Some Words

TOKYO -- In another capital city half-way around the world, murder. Brutal political assassination. While I was sipping a gin-and-tonic with Maki and Yumi, a man shot former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and then blew himself up, killing her and several others.

How is this acceptable to anyone as a means of settling a political dispute? I will never understand what extremists are thinking and feeling. Even if I could empathize with their views, their methods are not acceptable by any moral standard.

There are plenty of problems in the United States. Gun crime, for example. But much of the world is plagued by a sad, violent breed of instability. I can not understand it. I can only write a few words, baffled words, perhaps ignorant words, just words.

So many escalators

Update: Heading out into Shinjuku for the second time today, this time steering clear of Department Store Hell and seeking out a big bookstore before a 7 p.m. meet-up with some friends.

Also seeking: a new topper.

More later.

Tokyo

The bus left Nagoya at 5 p.m. and I have just arrived in Tokyo's Shinjuku, where I'm staying in a hotel which is conveniently located right around the corner from the drop-off point. I may be just calling it a night but there is a small chance I'll be able to meet up briefly with one of the Japanese friends via OSU.

The plan, as usual, is that there is no plan, though I am trying to book different lines of friends on different nights so I have a chance to see everybody. Otherwise when I'm on my own I'll explore with the camera.

I had long planned to get up to Tokyo when I had a few days off but I went back and forth on this particular trip. I booked the hotel and bus here just two days ago after a last minute decision to put the trip back on. I still need to book a way home, but the bus service I wanted to use is full on the day I wanted to return. So some improvisation is due.

For now, enough of What I Would Be Doing If I Were At Home. At the very least I should take a walk around, maybe hit the McDonald's across the street. (At home, you see, the McDonald's is at least a 10-minute bike ride away. This is the life.)

Updates and photos will follow. Just as soon as something happens.

Ho Ho Ho

A lot happened since the last "what I've been doing" post so I'll try to fill in the gap here.

First, it's pretty common for foreigners here to be cast as Santa Clause this time of year, mainly for kids. Last weekend, after a long night of little sleep, I headed off to a friend's English school for kids, slipped undetected into a back room and prepared to don the garb of Old St. Nick.

It was the full outfit, beard and all. Before I went on, they fed me. Not milk and cookies, but close enough. In the room across the hall, an unsuspecting group of kindergarten kids munched on snacks and learned about Christmas.

I was busy checking myself in the tiny make-up mirror every few seconds to put my mind at ease over the beard issue. You see, the beard has straps, and I was doing everything I could to conceal them under the jolly red cap or behind the jolly white whiskers. I am a method-acting Santa, you see, and one little slip up could knock me out of sync with the North Pole.

But all went well. One by one they took a seat on my leg and attempted to communicate with the strange man in the red suit who may or may not have suspiciously smelled exactly like what they all just ate for lunch.

It was easy. A couple hours later I returned for another group, this one larger and somewhat more energetic. I walked away from the scene, in my street clothes, $30 richer. And the kids seemed happy, except for that one girl, who is more than likely still crying.

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What else? We had our end-of-year party on Friday (stage one of my long night), which is not quite like your office Christmas parties back home. Instead of decorating the conference room and awkwardly forcing yourself to socialize for two hours, everyone shows up at a rented conference room at a hotel and awkwardly socializes for two hours. Except it's only awkward at first, and then the drinking starts.

First you drink only with the crew at your table, where you were randomly placed by lottery (I was with the head hanchos, the only ones whose names were attached to seats). Shortly after the drinks start flowing, people start roaming the room, from table to table, offering to refill drinks, be they sake, beer or tea.

This goes along with a key part of dining etiquette in Japan -- you do not pour your own beverage. Instead, an empty glass is a signal to others that you are ready for a re-fill (and usually, maintaining a full glass is the secret to avoiding a never-ending supply of booze, if anyone ever does this). In the party setting, people were so eager to socialize through the glass re-filling process that a full glass was no excuse to turn down an offer. Instead you be polite and take a sip, opening up a centimeter of space for your new friend to fill. It really gets the party moving.

The momentum from the glass re-filling circus carried right through into the trivia game, which began right as people were starting to get tipsy. Even Sam and I were made to play and we were covertly fed answers by Mr. Sato. I escaped the game uttering something in Japanese, but I have no idea what it was.

