailand before exploring Taiwan in January.

"The tighter you squeeze, the less you have." -Zen Saying

tnoy

Congratulations are in Order

My avoidance of studying continues! I’m slipping in pieces here and there, but I’m mostly doing other stuff. Let’s begin! On Monday night I got home from Tokyo and posted my blog, then on Tuesday Junko came over and I cooked pizza in my oven. I love pizza and it turned out wonderfully, the company was great too. I think we did some language exchange, but either way it was lots of fun. We later watched a Japanese classic, “Porco Rosso”; an amazing animated movie about a cursed pig flying an airplane in Italy during the lead up of WWII, go see it!

On Wednesday, Neal invited me to karaoke with his English class. There was lots of food and all you could drink again. I even sang my favourite Japanese anime song and I nailed it! The hiragana (one of the Japanese alphabets) was moving fast, but I could read it and keep up this time; my studies are paying off. It was a great feeling to give a proper performance of a good song, and hear the ovation.

Thursday and Friday had all the JETs and many others gather in the nearby Shiojiri for a Teacher’s conference. I went last year, but this is a yearly event. In all, it was a good couple days of discussing lessons plans and teaching ideas among other things like how to deal with kids sleeping in your class. Komagome sensei came from Tatsuno with me, and together we presented how we teach a Jeopardy review game. I think it went over pretty well; I can still remember not too long ago when I was in front of ½ the people, presenting on my 4th year final project in Engineering, and how I was so nervous I chocked and stuttered out a mess. Now I’m fairly flexible and coherent, and can wing my presentation; truly a huge leap for me.

The fun of Thursday night was axed considerably from last year: restricting drinking to the cafeteria and only until 10, then ‘lights out’ at 11. One theory on the new anti-fun laws was one JET (out of over 4000) was caught with a tiny bit of weed in Hokkaido (really far away). Another theory was 5 years ago some idiots got drunk and broke windows and threw stuff out of them. My personal opinion is most JETs need these kind of strong-armed laws, as I remember last year one jerk got drunk and tried to fight me, you can read about it if you want to hear the story.

Either way, that sucks for the rest of us. I guess it was something of an Eye opener for Neal as he is even more concrete about leaving his job, and I am pretty much fully in the same boat as him; although personally I can still see the shore in the corner of my eye should something or someone come running up and flagging us down before we sail out of sight. I love my job, I love the kids, I love the new friends I made… but my town is killing me. I can’t even take a bus to the airport anymore; they cut the service. Just another inconvenience on top the growing pile like the laundry I can’t dry. Or that I woke up a number of times last night because my face was numb from the cold.

Before that spirals out of control, after next week’s test I’m going to have to seriously look at spicing up my resume. I’ve met amazing people in Tokyo pretty much every weekend I’ve gone, only to hardly hear from them again after going home because my logistics leave a lot to be desired. I’ve decided I’ll either quit and go home in July, or I’ll get a job elsewhere and visit home in the spring maybe; it’s been long enough that I want to visit friends and family; and see if I can still properly eat with a fork and knife. Not to mention some of the shopping I want to do, especially with the exchange rate!

Imagine… being able to go into a store and not only understanding what you’re looking at, but being able to find whatever you’re looking for. The internet only helps so much.

Friday night after the conference I caught up with some family and friends back home; one of the more interesting stories of which was my cousin Jerry’s run-in with a meteor! Pretty exciting stuff.

Saturday saw me study a bit finally, then later we went to Brett and Kaoru’s wedding party. The actual wedding was small a week or two prior for family, but now it was the friend’s chance to share in the celebration. The setup was nothing like wedding parties I’ve been to back home, with us being stuffed into a corner where we could hardly see anything. I guess I couldn’t understand most of the Japanese being spoken anyways.

But ya, Brett wore a traditional Japanese outfit and Kaoru wore a beautiful silk kimono. She was so elegant and gorgeous. We got a chance to talk a bit and she joked about how many ropes were tied around her stomach; a lot of layers are involved apparently. She then said my wedding would be next. I told her it wasn’t likely, I’m still working on step one. She was shocked I was still single and started glancing around the room to find a partner for me. Comments were made about how I need someone with me in my big, empty house among other small talk. She’s so sweet and she meant well, but given the atmosphere and just how stunning she was, I couldn’t help but be a bit down after. Good thing it was all you could drink; they had some kinda yogurt liquor that tasted better than candy. Time to move out of Tatsuno.

The food was good, the drinks were good, the slideshow was great and the newly married couple was fantastic. I assume the talking and stuff was good too; of the bits that were translated for me were how they first met and things they wish for each other: like for Brett to not buy so many DVDs or something.

Sunday came, and Neal with his 3rd eye could sense I needed to get out of my house. We went up to Suwa to visit Craig, who was cooking up some traditional Southern food. I guess we have a lot in common, we both like cooking and entertaining guests. So the meal seemed simple enough: gravy, biscuits, bacon and scrambled eggs. Oh and gravy. LOTS of gravy. Apparently you can buy it in instant powdered form; I gots to find me some… :D

It was strange at first: I mean, gravy on bacon? Gravy on scrambled eggs? I am now convinced I want to visit the south and help them rise again; it was amazing. Well really, how can you go wrong with gravy? Craig even put on some southern music in the background to set the mood. We ate so much, and then later had cake that Neal and I brought for dessert. It was just a pleasant day of taking it easy. He has an awesome house too, which after a while clicked in that it was exactly like my house! Kinda.

I guess they spent a year and 10k renovating the place, and it showed with how new the place looked. It was a good contrast to my shabby little place, of which I felt like I was camping the first month or so in it, I mean he even has a sink to wash your hands! My house has since got some character, via me hanging posters to cover the dirty and cracked walls, but I wish I could do more. I can’t wash the walls so there goes fresh paint; there are heavy cracks in it anyways. Craig showed some preference to my place, but I think he’s got a great set up. He even has a patch for a garden; it’s right in front of a constantly running stream, creating the beautiful ambiance of running water in his house. It’s a lot better in the summer he says, as the house is more open. Just beautiful.

So ya, good food, good company, then back to the books a bit. I have one week left… I write the test on Sunday and given the old tests I’ve looked at recently, it’ll be ugly.

"The key to happiness is having dreams; the key to success is making them come true." -James Allen

tnoy

2 weeks

Neal was a nice guy to help drive me to a store or two so I could buy some Christmas presents and stuff them in the mail; hopefully soon enough so it may get home on time. On a sad note, I tried to send wine that I bought in Okinawa, but Canada is rather anal about shipping things apparently and gave me a big “denied.” Also, I had to open the box and weigh each individual present and mark it down on a declaration form. Note for my family: Don’t read the form before you open the box! Haha…. Surprise! :)

Neal and I had Brazilian food on Wednesday, and Junko and I had ramen on Thursday. After which we played video games at my place again, it was lots of fun! It’s nice having a gaming partner again.

