My shoji, let me show you it

Nothing too much again this week… calm before the storm to say the least with BIG things coming up this weekend and so on… updates may not be on Mondays for the next couple weeks as I simply won’t be home, but I’ll see what I can do to feed you adventures in a timely fashion.

Monday I met up with John from Saskatoon. We had Italian food and just visited, it was a nice night out and nice to see other young people walking around town! On Wednesday Jake suggested we take a trip to a local onsen (public bath/spa). It sounded all right, those places are always nice; I just hadn’t been to a local one yet. That hotel in town had one so we went there. It’s kind of up on the hill with a great over-view of the nearby park and other local treats.

So this onsen was a lot different in that there was no real blinds in the way from enjoying the view, I’ve only seen it once before. So when we got out there ready to jump in the giant hot tub, we both paused in wonder at the beautiful scenery. We couldn’t help but be frozen in time appreciating the mountains coming to life with the upcoming spring, the swans swimming around the now non-frozen lake, the little girl in the parking lot looking up at us butt-naked foreigners…

Haha ya that was a shock. Sure she was 70 meters away or so but we still covered up and jumped in the pool. It was yet another wonderful time out at the onsen, soaking up the amazing scenery and relaxing hot water.

Classes wrapped up and things were largely uneventful… Saturday came around and Kubota came over to help me fix my shoji. If you are wondering what shoji is, I’m sure you all have a picture in your mind of those wood and paper sliding windows that are very Japanese. There is a reason why I don’t have many pictures of my house, but I feel that has changed a lot since moving in, as this place needed a lot of love to help it feel like home. Part of what was falling apart was the paper windows. A combination of it raining and being windy while the windows are open, and me having the humidifier on this winter too long causing all the paper to fall off…

Anyways, so K (short for Kubota, he likes the knickname) and I went to the hardware store to buy replacement materials. I guess recently there is a new style of shoji out, one that doesn’t require a lot of glue or mess. I got this newer style and a slightly higher price of course but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The style I got is a picture of a bamboo stalk going up as opposed to… plain white. And the premium price was $10 for 2 windows instead of $5 for 4 windows.

So first step to fixing the shoji was removing the old glue/paper. We got the remnants wet and scraped it off, then took towels to dry the wood. The next step was to roll the paper out and iron it on. Easy as pie right? Well for the later step we had to kick Otaku out of the room as the paper was quite the toy to her, and she put many holes in it. Luckily the finished product is boring to her and she leaves it alone, and my does it looks beautiful! (no holes) I definitely want shoji when I have my own house someday in Canada. I’m not sure if I’ll do the paper look as drinking causes people to poke smiley faces in it; Patricia has a style where instead of paper it’s glass.

So ya it was an interesting half day of renovations. I showed K how Canadians like to do home renovations; with a beer in their hand. Of course since there were four windows to do there were more than one beer that needed drinking… one thing led to another and K ended up appointed doing the steady-handed tasks. Either way I think I prefer the iron much more than glue even though I’ve never tried it :) Glue is generally unpleasant.

I took K out for supper after as a thank-you gesture and taught him ‘useful’ English all day I’d like to think. Things like “that iron has seen better days” and explaining the method to my madness. We got our food; I got 2 main courses and a dessert while K got one course (my biggest expense in Japan must be food…) Unfortunately K wanted to eat in Ina so the driving involved got me rather sleepy and I had to call it an early night… I was in bed by 8:30. Kinda embarrassing, but that’s what a steady stream of beers since 10 or 11 a.m. can do to you.

So, signs of the economy slowing down: layoffs. K got one and it's been a hard time. Another fellow Canadian got the pink slip from his private job so Neal and I went out with him just to hang out, as it may be the last time. Our first stop however was to gram house, where Neal’s students roped him into attending their high school concert. Now I’m not sure how much many of you remember about high school music, but that bar was smoky enough to choke an elephant and loud enough to put a plane crash to shame... they never even tried to tone down the wafting feedback shaking the room.

English, as always, was something of a novelty in the songs as one song quite easily could have been titled “F@CK YOU!” Neal used his power of Japanese translation to tell us how there were 3 other sentences in the song besides the catchy title followed by the one-finger salute; apparently the singer went through a bad break up.

The audience was fun, several of my students made it out to the party as well. A couple of them were in my advanced English class and tried talking to me…in Japanese. I didn’t know a word they were saying and they didn’t say one English word. I can’t help but feel a bit of failure but let’s blame it on their lack of ganbaru (try hard).

We couldn't get out of there soon enough as our ears were bleeding and my throat was collapsing from the smoke having a techno party in my larynx. We went to a nearby Brazilian restaurant where we had proper hamburgers, then again to another restaurant for dessert and just hanging out. It is always hard to say goodbye to a good person so we cherished the time we could spend together and called it late in the night.

Today I had to rush this update but never had much to write about anyways. I heard from John something bad may have happened to Grandpa back home. My heart goes out to you and I hope everything is alright.

"I cannot do all the good that the world needs. But the world needs all the good that I can do." - Jana Stanfied

tnoy

Today’s update brought to you by the letter “x”… rated

Monday and Tuesday passed with little consequence, then Wednesday came and it was time to toast a colleague who was parting ways with us. I hopped on the train and rode it to Ina for ½ hour like I usually do when heading that way; this time was a little different though. I was sitting in my seat spacing out listening to music when some guy went right up to me and asked “Australia?”

I said “no” so he asked “America?” Again I was like “no. Canada”
“Ah” and he walked away.

I was confused but whatever, I think that might be the same strange guy I encountered before and wrote about in one of my first posts. Anyways, I started spacing out again and later he comes back and again it takes me a while to even notice him even though he’s standing right in front of me. He asked another weird question that I can’t remember at the moment and left in the same manner previously. Again 5 minutes or so later he returns but this time “What is your full name?”

Before I was weirded out, but now he was full on creepy. It’s hard to describe his demeanor but ya, it’s pretty darn hard to get under my skin and he was carving away…
Me: “Anthony”
Him: “Anthony”
I tried not to say more, hoping that would suffice like the previous questions. After a couple seconds of him giving me creepy stares I caved.
Me: “Schoenroth”
Him” “Shhee… Sheppard”
Me: “No, Shane-roth”
Him: “Sheppard”
Me: “Shane”
Him: “Shane”
Me: “Roth”
Him: “Roth”
Me: “Schoenroth”
Him: “Sheppard”
Me: “y… yea…” and he left.

Luckily my stop came up before he had another question to test my limits. I quickly joined 9 of my English-speaking colleagues at a nearby restaurant. I got there and found out that Komatsu-sensei, one of my favourites, was being transferred. He only found out Monday and I only found out 2 minutes before I was asked to give him a toast. It was a little awkward but maybe I did alright. I made sure to get a picture with him and a group picture before the night was out, I’m going to miss him as we taught the most advanced class together.

And so the party went on for a couple hours. I finally had a chance to share some of that Cider from B.C. that I brought; I think it was well received. Again I impressed people with my eating and drinking skills. Unfortunately there was no after party but maybe that was for the best as the last train home was at 11 and I grabbed the second last one. I was still feeling pretty good when I got home so I didn’t get to bed until around 3:30 in the morning.

Thursday saw another going away party, this time for Tatsuno. Before the party Junko came over to play with Otaku for a bit, I was surprised to find out that even at her construction/accounting workplace she had to wear a uniform not unlike what students wear for high school. It looked great, sure, but I can’t help but feel like Canada is too casual now. Otaku has a lot more energy when people come over to visit, I wonder if that means I’m boring. :)

But anyways the colleague, Kawai-sensei, was being transferred to Kiso, an hour commute each way. Again I gave a toast and again shared some cider. This time however I hardly talked with anyone, as it was predominately Japanese so I mostly ate and drank in silence in the corner. When you’re tired it’s MUCH harder to give a different language a try as it really is taxing on the brain. I was in bed earlier I think, maybe 1 a.m.

