Merry Christmas from Thailand

And a Happy New Year. All the best to you, your family, friends and so on :)
"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses." -Allophones Karr

tnoy

Onsens are good times

It was a pretty good week I think; the whirlwind leading up to the test has died down. We went for large, juicy hamburgers after to celebrate, and on Tuesday I saw Kayo again for our last class of the year; we basically just laid down a roadmap for where I will go from here. Maybe I’ll write the 2nd level test in June, but if I don’t I’m fine with that. When I go to Thailand this Saturday, I’ll have lots of time to sit on a hot beach and make long-term plans and goals for myself to achieve. If you haven’t guessed, this will be my last update for a long while, sometime after January 11th to be precise.

I wanted to go home for the holidays, I really did. I’ve been really homesick lately too. I read recently from my sister how it was -50 back home, and some of my homesickness went away. I recalled why I chose Thailand for the holidays, because I have 3 weeks of it. One or two weeks would have been perfect for a trip back home.

On Wednesday, I went to the handicapped school for a short Christmas lesson, and helped the kids with some farm work. I harvested some spinach, and then helped dig a deep hole for some kind of weird potato. It’s really long and thin, the holes needed to be about half a meter deep (almost 2 feet?) I was given some fresh Spinach for my efforts; I’ll need to make a salad later.

Richard and I treated Kayo that night for a bit of a celebration party. We ate and drank quite a bit in Okaya, and were joined by other friends. On Thursday I was talking to Mervin, and we decided to have a movie night at his place Friday, because we couldn’t go to the Christmas party in Saku; it was too far away for Saturday’s plans. We watched 3 different movies, had pizza and beer, and had a good time.

On Saturday there was a tour of Oshiba; a large park near me that has a large Onsen. (hot springs/ public bath) It was a nice day out, and that night in Komagane I learnt a little how to Salsa dance. Salsa is quite fast, and I’m more out of shape than I remember, a common theme for when I try to do something. I’ve gained more weight than I would have liked recently, but I’ll address that after my holidays; I just won’t look that great for the beach is all.

This week should be relaxing. I have yet to review my word list since the test; I have to do it tonight or risk starting to forget what I worked so hard to remember. It shouldn’t take too long I don’t think. I have new books now, and they’re exciting to go over again; I haven’t decided yet if I’ll take them on holidays with me, but I will be helping Anna with her English when I’m there this time I think, it could be fun.

Because of the test I’m really behind on Christmas presents, but got the good idea of just buying them when I’m in Thailand. It’ll be a change of pace from the last 2 years. My mom got excited, and emailed me a short list of things she would like to see already; I guess the presents I brought back last March went over quite well.

I’m finished teaching at my one school for the year now, but still have classes to teach at Tatsuno. The kids are on school trips, so it’s even more quiet than usual. On Friday we’re having a block meeting, where we will play Taiko again, and go ice-skating. So are the plans anyways.

Well I think I have my bases covered, I can’t wait for Saturday :)

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

tnoy

Tribulations and Attainment

My biggest reason for coming to Japan was to try and learn the language. For some reason it was, and still is, quite fascinating to me: there are no plural words, the orders is completely backwards from English, it uses some Chinese characters without being dominated by them. Most importantly though it’s not tonal like Mandarin, Thai or Korean, but like a puzzle made up of around 40 to 50 different sounds that don't change. (I can't tell you how disappointing it was learning mandarin for 7 years and not being able to say anything in China. Tones and pitches be damned.) Also many good cartoons and video games use this language.

After writing nothing short of a miserable test last year, at a level that is maybe between basic and intermediate, I was quite depressed. I felt defeated in the worst way. Months before, my friend Steve was bugging me about not being fluent yet, and other little things were adding up like my sister Patty assuming I was fluent by now. I mean if you live in a different country for over 2 years, I think that’s logical too, so what was wrong with me? These things weighed on me more than I would like to give credit.

I was hoping to have closer Japanese friends by then; not to mention now. Over a year since moving to Japan and they could have helped me out with this stuff. To some extent I still don’t have that, but I mostly gave up on trying to find some, and hired a tutor in February; conceding to some defeat. I got lots of friends here, don't get me wrong, it's just that they either live in other cities or whatever. My motivation to study was low, as I lost pretty much all reason to carry on. Some of my tutoring sessions was us just chatting, sometimes in Japanese, but I didn’t care because my tutor was my friend now.

I still remember the precise moment when I lost all motivation; when I wrote in my blog how mind boggling it has been for me to study as long and as hard as I have done, but still not know where “I am” in terms of knowing the language, other than getting destroyed on an easy/intermediate test. I stopped caring.

I kept on not caring up until about a month ago. I got an audio book on “accelerated learning” (which I still need to finish) but in the beginning it taught me about “universal learners”; ie people like me who need to see the whole picture before attempting to break it down into little pieces and conquering it that way.

How can you sum up a language in one picture? Recently the English language just hit one million words. Language has so many branches, who really knows what and where and how? People are still learning how to learn all over the place, and debating the best ways to teach. Did I try and bite off too much and now I’m suffering for it?

Not long after this revelation, I found a 1000 word list that was required for people writing the level 3 test. There was a breath of fresh air about that; here was my whole picture. If I could somehow conquer these 1000 words, then I should be ok for the test right?

Around the one-month mark, was when my tutor Kayo introduced a new grammar book for the test. Again; you conquer this book, you conquer the test. If you remember my recent posts, I was quite shocked how much was now falling into my lap that was so basic and essential; but at the same time I’ve never seen or heard it before; now to use this grammar ‘glue’ to put words together right? Grammar, like my engineering mind, is very logical. There are rules; none of that fuzzy and flawed opinion/emotional swagger. If you learn enough tricks through example after example; eventually they’re going to run out of tricks on you right? “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

The grammar learning was slow going, mostly because the words were a mess. I was constantly going back and checking my dictionary, thinking repetition and reading and whatnot would let it naturally seep into my head. It would too, if I had more time. I had tried my “traditional” method of memorizing the words on flash cards like I’ve done in the past, but I’ve grown so tired of how slow and full of review it is, that not much progress was made.