My 3rd year students at Yayoi only have 3 classes left so we watched a cartoon to help wind up the semester and have fun. The dead horse I keep beating is how it’s ‘crazy how time flies’. I just hope I did a good job and didn’t fail these kids in their academic pursuit. Next year the English interest has jumped so high they are discussing the possibility of me teaching 2 OC classes; I wonder if it’s because I had a good effect on those first years that are now going to be 3rd years soon… wow

And for the weekend, I went to Tokyo. Heh, you know you’ve been here a while when a weekend trip to Tokyo has become somewhat run of the mill; I mean I only took one picture all weekend and it was of a small booth partially hidden underneath an pedestrian overpass bridge. The reason behind that is you’re not suppose to smoke in public, you have to go indoors and hide it; and second-hand any poor suckers also inside.

Anyways, I went to visit my friend Matt from Australia. He had been to Japan before, but hey, Tokyo right? One of the largest and most exciting cities in the world. I’m always up for a reason to get out of my little house and town; all study and no play makes Tony a dull boy. It’s quickly becoming my second home I guess.

I guess the highlight of the weekend was the night scene, of which I finally properly indulged myself in at the expense of being able bodied for daytime adventures. That’s alright though, I discovered a number of other people that were also fluent in English. It was a bad weekend for my Japanese to say the least, but it was still cool flexing my social muscles and making new friends.

Heh, funny side story: while we were recovering one morning looking bleary eyed at some English magazines that were in our hotel we can across a guy’s personal. “Buy me a meal and I will f**k you. Alcohol required.” Then it had his email. Heh, we were laughing at that one all day, blunt and to the point I guess. The magazine also had a pretty cool movie reviewer; who gave the most scathing reviews I’ve ever read. It was really cool to read; I think I might start subscribing…

Anyways we had a number of late nights and some crazy adventures, of which you can fill in the gaps with loud music, strong drinks and cute girls. I’ll have to come back to these clubs in the future with Dougal or someone. After Matt left I even got to meet up with my friend Anita after, albeit extremely briefly as it took over an hour of wandering streets to find the place and then I had to leave less than an hour later to catch the last train back; Matt wasn’t around to split the $40 cab ride this time with me.

Sigh. Back to the books to study for my Japanese test in 2 weeks. Neal isn’t even studying for his, haha. “I put in some time a couple weeks back” he says. Confidence is good and all, but it doesn’t answer questions on a knowledge/fact-based test. Atleast the schools finally turned the heaters on a couple days ago, even if it's snowed last week. Bare with my bland stories for a while longer, the test is fast approaching and I leave on a huge trip Dec 18.

"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional." -Unknown

tnoy

The Majority Rules

On Saturday since there are more Americans than Canadians in Nagano, we celebrated thanksgiving in November and not October. Curses eh? If it were up to me, I’d say we should celebrate thanksgiving twice! That way everyone wins; more turkey! Yay! Oh I guess they’re doing something for Christmas, but I’ll be in Thailand then.

Since my chicken was a success at my BBQ, I was volunteered to cook another bird. I got up early and in my study-avoiding habits started cooking it rather early. That’s alright I guess, it was done almost an hour before I had to catch the train so I wrapped up the cooking pot thing whatever-you-call-it in a towel to keep it hot and jumped on the train with Michelle and Dougal.

The event was to start at 4, but the reason they made it so early was because you know it’ll start late and last year we had to hustle out of there before risking getting a fine. We were not in Matsumoto this year, but Ina, which is a lot closer for me. Anyways, of course it didn’t start for a long time after and I was antsy so I did my carving and gravy making early so I could relax; leaving my poor bird to get cold for the next hour or so out on the table. It still tasted pretty good, but I still need more practice making gravy.

When we did start eating it was closer to 6 and a lot of people had a number of drinks on empty stomachs waiting for it to start. The wait was definitely worth it though. There were so many foods and it was so varied and there were even other new, cultural stuff thrown in like spring rolls from China, Sheppard’s pie from Scotland and strange desserts I’ve never seen before. Of course everyone heaped up their plates buffet-style and each forkful was a different splash of great taste in your mouth. Erica bought real, proper turkeys from an American military base near Tokyo so that was a super treat, and she prepared it with pepper or something, which worked really well. Someone made a container of gravy by itself with pepper and mushrooms and other tasty stuff.

But as my friend Steve said it doesn’t do much for me to describe how something tastes as you can’t enjoy it and it’s just making me hungry. I ended up eating so much my stomach was physically sore for 10 minutes or so as I remembered a cow we had back on the farm that ate until its stomach exploded and we found it in the morning with its legs sticking up in the air, offering scratching posts for his pals standing around. I wasn’t going to let these guys scratch on my bloated corpse too so I stopped eating and got intensely sleepy; it wasn’t even 7 yet! Haha we all stuck through it though and I got something of a second wind later on so I could at least be half social. Most of the rest of the evening was spent sitting around and talking.

The cleanup was something odd too, even with 30-40 people cleaning, it still took over ½ hour to get everything done. During the clean I went to put away an oven tray, and I discovered that someone forgot a whole turkey in one of the ovens! Some of us took pieces home; I grabbed a large leg. I made breakfast from it: a leftover turkey sandwich with mustard and pickles and butter. It’s been so long and it was so tasty… it was almost a spiritual experience.

I spent a lot of Sunday wondering when I’d get a certain phone call. A mom cornered me when I was shopping last and invited me over to meet her family, but the call never came and I got a little bit of studying in along with all the other activities like watching funny cartoons and catching up on some emails. I have less than 3 weeks left before the test and I spent a good amount of time trying to find a mock exam to help me get used to the format. I ended up finding a Kanji list that I’d need to know, and I’m maybe 2/3 of the way there. If what my new friend in Tokyo said was true, that’s not nearly as important as knowing the grammar, which was half of his test. The hunt for an old exam continues…

Now that I can visualize a ticking clock, the motivation has been kicked up another notch. At this point though, I think I need to go to a library or a coffee shop or something to study as I have too many distractions at home now and most of my studying ends up happening at work.

Oh ya, Thursday night I met up with my friend Junko and we got Italian food together. I convinced her to play some video games after, and my controllers had some dust on them. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve played my old games, but it was still fun. Not to mention really cute hearing all the little Japanese phrases come out while struggling to keep Mario from dying.

I was talking with my friend Matt back home and I can’t believe how long it has been since I had a real conversation about games and gaming last, and I even met my brother John again online with his cocaine addiction better known as World of Warcraft, or W.O.W. if you know it. Either way he has the new expansion now and I don’t, so we couldn’t play together. He got me to ‘sign up’ with his guild, which was like an online interview, as I needed to divulge how I play the game, why I play the game, what time zone I live in; there even was a “tell us about yourself” section, where I put 6’1” male, etc. Had I not already been a member, they were actually going to do a 10-15 minute interview to decide if I could join or not. There is such a fine line between gaming for fun, and whatever these people call their lives.