Friday was White Day/pi day. The day men give chocolates back to the women they got chocolates from and give out extras to love interests. So if you read my valentines post I didn’t spend a lot of money for that day, I gave some out to the nice Librarian Inoue-sensei and my Caretaker Uchiyama-sensei in my office. When I say “caretaker” it means they are in charge of practically babysitting me on the side while they still have their English teacher duties to do. (in case that needed to be clarified)

Anyways, I had been invited to my caretakers to enjoy a meal with her family but it was cancelled unfortunately because her daughter got sick again; I guess she has asthma too. Too bad I can’t tell them more about how I got over my asthma other than “it just went away, haven’t used a puffer in over a decade”. I guess Neal had a White Day party that I forgot about on the account of thinking I was busy already and couldn’t go, but either way I was stupid and didn’t go to bed until 4:30 a.m, which leads to Saturday’s adventure.

In case you are wondering about the title, let me just say it now and get it out of the way. Penis. Down in Nagoya there was a rather large Penis Festival, where men and women, young and old, came out to… rub large wooden penises and smooth marble balls while praying for… good luck maybe. Fertility? Since it’s a spring festival maybe it has to do with praying for good crops.

So anyways, since I was tired I chose to be DD. Besides, I already had my fill of alcohol for a while and any more at this point would make me dead to the world. 5 of us piled into a car and drove down south for a couple hours. The price of the road trip split 5 ways with gas and tolls included was cheaper than a 1-way 1-person train ticket there, and maybe 5 hours faster. Anyways we got there and were treated to many different penis paraphilia. There were all kinds of differently elaborately decorated bananas coated in many different types of chocolates and coatings. There were good luck scribes with penis pictures as people made their… wishes maybe. There were shrines with penises as big as me carved beautifully in rich wood, smoothed down over the years by the countless hands coming to rub it down. There was a bell above the temple as with all shrines, but this one was shaped as… well you can probably guess it was a penis.

Needless to say the inside jokes on this road trip were rather perverse in nature so you don’t need to hear them, the biggest one though was everyone would purposely break out laughing whenever anyone said “penis” and “come” in the same sentence; at the person’s expense of course, would you have it any other way?

Some poor sap: “When will the penis parade come already?”
Everyone else: “Bwahahahahaha!”

Maturity at its finest.

I will try to stop saying dirty words so much and use some of the cleverer words/slang I overheard at this fine event (I did say this post was X rated, you’ve been warned). So we got good spots waiting for the parade to come by as the lineups to see the ‘meat-trains’ were too long and crazy to brave, especially when they would be following a predetermined path right away. While waiting we were treated to interesting encounters with many different types of people, half being other JETs from our camp (as with any Japanese festival, many foreigners were around).

The one encounter was an old man who I thought was just being friendly, giving out beer and sake like he worked for the companies. Patricia got drunk off her tree and before she knew it and she was in the thick of the ‘male-muscle’ action, must to the appreciation of hundreds of cameras in every direction. He would always say “kanpai!” (cheers!) and toast each of the girls and totally ignored many of the men in the group a couple times, which led to some awkward cups in the air waiting to be clinked by a cup that had already turned it’s back on them. Later on he got bolder with his cheers, ‘clinking’ his cup on every ‘chest pillow’ in his reach. Tiffany in our group called him a “sukebe” and he laughed admirably. (sukebe = dirty old man. There are SO many ways to say dirty/perverted in Japanese) Oh and earlier Rachel had people get close to her and take pictures of nothing but close-ups of her ‘sweater huggers’. (I learnt lots of slang this weekend, even Japanese!)

This was one of slowest parades I’ve ever been to. It was maybe 100 meters long, but took over an hour to pass. The first person in the parade would give you salt to purify your hand for the upcoming ‘knob polishing’. Next was a man carrying a banner that someone spent WAY too much time painting considering the level of detail, I wonder if they painted off a model or from memory… Next there were many beautiful girls carrying ‘wood carvings’ about a meter long and letting everyone in the crowd rub its head; even children who could hardly reach it. They were also carrying boxes and carts people used to ride on for reasons unknown to me, needless to say they weren’t grabbing as much attention as my drunken friends being edged on into provocative poses with the passing ‘frankfurters’.

Later on there was more free sake, 2 carts in the parade in fact giving it out, rather impressive considering how small the parade was. The men carrying the large chairs on their backs were wearing shoulder pads or something to make them look all beefy and strong, with the heat you could tell it was taking its toll. (It felt like summer, so beautiful) And finally the main event slowly marched down. A ‘pink piledriver’ easily bigger than my whole body wearing a decorative hat was escorted by many burly men. They would stop regularly and spin it in circles while chanting. It was a rather impressive carving into what once had to have been a tree trunk.

After the main attraction, there was another sake cart, more rubbing, and one other large ‘beef bayonet’ being carried on the strong shoulders of proud men. This one however was pointed up, and they took turns putting it on its side so the crowd on both sides could experience happy hands. After the parade passed we followed the masses as ‘the wild bologna pony’ was slowly inserted back into its shrine but to the wild appreciation of the gawking onlookers, who provided appropriate sound effects to better immortalize this momentous occasion.

Feeling spent, we gathered our drunken comrades and took a rather long train ride across town to visit the outback steak house. On the way to the train there was an older fellow selling woodcarvings of you know what. He had a lot of creative artistic skill though; I’ll give him that. After supper we went home and I went to bed much earlier this time (2 a.m.) The pictures of this festival are in their own folder: 08MarchNagoyaPenis. You can get more information about that festival here: Link

Sunday we got up early and were treated to a tour of the Kamiina-gun area (kinda like a ‘county’, Tatsuno and Ina are here). Patricia teaches an English class and the last couple weeks have been helping them become tour guides for this event, it was really nice as everyone practically had their own personal tour guide.

Through the course of the day, as seems to happen fairly often, (especially with Neal advertising it) it came out that I am Otaku. I usually am kinda happy when it comes up as everyone gets a hearty chuckle and the conversation easily switches to cool things like video games. That day it was a little different.

One of our guides would ask me “have you been here before?” and I would say no, not even knowing where I was (beautiful places though). She would laugh and talk in Japanese to me, the only word I can understand is Otaku. Later on the exact same thing happened while we were at a farm that looked like every other farm I had seen so far; apparently this one was famous. Jake later told me “She’s saying that you really must be Otaku because you have never been here before.”

I don’t know why but I found it somewhat offensive that this girl thought I was a shut-in when I’ve probably seen more things than she has. It’s all fun and games until someone is laughing in your face in a language you don’t understand completely at your expense. Luckily Jake explained to her and helped clean up some of the ignorance.

But that aside, the tour was really cool. We saw a large shrine that was made out of a single tree, I got to ring one of those large bells that sound so beautiful and I learnt many new things. I even got my fortune finally! Mediocre luck and a message saying something about how if I don’t care what my neighbors think of my happiness then I will find true happiness.

Later on we were treated to the most expensive restaurant in Ina. The hostesses wore full kimonos and we ate in a very beautiful Japanese style room with bamboo growing outside the windows and new tatami mats on the floor. We were treated to a story of how in old days, ninjas would hide under tatami and when you stepped in the wrong place they would stab you through the tatami. Ninjas are so sneaky.

Well that’s about it. I am enjoying the BEAUTIFUL weather here; t-shirts and open windows. It still gets cold at night but oh well; it’s nice enough during the day. I finally posted some more youtube videos if you’re interested, again check out the pictures! :)

"Before you borrow money from a friend, decide which you need more." -Anonymous

tnoy

Skirts and Blizzards

Deep sleep, elaborate dreams, mystic visions of superpowers and fantasy worlds… oh how nice it is. It tells me that my kitty let me sleep for a span longer than 3 hours this time and if for nothing else, I know I don’t have a sleeping disorder. Chris (my buddy back home) once told me I woke up suddenly, looked confused, then said “man I can’t tell if I’m sleeping or playing video games” before quickly falling back asleep (he was playing Doom 3; spooky having this real-life zombie nearby).