Richard was taking the same test as I, and we started coming in to see Kayo for extra sessions. I wrote a copy of the exam that I wrote last year as practice, and was disheartened that I actually did worse. This was incredibly dispiriting yet again; it looks like I did a good job of guessing last year when I failed.

I was finding that the more I was learning, the harder the test became. Now I wasn’t going for “this sounds better”, and thinking about my answers logically with stuff that was so new. New tricks popped up all the time, and more baffling questions sprung up constantly. I’m lucky I could get most of them cleared with my tutor, as there is so much gray area you can’t find in a book of rules.

I canceled tutoring English on Thursday so I could study. I couldn’t do it after class Wednesday as I was exhausted from teaching all day and staying up late studying the night before. I put in many late nights at some family restaurants, enjoying the drink bar and hurting my head for hours, and progress was still incredibly slow. (you get drinks, and the place is warm unlike my house)

“Work smarter, not harder” is amazing advice. How does one work smarter though? “Don’t confuse motion with progress”. Some people are busy all day, but get nothing done. I remember when my grades started to decline in Elementary school because I was more concerned with figuring out why I was so doing so much better at learning than most of the other kids: ‘what am I learning? Why? How?’ would continue to distract me for years.

In university I learnt about how memory works, tricks you can use, and many kinds of things like that: ‘get lots of sleep, use association’ and so on. Then here I was on Thursday, feeling like my wheels were spinning no matter how many hours studying and headaches I got. I even got out of a class to study more, and stayed at the restaurant until 11. Atleast I learnt how to better moderate and control my headaches from cramming for hours: more liquids, less coffee and less pressure were my Advil.

I got home late Thursday feeling hopeless still. I wrote, corrected, translated, and re-worked 2 day-long practice tests already, but still things looked grim. An hour of relaxing later, my headache was manageable and I went to bed at midnight. I don’t know what prompted it, despite how tired and worn out I was, but I picked up that huge word list and went over it again.

On each page of the second book, I knew maybe 10% of the words; another upsetting statistic. I then started to memorize that first page. A number of times my nagging thoughts told me to stop, or slow down because I was doing too much and will forget everything in the morning anyways. I didn’t care, and didn’t sleep until I memorized that whole first page; maybe 50 words. It took me almost an hour.

When I woke up in the morning (now Friday), the first thing I did before getting out of my warm bed, was go over the words again. To my surprise, I remembered them all. I got really excited by this. I was lucky I only had a morning class this day, as I spent the next 7 hours straight memorizing word after word, until it was time to drive to Okaya to have a 2 hour session with Kayo and Richard again. Many times while memorizing, I had a feeling it was futile doing so much. Who could possibly remember this much random stuff being thrown your way?

By the time I got to class I was exhausted and completely out of it, but we studied for 2 hours, then Richard and I went to a restaurant to study until late that night again. Grammar was half the test and I needed to go over it, but I wanted to defeat this pile of words in front of me, and I managed to do just that.

That one day, I manage to memorize over 400 words, and now I can say I know over 1000 Japanese words. Normally, it would have taken me a month or more if I had been diligent, and it would have taken more time. It’s nice being able to put a number to what I know. When I woke up Saturday, I spent and hour and a half going over the pile I had memorized the day before with surprising accuracy. What took me 12 hours Friday, took me 90 minutes Saturday. I studied the whole time in my bed, while I could see my breath because my room was so cold. I switched my hand that was holding the paper a couple times because it would go numb from being exposed.

I went to Okaya again for my last 2 hours session before the test, and Richard and I studied until 11 that night; way too late. Now that I had my puzzle pieces for my ‘complete picture’ together, learning grammar was much, much easier without having to jump to my dictionary constantly, and finding the words I had just learnt peppered all over past tests and sample questions did nothing but reinforce that which I just memorized. I did my 3^rd, and last, practice test now, and I did really badly. It was so frustrating, and I was so tired, and now that it was so late I found questions I didn’t have time to get answers for.

In our last hour, I did one big compilation of everything I had learnt. I put grammar points on one page and categorized how to conjugate them. I added maybe 20 words found in tests to my collection for memorization later. I poured over old practice questions not so much to get a feel for them, but to figure out the “why” behind their logic rules, and recognize the tricks that started repeating.

I had done all that I could, and now the most important thing was left: getting some much needed sleep for the test Sunday.

I got home past midnight and to my delight I had forgotten to turn off my electric blanket. This meant my bed was warm and I hopped right into it. I only got about 6 hours of sleep, as much as I could, and I got in my car and drove in the fog to pick up Richard and Michelle to go to Matsumoto for the test.

I had a dull headache still from my trials over the last couple days, and I was still wearing the same clothes from Saturday; not having time to change. I offered to drive up Sorin too, but he wanted to go separate and ended up going to the wrong place. The poor guy ended up being late, and wasn’t allowed to write the test.

I parked at Neal’s, and went over my vocabulary list again while he gave us tea. This time I cleared it in maybe 45 minutes. The first part of the test was vocab/writing, so I would review grammar later. In contrast to last year, the room was really hot; I mean I was practically sweating which didn’t help my dull headache. Last year I froze.

The first part of the test went all right, but so-so. My slew of memorization helped me finish on time, but barely. Again, the more I learnt the harder the test seemed to get; for example I’d come across a word, but recognizing it wasn’t the problem anymore, the problem was which definition was I expected to use for it.