Japanese work parties are a different cup of tea. They can get wild. People can get quite drunk. Horribly inappropriate things could take place in the fog of booze and detachment from the real place of work. But then on Monday, it's all erased. It's not spoken of. Nothing wild and crazy happened at our work party, though, so I'm afraid I don't have any good stories in this department.

No do I have a good ending for this post, except to say that I'll be appearing again as Santa at Nanaimo's Christmas Eve party. There will be two Santas ... the other a tall, lanky Englishman who may or may not be dressing as Mrs. Claus. Stay tuned for a full report.

Blow the Belt

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times imagines one last debate before Iowa votes. Good stuff.

Reality Land and Dirty Tricks

Dirty trick season is here. The Clinton camp's newest panic-mode effort is a sad strategy to put Barack Obama's admitted teen drug use back into the headlines. Obama wrote about his drug use in his own book, long before he was running for anything. He has talked openly about it on the campaign trail as recently as last week. Rival candidates have not made a fuss about it, as they shouldn't really, because it's highly irrelevant today.

But a Clinton adviser, in an interview with The Washington Post, said his past drug use should be an issue, pushing the story into headlines and making it an issue just before the voting starts in Iowa. Clinton's camp distanced itself from the remarks and the operative later said he shouldn't have made them. But this is classic dirty trickery at work.

What likely happened was that somewhere deep in the Clinton strategy center, probably a tense place right now as Mrs. Inevitable has slipped in the polls, it was decided that they needed a torpedo. But Clinton cannot just stand up and add a paragraph about cocaine to her stump speech. They pick a sacrificial operative to let the issue slip, then distance themselves from the remarks. Then the operative apologizes, and everyone live happily ever after.

But the job is done. Who benefits from this mistake? Obviously the Clinton camp. Most folks will buy the fairy tale that the operative wasn't speaking for the campaign and that no one planned this whole gig.

In Reality Land, this was almost certainly an orchestrated move. A brilliant, sad, well executed move.

Haiku

The apartment, clean
Cold, though, really quite chilly
No insulation

a post

My main room is now host to a sofa-bed. It's basically a thick futon-like mattress on a platform and one side clicks up into three different positions of sofa-ness in addition to the fully flat bed-like setting. At night I lay a futon over the sofa-bed to form my new upgraded sleeping area. This is warmer and more comfortable than the double-stacked tiny futon of yester-week.

So that's good.

The second term of the school year (my first) is winding down, which means final exams, which means nothing for me to do, which means reading books and surfing the net at school, which may lead to more blog posting, but we can't be sure.

I've been spending plenty of time at work in recent days trying to arrange details of my trip to Tokyo. I've already re-arranged things a bit -- instead of going over Christmas, I'm going after, staying in Ise to attend related parties.

I may or may not be appearing twice as Santa. I expect full compensation in the form of snacks and beverage, and if the big white beard plays well maybe I'll just keep it on over winter.

Back to Tokyo -- I'm in talks with friends about staying at their places for a day or two while I'm there. If that doesn't work I am looking into youth hostel options, which sound good except for silly curfew rules (be back at 12 when you're on vacation in Tokyo?).

And at this moment I'm debating whether or not to go off to Nanaimo for a 600 yen dinner. One of the veteran gaijin in Ise, Sean, eats at Nanaimo just about every night for dinner, simply asking the owner (and our friend) Kentaro for something to eat. He gets creative for Sean and everything I've seen looks delicious. Most of these dishes aren't on the menu. I'm not saying I want to eat at Nanaimo every night, but now and then it beats to ritual of heading to the grocery store and cooking in my tiny kitchen. So I'll decide within the hour if I'll get up and head out to Nanaimo or come up with a plan B for dinner. Since I currently have no groceries and would have to bike to the store anyway, there's a good chance I'll just go the extra mile (literally) to Nanaimo.

So then. Time to freshen up. Good day.

Melon Time

Brother Phil pointed out in a comment that my most recent post was from quite a while back and about drinking a lot of beer in one sitting. I realize this may have raised some issues about my state, but rest assured that rumors that I was kidnapped and taken to Kyushuu to work on a melon farm were highly exaggerated. The melon farm was in Sendai.

At any rate, I am alive an well now. And though it appears to be Friday night, it is still a "school night," as we have a day-long seminar for the second-year international course students tomorrow. Sunday will be doubly good as it represents my only weekend day as well as the day my new couch/bed thing will arrive by delivery.