I came close to ordering a couple hundred dollars worth of games (so 4 games) to be shipped to me, but luckily was reminded I don’t have time for such indulgences yet. There’s so many good ones that came out recently, and it’s getting harder to ignore with the Christmas releases gushing out. Sigh; someday…

"You have a solemn obligation to take care of yourself, because you never know when the World will need you." -Rabbi Hillel

tnoy

The Brilliance of Red

The four-day workweek came and went with little things happening here and there. I sent money home, followed the historic event in the U.S. with friends and bought plane tickets for my Christmas vacation to Thailand/Taiwan. It would have been nice to visit family, but the price and time needed was a little too high unfortunately. When February comes and I know if I’m staying a 3rd year or not, I’ll need to make definite plans to go home for a bit. It’s crazy to fathom that it’s been as long as it has been.

On Friday I met up with Richard and Michelle (both new JETs) and we ate at a BBQ restaurant in Tatsuno. I’ve lived here over a year and haven’t gone yet; it’s a really nice place. Unfortunately by the time plans were made, I already cooked up some awesome chicken fried rice at home and wasn’t hungry; I still enjoyed the company and barbequing for the two though.

On Saturday Ono Sensei invited me over to her family’s house for nabe and drinks, similar to an outing last year. It was a really good evening again of delicious food and lots of drinks. Mr. Ono took out a large bottle of sake and somehow the two of us finished it; 1.5 liters of 17%. When it was finished though he got really sleepy even though it was only 8:00, so I went home and… I don’t remember much after that so I must have went to bed. I must have turned the heater on though as it was dry in the morning and I had to put more kerosene in it. You gotta be careful with that sake, I think I woke up a couple times in the middle of the night wondering if I had been sleeping; Tequila does that too.

Sunday was an extra special day… too much video games. I put 10 hours into a game or so and it was really nice just relaxing. My study progress has slowly dwindled daily to the point where I sit around not doing anything, so I figured this break was something I needed to get out of this slump. The test is only 4 weeks away or so and of course I’ll be busy in the meantime with stuff. When you’re avoiding studying you do lots of stuff you normally don’t like clean and cook huge meals; I’ve been eating a little too well lately since celebrating all that weight I lost and gained a couple kilos back. I’ll get back into the swing of things again soon, maybe it’s the recent cold that brings on this lethargy.

I’m getting all kinds of fun reactions from the kids because I’m in my short sleeve shirts still while they walk around the hallways hunched over wrapped in blankets trying to keep warm. The heaters haven’t been installed yet and it’s really nippy. My fingers are a bit purple as I type this, but I put on a strong face because I didn’t bring a sweater or anything, although I finally wore a toque to work today. All these pictures are of things I see almost daily. The trees are a brilliant, vibrant red and colours are everywhere in this beautiful place.

Well you don’t need to hear me talk too much about nothing; not much happened and it was a great time anyways.

"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another." -Walter Elliott

tnoy

The Things We Do…

I was in Yayoi on Wednesday, but that was the closest day to Halloween so I had another first: I dressed in Anime Cosplay. What better time eh? The outcome: huge success. I even grew a goatee for the part. I didn’t get any people scared like last year, but I got great reactions anyways, and lots of smiles. When I walked down the hallways, half the students were wondering if it was Tony and the other half was wondering if I was ‘Sanji’, a cool chef on Luffy’s straw-hat pirate ship on the immensely popular anime, One Piece.

It was great to have the kids whipped into a frenzy when I walked into the classroom, then have me whip out a text book and tell them to do the same. Don’t worry, I wasn’t that mean, we drew Jack-O-Lanterns and talked about Halloween for a little bit first. Most kids were sure to pull out their cell phones and snap pictures of me; I got pretty good at posing as Sanji too. After school I walked around with my big bag of candy and got the kids to say “trick or treat” before I’d hand out their reward. Some boys near the end were coming for 2nds and 3rds though, so I had to start asking if they got one already unfortunately, where one boy questioned back: “Do you know who I am?” Geez, haha

For my 3rd years we planned a little something of a Halloween party, where I put together some simple games like pin-the-tail and played a couple short Halloween cartoons for them. I think it went really well, but I’m sure the snacks and drinks we provided helped with the success.

On Halloween Friday I was in Tatsuno, and before even any of the students saw my outfit, a little group of girls were gathered outside. I guess their friends from my other school emailed them pictures of me on their phones and wrecked the surprise but oh well, I gave them candy anyways. The third years here had been working on Halloween stories, and some were just amazing, I was really happy for them. Even Ono sensei brought a mask to dress up too, it was cute. No students dressed up this year at either school though, even after I bugged them about it for a week. Ah well

I thought of maybe going to Tokyo this weekend to catch a Halloween party, as… well you don’t need to hear me talk ill of my town anymore. Long story short, I spent Halloween night with beer, pretzels and (gasp!) some video game (demos) at home. I can’t start a big game lest I risk playing more when I should be studying. I spent too much time last week as it was cleaning my house and other study-avoiding projects instead.

So it was a 3 day weekend. There is a real cutie that I’ve talked about before in Tokyo that still wasn’t doing a good job of replying to emails. I got a hold of my friend Anita again though, which gave me a better/less-desperate reason to visit Tokyo since I didn’t really have a good reason to go otherwise. Anita’s friend was opening a pub in Tokyo, and for the opening party he was giving out free beer; shouldn’t need a better reason than that eh? I bought my bus ticket online that morning and was in Tokyo that afternoon. I guess I could do this more often. Like my friend Neal asked me that morning: what else are you going to do this weekend? Even though I was a bit excited to study the next 3 days like a hermit with a textbook. Time to mingle with people; a lunch we had that week showed warnings that I was going back to my socially awkward self again.

The pub was packed with people, I guess it didn’t help that it was also really small. But hey, free beer right? The things we do. A real cutie at the other end exchanged glances with me a couple times, but the sardine nature of the place kept you from moving much. Later when our little posse (Anita, Takaku and I) managed to squeeze deeper into the pit, we were able to talk more.

Her name was Megumi and I guess she did a year home stay in Winnipeg, so she was happy to talk to a Canadian for once, and I was happy to talk to someone that not only has heard of Saskatchewan, but actually visited Regina. (shock!) Of course I couldn’t help but squeeze out a ‘why’, but it was in good taste, don’t worry. Her English was so perfect though you wouldn’t think she was Japanese, maybe the best I’ve ever heard. We had a great talk and some shots, but those crappy trains keep your eye on your watch as I wasn’t going to spent more on a taxi ride than it would cost to stay in my capsule for one night. Before we parted, we exchanged information and I was invited on a Mountain hike the next day. Looks like my whim trip to Tokyo just got some meat for its bones.