The second part was the listening, and maybe I got 50% on that one, maybe not even that much. I really didn’t study for the listening part at all, and it was confusing; but atleast I didn’t feel like my brain exploded like it did last year. These two parts together are worth what the 3^rd part of the test was: the grammar/reading section. (100, 100, and 200 marks respectively)

During the lunch break I didn’t mingle with anyone, and I went over my notes and examples again and again. I tried to be calm, I tried to be positive, and when the last part started, I lit it up.

Question after question I recognized the tricks right away, and threw in answer after answer. There were a couple I had to think a little about, but after 30 minutes I had 40 out of the 50 questions filled in. I double-checked the time a couple times to make sure there wasn’t a mistake; there was no way I could be going through this so fast; I had over 30 minutes left to write.

The last part did take longer though: the reading section. I had to read a couple pages written in Japanese and answer a few, heavily scored questions. I took my time, and read the whole thing. I can’t tell you how beautiful it was. I wanted to run into the hallway and dance. I wanted to throw the test in the air and cheer, but I suppressed it all, and enjoyed some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read, perhaps on par with the feeling of discovering you can ride a bike all by yourself for the first time, and I answered the questions with ease.

Time was up, and I was ecstatic. I was still restraining my joy, and to my surprise everything got watery; I was so happy, I almost started crying.

I can not tell you how happy I was. I can not properly express a sliver of the joy that I experienced. Writing this now, I want to cry all over again. I went from wanting to hang myself last year, to breathing some of the easiest, most elated breaths of fresh air in my life. I did not realize how much stress, how much pressure, how much depression, and how much complete utter failure and defeat I had been carrying around with me for so long, and how much it weighed on me, until I felt it spread its wings, and disperse along with that morning’s fog, leaving nothing but warm sunshine on my soul.

After years of doubt, defeat and pain; I had in one stroke, truly validated that I really can accomplish absolutely anything that I want.

Anthony

Kyoto, Nara, and Giving Thanks

I’m a bit embarrassed I didn’t update at all last week, but I guess that can be explained within. It started off as a 3-day weekend. The fall colours were starting to peak in Kyoto, and I promised Noriko a long time ago I’d come see them with her. The bus trip down took around 5 hours.

She had to work that day, so I could walk around and do whatever. I got surprisingly lost trying to figure out where I was, mostly because the bus stop is so far south from the “city center” that after around 5 different maps I poured over I still couldn’t figure out where I was. A cool story though; after I got off the highway I asked at a gas center how to find the train station. A dude there just drove me. I was pleasantly surprised, that was awfully nice.

Kyoto is a city in high demand to say the least, but I wasn’t in much of an exploration mood so I ate some food and relaxed at the station while people watching. It seemed fairly crowded, but I guess when I saw the tourist office’s signs I shouldn’t have been surprised; all hotels in the city were booked up. Personally I think that’s pretty impressive.

When Noriko was done work, we went out for supper together; eating exalted kansai okonomiyaki (a little like Japanese pancakes using meat and other fun stuff. Super tasty.) Earlier I had famous takoyaki (octopus balls) and was quite surprised seeing a white foreigner inside cooking the balls, maybe a first for me in Japan. I think it would be a cool job; those things are my favourite food here! Imagine having that at your fingertips all day… drool…

After supper we watched a movie, and since it was the last show of night (around 9 o’clock) it was practically half price. That made it still $12 but hey, and movies are fun right? We made our way back to her place after, where I visited with her family until past 1 in the morning. It’s a really nice place, and they were so hospitable! I’m so happy to get a nice Japanese experience like that, as I didn’t really have a home-stay family like many of the teachers I know here.

I didn’t want to see anything in particular in Kyoto, so we decided to see something new that was nearby: we had Kobe which is maybe famous for something, and there was also Nara; Japan’s first true capital city before Kyoto. It’s famous for that and its deer that it lets free roam the many beautiful parks full of colour and life. We spent a good part of the day walking around seeing the different deer, feeding them, and visiting temples. Not to mention some of the amazing photos I was able to take; what a wonderful trip. (pictured: maybe the best photo I've ever taken)

One temple had a huge Buddha, and in one of the pillars is a small hole that you crawl through for good luck. I would never fit, but there were many kids having fun, and some girls trying their best to pop out the other end. I bought a “knowledge” temple charm for Noriko, and she got me a “pass the test” charm as my big test is next week already… December 6^th. Le Panic.

After, Neal gave me a recommendation for a Kobe steak restaurant. This is supposedly the most famous beef in the world, so I should try it right? The dude there though had a thing or two to say about this fabled meat though; mostly how they import their beef and then give it the name, as if you go to that metropolis you won’t see cattle anywhere. Nah, the stuff he had for me was much better than Kobe steak, and it came from Kyushu; the southern island. (pictured: maybe the biggest temple I've seen yet; look how small the people are!)

It was interesting when he pulled out his collection of money from around the world. I recognized some of the bills, but many of them were a big mystery, along with the languages they were written in. The ones I did know, like from Canada, would all attest to the fact that yes, this is the best steak in the world. I knew I was in for a treat, even if it hurt the wallet dearly; a 150gram steak was $70, a 200g=$90, 250=$110 and so on up to 400g I think. I sprung for the 200g one, while Noriko got an expensive Japanese style hamburger that was amazing.

When that steak came to me, I didn’t know what to expect, and I’m no steak connoisseur, so forgive me if I can’t find the words to give that piece of heaven justice. Each piece that you put in your mouth was rich and full of flavour, while so tender you could almost chew it with your tongue; a method I recommend. I cut many small pieces so that I could savor it more. It was so, so good. While an expensive treat, it’s good enough to try again another time. This is coming from someone that doesn’t necessarily like steaks normally.

The dude was really nice too, giving me free alcohol that ‘complimented’ the beef as well. It was some Japanese sho-chu, and it was powerful stuff. Even after I was done eating he kept pouring me glasses, but I didn’t want to be drunk when I met up with Noriko’s folks again later. We watched another movie that night, and after the movie I felt perfectly fine, except I would have odd, sporadic moments of being really dizzy. I was worried at first, but it must have been that crazy alcohol.