But as all good things seem to end before their time, the buzzer went off and it was time to roll out of bed into that cold room. I quickly looked out the window (as may be habit for some people) and freeze; pun intended. The world is once again covered in white and relentlessly being bombarded with large soft while projectiles slowly descending to the ground. Well that was a bummer on the day, the only thing that perked me up was the possibility it might be a “snow day” and I would get to stay home :) (Pictured: Students braving the cold with their bare legs)

Alas no, off to work I went today; braving the weather. It looks beautiful, sure, more beautiful than any snowfall I’ve seen back home. I made sure to take pictures as just yesterday there were scarce hints that it had even been cold lately, save for that path of ice by my front door because it’s mostly in the shade and I can’t be bothered to clean it away; heck the floor mats for my car are still on the ground where they were last July. haha I’m sounding like trailer trash now :)

Anyways in part of my Japanese studying I learnt the kanji for “south” used to mean “the warm side of the house” and after learning that I realized most houses and large windows on every building here faces south. I can only assume because it will help a bit with keeping warm in the winter, as the sun will always be in the southern side of the sky. I also discovered a vent on my kitchen door that was open all winter (it’s not windy here so it’s hard to tell when there is no draft; also who puts a slide vent on a door?!?)

So yes, the business-as-usual after graduation continues still. I went in to work Tuesday fully expecting nothing to do, only to find out I had a class 1st period and I was late :S It was ok in the end, we just played the card game 99 and again some students loved it so much they want to turn it into a club activity (something they do for hours everyday; after school and on weekends like their sports). Then later in the day a teacher came in wondering why I didn’t visit him like I always do when there is an upcoming class then told me I had 2 classes in a row right away. Well lightning doesn’t strike twice so I knew something was up; eventually I found out there was a new schedule for me out that everyone had but me :)

Wednesday I was back at Yayoi and saw my new 3rd year OC (oral communication) for the first time; and I even made a syllabus for them! It was fun, 16 girls and 1 boy in this class and they all had to prepare questions for me. They ranged from “what are differences between Canada and Japan” to “do you have a girlfriend?” The rest of the day I spent in intensive Japanese study; I blasted through half a month-long book/course that day then promptly got a nasty headache.

After school Neal and I usually meet up for burgers and beer; as is something I pushed on him to start a “tradition” not unlike my wing nights back home; it’s very therapeutic. Anyways Neal was busy with “last class” parties and I found out about a new sushi train place so I wanted to give it a go. On the way I bumped into some of my new 3rd years and they walked with me. We had a good, light conversation and they were ecstatic to be able to talk with a foreigner, AND mostly in English; I can tell they will try hard in class this year, they kept saying how much fun they were having speaking to me. (Pictured, the train I took to work this morning)

So anyways, they ask, again, if I have a girlfriend then go on to ask with whom I was going to the restaurant with (this question took a couple minutes for them to figure out how to ask). I said I was going alone and after they punched a word into their cell phone/portable translator they told me I was lonely. Shucks kids, you don’t have to play captain obvious here :P I saved face again by saying how Neal was busy… and that I have a cute kitty at home. But ya, eating alone in public is something I always found difficult, prying on my insecurities! The sushi was really tasty though :)

Thursday and Friday passed without many things to write home about, although half the day Friday I ran errands like groceries and laundry instead of sitting at my desk; lamenting how I should be studying but just not wanting to. Ever since my Korea trips I keep an eye out for that Kimchi. It’s so tasty, and a much better alternative than chocolate bars that I’m used to reaching for when I need a quick snack; on that note I found these amazing Oreo chocolate bars here.

Friday night Jake and I ventured south to Ina to hang out with Patricia and her friend at a Jazz bar. The place had a lot of atmosphere, with posters on the walls, a toilet that was a 3-meter hole into the sewer, and a pair of pants plasticized into a lamp near the entrance. There wasn’t much for food, not much for seating past 10 people (yet they have live shows) and not much for drinks for under 600 yen ($6). “Yasui ne!” (cheap eh?) The bartender reassures us. We chuckle nervously… nah he was cool but we only had one drink.

Saturday a local friend was having a concert at Gram House (maybe the only club remotely close to me, still over ½ hour away) and invited us out; it was live reggae and I’m always down with something new. We were treated to a surprise visit from Ben, a prefectural advisor of ours that lives maybe 80-100 km away from us. He shared with us the tale of how he made it down to us in less that 3 hours without using the expensive freeway, we were shocked at his speed and resourcefulness. Reggae is a weird music to me… I have trouble dancing to such a slow tempo. It has lots of character though so that’s cool, I wonder if it’s meant for a lounge though; or maybe I should just stick to my raves and glow sticks.

I have written about Gram House before, (‘only’ 12 bands, etc) and it is a pretty small place. When our group of 8 foreigners showed up we doubled the population in the place (including the DJs and bartenders). We showed up fashionably late too but later on more people came out. We were shocked again as we chatted with a few of the only girls there and found out they were over 30 and married; It’s shocking because they look like they are still in high school. Anyways later in the night they had “Milky Way” come out to the stage and dance. I am not a mean person but I could help but laugh out loud at whatever it was that happened on that stage and I wasn’t alone with the people around me as they felt the same way. It’s hard to describe a cougar dancing half ballet, half like a stripper to reggae music. She wasn’t up there too long and our friend came out and started singing. I think it was good but I’m not a good person to ask as I barely understand Japanese and I barely understand Reggae. We didn’t stay too late, as everyone wanted to get up early to snowboard the next day. On the way out we saw Milky Way sitting in the backroom slouched with her head down... you know the look. I couldn't help but feel bad for the laughing earlier; I wonder if she will re-evaluate her career choices now. (Pictured: Milky Way)

And so ya, as everyone went snowboarding, again, I bet you can guess how the rest of my weekend went (I stayed home; a JET recently compressed some vertebrae on the hills). I discovered cow-tongue onigiri (rice rolls) at the convenience store that night and one of the highlights of Sunday was discovering I bought extras; it was a nice treat as it’s really tasty. I feel apologetic for my lack of exciting stories lately but I’m in a weird position of it being cold out, I have a big trip coming up (when my mom visits), practically nothing going on at school, and the attitude I had to adapt of “study now, party later”. How about some nothing/random stories?

Story 1: We have this newsletter we hand out with different stories in it, my Korean experience losing my skin made the cut. Anyways there was this story from a JET who had to get major surgery from a bike accident in Japan. Apparently she fell and broke her face or something, needing 3 major bones to be re-attached and plated in on her skull. It sounded like there was a bit of a wait for the surgery, of which they gave her no painkillers (they being the hospital/doctors/nurses) and she was never asked how the pain was, she repeated that a couple times. When she begged and pleaded enough, they finally went over to the lock-and-key box to get out some painkillers. It was Ibuprofen, and they didn’t give her much (it is illegal here), even after the surgery when she woke up screaming (apparently common for those waking up after being knocked out).

She begged and pleaded again and after a long time they finally gave her some morphine. She got 1 mg over the course of 8 hours, and the doctor said it was the first time in his 12 years of working he needed to give out a painkiller that strong; remember this doctor just finished screwing plates into this girl’s face. Later on in the story apparently she got an infection from the surgery and instead of getting antibiotics to fight it, they wanted to reverse the surgery or something really crazy… long story short she went back to America (at the request and pleading of her doctor parents) and things are peachy now. She made several references to how Japan is the country of “ganbaru” (try hard). (Pictured: Jake the super villain)

Story 2: My kitty Otaku is big enough now to jump up on counters and knock stuff around; this week alone she broke 4 of my cups but I came close to breaking them too as the overhanging thing above my sink isn’t very intuitive. I’ve been teaching her tricks still like “come here (snap my fingers)”, “shut up (spritz with water)” and “don’t bite (stop playing with her)”. She is still super cute and she finally stopped puking around the house… or at least she is on a couple day streak. She jumps up from her litter box (a booster) to get on the counters and has knocked the whole thing over twice now; not too much fun to clean.

But those are the worst/more interesting stories about her as I don’t know how much you want to hear how she’ll wait for me around corners and pounce me as I walk by, how she will hop on my lap and take a nap or how she snuggles in with me at night to go to sleep. Before I go to bed each night I usually sit in front of my kerosene heater for a bit, warming up for my cold bed and we take turns pouncing and stalking each other on the soft sheets. She gets excited easy and is lots of fun; she is very curious and almost acts like a dog sometimes with all the sniffing everything and waiting-for-me-to-come-home that she does.