A group of us met up and took an hour train to Takao Mountain, which made a bit of sense, as I was confused knowing there was no mountain in Tokyo. So with us were Meg(umi), Steve from America and a dude from Europe. They would ask me if this is what Nagano was like, and in a way it was similar; except more things are dying now because of the cold and the mountains were higher; sounds like I’ll have company this winter when the snow comes for skiing and such. There was some Taiko (Japanese drums) festival going on that day too, so there was an incredible amount of people.

When I arrived in Tokyo the day before, I bought a pair of shoes that will last me for a year or so; quite shocking given the disappointment I felt in Nagoya. Of course I told myself “I won’t need to do anything too crazy so I should be ok” and now here I was the next day mountain climbing with them. Long story short at the end of the day the new shoes rubbed a hole in my one ankle and there was blood all over my sock. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The four of us climbed the mountain together, had great, intelligent talks, snacks and enjoyed the beautiful nature even though the colours haven’t changed too much yet because Tokyo has temperatures above 10 degrees yet those lucky jerks. In case you missed the ‘intelligent’ quip I threw in, it’s so refreshing to be away from the JET mess of gossip and rubbish; a shame really. Lots of the JETs that I do talk to see through the BS too and kinda peel away.

Since we were all fairly new with each other and lots of talking was being done, reflections of home came flittering by. What was my family up to? How’s everyone getting along? I can’t help but feel I’m experiencing some of the same things my cousin Darren must have felt when he moved to the other side of the country. Almost the same thing I feel when I see recent photos of people I’ve grown up with and known for years surrounded by people that I don’t know a lick about, and now here I am on a hill with 3 strangers having a great time like I’m sure they were too in those pictures. Change is a strange thing, but I’m digressing again.

I guess there isn’t too much to write about the mountain, it was simply a great time out even if it was a bit crowded. Oh and we saw a traditional married Japanese couple, where the wife tripped on some tree roots and face planted rather harshly. All the husband said was “why did you do that” in Japanese and didn’t help her at all even though we offered. As they walked away she kept 2 meters behind him it seemed. Eerie.

The guys had their own things to do that night, so I suggested supper with Meg. We talked about our shared love for spicy food, but ended up stopping in the first burger restaurant outside of the station because our legs were so tired. We got a cool seat on the 3rd floor though where we could oversee a large intersection. I think we were there for a couple hours as time kinda flew by it was really cool. When we got up later to find something else to do, we didn’t last too long and soon parted ways due to exhaustion.

So here I was in Tokyo for a second time to see my friend Anita, and like that last weekend we hardly hung out at all! We exchanged a couple mails, but I quickly passed out in the lull of replying and was out for the night. Maybe 10 hours of sleep later I woke up and was able to complete making plans for Monday, haha

Anita had stuff to get done in the morning, so I passed some time during breakfast in my textbook. I got a good hour and a half in before the head started to hurt, so I took a study break by catching the train to our meet up place. Once there I walked to a nearby park and snuck in another hour of studying. I’m sneaky like that.

But ya, this park was amazing! You seen them a lot back home, but this was my first time seeing one in Japan where you had an open field, where many kids and their parents were happily using to play soccer or baseball and other fun stuff kids should be doing in parks. I guess every other park feels it needs to pack it with swing sets or trees or other stuff you simply don’t need if you just want to get out and lay down on some green grass.

I met up with Anita and her friend who was also named Megumi. She told me it was a popular name but it was still a bit ironic. We went to a coffee shop, where we could drink ‘organic’ stuff. I didn’t know that, but I found out later when my small glass of apple juice cost $5. Those cultists…

Haha, anyways, this Megumi’s English was alright, but a lot of the conversation was in Japanese. Anita is pretty good, and as I’m a lesser speaker it’s easy to fall into the shadows; I guess that’s how some of my students must feel. I took solace though by being happy with understanding a lot of what was being said. My internal processor might have started smoking a bit to keep up, but it’ll need to do that if I want to talk at a faster speed. This was a great time to ask about grammar and vocab that came up; great reinforcement.

When we got tired of sitting, I suggested something less conventional like badminton or a game arcade. We tried looking for one, but I guess a lot of things have been closing lately and they’re blaming it on the recent economy stuff. We ended up grabbing some food and I got on the bus to come home. This was the one reason I packed my laptop I guess, so I could write this while on the 3 hours bus home. That, and maybe to show pictures to the person I hoped to meet. She’s another story on her own though, she finally messaged me back 3 hours before I had to leave, and of course I was busy. Anita and I somehow became each other’s love doctors recently and the option of forgetting her passed again; it’s a shame really but ya I don’t need this crap.

Ah well, although she was a hidden underlying reason I went to Tokyo, I’m glad I made new reasons to be there, and great things happened. I went to new places, I did new things, made new friends and got to catch up with an old one. Bros before hoes right?

"The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does." -Hugh Macleod

tnoy

Either you’re feeling it or you’re not.

Another week gone by, a couple things happened I guess. Because the dollar has fallen back home and the Yen is rather strong, I figured it was a good time to try and send money back. Over 2 hours and 5 locations later, I still didn’t get any sent and it was a horribly painful experience, one I’m not going to relive. I’m now signing up for some service that I pay to send money for me; should be ok.

On the note of money, if I were to go home this Christmas, it will put me back at least 1.5k for the flight alone (I guess over 2k now if you convert it, sure has changed alot), and that’s the cheapest option I found so far; a 3 week trip. I don’t know if I can or should take that much time off. Tough decisions eh, it might make a lot more sense to visit home during an ‘off’ season. I should have looked into this stuff sooner; too bad I’ve been crazy busy traveling and burning out. (pictured: people! in my house! ...whoa!)

Well as for Japan, on Friday I had a BBQ! Our ‘block’ of teachers congregated at my house for shenanigans of drinking, drama, and dining. I found a whole frozen chicken at the foreign store for $6 (cheaper than a meal at a restaurant!) and roasted it up for everyone. It went really well and I even cooked gravy for the first time. I think I threw in too much flour and water though, as the taste was a bit thin; I guess I stressed quantity over quality as it has been so long since my tongue last fused with the harmony of brown love… oh wait, in Vietnam Neal and I got mashed potatoes and gravy at KFC a number of times, so I guess it hasn’t been that long.

I also cooked up a potato dish, and Neal brought a lot of Brazilian sausage, Ike (a new JET) made onion rings, and various people brought chips, snacks, refreshments and other stuff. We played a little bit of video games, but my spacious house was feeling the strain of so many people so it was short lived. Atleast I got to play a lot of music I liked, even if some people commented on how they felt like they were in a spaceship. Good times.

We slept in a bit Saturday and cleaned up the house. A rather successful gathering if I must say. That night in Shiojiri, they were hosting one of Japan’s largest Halloween parties and most people had to get there to volunteer. I showed up an hour before it wound down so I didn’t get to see too much; a pity really. It seemed neat for what I did see though, they closed down a street and had booths sent up all over the place. Lots of kids were walking around in cute Halloween outfits too, something really refreshing to see in Japan.