Although I had a 3-day weekend, Noriko only had that Sunday that we spent in Nara. In the morning after another amazing Japanese breakfast from her family, I needed to get going, as the afternoon bus was sold out weeks in advance; it’s good I bought tickets so early to come down.

Getting home took about 4 hours this time, and surprisingly I spent most of it asleep again, as much as I would have liked to study instead. When I got home I think I was productive but I hardly remember. I was busy all day Tuesday so I couldn’t write this blog, and for Wednesday and Thursday, that was the big annual “Mid Year Conference” meeting that is mandatory for us on the JET program. It of course was a big waste of time again, but it was nice seeing some people and catching up with them again.

At night we tried to have as much fun as we could before the fun police came around telling us to go to bed at 10:30 again. Of course it was insulting and terrible, but at least it wasn’t as bad as last year. Maybe the only good thing I can say about this whole thing.

Then it was Friday, and I took it easy at home. I took it so easy, that I played video games until 4 in the morning. That was fun, and Saturday I spent over 3 hours on the phone talking with people back home that I haven’t talked to in many months, so that was nice. I hurried and bought some groceries to make cakes, as today was my last class with one of my 3^rd year classes already, so we had a bit of a Christmas Party.

I needed it early too because a huge thanksgiving party had been arranged. I don’t think I’ll ever say no to roast turkey, stuffing and gravy, and my contribution to it all was some Marshmallow Cheese Cake recipe that I found on the Internet. I put it together with some help from Neal, Michelle and Shima, and it turned out nothing less than amazing. I was particularly pleased with the design we put on it; raspberry and blueberry sauce very easily mixed in; it looked so beautiful!

I stuffed myself in a way I haven’t done since I was in Canada last maybe, as I knew I had to stop more from the physical pain of my stomach pushing against my ribs. To top it off, we had something of a silent auction too. I got some teams together to bid on things like a South African meal by Neal and Carin, but we lost out when another team bid $180. Then during a live auction, Neal and I bid up to $140 to go on a fishing trip; again we lost out.

We did however win a fabulous southern meal by Ike. He is our local superstar chef, and we got it at the great price of $10 each; Neal, Richard and I. I look forward to that quite a bit :) That night we went to Gram house, my first time in over a year, and had a great time with drinks that were too strong, and relaxing music that was still nice to dance to.

On Sunday I studied for 2 hours with Richard and Kayo, then we went out for an Indian Curry buffet for $10. What a steal! I have been there before during my first year; I’m just kicking myself I don’t go more to that wonderful little place. My test is next Sunday, and the panic is setting in. Tonight alone I studied a number of hours, and I wrote a practice test. Just the first part anyways, the “vocabulary/writing” part… and I got 75%!!!! I might be ok………… I’m holding my breath, and I’ll try my damnest this week...

"Success is the sum of small efforts - repeated day in and day out." -Robert Collier

tnoy

All aboard the tour boat

There is no excuse for this being late, other than I was up past 1 in the morning the last 2 nights playing video games; and now I have a big headache. Ah well.

I had Wednesday and Thursday night off for once, which was a nice little break that was too easily squandered. I’ve spent a lot of time just trying to read sentences and learn their words/patterns in Japanese all week. I have vague memories of learning to read in Elementary using similar approaches and I think that turned out pretty well. You see how the language fits together and the context of the sentence helps in figuring out, learning and memorizing the new words that pop up. (eyebrows are still growing back...)

Just by reading a kid’s book it’s interesting how much I’ve picked up and learnt from that. The sentences are simple and repeat a lot. The only downside would be the useless vocabulary that comes up, like the Japanese equivalent “hide and seek” and other words that were peppered over one book in particular.

On Friday I think I had a quiet night at home again. Dougal called me at 8 to invite me over for tacos, which would have been great if he didn’t live an hour away, it was raining heavily and was quite late already. I was hoping to go on a hike in the morning, but it was still raining so I played games instead. That night a group of us went to the world beer restaurant again, but I didn’t join them in going to the second pub and went home early.

On Sunday we joined the guide club’s tour around the famous Kozenji temple in Komagane. It really is a beautiful and peaceful place, made even more fantastic by the 3/5/7 festival occurring. As I’ve written before, those are the ages celebrated by boys and girls as traditionally once they’ve reached that age their chances of surviving increase dramatically. Now it’s just a nice festival with cute little kids wearing very formal clothes and visiting the temple.

We went on a couple walks, enjoying the beautiful weather and fall colours. We had an amazing lunch and later visited a beer factory. I only bought a beer and some wine, as being inside the large warehouse that reeked of hard liquor; I got the unmistakable urge to drink some red wine. It really is good stuff and supposedly healthy for you. There were so many people there and it was great to catch up with some; like Neal, who I haven’t seen in almost a month, but time was fleeting as it always is.

Next week I’ll post late again, but this time because it’s a long weekend and I’ll be in Kyoto visiting Noriko again.

"Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness." -Chinese Proverb

tnoy

Life’s Dawdles

I’m not a fan of posting my own “random thoughts” section at the end of my posts; I shouldn’t be advertising my problems, even if that’s what makes me human. It wasn’t the best week, but that’s how we figure life out maybe.

On the surface, I had a good week again with good friends, good food and good talks. Tuesday was a day off, but I went to Okaya anyways for a Japanese lesson, then later stayed for good pizza. On Wednesday I taught a busy, but fun class about travel to my adult students, then Thursday again I tutored. It’s going better I guess, I’m not so good with kids yet, but I’m figuring stuff out and trying to be effective at the same time. Afterwards there usually is an amazing meal cooked for me, so it’s not a bad job at all.