Story 3: Because my mom is coming I’ve been trying to get a hold of her to confirm plans. Skype is a great program for calling home, a 45-minute call costing $1. It’s just that the times are so messed up. I stay up way later than I should so that when I call I don’t wake up my sister Melissa but my mom isn’t home from work yet. Then when I wake up in the morning I call first thing and she left FOR work already. On the plus side I talked with Melissa for a while. She misses her “I love you so much hunny bunny” man or something and then got all googly eyed (I could tell, even over the phone). She wasn’t speaking too clearly because I woke her up anyways and I wasn’t listening too clearly as I was so tired from staying up so late. I called my dad a couple times and he was still sleeping too. When I post this blog this Monday night for me, you will be able to read it first thing that same Monday morning.

Well that's enough of that for now. Pictures from February are posted on my photobucket now for those interested. I have a feeling next post will have more content... I'll probably get drunk 3-? times; lots of going away parties.

"Whatever you fear has no power; it is your fear that has the power" -Oprah Winfrey

tnoy

Rocking the world for a quarter century

So I got this pickling spice for Christmas and had a batch of pickled eggs curing in my kitchen; I figured I should try making some of that “deviled eggs” after an email from Patty (my younger sister) gave me the idea. It was my first time but I think it turned out all right; I just pulled a recipe from the Internet like I always do. I was surprised I couldn’t find any dill spice though! I even made an emergency trip to my local grocery store in vain. Patty’s email had many cooking tips such as “preparing deviled egg’s filling in a ziplock bag”. I gave some out to my fellow co-workers at both schools with really good results. Everyone liked them and asked the same questions like “why do you call them deviled?” and “what is inside?” Maybe the funniest outtake was when I gave one to my Kocho (principal) at Ina Yogo school and he was like “oh is there vinegar in this? Ya it’s vinegar… oh it’s strong!” Then ran away :) I don’t know if he spat it out somewhere but it was kind of funny to see me make my boss run like that. Kyoto sensei (vice-principal) ate one at the same time to quite the opposite effect; he loved them.

Hmmm I think I had one class all week, and that class was just handing back final exams then playing games. The marks varied from 94% to 22% so I’m happy some people got good marks atleast; usually my tests are too hard. The rest of the time was spent studying Japanese, avoiding studying Japanese, visiting co-workers, and occasionally some students. Tuesday saw some really ugly weather, sleet snow/ice falling everywhere so I cancelled going to my Japanese lesson. I had to run a load of laundry to get dried though so I went out to brave the ugly weather conditions…

I think I was stopped at a light or something, and then it felt like there was a chunk of ice wedged in front of my tire. After about 10 meters, the car still shook violently, and I soon began to suspect that maybe my axel collapsed and was all bent? What would make the car go all wonky like this? Of course there is no where to pull over in Japan and the Laundromat wasn’t that much further so I pushed onward in the bad weather, shaking car, and lack of steering. Turns out I got a flat tire :( I don’t think I’ve ever got a flat like that before and it was the strangest thing; the tire seemed to just have popped off the rim and I hardly felt a thing; except for the weird after effects.

Well I should be happy I wasn’t going fast or anything dangerous like that, and it was lucky that I had a spare in the trunk; wedged in its hole from the many accidents and dents my predecessor put in the car. I am still just waiting until my car can’t legally be driven anymore which is either sometime this month or in May (I should probably look into that) then it’s off to me paying for it to get recycled (sucks eh?)

Wednesday was fun at my visit school Yayoi, as they had many students from Thailand come visit. After a rather strange introduction ceremony in the Gym where they sang and danced and stuff, they broke up into groups to experience different activities that were planned. I personally partook in Kadou (Japanese flower arrangement ceremony) along with Sadou (Japanese tea drinking ceremony). It’s tricky getting the Japanese names straight… (shodou = calligraphy, kyudo = archery…)

This was my first time doing Kadou and I found it fairly straightforward. You have flowers that you prune to your desired length, and then poke them into a spiked center in the middle of the flower vase; there is no dirt and hardly any mess. So yes, be as creative as you’d like and it usually looks very pretty when you’re finished. Of course I don’t believe much in flowers but I can see how others appreciate it.

Anyways, the English from those Thai students is amazing! They were from an agricultural school (usually means low English in Japan) but were practically fluent I thought; instructions were mostly given to them in English. I got to talk with many of them and many wanted their picture with me. At the end of the ceremonies, everyone would break out cards and started networking! I wonder if I should be making cards to give out too. So now I can potentially have like 30 or more penpals in Thailand, but I’m not sure I have time for that; I’m still having trouble keeping up with friends and family as it is. All of them had their own blog it seemed, and the cards varied from standard and boring to creative and crazy :)

The one student’s card was a picture of him trying to look badass, as there was a “wanted” sign above his picture. If you look in the picture over his shoulder though, it was captured in a bathroom as you could clearly see a toilet in the background. Another card was cut out of construction paper into a “Hello Kitty” shape and the information was writing out by hand. Along with giving cards, some gave out gifts like chocolates, good luck charms, and one student even gave me a rolled up set for calligraphy brushes. It looks very nice… but have no idea when I will use it :) Some students had pockets overflowing with cards and I tried accusing them of having too many boyfriends to much comedic results.

Thursday saw a couple students that were graduating that Saturday come visit me. It was strange like always seeing them out of their uniforms and in normal clothes as you get so used to it. Although the one outfit was even more strange than normal; really baggy jeans, held up by thick black suspenders and a ruffled shirt similar to something you’d see from those paintings of Shakespeare… the color scheme didn’t help much either but who am I to judge clothing? She was still cute

Anyways we got to talking about video games, anime and other fun stuff and I finally went on the internet to pull up an instant translator so that we could talk more. My Aunt Wendy emailed out a nice picture of my siblings and it was my desktop on my computer and proved to be an interesting conversation piece. I was able to explain how my sisters are in the navy and how Melissa’s boyfriend is going to Afghanistan in the military. They kept asking why he was going and I kept trying to explain and gesture with a gun and they were shocked! Also we all look similar apparently ;)

So both students are moving to Tokyo for university and I recently discovered that 40% of Japan’s population lives in the Tokyo metropolis area that includes 30-some towns. I told them to invite me to some of their university parties and the one said that we will have to go to Akihabara one day (geek/Otaku central!)

Friday saw us going on a trip up north to Nagano city for some JET teacher training. I enjoyed the conference again and am still surprised at how useful these sessions are. The second years don’t share that optimism though as they have done very similar things the year previous and have heard most of this stuff before. I got to talking with the one JET a lot and was surprised just how much negativity they were suffering. Whenever they could, they would bash Japan or tell stories about how they start doing little culturally incorrect things all the time (like wearing outdoor shoes inside)… to get revenge or something, I’m not sure. It’s too bad this has to happen, there’s a reason why they are hiring fewer JETs all the time other than budget.

For supper we went out to a Hawaiian restaurant and we all ate proper hamburgers. I got some kind of double patty monster that shocked and appalled some people that I was able to eat it as the grease dripped down my fingers and it was big enough to barely fit in both my hands; other people got things like chiliburgers and avocado burgers. It was great eating a proper hamburger again, but I might have accidentally started a bad reputation as a huge eater as I kept hearing after how surprised everyone was at how much I ate. I personally didn’t think it was too much food, maybe about a normal sized meal back home. Argh, these cultural differences from all sides are just too much some days!

During supper many stories were shared and one was about some kind of 7-storied porn shop in Akihabara. One floor is toys, the next dvds, etc. They went on to talk about all the weird stuff they saw like realistic dolls, jesus porn, and other weird stuff that would be better not to mention here. We wanted to stay late and party with everyone, but the last bus home left at 6:40 and some of us had our school’s graduation the next day.

So Saturday comes and it’s graduation time for many students. Unfortunately both my major schools have it on the same day so I had to pick one or the other; I chose Tatsuno because I’m there more often and I live in town. So I put my suit on and went to the gym for the celebration. Gyms aren’t really heated here, so they had some monstrous kerosene heaters with tiger-torch like flames burning inside them, shooting heat around the place; it didn’t help much though as I was still fairly cold. The ceremony itself was fairly different from ours back home and it started late as we all waited for the mayor to show up.