I was lucky enough to get a ride with Noboru and Matt and we went to a club in Matsumoto that night. The music was a bit too relaxed at times, and a lot of it wasn’t bad at all. I just wasn’t feeling it though. The place was packed with other JETs, but I could only put names to a handful of them. That was another interesting experience mingling with all these new people, bringing back reminders from when I first came here.

Heh I’m deleting so much of this post just because it isn’t interesting; to me right now anyways. Besides, you don’t want to hear about me judging people anyways. A number of times I just kinda wanted to go home and back to my books; all week was filled with “…OH!” moments and they came one after another, and the feeling is indescribable. A telephone is no long “denwa” as I forced myself to memorize a long time ago, but is now what its Kanji means: “electric conversation”. Maybe I’ve learned to be more focus and not so distracted lately, so when I get forcefully pulled from one world to another I am briefly disorientated for a while; like from my book into a conversation or from writing this blog to having to run to class because the bell rang.

It could be part of this weird feeling I’ve had of late. Sometimes I can’t tell when I’m dreaming, if what’s happening around me is real; leading to odd temptations to do stupid things to test the fabric of this plane’s reality in which my earthly vessel resides and is limited to its current 4 known dimensions. Luckily I’m a goof so if I do something dumb it can easily be laughed off, it’s mostly dumb questions anyways to see if the student understands what I’m saying; like “can you walk to Canada?” I guess I need to spend more time outside of my textbook and with real people; I’m catching myself more and more thinking in Japanese like this morning when I was looking for my shoes: 私の靴はどこですね〜

Sunday was spent trying to fend off a slough of emails from cute girls. In Okinawa I’ve been invited onto a Japanese social site by a friend I made there, and I’ve been getting emails from people ever since, and it kinda exploded yesterday probably because I was at home and able to answer faster; I didn’t even have time to open my books actually with all the Japanese deciphering I was doing.

Now let me explain the deciphering; these girls were speaking (real?) Japanese and not textbook stuff. And they were using all kinds of emoticons, slang and expressions, which screwed with my translator. So I spent a lot of time looking at what they wrote, and tweaking it here and there so it could become legible. Is this how they must feel about our garbage like myspace? Or worse yet, comments on youtube? Where we have idiots posting stuff that can hardly be called English… ah sweet irony, I was really struggling but it’s interesting I can look at their sentences and their structures and tweak it appropriately. Later when Dougal came online and I chatted with him, it was a great relief to put my ideas into English words again and pull me out from the deep end of the pool.

The one girl was a 20 year old house wife, and near the end of the night apparently I wasn’t sending emails back fast enough, and I had 3 in a row from her sitting in my inbox, with the last one roughly translated “little sexy picture of me”. I still hardly know her. Keep an eye on your young, bored, cute housewives fellas!

Ah good thing I’m at work and have no Internet… I’m dreading that inbox a bit when I get home tonight. (update: over 20 messages… time to break some hearts I guess, I don’t have time for this headache) I’m doing a movie night with my friend Osamu, so that’ll be a good respite. We’ve met up a couple times now, I wonder if I should try to add a bit more language exchange to our meetings, something that was offered from another cutie last night. Oh and one girl while she didn’t really know English at all, knew Canadians like to say “ay” a lot. Don’t worry, I corrected her to say “eh” ^_^

Perhaps I learnt a lot through that experience with the language, but it’s hard to tell progress anymore. Is this what it feels like studying for your masters? Constant big discoveries, but no real end in site due to the sheer volume of the task you’re attempting. You keep walking down the road thinking you’ll reach the end eventually, but all you see are bigger and nicer houses, and more roads and avenues you can branch off to. Perhaps this is a metaphor on life as well? You can give up or be lazy or settle at anytime, but the further you go, the more you learn and the more you experience the better your rewards?

Perhaps that’s why nothing seems real lately. Too much time in my books having imaginary conversations in a foreign language with imaginary people, then later feeling haunted when foreign thoughts cross my mind, making me wonder if they were my thoughts in the first place. Is our ability to think limited by language and our understanding of said language? Is that way Einstein and them always stressed imagination, as perhaps that is the only method we can think outside the constructs of rules and limitations we set up for ourselves so we can understand each other? Even the Kanji for “teach” has the symbol “to hit” inside it; do we close our minds to new ideas through learning?

Maybe I need more sleep.

"It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute ... that gives meaning to our lives." -Anthony Robbins

tnoy

Lazy Sunday Reflections

This entry of course comes off the heals of my friend Chris’ comment on how I’m keeping busy ^_^ haha nothing wrong with a slow week; this will be one of the easiest write-ups yet. I worked Monday to Saturday then had a super lazy Sunday. When I say lazy, all I really did was do some laundry, got some groceries, did some cleaning, fixed a paper window or two and failed at studying. A really lazy day for me; amazing the things you’ll think of doing when you’re avoiding studying. It was a nice, hot day, maybe one of the last ones before the snow as I usually turn on my kerosene heater at night as of late. I even had two naps during the day, one on my couch and one later on my bed with the window open. (Pictured: then)

I tried studying, but it just wasn’t happening; it almost feels like I’m trying to dig myself out of deep mud when I look at my piles of flashcards that I had mastered a couple weeks ago and haven’t kept on top of. I have strategies to get around this stump, I’m putting them to use today. But since I was still lazy yesterday, I opted to put on some Japanese listening tapes so at least I was learning passively while I laid on my couch looking at the ceiling, wondering what all that turkey and gravy must have tasted like back home and other brain processing cycles. This was my first “day off” at home in months.

I guess a couple things happened last week of mention; like some girl students staring at me with wide eyes while they came in close to talk. I said “nice weather” and they gasped “nice body?!?!?” I wonder what’s on their minds? I gave a different girl student a compliment on her cute red sweater another day, and she said “cute and sexy girl” back to me. The teacher beside me started laughing heavily, although I’ve heard this line a couple times already; the cuteness doesn’t get old though.

Another JET was telling stories about the girls at her high school, grabbing each other’s breasts and banging and moving them around together like they’re… something you bang around together; cymbals she compared it to. Then later how some boy students snuck behind a group of girls and gave a big slap on the boobs from behind, the other girls laughed at the victim, sympathizing in her misfortune while she weakly cried “itai” (ouch). My students aren’t this bad, but I do see bold groping from time to time, and I call them ‘sukebe-chan’ (little pervert; ‘chan’ makes it cute). They’re more shocked at me saying that then the sexual harassment going on, and most times it incites them to be dirtier, like one chasing the other and flipping her skirt, so I don’t say it much anymore.