On Friday I got together with some of the teachers in the area, then again on Saturday night. This time though I met some new people I haven’t seen before. Neal’s words of wisdom rang true again when they turned out to be douche bags because “You know when someone’s been in Japan too long, when they don’t look at or talk to other foreigners.” If that wasn’t bad enough, they were double douche bags because you’d swear they just started high school they were so immature, but not so young as the I overheard the one talking about his wife and kid. This turned my stomach quite a bit, but at least I have no regrets about having not met them earlier.

I did however get to see Dean again after about a year; he’s a cool guy from Winnipeg. That’s about it for last week; finishing on a high note.

"When I grip the wheel too tight, I find I lose control." -Steve Rapson

tnoy

Don’t Fear the Reaper

I did something for the first time: I shaved off my eyebrows. I did this of course, to top of my awesome Halloween outfit. How I looked though without any hair other than eyelashes was maybe even scarier than my costume. It had some serial killer appeal to it, and today while they are still growing back, I’m getting interesting comments haha.

I borrowed a dark curtain from one school, managed to find some crappy make-up “pen” at a store, and I wore a black dress shirt backwards to complement and already all-black outfit. It think it was a good success. I first dressed up on Thursday for Tatsuno, but my career of actively trying to scare kids was short lived. At lunch I made a little growl and a quick step towards a couple girls. They collapsed, and the fear in their eyes disturbed me a bit. Her eyes dilated behind the tears while her legs were weakly slowly kicking her further back into the wall while she just didn’t know what to do with her arms. 5 minutes later she was still on the floor.

I felt so bad, so I didn’t really do “bad” things like that after. I gave her candy and apologized. My exploits were more limited after that; like busting open the classroom door and growling as I hurried in. Or my favourite at Yayoi the next day: knocking on a window and starting at a student while she was in her locker. She saw me, and then took off screaming down the hallway to get her friend. I was in class and started laughing; the kids liked it too.

Since I was passively scaring people, later I stood around the corner in the English room, so once you entered the room you got a face full of my scary face. I think the ‘warning’ circulated along with the rumor I was giving out candy, as some students would slowly poke their head around the corner, say “trick or treat” and get out just as fast once they secured some loot. My mom is such a sweat heart, she sent me something like 5kg of chocolate from back home that I couldn’t possibly eat, so I let other people indulge in such delights for the first time; like those lovely peanut butter cups.

I was still dressed up Friday for when Dougal, Ashley and Neal came down. They needed a place to stay for the night as they had “debate contest” all weekend in Neal’s old school. We had lovely Chinese food with many of my Wednesday adult students, and after we played “Settlers of Catan”, and I won again, at my place. Awesome game.

I had to get up early though to pick up Richard and Michelle to meet up with Mervin in Okaya. There we got a tour of a recycling plant, learnt how to play taiko (Japanese drums), got a fabulous free meal at a nice restaurant, and learnt safety things including how the defibrillator pads work; you know those little portable ones that are popping up everywhere because CPR is so unreliable for recitation.

It was a great tour; Mervin is an awesome dude. We met many interesting people from a variety of other countries too, which was fun. Now I can say I’ve played real Taiko, and I have an idea how that heart-shockin’ rockin’ lifesaver works. When it was over, we rushed up to Shiojiri and I put on my costume for a 3^rd and final time. All morning I kept my toque on really low to hide my lack-of-eyebrows.

Japan loves to be cute, and Halloween was no exception. I guess little kids will be cute in whatever costume they wear. I volunteered for the games section, as I wasn’t excited to lose my voice in the haunted house screaming for an hour. My game was a little “pumpkin golf” where the kids used a witch’s broom to putt a ball into a Jack-O-Lantern’s mouth. It was great fun.

A number of times kids would see me, kinda pause for a while not knowing what to think, and sometimes take off in the opposite direction. More than a couple kids would refuse to come to my station and play the golf game even though the parents were pushing them on. It was great fun.

Because of the swine flu scare, my costume was hampered a bit when I needed to wear my mask around kids. It got hot and I sweated off some of the make-up but no love lost. Later I enjoyed some festival food, and was even interviewed briefly by a news crew making its rounds. This was my second TV interview in Japan I guess, the other one was during an anime convention over a year ago. I remember when Jake was here; he said the newspaper were writing stuff up about him almost monthly. He’s missed, but doing well teaching English in Africa.

Heh, well that’s funny. I just spent the last half hour in silent reflections. So much has happened here in Japan. So much has changed. So many amazing people came into my life, and then left just as suddenly. It’s weird how I can’t seem to put anything into words about it, yet I have maybe a thousand pages up on this site, and over 10 thousand photos accumulated on my computer.

Well, after the big Halloween party, Richard and I stayed at Jon’s, and then had breakfast with him and Charity in the morning; another two great people I want to spend more time with. You just take what you can get with this life some days, and make the most of it. When I got home it was raining heavily, and the other 3 wanted to go home so we didn’t have much of a chat. Earlier Neal mentioned how he would like to come visit Regina with me someday; so depending on my reconstructing decision in February (still ‘no’ at this point; for no reason one way or another of course) it may happen in spring or summer. I too would like to see the new RCMP museum; Neal is in love with the show “Due South”.

More random reflections time; something I’ve been forced to do more often than not. This feeling recently all came about with that goal setting/time management thing I do with my friend Sundays. Lately the first question in the homework assignment was simply “why are you alive?” A valid question I often struggle with, and then put off in the back of my head from time to time. How do we discover our own worth? Or a better question, how do we make ourselves worth of our own time? Reading those over now, it doesn’t make much sense to me anymore. Is the question more important than the answer? Ie in how we think?

It was mostly scary when I needed to sit down and make goals. “well that’s easy, in one year I’ll be doing that, in 5 years I’ll be doing this.” But I’ve been setting goals only for the reason of setting goals and not caring one way or the other. I’m having trouble finding goals or a purpose that excites me; I’ve grown too complacent. For some reason I can’t be happy or satisfied with just staying the status quo, knowing that stagnation breeds discomfort and longing for something different; perhaps the reason I’ve been feeling I need to get out of Japan already.