Although I couldn’t understand the majority of what was said or going on, this is what I pieced together. First, the students are marched in following their homeroom teacher from the past 3 years; we clapped the whole time. We sang what I can assume to be the national anthem, then the school’s song. Then they did roll call, similar to what we would do at the start of a class except much more formal. When your name was called you said “hai” and stood up; I noticed a couple students were missing. After roll call everyone sat down, then the class president went up one by one (5 total) and collected the graduation papers/diploma for their whole class. (I assume the class president handed out those diplomas later)

There were 4 students that got special recognition or something, as they seemed to get some kind of prize. After that, then the speeches began. This was easily the most difficult part to sit through, as again I couldn’t understand what was going on at all; the only part I understood was when they were saying today’s date. After numerous speeches by many people and even a couple students, I think it started to wrap up but things are pretty hazy at this point with all the fidgeting and trying-to-stay-awake that I was doing. I just know I had to get up at the end, rush to the back of the gym and join the other teachers as we clapped for the students as they walked out of the gym single file.

Well that’s pretty much a Japanese graduation. It finished before noon and I helped clean up the gym… so the students could start their club activities. Yes, right after school graduation, on a Saturday, the students still went and did their club activities. And today, Monday, 2 days after graduation, it’s a normal school day like nothing happened.

Different world for sure; graduation day for us was almost a symbol of the start of Summer holidays if I remember right; a vacation that seemed super long because you had no concept of time except vaguely trying to keep track of when Saturday would come because better cartoons would be on that morning… but that’s reaching pretty deep into the memory tanks; I remember when I figured out the clock enough to know around the time John (older brother) would get back from school and we could watch Duck Tails together.

This Saturday was a little extra special in that it was my birthday. I only told a few people, but information like that gets around pretty fast usually. I was given birthday greetings by a number of people and it was very nice; some students even said I looked like a prince in my suit so that was cool. Kubota even gave me a present, some Plum wine that is apparently a popular birthday present in Japan; I’ll have to keep that in mind.

So it was business as usual that afternoon, that night we went to that Fancy hotel in Tatsuno that I heard about for the first time when we traversed the park last weekend. It was really nice and I knew it was going to be a good night when it came time to drawing numbers to determine where you would sit and I picked “1”. (Lucky! Haha, I know I don’t really believe in luck but I’ll still play on it)

There was a table set up for the guests of honor, the homeroom teachers. They were presented flowers, gave speeches and even later in the night were asked to share amusing stories from the last 3 years. My birthday was announced and I was asked to lead the room into our night of drunken debauchery with a “kanpai!” (cheers). I was super nervous for the first time in a long time; probably because no one really wants the room to break into song for them and I had the suspicion it was a trap!

“um uh… mina, kanpai!” (cheers everyone) This got some chuckles and everyone kanpai-ed instead of singing so I was safe… for now :O (*dramatic music*)

So this night was very different in that for the first time I experienced an after party; one of the many stories I heard about before going to Japan but never experienced yet. After time ran out on this nomihodai (all you can drink), we went out to our second party, nijikai. A lot of people went to this one yet and it was a good time. My caretaker, Uchiyama sensei, helped me again to try and learn the names of people I work with and we talked about a number of things like the differences with graduation back home.

Later we went to the third party, sanjikai. There was karaoke at this one in a lounge format like back home and of the 6 songs sang that night I did 3 of them. One of them was a Japanese song too, much to everyone’s delight. I didn’t do very good of course, but I know the song from my favourite anime One Piece; so when things got bad I half closed my eyes and pretended I was (trying) to sing along to it like when I’m at home. This proved rather effective as I aced one of the choruses and everyone cheered loudly :)

The fourth party, yonjikai… the memory starts to get a little fuzzy at this point as we’ve been going hard for the last 6 hours, (I know we walked around a lot trying to find new places) but at the 5th party, gojikai, there were only 6 people left, myself included, and we were at some seedy snack bar I have told you about before. Right away one of our companions fell asleep, I had a large cup of pure sake in front of me, no more English teachers were in our group and there was soft lights and music playing; all those factors aren’t conductive for staying awake.

After we got out of that place I was pretty out of it, and maybe half our group went off to find the 6th party. I got a cab ride back home with some people and was dropped off nice and close to my house. All in all, that was one of the best party nights I’ve been on, also one of those most expensive! Good thing it was my birthday and my Kyoto sensei is such a nice guy; I am really glad I didn’t burn that bridge way back when over holidays and the witch-hunt. (pictured: my Kyoto, cool guy)

On Sunday I could have gone South for another party; someone was roasting a whole pig and needed people to come and help eat it, but I needed to relax and find my feet again so I didn’t go.

Well it was a good time again, but I can’t help but suspect a bit of depression the last week or two; simple things like getting out of bed or making supper has become a lot more difficult. Little factors like lack of sleep and boredom at work probably have a bit to do with it, but let’s not complicate the matter. For now I’ll just blame it on the weather, the Japanese studying (only memorized 85 new words last week), and the inevitable roller coaster that is life. We need to feel down every now and then to better appreciate when we are rolling high.

"A year from now you may wish you had started today" - Karen Lamb

tnoy

Coming up, one restraining order against studying…

Well this week was an instant replay of last week… but I’m sure I ramble enough to make half a story out of it; let’s see if I can make/keep it interesting ☺ Fuaito! (‘fight’ in Japanese; kinda like ‘ganbatte’ for ‘try hard’)

4:38 p.m. Bought new dish soap. It smells like oranges. I can’t wait to get home and wash my pots and pans and have my kitchen smell like oranges.
4:57 p.m. Washed my pots and pans. My kitchen smells like oranges. I stop to breath the aroma in and am reminded of oranges. Must remember to buy oranges…

Ok so that never happened. What, you thought I wash my dishes regularly? :) I haven’t since spring-cleaning last week; there is a pile in my sink. Apparently my predecessor piled her dishes in the bathtub, washing them like once a month… in the tub. Don’t worry; I clean if I know I’m having company over. Speaking of which, I tried out my new vacuum and what a world of difference. Sure it uses bags like the one I broke when I got here, but oh well, it cleaned my rug right away and actually had enough power to scare my kitty this time. (My other one was so weak you felt sorry for it, it’s garbage now)

Otaku was curious like she always is, but then she started freaking out from the vacuum! She would hop off one wall, hop straight to the other one just like you’d see on the Matrix and was all over the place; very impressive aerobics. This of course was amusing so I chased her for a little bit, giving her some exercise. She has got really fat already and I’m not sure what I can do about that… stop feeding her? She already broke into some of my garbage bags and I have found plastic in her stool… maybe she isn’t as bright as I once gave her credit for. So anyways after chasing her around the room for maybe 2 minutes she was exhausted and collapsed in the middle of the floor; party’s over. I guess I know how I can ‘play’ with her the next time she meows loudly for hours at 3 in the morning. She also makes for a great towel when you get out of the shower; big, furry and absorbent ;)

Haha I’m just kidding there, don’t call the humane society or child services or my parole officer. Well, school is super slow now, with no real classes that I know of until April 9th or so. Everyone is taking tests and the school year is winding down; graduation is this Saturday. Even though I have nothing to do I still have to go to school or use my holidays to go home. It’s lame, sure, but maybe it’s a sign. This is a perfect opportunity and a great kick in the butt to back pack all around Japan and taking ferries to the neighboring continents…

Just kidding. I decided to be lame and study. For those that don’t know, my mom is visiting in early April and I know my Japanese is laughable at best. I get some compliments, sure, but I don’t know if I’m even at the kindergarten level.

And so it begins. I’ve been so busy with the parties, travels, teaching, and relaxing during my downtime that 7 months later (an unbelievable length of time still) I am not much better than when I got here. I’m sure I’ve learnt through osmosis and other tidbits but that’s all they are, tidbits. I can get more than a couple chuckles now by throwing out situation-appropriate words (shouganai = can’t be helped/we’re boned) but as for communication it’s a bad scene.