Maybe the best story was a mob of girls coming to mug me for candies I didn’t give out yet in class after the bell rang, yelling “Choko! (chocolate) Choko! Give… me!” I don’t give this stuff out for free otherwise I’d be broke, so of course I got them to dance for it first. The one did an easy jig with her fists in the air and a little hip action side to side. I congratulated her on her super cool dance, and she later bragged to the teacher about it. Apparently what she did was a very popular diet dance in Japan. (girls here are obsessed with dieting, even if they’re all bones) So what better way to reward her diet? With a chocolate treat of course. Ah well, I still think it was cute.

Oh, and for the first time in 7 years I weigh less than 200 pounds; I’ve lost 20 kg since coming to Japan last year. My belt now needs another 2 holes cut into it and most of my pants I can take off without undoing; I’m going to need to do some shopping I guess (please don’t send me more clothes mom, I have too many in my small closet and need to throw some out, thanks though!) I have a new friend or two in Tokyo now that can maybe help me pick some Japan-appropriate fashion. Oh and I spent a lot of the week tucking in my chin and feeling my throat, marveling in how I can hardly feel my second chin anymore; another 5-10 kg and my abs will be back. (Pictured: now)

I’m just reaching for stories now… a new JET, Richard, paid me a visit Saturday night where we had ramen and watched a movie at my place, and Saturday after school I played Badminton; we lost a lot because I suck but it was fun.

I think it was Wednesday, I don’t remember, I made 2 pizzas and baked them in my oven. It was so tasty I ended up eating both and had some cold beers on the side. It was really nice, and in the morning I still weighed 90kg. Good times.

"If the whole world followed you, would you be pleased with where you took it?" -Neale Donald Walsch

tnoy

Old Destinations, New Adventures

Lately, I’ve hardly had work or a job as much as I’d say there was a weekday lull between each of my traveling destinations. That being said, last weekend I went on another 3 day weekend adventure to Tokyo and told myself I need to take a break from travel after that; I haven’t studied Japanese in over two weeks and that makes me a sad panda. Even looking at my flash cards again for the first time last night had me wondering where I left off even; not a good sign.

Anyways, flash back to early morning Saturday, where my alarm DID go off so I could wake up and not kill myself trying to catch the bus. Why was I going to Tokyo again? For the Tokyo Game Show of course! The reason anyone would visit Japan right? Well, turns out this year, not so much. Last year I went with Neal and we had a jolly good time, this year they sucked as much fun out of the event as possible if you can believe that.

It started by waiting over an hour to buy a ticket to enter the place; 2 people selling tickets for a throng of thousands. Then after that there was another line just to turn your ticket in and enter. Then when I got inside, on more than one occasion people would run up to me and say “no pictures!” when my camera was out, making me wonder why I was even there. The cosplay should make up for it right? Nah, it was really lame this year, maybe half of what you saw last year, and the vast majority I didn’t recognize at all. Also there were many rules posted all over the place and cops crawling the place ready to confiscate your camera if you didn’t follow them.

Intimidated I headed back inside to see the stuff and get free lootz. Last year you got posters, toys, game demos, candy and cool stuff. This year they didn’t even give bags to hold the boring purchase catalogues they were handing out. They even found a way to organize the place so it was much more congested and claustrophobic even though you were in a monolith of a building. Even some of the booth babes wouldn’t let you take pictures of them, what a rip off. I have doubts I will attend next year if I’m still here, actually I’m surprised I wrote over a paragraph about that place; I guess I should have cut out more of the negative.

Bad taste in my mouth, I met up with Brian and some new JETs I did an English camp with a little while back (Thersa and Phillips). Although one hour in the place was plenty enough for me, I decided to stick around and hang out with Brian because he’s a cool guy and scope the place out a second time. He too had his fill before long, but it was kinda neat acting like some kinda chauffeur, giving tidbits on companies, products, and offerings that we were seeing that I had read about already on the internet; no surprises for me.

He had some family coming in that night so we parted ways, but I caught up with another long lost friend, Anita. She used to be in Nagano prefecture too a while back and I haven’t seen her since; she invited me out to a live music concert. It was neat to be in a small venue like that watching the bands; even though it was in Tokyo and on the 5th floor of a building, it was pretty much exactly like the small club back in Ina, Gram House. The crowd was, well, Japanese though, and they mostly stood watching and politely clapped after each righteous guitar rifting, room shaking song; no dancing.

I hadn’t had nearly enough drinks to get the party going in this atmosphere, and at those prices it wasn’t going to happen, so I was fairly happy when our group got out of there to a more traditional Japanese drinking venue where there’s a hole in the floor to put your legs to give the short table the illusion of being low and traditional. These ‘izikaiyas’ as they’re called are visited often for ‘nijikais’ (second party) as they have the ‘nomihodai’ (all you can drink) and snacks.

Anyways, I met up with some cool people here! It was great seeing Anita again, and it was great being in a venue where you could talk without yelling into each other’s ears. Not to mention it was smoke free, clubs can really suck here when you smell like a sewer after you leave. Among the new people was a real cutie named Shiho. She had a bit to drink, which was a bit shocking in itself as Japanese girls usually never drink and we had a great talk. She’s really cool, and we agreed to meet up again before I left Tokyo.

The next day, a group of 7 of us or so got together to visit the ramen museum in Yokohama; apparently the second largest city in Japan that is a little bit south of Tokyo, although I’ve never been here yet and my travel guide only has 3 pages on it whereas there are like 100 pages on Tokyo. Anyways, we got out to the ‘museum’ and there wasn’t much to see and nothing was in English. The big draw of the place was the basement, where a couple floors down the place opened up into a large olden-style city. It was so cool having this locale pop out of nowhere. In this underground city were many different types of ramen shops, and throngs of people in lines for each one.

We ended up eating at a burger restaurant nearby as we didn’t want to wait in line, then went to a special area in Yokohama where there were really cool things to see like huge buildings, replica ship museums, amusement parks and old German architecture where some of the first foreign settlers were forced to live when Japan was forced to open its borders to the outside world many years back. In this German area was our prize: my very first Oktoberfest. (I know I blinked in this picture, but Brian looked too damn happy to not post his mug)

Thousands of people were out in the sun drinking thousands of liters of beer, as the huge trucks with many empty beer kegs surrounding them can attest to. We had to wait in line for a little bit, as they had reached capacity, but a friend got in early and brought beer to us waiting on the other side of the waist-high fence. I don’t know what I had, but it was one of the tastiest beers I’ve ever had… it was sweet! A sweet beer! Imagine that…

It was my only one though, as it was $12 for the half liter I was enjoying, and the food was really expensive as well. I was content to sip from my mug and soak up the atmosphere of cute Japanese girls wearing tight German Oktoberfest clothing walking around along with other crazy crowd paraphernalia like goofy hats, face paint and huge German flags. I was tempted to keep the cup, as you had to pay a deposit on it, but it was really big and I have enough cups at home; some people in our group took some home.