Is that what our species is about? To constantly search for struggle and conflict in an attempt to define our selves? Is that why all great civilizations are doomed to decadence and decline over time? Why do I quickly stop thinking about my personal problems and insecurities and instead direct them on society as a whole using large, vast, complicated questions that can’t be answered the same way you can solve a math question? I guess even higher level math is not about solving anything anymore, but proving what you’re solving actually exists, and why the logic is sound.

Maybe I should just quit everything and get into philosophy.

"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln

tnoy

Happy Halloween!

Nostalgic Pumpkins

That was a busy week; for some reason I’ve managed to schedule something for all my free days. Monday and Thursday I tutor. Tuesday I get tutored. Every second Wednesday I teach an adult English class, and then it’s the weekend, when I went to another English camp. It’s strange to try and make plans to meet with a friend when you’re literally busy every day of the week. Luckily (?) my Thursday class was canceled, and I managed to watch a couple movies among other things. Right now there are over 50 emails sitting in my inbox that I need to get around to answering…

Every night before bed I also study some Japanese, then again when I roll out of bed in the morning. I was actually late for class one day because I was going over some vocabulary… It’s so nice knowing the new grammar and conjugation rules for different types of verbs. Like today I figured out “isoide” worked backwards into its basic dictionary form is “isogu” thanks to the rules. It allows me to properly file it in my brain, and reinforce all the other stuff I’ve learnt prior. Since last week’s list I’ve learnt some new ways to conjugate, using eat as an example again: “Tabetari” (have done things like eaten) “Tabetara” (if you eat) “Tabetayouni” (eat openly/publicly) “Tabenaiyouni” (better to not eat) “Tabeteoku” (eat in advance) “Tabeteshimau” (finished eating)

As a bonus on Thursday it was class match. Usually I get pretty excited about that sort of thing, but I spent the day reading a kids book in the library instead. It took many hours, but I managed to get through the whole thing with some help, and it’s amazing how much reading helps me form and fit new words and thoughts together properly.

I left half way through the day on Friday so I could go to the Halloween themed English camp. I had some time to eat sushi for lunch and grab drinks/food for the night. It’s strange how not having time after work cuts out even things like shopping; I still need to go and buy my Halloween outfit. One of the first things we did at the camp was carve pumpkins. It’s been so long since I’ve done that last, it was rewardingly nostalgic. I wanted to jump in and do it too, but I wanted the kids to get the most of out it; maybe this was the first time any of them got the chance to make a Jack-o-Lantern.

Later we were put to the task of making a scary story or a commercial. All too often I’m used to the students sitting around without ideas, then stealing whatever suggestion I pop out of my overactive imagination. This time I tried to be as hands-off, but still supportive and motivating as I could. While we ended up needed a lot of time, the creativity and quality the kids put forward was amazing. The product they advertised was an “invisibility potion”, and their first idea, among others acted, was to use it and rob a bank. “We’re rich now, and you can be too! Why don’t you buy it today?” Haha it was so cute.

The judges gave them the first place prize the following day after presentations. We had some extra candy and some extra time, so I taught them to play “99” to practice their numbers and determine who would get the extra loot.

On Friday night we watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas” which I showed my kids at Yayoi a week or so ago. After retiring to our rooms, we had drinks, snacks and great talks for hours. When it got late, we opened up my board game “Settlers of Catan” again, and I claimed my 3^rd victory with that game :) That game is so good. After the presentations Sunday, we played a ‘scavenger hunt’ style game, where you had to find the teacher somewhere at the campgrounds and play their game. I was in charge of a Halloween themed pictionary, and we topped the camp off by wrapping a mummy; one student in each group got covered in two rolls of toilet paper :)

Michelle and I were hoping to have a games night that night, but the rest of the group was tired, and I became quite tired myself later so it was a quiet night at home. Sunday was a lazy/quiet day as well, which turned out to be amazing. I did have to leave the house late at night though when I remembered to buy groceries. I wanted to do a cooking class with my 3^rd year students and it turned out quite well; we made banana pancakes today.

Since this was my first time doing such a thing, we kept the recipe really easy, and we were still pressed for time to eat and clean in the same 50-minute period. One group of boys maybe didn’t read it too closely because it was all in English, and added salt twice, once was in the absence of sugar. It was hilarious watching them eat from the same plate like hungry animals and complaining how salty it was, while the other groups had their own plates, sat on chairs, had tea, ate gracefully and so on. Regardless it was a great success, and I look forward to doing it again.

Well that’s my week; I had a number of reflections as well. I remember before I left Canada many of the restaurants started to look the same; with their onion soup, chicken wings, pasta, pizza and whatever. I’m starting to feel the same way in Japan with the ramen, sushi, curry-rice, ‘hamburger’ (meat on a plate) and so on. Maybe I’m about ready to move on. October is almost finished already, another 1/3^rd of a year gone. 1/3 of a year later I’ll have to decide again to stay a 4^th or not. It’s hard to believe that number got so high already. For no particular reason of course, just a gut reaction to move on.

Which is maybe my problem, not setting up something long term and concrete for myself. I know I have millions of choices and options, and perhaps having that available to me makes it hard to pick one thing I’m interested in and want to move towards. I just need to take what I’ve learnt here about having the time of my life and apply it to where ever I may end up; yet another thing to consider. I was thinking maybe Vancouver eventually but I don’t know yet. It would be great to live somewhere in Canada that doesn’t have 5 months of winter a year…

Which brings up my next, very difficult decision. While half reading that kids book, I spent the day Thursday looking for plane tickets to Canada. If I could leave earlier, I could get tickets for $700. I was quite shocked how cheap that was, and I wonder why I paid so much the last time I went. Alas it would be quite hard to leave ½ way through December and I like to save my holidays in case I need it for a bigger trip later. Because of the holidays I managed to secure almost 3 weeks off, from Dec 19 to Jan 11, using only 5 of my 20 days off a year.