But I’m getting a head of myself; instead of life in general let’s hear what happened! Um… gave a test Friday, made it during my downtime Monday before writing the blog… read a book all day Wednesday… corrected said test… debated the merits of digital signal processing versus the sin (x) / x analog transmitter through applications regarding capacitors as they exist in a vacuum with temperatures reaching 398 Kelvin and surrounded by a magnetic field of alternating strengths plus minus 44.23 Joules…

Oh here’s a treat. Thursday was such a beautiful day that when I went home for an hour to cook lunch or whatever during my flux of downtime, I opened all the windows in my house! Aired it out and even freaked my kitty out when I went home later that day and saw her eyeing me up through the screen. I went up to the screen and opened it, blowing her mind on the whole “there is an impassable wall there” reality in which she lived. It took her over a month to figure out my front door and I swear she camps out there on my shoes waiting for me to come home. One day I was loading my car with laundry to get cleaned, walked back to close the door and saw my kitty was stuck there, with her head wedged between the door and the frame. It was a pretty bad sight, her sitting there motionless, silent and weakly trying to back up into the house which did nothing to get her unstuck. I’m just glad she didn’t break her neck. The wind must have pushed the door closed on her or something; again another reason she might not be too bright…

Well the weekend came and the Komagane boys were up in Ina for Karaoke and food! Matt’s friends were visiting from England and we helped break them in to some Japanese experiences. One of them ordered some Sake, the waiter brought out a shot glass that was 4 times larger than a normal shot glass inside a box. He proceeded to fill the shot glass… until it overflowed. He kept pouring until the overflow filled the box the glass was sitting in. I thought it was strange but apparently it’s really common here, to drink your sake from the glass, and then box it was presented in.

Jake wasn’t feeling well (everyone is sick here! It’s unbelievable, must be that time of year) so he went home while the rest of us went to karaoke and nomihodai (all you can drink) for the next 3 hours. They had this weird machine in the corner where you could put 100 yen in and charge your cell phone for ½ hour. There was also a machine where you put money in and you could get a mini-Mario figurine among other machines where you can get anime action figures. I of course wanted the 1-up mushroom so I tried twice. Both times I got a mini “shy guy” from Super Mario 2 and subsequent Mario Kart games among others. I traded one for one of those question blocks with one of Matt’s friends who really wanted one. Matt’s other friend also tried and got a “shy guy” as well. It’s a scam! Of the 4 pulls we did, 3 were “shy guy”. It sucked because looking in the machine I could see at least two 1-up mushrooms and if I had more change I would have tried again.

Grumbling aside and after discovering it was too big to connect to my cell phone, we went in for some Karaoke! I was all excited for the all you can drink and started sipping on my first drink… Oh man, there was so much sugar in it, it felt like I was going blind from drinking it. Of course this slowed me down a lot and I ended up switching to other drinks, which were still heavily laced with sugar but at least tolerable. We all still had a good time though with the singing and the dancing on the table and sofas…

Oh and in case you didn’t know when you Karaoke in Asian countries you rent out private booths; it’s a pretty slick setup having your own room with a telephone to tell then to bring more drinks :) A funny story there was when I tried to order 4 (yottsu) more of those sugar-blinding drinks and accidentally ordered 8 (yattsu). I suppose I am hard to understand, especially when there is karaoke blasting loudly in the background. On the plus side, it was the first time I ordered something successfully on the phone! Hooray for small victories. Remon chuhai wo yottsu onegaishimasu!

We all crashed at Patricia’s for the night, it was warm enough I didn’t need to fully bundle up to be warm enough to sleep! Something so welcome and forgotten I am sure to point out; I am still sleeping with a blanket on my head at home so that when I wake up half my face isn’t numb. I meant to take the 11:13 train back home but got side-tracked by that nearby foreign shop that sells root beer (only shop I know of) and chicken hotdogs among other treats. The only train line that goes to my town that comes once an hour has a rather large lapse for lunch break and the next train wasn’t coming until 1:03.

So after realizing this 40 minutes later with my hands numb, I went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. The owner, Hiroko, doesn’t make rice vermicelli like I had at Lang’s back home, but she still makes some good dishes; not to mention she speaks fluent English. This is a popular place for the foreigners to hang out at, and you may remember me talking about it when we were there for Brett’s birthday, or her telling us how there was “only 13 bands and 2 DJs playing tonight, so it might not be that good”. Anyways Dean was there, a Canadian that hadn’t seen another foreigner for the first couple months he was here. It must be tough teaching privately… but to each their own; sometimes I wonder if it would be better for me to be forced to be with the locals more.

Which got us to talking about Japanese. He was studying there as he does every week apparently and the study-buddy proposition was formulated. I’m not sure yet if I’ll follow through as Ina is pretty far away to go just to study. At the very least, I got a look at his textbook and decided I wanted one too; before catching my train home I bought a copy at a nearby bookshop for a VERY reasonable price of 2500 yen. ($22?) Yea, remember buying those textbooks at university for $150 each? And then not using them? University really sucked sometimes…

So yes, I am excited to finally advance my education and strive to achieve the goals I laid out before trekking out to this foreign place; my biggest goal coming here was to at least learning enough Japanese to hold my own in a conversation. I was so excited and still oversaturated from house parties that I canceled out on a swanky party (drinking in suits/nice clothes; not to be confused with skanky) and then canceled yet another snowboarding trip for Sunday.

I soon discovered how long it has been since I really studied after I graduated. I vaguely recalled tips like the “study 50 mins, break for 10, rinse repeat” among other ways of grinding the intelligence points for hours. It might not be a bad thing to go to Ina where there would be fewer distractions as before I knew it I was playing with my kitty; or my 10-minute breaks would stretch to ½ hour breaks. Not to mention the lazy sub-conscience always telling me “you can do this when you’re eyes are bleeding from boredom at work for the next month, play video games now!” Hard to argue against that logic…

So Sunday comes by, I look like a hobo again while studying and I get a call from Jake. I guess everyone finished skiing early, as it was super windy and were in town for Ramen. (What the heck, people came to Tatsuno?!?) So I joined them, with mustard still visible on my Jeans from yesterday, BBQ sauce on my bunny hug and stubble all over my face. Ya I’m pretty classy that way but if I had more notice I would have changed my clothes at least, I didn’t want to keep them waiting too long, which is what they were doing when I showed up.

Lunch was good, a big bowl of ramen. John was reflecting on how when he went back to America the biggest thing he missed was those big bowls of ramen, as you couldn’t get them back home. I figured that was interesting, especially since I personally didn’t think they were specifically special; greasy noodles in a broth so packed with salt and carbs it could be its own meal. Oh and their ramen came with a half hard-boiled egg that you put in your bowl and let it finish cooking itself from the heat; similar to some dishes you can get in Korea.

The thing I know I will miss the most are those lovely little onigiris they have here. They are triangular shaped rice balls with seaweed around the outside and whatever you want for filling; I usually go for the tuna if I can, but discovered another one I really like today (Kanji/Chinese characters are hard ok? I don’t know what I buy ½ the time :P) I have actually made a meal of onigiris more than once at home; using tuna mixed with mayo and broth-flavored rice wrapped in those delicious rolls of Korean seaweed that we brought back in bulk… Oh man my moth is watering from the reminiscing, or maybe because it is an hour until lunch for me and I have a Tuna onigiri waiting for my enjoyment on my desk… Oh and another thing is those sushi train places, apparently in England it is 2 pounds ($10) for one little plate and here it is 105 yen ($1), but I digress…

After the food Jake suggested we take a trip to Tatsuno’s park! I have lived here 7 months and haven’t seen it yet so naturally I was eager. We got there and there were a number of things to enjoy: a kid’s playground, pond, museum, baseball diamond, and a great view, as it is fairly elevated above the valley. Jake introduced it as “ok this is the greatest thing that Tatsuno has to offer… so please don’t laugh” haha

We played on the structure for a bit and walked around the pond looking at the beautiful swans being hostile to everything around them, then hurried back to our cars as a breeze is all it takes to make you feel chilly. The rest of the day was half spent in the books… ok that’s a lie, I spent the rest of the day playing video games :( Until 1:30 in the morning actually; made it a little hard getting out of bed this morning.