After we all went to a nearby china town; a huge tourist draw as the place itself is massive as well. Lots of it was expensive of course, but we still found a really nice restaurant that had reasonable prices. Ah Chinese food is so good… I miss living in China, with my roommate Chris making fun out of me for playing video games in my underwear all day again and other shenanigans. Ah how things change, I had a PS2 then and now I have a PS3 ^_^ haha. Same underwear. (is he joking?)

After a great night out, we all went our separate ways and I checked into a cheap hotel in a shady area, but it was all-good. For the last day of my trip, Monday, I went to Odaiba; the Tokyo Bay Area. I guess I had been here before for the anime fair with Neal and John as Tokyo Big Site was here, but now I was seeing a different area, and wouldn’t you know it, there happened to be something very special in the air.

The ground was shaking, the heart was beating fast, the sweat glistened off my head under the hot summer sun in Tokyo bay; there 100 meters away was the largest techno party I’ve ever seen. The place might look empty, but trying walking around outside; the sidewalk was choked with people waiting in line to get in.

I’ve heard rumors of this event before coming, but didn’t do any research during my travel-burn-out session. Either way there were wall-to-wall cute girls as I came out of the train station geared out in techno clothing, listening to some intense tunes, and we weren’t even in the concert grounds. The line to get in was huge, and (unfortunately?) I was on a ticking clock…

While my longing eyes and happy ears paid attention to the huge concert, I got myself to quickly check out the tourist attractions I was there for originally. Here you could see the rainbow bridge, a miniature statue of liberty, amazing architecture and other cool stuff again; there was even a model doing a photo shoot down by the water, but I’ve seen more attractive girls, namely my date later with Shiho.

This is when I start to wonder where to draw the line between my public and private life; this was my first date in over a year and a gentlemen doesn’t kiss and tell, even if it’s been years since I’ve done even that. So you’ll get the bare bones knowing we had an amazing evening of eating sushi, playing video games at an arcade, and talking over coffee. I ended up speaking Japanese for almost 4 hours with my limited ability, so I was really tired after, but happy with my accomplishment.

And now here I am, back at work. It was 15 degrees in my house last night as I finished up that last blog with numb fingers. I’m going to try and use my bike today to get kerosene so I can at least heat my house a bit and now I’m caught up and dipping back into my studies. I’m grounded this weekend with work on Saturday, so no new crazy travel plans for a while; I really need to figure out what I’m going to do for my Christmas break…

"Time is not a line, but a series of new points." -Taisen Deshimaru

tnoy

Opportune Okinawa Odyssey Part 2: School Trip

My second year students (grade 11) from Tatsuno went to Okinawa from Sept 30 to Oct 3. It was because of this I was probably able to get the holidays I was now enjoying; a lot has changed from last year in regards to my job. Anyways, to get to the southern area it was going to be difficult with all the bus transfers and stuff, I was going to be fairly late trying to catch up with my kids because I had that scuba test and stuff in the morning. While I was sitting there waiting for a bus, a taxi driver drove up and started talking to me… in English! Not only that, he haggled with me over the price!

I was quite shocked; this was a first for me in Japan although it’s quite common in the other Asian countries I have been to. Not only that, this ride was twice as long and cost half as much as the one in Tokyo. No wonder so many people want to move this cool part of the world. So with the taxi and spending slightly more than what the bus would have cost, I easily caught up with my kids and sat in on their first destination, a museum set up by the few surviving school girls from the war.

During the war, they were forced to be nurses in underground caves under horrible conditions. As the war turned worse and mainland Japan sacrificed Okinawa as much as it could to postpone a mainland invasion, the girls were ordered to the war’s frontlines. Of course it was a massacre, absolutely horrible. Then they talked about the mass suicides, as surrender wasn’t an option. The lucky few that did survive, wanted to die a fast, much less painful death from bullets so they ran outside the cave to the Americans. There, there were taken as prisoners and survived, a concept practically unheard of to them.

Many more brutal stories and an interesting museum peruse later, I was informed I could join my school for their trip! It was great seeing my students look all shocked when they saw me. Anyways, this was great news, as before I thought I’d have to tag along from the shadows and probably have to spend a lot more doing so. There were 5 buses for the 5 classes of students that came down. We got on the buses and headed to the cornerstone of peace. It’s a huge park-like area, where the names of fallen soldiers, including Americans and the UK, are etched into stone. Class photos were taken and I strolled around the area. I remember my sister Patty saying how she was intended to see the area while she was doing her Asian navy stuff, but even after asking, we couldn’t find any Canadian names there; perhaps she was talking about a different place.

Humbled by the solemn reminder of war and brutal sacrifice again, we headed back to our hotel in Naha where all you could eat buffets awaited, a theme that played out for every meal during the trip. I had a buffet only a handful of times while being in Japan, and how here I was having it for every meal. By the 3rd day or so I was hardly eating at all anymore with all the food I put away. Good times. At night, the teachers met up for mini drink parties, so I passed the time by reading my book at the top floor of the hotel overlooking the city at night, it was really pretty.

How the work parties went, were they were suppose to start at 10. Of course by the time everyone gathered it was 10:30. Then they had a meeting for the next day, which didn’t end until 11. Then we drank and had snacks until 11:30. This happened every night and then next day I would always get a wake up call at 6:15 in the morning. Good thing we could sleep on the bus I guess.

So on Wednesday we started the day at another gravesite. We didn’t stay long because it was raining, but the pile in front of us contained the cremated remains of tens of thousands of unidentifiable bodies. There were many different monuments in this park too, apparently different ones for different prefectures of Japan.

Later we went to a nearby place that had a huge natural cave underneath it maybe a kilometer long, as we sure walked for a long way. It was really cool seeing all the stalactites and pools of water. A couple times small… somethings would fly in front of you and freak you out. I liked the pools of water the most though, they were crystal clear and gave the place a really cool atmosphere; something I’ve never experienced before.

When we finally came up (it was a big walk), we now had to walk the distance back above ground, and there were many different types of shops. The first thing I noticed were those delicious Dragon Fruit we ate in Vietnam. Here, they were 1000% more expensive. In Vietnam maybe 70 cents, and here they were 70 dollars for one. It was great seeing the students’ reactions by the way when I told them I got my hat for 20 yen (about 20 cents) in Vietnam by the way.

Another shop was a glass molding setup. They had the furnace and the equipment, and all kinds of cool stuff. Later on there was a brewery, where they showed how they made the special snake’s venom vodka or whatever it was. Real creepy stuff for sure! Oh and live cultural music and dance near the end. Back on the bus, the tour lady person would usually talk or sing a cultural song for everyone. She said although we were surrounded by beautiful green everywhere (Lots of sugar canes! Those things are cool), she said during the war there was no green at all, just scorched Earth from the gears of war. I was so lucky my caretaker, Uchiyama sensei, was with me to translate.