Regina is so hard to vacation at for more that a couple weeks, as my sister Patty can attest to. The first week or so is great, but after that people go to work and other things we keep busy with, and you’re left to watching movies or whatever; trying to keep warm in the sub-zero surroundings. I’m not much of a shopper either. I still wanted to go though, so I looked into other options like maybe spending a week of those 3 in Ontario or something. Alas it was still complicated and expensive, so I just got the (surprisingly cheap and not complicated) $500 tickets to Thailand again.

I could have paid twice that to go to the Philippines, but I’m rather jaded by travel at the moment still. It does take a lot of time, and coincidentally money, and I’ve checked off most of what I want to see and do in Asia; much like my career path I don’t really care where I go and what I do now, and Europe with be its own, separate adventure next. I was talking with my buddy Mervin about my dilemma, and he said just go have fun and relax.

Somehow I made things more complicated than it should be and forgot about the simplest option to me; I don’t always need to have a game plan. I have friends there, doing things is cheap, and I don’t have to deal with winter in any way, shape or form. I still have great memories of that beautiful beach Richard and I stayed on for 3 short days, of which we hardly got to enjoy because of all the running around and being busy.

It’s a shame; I really wanted to be home this year for mom’s roast chicken among other things. The high price, the long/cold winter, and my really long holiday had me thinking otherwise though. I’m glad I at least visited home once this year now. I still need to get some presents together and send them home.

The longer I stay here, the more of the “holiday spirit” I seem to lose. Christmas is not this huge holiday for me anymore; I still remember my first year here when I was working the actual day of; it was depressing. Although KFC’s Colonel Sanders is already dressed up as Santa (it’s not even Halloween yet!) Christmas gets a big pass here like other holidays.

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong." -Bertrand Russell

tnoy

Old and Smoky Cabins

My Japanese classes have moved to Tuesday nights and the test is fast approaching. My tutor Kayo laid out a book of the basic grammar that was to be covered, and I stumbled on all the basic, first grammar points; it was my first time seeing them. There are millions of ways to conjugate verbs here; it seems a majority of the grammar is in doing that. Frightened, I found the motivation to study every day since then.

I’m trying to read kids books too, but the problem I’m constantly running into is the odd vocabulary. Being a kid’s book, you’d think they would be useful words and stuff, and maybe they are, but it seems to be impossible to find a dictionary that will tell me what it’s saying. This also presents my next big problem: good luck finding a dictionary that will explain the grammar point being tacked onto the end of the verb.

At the risk of boring you, I’ll give a very basic run-down of what I mean with different ways to conjugate “eat” off the top of my head:

Taberu, tabeta, tabenai, tabenakatta (coliqual eat, ate, didn’t eat, haven’t eaten) Tabemasu, tabemashita, Tabemasen, Tabemasen deshita (same as above, but polite) Tabemashoka (shall I eat) Tabemasho (eat together) Tabetemiru (try to eat) Tabetai (want to eat) Tabekata (how to eat) Tabenagara (while I eat) Tabehajimeru (begin to eat) Tabedasu (same) Tabeowaru (finish eating) Tabetakotogaaru (have eaten) Tabetagateiru (someone wants to eat) Tabenaide (don’t eat) Tabete (please eat) Tabenakereba (should eat) Tabenakucha (same but less polite) Tabenakya (same) Tabechatta (unfortunately ate) Tabetekara (since eating) Taberumade (until I eat) Tabetsuzukeru (continue eating) Tabeyasui (easy to eat) Tabenikui (hard to eat)

There is obviously many more ways to do this, and many different verbs conjugate in different ways, but that’s enough. In retrospect maybe this makes the language easier to speak? Regardless, I need to write an old exam already so I can be assessed and study from there, but here I am writing up my blog at 9 at night after another really busy day…

Studied and worked and did stuff during the week. Friday, for some reason I don’t remember, I got the idea to have a board game party; and I invited people over to Mervin’s house in Okaya to play it. There we drank, ate and were merry for many hours, and I finally got to play the game that I’ve owned for over 2 years but haven’t played yet: “Settlers of Catan.” What an amazing game. There were 7 people and only 4 could play because I didn’t get the expansion, but that was ok as we made teams. Richard and I ended up taking the gold home, which was great, and then crashed at Mervin’s as I surprised myself how many cans I emptied.

We got off to a late start Saturday, but Richard and I headed down south to a camping ground in Edo style houses. It was way off in the mountains, and I recognized them right away as the sort of place my mom and I saw when going through an “old house museum” in Tokyo.

It mostly looks like a common house in my opinion, other than being really big, have really cool wooden doors that open all along the outside of the house, a big dirt floor entrance, and a huge pit/area right in the middle to build a fire. Everything was alright, but easily the most flawed thing was ventilation; the smoke had nowhere to go. So we had an entire night in a house billowing with smoke; my blankets still stink even after leaving them outside for a day to air out.

Naturally we had doors open just so we could breath, which effectively let out (some) of the smoke and (all) of the heat the house may have had. Ah another adventure of sleeping in my winter coat with my toque on, but oh well. It was a fun night, but after Friday’s binge, I was less than inclined to drink again. It was surprising how hard it was to get into the party mood with all the stuff going on, but oh well.

The house had many charming touches, like an old wooden bathtub, these funny containers that looked like coffins in a room, an old fashioned adjustable hook thing to hold the pot over the fire in the middle, a variety of old stoves and other fun stuff.

If we had shown up on time, we would be able to join the hike, but luckily we missed out because it ended up raining all day. We played more games while we waited in our cabin. It started getting dark and we were worried the group got stranded on the mountain out in the rain somewhere so we went looking for them. They set up camp in the wrong cabin, of which we were later kicked out of regardless of the raging fire and half-cooked stew inside. But ya, another night of eating, drinking and merry making.