So that was my uneventful week. I have the sneaking dread that these entries will become less interesting as I get more used to things here and study more; there is only so many things I can say about a house party or things of that nature… maybe part of the reason I canceled going to them the last couple weekends, or maybe the cold has something to do with it. Fresh memories lingering in my head of sleeping on a cold hard floor with 20 other people while my toes go numb and waking up occasionally to the sounds of people running to the bathroom to get sick; trying not to get stepped on. I need to buy a sleeping bag like everyone else already.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world" -Anne Frank

tnoy

Springin' calls for Cleanin'

So Christmas visited the Big T & Otaku household last Wednesday (Big T is my knickname here). Inside were presents and foods and letters and love. (awwww ☺) Not to mention a movie! I put it in and gave it a watch; it was Christmas at my mom’s house. It had all kinds of funny moments like Patty breaking stuff while she walked around with the camera, everyone screaming, then the scene quickly changed to something completely different than the panic and disarray expressed moments ago. Or John trying to say “ichi ni san” (1 2 3 in Japanese) with horrible, abominable pronunciation, then quickly having everyone else quickly gang up on him and try to convince him it was Chinese as the movie faded to black.

First thing I noticed was how people changed. It was very small and subtle of course so it was weird to pick that stuff up in the first place and it makes me reflect on how I’ve changed since coming here. I feel like I can handle crowds a lot easier and have learnt many things about many different cultures, not just Japan’s among other things.

Thursday was Valentines Day. In Japan, the men don’t do anything this day, it is up to the women to give chocolate to the boy(s) they like or to co-workers. The men don’t need to give anything back; that is what “white day” one month later on March 14th is for. (pi π day for all my nerd friends. 3.14 ftw!) On this day the men need to give back chocolates to the ladies that they like in return.

I didn’t get chocolate this Valentines ☹

I did get some chocolate from our librarian on Tuesday I suppose, but the other twist to Valentines is you buy for your co-workers. I’m not going to complain though, they’re good chocolates. They were in a fancy box and wrapping too. I think the biggest reason (read: excuse) for being loveless this year was because everyone was gone. I only saw two other people the whole day (Kubota and another office worker) as the 3rd years don’t have classes anymore (it’s time to study for university entrance exams) and everyone else was off on a ski trip that I couldn’t attend unless I wanted to use my holidays to go. I was rather disappointed… but someone explained to me how it was probably because my insurance probably doesn’t cover it should something happen while I’m on school time at the slopes.

This repeated itself Friday as well as it was a rather long trip. Thurs-Saturday was a period of great sloth for me. I cancelled a trip to Tokyo for certain reasons, cancelled going to anti-valentines party for other reasons, and again cancelled a day on the slopes for many of the reasons explained in the last post. I suppose that doesn’t make for good story telling. Let’s call it hibernating ☺

Here’s something exciting, so Sunday I woke up and noticed how I was starting to look like a hillbilly, it was warm enough in my house to venture from the warm room, and my fill of sloth finally gave me motivation to get stuff done. I spring cleaned and other tasks for 6-8 hours and need not bore you with the details of my dishes, laundry, haircut, mopping, throwing out old stuff, grocery shopping, and other various cleaning tasks.

It’s funny how my attitude has changed since I resigned the contract. I know I’m here for a much longer haul so I am starting to do things differently. For example I bought a decent vacuum cleaner and finally went through my cupboards to throw out old stuff that has been here far longer than I’d like to think. I found food that expired in 2003, then older stuff in 2002. It was instant miso soup (extremely common in Japan, many have it for breakfast), I gave it a try but it didn’t taste very good so I threw it out ☺ I thought that was bad enough until I found stuff that expired in 2001. This is food that has a very long shelf life of at least a year or two as well so there is no telling how old it is.

Oh and I cleaned my fridge while it was bare and then filled it later. There was split juice and all that other fun stuff, like lettuce frozen in my freezer from when I was still putting stuff in there (laugh it up Patty). If I had to guess, we unplugged my fridge back when I had that video game party because of how much juice the oven was sucking and it hadn’t been plugged in since. Since my entire kitchen is in itself a fridge I didn’t notice the fridge wasn’t plugged in, only thought the light burnt out. All the food was ok but the stuff in the freezer went bad.

When my fridge was empty and I was still being a sloth I made some crazy lazy meals. Like my stir-fry that had onion, cream of mushroom soup, hot sauce, chocolate, vinegar, and other stuff I don’t remember right now. It tasted alright; ah the glorious life of a bachelor ☺ That reminds me of the time my dad taught me how to cook a hot dog over an open stove burner… hey I just thought of how to eat those 2 hotdogs left in my fridge, I could skewer them with a chopstick or something.

So ya that’s pretty much everything. Never really had classes, events got canceled, did nothing on the weekend and never had much human interaction; I played with my kitty a lot though ☺ I could tell you random stories and other tidbits but it’d be so scattered and incoherent. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to for you and I to take it easy on the blog for the week.

I will never get used to being surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains. It’s breathtaking every time I see them…

"The best time to plant an oak tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today." -Unknown

tnoy

Those children are demons? Get the peanuts!

Look west. Look faaaaaaar west; past the setting sun, possibly over 1/3 of the planet’s surface. Past that big ocean… that’s me. Sitting up in a school office in the middle of all those mountains. See me? Call my name and I’ll smile and wave; don’t worry about that. Not too many “tonii”s here. Not to mention I have all the key words hammered into my memory from repetition alone if someone looks my way and recognizes me. The most obvious and common reaction is shock! “Oh! Toni desu!” Then giggles and possibly quick walking away as I’m probably on to them at this point and I might *gasp* try to talk with them ;) Some students are up to the challenge; others look around their group and point out whoever has the highest English marks I presume to do the group’s translations.

Me “How’s it going?”
GL (group leader) “ehhh… eh?” group chuckles.
Me “How… are… you?”
GL “ah so ka! I am fine. Thank you. And you?” (everyone knows this one)

Sometimes it gets more interesting, depending on how successful that last transaction was. I may say how the snow is pretty and unfortunately many of the answers I get will be of the “Yes” or “No” variety even when the question doesn’t call for one. It’s like a multiple-choice question with two possible answers and many times both answers are correct.

One time a student was showing me a Christmas card that everyone in the class made
Me “Oh for me? Thank you ☺” yes I speak with smiley faces :D
There is a picture of a Christmas tree in the card “Is this a Christmas tree?” “yes”
Me “Do you have one at home?” Student: “yes”
Me “Did you decorate it?” Student: “yes”

Me “What decorations did you use?” Student: “yes”
Me “No ☺”

Usually there is a crowd that laughs at this point. This scenario has happened so many times and it’s so disappointing. I think I’m having a half conversation but oh well. Then we backtrack for a while to find out which path down the rabbit hole we got separated at. Turns out the student didn’t have a Christmas tree. Conversation over.

ANYWAYS enough of that, it’s too easy to get carried away talking about my students, they are so fun. If they look happy to see me chances are they go to one of my schools so it never hurts to smile and wave. I’m am starting to recognize them more and more though and it’s common for JETs to ask each other “are they yours or mine?” haha. So yes, let’s stop talking about students and now let’s talk about… school! Students play a supporting role in this story, but first a prelude!

February third. Some people call it the first day of spring, some setsubun, others like me don’t know when the first day of spring is. To others… like the Japanese people… it is known as the legendary mamimaki. Oni are trying to invade the houses of good working folk. The kind, every day people of this fine country are in danger! It is up to you to grab beans or peanuts and throw them at the demons. Are you a bad enough dude to throw peanuts at oni? (oni = demons/ogers, mamimaki = bean scattering, setsubun = new season, usually for spring)

Ok so it was February 7th and I was at the handicap school for the 3rd time. The day started off good by sleeping in and waiting an hour for a bus to come to take me to the school. I got there just in time for a tasty lunch but first I needed to be escorted to my room. My caretaker found me as well as some students and one student grabbed me by the arm and started leading me down the hallway. I’ve heard about this before; younger people love climbing on your, grabbing you and taking you places so I wasn’t too bothered. She kept pulling hard even though I was talking to my caretaker, reaching for my goatee and being all excited. Then came the time when my escort and I had to go separate ways. She reached up excitedly, opened her hand, the viciously hand-palmed my eye.