Afterwards, we all donned helmets and took care moving down very steep stairs into a huge cave used extensively during the war. This place was massive and was used as another makeshift hospital during the war. It was eerie just how dark it was down there. One of our first stops was a deep section in the cave where the heavily injured were taken to die. There they weren’t taken care of or fed, and the tour lady got us to turn off our flashlights and we experienced the pitch black that was experienced by thousands before their end. After the war, they filled up over two large trucks with bones from the cave and took them to the large pile we visited that morning. What a horrible way to go out.

The cave was huge and used for a long time, so there were other stories and explanations, like how this pile of rocks over there was going to be used to make a central command station, but later was used as a bathroom. Or how over a hundred people that couldn’t walk were left for dead during the last few days, and how one person saved 7 of them by bringing them water from this hole; the same hole a body was thrown into when a bomb fell in through an air hole in the roof. Twisted metal was flung and deeply implanted itself into the roof and has since rusted. Part of the cave was scorched too by flames, when the Allies dumped in some oil and lit it on fire trying to get them to come out.

After, we went to see the American Air Base near where I had been scuba diving. There, the tour guide asked me how I felt there was a foreign military base on Japanese soil. Like a politician, I thanked him for asking such a controversial question, but after I realized he wasn’t going to let me off without an answer, I gave the pros and cons of both sides of the argument. Like how good it was for Okinawa’s economy for example. Interesting they would ask me that question; maybe it was because I’m not American.

We weren’t there for long, and we went over to an overlook of the ocean. The rocks dropped off 30 meters into the ocean or so, and got some really memorial scenic photos. We enjoyed the air and the view for a good while, taking in what we could on our tight schedules. It was breath taking. After which we went to the hotel, where I was on a high floor of a fancy place with a huge room to myself with a balcony with an unobstructed view of the ocean, emerald beach (actual name), and a large island in the distance. One of those you-had-to-be-there sort of things, as this picture can only capture a bit of the awesome.

We were staying there two nights and our hotel had a pool. Since we got back so late the beaches were closed; totally unlike Vietnam where they didn’t even have lifeguards, haha. I swam in the pool and it was really nice, even if my students called out to me like every 5 minutes from a different balcony window. The one time though, I did the “dead man’s float” that Dad taught me a long time ago. I could hear the kids screaming “Tony! Tony! Tonyyyy~~~!!!” and screams of ‘Daijobu?!?! Shinda!?!?’ (Is he ok? Is he dead?)

It took my every fiber of my being to keep some relaxed composure; I was trying so hard not to laugh. I’m sure there were some body convulsions and some air must have escaped through my tightly clenched teeth and wide grin a number of times during my stint though. Eventually I couldn’t bear it anymore and bust my gut laughing, their cute voices had multiplied and were really loud now, as lots of them were shouting down at me; never underestimate the cuteness of Japanese girls’ voices.

The next day was slightly more relaxed as we did cultural things like making jewelry or learning to dance. It was all in a village used to make an old sitcom, but has since been converted for this park as it has historical roots in the architecture. Anyways, I ended up making a gel candle with sand decorations and such; it’s really pretty. After which I lost interest in the other stuff so I checked out the nearby natural beach. This altogether was a new experience because it doesn’t see tourists. There were seashells, coral, crawling things, and all sorts of natural splendors I haven’t seen before. I easily spent and hour going around picking up seashells that looked pretty and adding them to a quickly growing collection. I stopped and laughed at my newfound nerdiness: picking up pretty seashells on the beach.

We went to some kinda pineapple processing plant next, but there wasn’t much to see and do other than be ushered into the monstrous shop inside where they had all kinds of goodies from jalapeño spiced pineapple cookies, to a pineapple chocolate fondue fountain, to pineapple wine; you name it. Lots of cute toys too; Japan’s a fun country.

After we went to the Okinawa aquarium, which is one of the largest in the world or something. Either way the place was absolutely massive, and inside was a monster of a water tank, holding monsters for sharks as large as 7 people, stingrays and schools of fish. This room had rows of seats set up too, where you could sit back and take in the show. There was so much and we had so little time as I wanted to see the dolphin show. It ended up not being as good as Nagoya’s, but hey, dolphin show right? It was great being with Uchiyama sensei and teaching her some stuff in return for once, like what root beer is (not alcohol!) and why it’s so good, or getting her to see her first dolphin show; she’s a great friend.

We enjoyed our last night, and Friday morning we got up early for the last time to see the castle in Naha. The place had been completely destroyed in the war, so the portion that had been rebuilt that we saw still smelt like saw dust. It was still cool though to see what a brand new castle would have looked like. After which we said our goodbyes and I checked into a super cheap surfing place or something, where it was $10 a night. Cheapest place I’ve stayed at in Japan thus far. It was ok, but no real mattress to speak of.

After checking my guidebook, I realized the school bus hit most of the large tourist attractions so I had the next couple days to just relax. I checked out a nearby garden museum kind of place, where there was waterfalls, statues, ponds with fish and turtles, rock formations and all kinds of cool stuff if you’re looking for your Zen. Or something. Either way I really liked it. I spent most of the day on the beach that was a quick walk away. It was kind of disappointing though, with the view being concrete all around, even including a large freeway overpass over the water. Since the water was so calm too, lots of seaweed was growing wild. Crystal clear and warm though, it was still relaxing. I think I preferred having the waves crash into me like on Vietnam though.

I went out to a really cool restaurant that where you could pick and choose your shishkabob thing and I had a really great meal coupled with really great beer. One of my pickings turned out to be chicken gizzards! It has been a while; I don’t remember them being that tasty. The swimming and the beer must have made me sleepy though, not to mention how little sleep I got the last couple days.

I ended up riding the monorail around a bit and checked out a nearby Chinese style market. I quickly lost interest though and just wanted to relax for my last day of holiday. I read a whole James Bond book not much else. It was interested to see things from bond’s eyes, and funny again to hear how things keep changing in his world. Like he referenced his training from WW2, and the evil villain had to be stopped because he made computer-training programs to make super precise thefts and stuff. Laughable at best, but still entertaining; I guess that’s why this one hasn’t been turned to a movie yet, that and “the reds” were a big background enemy along with other stuff I haven’t heard of.

Other tidbits: one week later Okinawa had the world’s largest tug of war again, where a one meter thick rope is used by thousands of people. I saw a picture and it’s unbelievable. Also, the TV offerings were really cool, with the airbase broadcasting their own news and commercials. I never realized how bad it was back home until I saw those commercials that were actually good. Things like don’t smoke, here’s how credit card debt works, here’s a website were people are ‘supporting the troops’, here’s to go if you need help raising your kids, gambling help, your rights, and on and on.

Anyways, Sunday I went from sweating on a beach to freezing in my house in Nagano. As my sunburn continues to peel, my fingers are numb typing this; it’s 15 degrees in my house right now. Since I have no car now, getting kerosene to rough out the winter is a ½ hour walk away… with those heavy jerry cans. Haha I’ll figure something out.

"Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something." -Gene Valvano

tnoy