Sunday was beautiful, but busy again. Got back, discussed lesson plans with Nakayama; the guy heading the English class I teach Wednesdays now, and various other things as it happens. I really need to get a day planner to start keeping my crazy lifestyle in order. I can always check back thanks to these entries, but what I have planned tomorrow is often cycling in my head to be sure it isn’t forgotten. Hours were spent writing emails again, and now I’ll end so I can get some cleaning done and get some sleep; I’m so bushed. Man I need to study too…

"I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand" -Confucius

tnoy

Tony’s First Open Campus

Late again, but it was a long weekend and Tuesday (like Thursday) is always a busy and therefore sometimes unpleasant day at work. I wish I didn’t have to teach 3 classes in a row in the morning, my whole day suffers then; but I digress.

Speaking of Thursday we had a ‘big’ typhoon hit Japan. It was storming a bit when I went to bed, and it rained a bit in the morning when I got up. That was the extent of it, and the aftermath was a really beautiful day. School was cancelled because the trains were shut down, and I “can’t drive” drive to school, yet I was still expected to be at school somehow to sit at my desk and do nothing. Unfortunately it’s a common double standard to foreign teachers; one hotly and openly complained about as it should be.

I had my first class for adults on Wednesday, and they seemed to really enjoy it. It’s exciting to teach to adults that are motivated to learn. My one student and friend invited me out for food and drinks Friday with some of their friends, so that was fun as well. It seems I’m meeting new people all the time, but it’s still unfortunate if I tend to forget some that I meet along the way. It’s not so uncommon now when someone will recognize me right away, then I feel like a dumbass for not having a clue. Just one more thing to work on I suppose; I am getting better all the time.

So Friday came, and my friend Mervin invited me to Fuji Q theme park with some cute friends of his, but I caught wind of an open campus in Tokyo. For some reason I don’t have much love for Tokyo anymore; it’s a combination of the prices and rushed atmosphere maybe, I don’t know. It was alright though; I bought a bus ticket in the morning and headed out there. I have been good friends with a girl there for a year now, but oddly enough we haven’t met yet. Because of my short notice that tradition would continue, but I considered myself to be on a hit job; get in and get out.

The day started off great, having played over 3 hours of video games on the bus, but quickly turned sour. I walked around for hours trying to find this place. This might be an area of Tokyo suited for big conferences maybe, as there were literally 7 different sky scrapers with similar names getting me confused where to go. Many times I considered just going home out of frustration, but it was good I found it.

I stayed over 4 hours and had many talks with many representatives. The common theme was they were surprised to find someone like me at a convention in Japan of all places, and as such usually have more information on hand. So I got many emails since being back about programs offered and what not, but the one place that stood out the most for me was Surrey University’s Postgraduate study course on planetary exploration, space robotics, propulsion systems and so on. It blew my mind reading about it; I think it would be super cool to do.

But there’s a cost of course. My one-year doing that would probably cost more than my 5 years of university in Canada. Apparently there are other universities in Europe where tuition is paid for by the government. I’d love to see Europe, and see myself in a “seeing Asia” phase at the moment. Speaking of which I’m looking into options for my Christmas vacation. To go home would be around $1200. The Philippines, $1000, and for some reason Thailand was still a really cheap $600. I don’t know if I should go there again though, I just got back. I got some time to decide though.

Well anyways that was interesting, then after I met up with Fumi and Sakurako from Neal’s and my beach trip a couple weeks back. When asked where I wanted to eat, I stressed a “crazy restaurant” because you always here about them. We went to this place called “Lockup” in Shinjuku, and it was fun! You ate in this small booth build like a jail cell after being escorted by a sexy lady wearing a “naught police” branded hat, and were treated to spectacles every hour like inmates doing a prison break and such. Good times. The drinks were really creative too, as you can see mine with a syringe.

After we went for karaoke until almost 3 in the morning. A perfect thing to do is to drive around Tokyo at night. The traffic is gone and the city feels a lot smaller. Sakurako drove and I don’t think I’ll ever complain about parking again after seeing her bill. She paid almost $50 to park for 5 hours.

On Sunday after regretfully finding out the huge Gundam model in Odaiba had been taken down, I took a bus to Matsumoto to see Neal and others for a big soba festival at the castle. The bus ride was even longer due to the traffic, but I had games again. I got there, saw friends, talked to people, ate soba, then actually had a relaxing night at Neal’s as we watched a movie and slept early after 2 busy nights of drinking each.

It was great catching up with Neal again; it’s a bit tougher now that he’s living further away. He suggested I stay another year. If not, then work in London where the pay is amazing, the holidays are long, and the flights around Europe are cheaper than a bus to Tokyo.

I’m not that motivated by money though, and think people who want “millions and millions” of dollars are shallow. I still remember a certain relative of mine that told me how he couldn’t imagine a life trying to scrape by on less than 500 thousand dollars a year minimum. Who’d have thought it would be tough to find something that you want that get you excited; this is why they tell you to hang on to your childhood dreams. I think either most of mine came true, or I gave up on some others, like building an interstellar space ship and exploring the cosmos.

Monday was a good day too, more time spent at the festival trying different foods and beers. I got home around 6. I know this blog seems rushed now, but I’m tired, want it finished and want to go to bed already. I didn’t even proofread it this time, so it’s probably full of errors. Only 6 weeks left until my test. I feel like I haven’t got much done lately and it’s a crappy feeling. Oh and those pics from last week; I'm not actually naked behind that flag, but I'm glad it looks that way. G’night.

“You always here people say ‘I need to’ or ‘I have to’ or ‘I should’, but what you don’t hear them say is ‘I want to’. Make goals that excite you” –Matt

tnoy