The smack was loud and I winced more in shock than pain. “ow” I confusingly muster. My caretaker got her to apologize and my eye hurt for the next couple hours but ah well, I’m a trooper with a good attitude; no harm done. Good way to start the day eh? After the tasty ramen meal (again after dressing up like for surgery to prepare the food) we got out our oni masks and prepared to ravage classrooms. I guess the onis dress in all red or all blue; I didn’t have red pants so I was a blue oni that day bust most people just used masks without the matching clothes. Before long people were calling me To-Oni! Haha… puns are so much fun… :S

So there I was, in my mask the kids made and running around with the crowd disrupting classes and having them throw peanuts at us. We started off at the elementary rooms and worked our way up. Some onis would pick up other students and carry them off like good little ogres; others would pick up peanuts and throw them back. What we were supposed to do is make growling and other menacing noises while they threw peanuts at us. We would then say “itai” (ouch) for a bit then run away screaming “tasukete!” (help). They would scream “oni soto, fuku uchi!” (demon out, luck in)

We made our rounds and even ended up at the office! There the busy workers halted their on goings, picked up a handy bag of peanuts nearby and pelted us as well ;) I noticed through a window the Kocho (principal) had a business meeting going on as they were both dressed up in suits. I figured we were done here but before I knew it we busted into the meeting! And wouldn’t you know it, the principal and company, in their suits, got up and ran around the room throwing peanuts at us as well.

I’ve never seen anything like it, a couple of suits running around a very professional looking room (leather chairs, paintings, the full meal deal) pelting school children in devil masks with peanuts while calling them demons. (A parent’s dream come true?) It was so cool, and as we left they were on their knees picking up the peanuts! Yes in their suits. Amazing.

It was hard to top that so the rest of the day seemed kind of tame. One teacher ran around with a billboard with a demon picture on it while students would punch and drop kick it (yes, flying kicks at teachers), another student would wrestle non onis. One class had everyone dressed up like that bad guy in the movie scream, in that same room a student was playing piano while peanuts flew from all directions all around her and while she was wearing that mask. I picked up several kids at their request and posed for many pictures.

Why don’t we have something this cool back home? Crazy world…

So after it was all said and done we cleaned up. I guess the next part of the tradition was picking up the peanuts on the floor, shelling them, then eating the exact number that is your age. I read somewhere you only eat the number of mamimaki that you have attended. So for me that would be 1 peanut, but I went with the age one and ate 24. (25 in 2 weeks!) Also you are not allowed to eat over that number or else your nose will start bleeding ☺ So ya I sat there with the students and enjoyed exactly 24 salty peanuts while my bad cholesterol level enjoyed chest pains; good times.

There was this super cute teacher doing the demon stuff with us. I kept and eye out for her a couple times while we were doing our bit but she seemed kinda cold and rather uninterested so I kept to myself. Later in the day when it was time to go though and the students were gone, she came to talk to me and was very pleasant. I had two teachers beside me helping me so that was awkward, plus I had just finished saying goodbye for the day, that and there was a rather large language barrier there. I wanted to say more or at least get her name but instead I had to run to my bus (as I was already ½ hour late) and ended up kicking myself for the rest of the day. It sucks this seems to happen more than not, like that student who’s older sister wanted to be my anime buddy but now I don’t even know which student it was that told me this.

Kicking myself aside, Friday night Neal was hosting a rather large feast at a new Chinese restaurant in Ina. I drove Jake down and we all enjoyed a nice feast of tasty Chinese. We met up with people we hadn’t seen in a while like Junko. At one point Junko and Jake’s friend got a hold of my Japanese mini-dictionary and took turns telling me to kiss them thanks to the naughty section in there ☺. I knew they were joking though and I was still kind hurt from earlier when they called me a liar when I tried saying I was 24. ;) All in good fun.

Saturday Pete from New Zealand was in town along with Charity and Jake and I helped out with the students going to New Zealand. They were surprised to see so many foreigners come out and apparently it was the last class so we all got food to celebrate and stayed rather late just chatting. This causes us to be a little late for going far up North to Iiyama for a snow festival they were having.

The festival and the town were really cool. There were snowmen and sculptures all over town and at the center was where most of the action was. They had 13 exhibits set up and they all looked great, especially considering it was all made from snow. They had a jump for snowboarders to show off tricks, they had carnival for food and games, they had a stage and chairs for contests and they even had a wrestling ring made out of snow! We were late and didn’t see any wrestling but I saw pictures of it later, which explained the large square snow structure in the middle that children were now playing king-of-the-hill on.

So we ate some food and checked out the carnival. Japan has creepy carnies just like back home, not to mention rigged games too but oh well. This one was a standard shoot-corks-knock-over-your-prize game and they had the standard prizes like candy, action figures, Nintendo DS units and games, shirts, porn, whiskey…

Wait, what what what? Ya, like 2 prizes down from a Nintendo Wii they had porn DVDs with rather revealing covers. I look at the DVDs, I look down at the numerous children from ages maybe 4-8 all playing the game. I look back at the porn... and 60 of whiskey. Well, hells yes I’d like to give it a try!

So I put down my 500 yen for 5 shots and line it up. I was nervous at first smelling a scam but wanted to play anyways. “I like how you’re always up for anything Tony” Jake says in the background. I suppose that could mean a fool and his money are soon parted but I’m sure there were good intentions behind it ☺ We all made sure to get pictures of me aiming at the porn, I released the trigger and pow! The cork bounced extremely easily off the lovely lady’s sweet caboose that graced the cover. Ya that’s right, I hit it ☺

Too bad the game was a scam though; you had to knock things over to win them. I hit the promiscuous lady again, hit some candy, hit some money (cash prize) and probably something else but then I was out of shots. All things I hit hardly moved, but I still think it was worth it just for the experience.

After we went to a house party at Jo’s. Before that though we all went for Onsen (public bath/spa) at this absolutely beautiful outdoor location. It was snowing big snowflakes and they slowly fell on us as we sat in the large outdoor hot-tub naked. I still remember the early days of Onsen when I thought it was crazy to get naked in front of strangers and soak but after being here for a while I'd hate to go back; we even got in an in depth discussion on what we would have to do to open one back home. Anyways it was absolutely beautiful. A frozen waterfall nearby, big snowflakes, lanterns lit everywhere, steam rising high in the air while snowflakes fell on your tongue... I never wanted to get out...

But we did eventually and went to the party. I recently discovered I am starting to tire of the house party scene in Japan, where too many people crowd around a small room drinking. Then when we all find floor room to spend the night it gets rather cold lately. I’m sure it’s all in my head; just need a break from it for a bit. I was really tired but I stuck it through and we all had a good time. Since we were in the kitchen lots of props came out and people dressed up. A particularly momentous cos-play involved two ladles and everyone finding different uses for them. They ranged from makeshift bras to earphones to my bulging biceps. You could hear Jo in the background “I use those for eating!” bwahaha

The next day everyone and their mothers went out to ski or snowboard. I went up to Iiyama with the full intention of doing the winter festival then maybe relaxing at home. When I found out about the ski trip I reluctantly decided to just do it and rough it out. Later on though I started flirting with the idea of just catching a train home, even if it took like 3 hours. I could believe how excited I was getting at the idea of just having me time, not to mention time to play my DS.

I recall explaining my “crazy” decision to not hit the slopes with everyone else as “I get 4 months of this at home every year, time to hibernate” to “I get giddy just seeing snow melt. You see that road? Yea, no ice on that bad boy!” Everyday here feels like the first day of spring. Sure every 4th day we seem to get another 10 cm of fresh snow on a daylong snowfall but it always seems to melt right away. Not melt completely but at least it knows to get the hell off my roads when I’m trying to drive ☺ Also Iiyama had some really weird anti-ice measures. Every road had water pipes running through them spraying the roads at all times with fresh water, not unlike the driveway cleaners at Nozawa Onsen. Rather elaborate set up; pretty cool too.

Maybe I’m just fatigued of my crazy lifestyle, maybe I’m glad I got to catch up on some game time or maybe I’m just glad I jumped out of a moving vehicle and did my own thing for a while; it’s hard to say. So yes, the train ticket was $16 to get home and the tube/flat screen I have set up in my house dominated the rest of my long weekend. Neal was busy with his girlfriend who came into town, Jake has a new lady friend, and I … well I was at home with my kitty I guess… she’s cute…

Don’t worry folks I didn’t forget about my cliffhanger. Yes, I signed on for another year in Japan; so get ready for another year of crazy stories and excessive reading at my expense. I felt I have too many goals left incomplete to get out of here and I shy away from failure; doesn’t quite suit me.

"Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture." -Russell Baker

tnoy