I need to clean up because I'm hosting overnighters tonight, so I must go. Farewell.

Keep eating melons. It keeps people employed!

All one can drink

I shall try not to think too much about the delicious Thanksgiving meals currently being planned by various wings of my family back home. I'll just stay safely wrapped inside my Japan bubble, where the commonly used household cooking devices are not even close to big enough to host a turkey for an afternoon.

Oh, and the pie.

But no -- I must not focus on the pie, in all its wonderful varieties. No, it's just another week in Ise. Tonight I'll be heading down the street to the Ise Brewery for a twice-monthly tradition. For 1,000 yen (less than $10) per person, you get all you can drink on quality beers on tap, some which are made in the house. This is not your normal super-light (and super dry) Japanese beer, which I certainly don't mind. This is quality black beers, brown beers, bitter beers, amber beers. And some wildcards which are best kept in the "sampler" size ... I'm talking about the green tea beer, here, mainly. Not to be trusted.

This place is just a dash away from my house, just before the 100 yen shop and the drug store. Four or five or six of us meet there for the twice-a-month all-you-can-drink festivities, and if we are not satisfied with the night by the 11 p.m. closing time, we usually meander (stumble?) over to my apartment and try not to piss off the mean downstairs neighbor as we push through to 1 a.m. All this on a school night (for most of us). Fortunately this is just a couple times a month at most. But I feel fortunate to live so close to Ise's best source of good quality beer.

Then on Thursday I will teach only two lessons before a three-day-weekend. Nothing special planned at the moment so maybe I'll stay local and aim to save money right after payday instead of right before.

Happy birthday wishes go out to my father, Bryan, back in Oregon. Happy holidays wishes go to all of my friends and family. All I ask in return is that you simply think of me this holiday season. Also, fax me some gravy.

Budgeted In

Even though I had a chance to more than double my buy in, I played it safe -- that is, I didn't play at all. Rather than forking over the 2000 yen buy-in plus transportation plus food and drinks, I stayed home on Saturday, cooking my own dinner, etc., in a end-of-pay-period conservation drive.

Sunday was not much different. I rode around on the bike for a bit, and later went to the grocery store to sustain my higher rate of eating in. We do get paid on Wednesday, though I should increase my eating in even during normal times (it does not take a financial expert to realize that I wouldn't be broke if I worked a little harder on balance).

Anyway, enough of that nonsense ...

We're entering another busy phase at work. We are in the planning stages for a day-long English seminar for our second-year students set for Dec. 1. The hardest part so far has been recruiting other ALTs to come help ... we offer them about $30 for a days work but it's on a Saturday so we've gotten a lot of "maybes" (JETs tend to be very active on their weekends ... I'm not sure where they get their cash).

Meanwhile, one of the members of the English Club is preparing to participate in a regional speech contest after qualifying at the prefectural level. If she wins again she'll go on to the national competition. Starting tomorrow we'll be working with her after school.

Speaking of the English Club, we're suppose to plan a party with Thanksgiving as the theme. Any ideas? Not sure how practical it would be to try to ... you know ... cook a turkey. What else could we do? The floor is open.

Poker Face

The week is fading into weekendery here in Japan, with only a couple more hours of work on the slate. Tonight, Friday, we will be attending a farewell party for two student teachers who have been here for two weeks. Both are Yamasho graduates and both now attend a university in Nagoya. One plans to go on to a career as a teacher. At any rate, it has been fun to have them around. Sam and I had lunch with them last Sunday and strolled around the historic shopping district near the Grand Shrine.

On Saturday night I will join a charity Texas Hold 'Em tournament in Matsusaka. The entrance fee is a little less than $20 and the potential winnings are probably near $100. There will surely be lots of competition so I'm counting on the cards to carry me. Also some bluffing, perhaps. I cannot reveal my strategy in this public forum.

That leads to Sunday which I currently plan to spend doing nothing and spending no money. Even though I didn't buy a $450 camera this month, the bank account seems to have shed yen faster than any previous month in Japan. So until the 21st I'm in conservation mode, which includes a higher frequency of eating in and a lower frequency of going for a drink at Nanaimo.

In about 10 minutes I'll head to my final lesson of the week. Then I somehow kill an hour before I am released into the wild.

A Couch Crisis

I officially need a couch or something.

The situation is this: I have hardly any furniture. In the "main room" you will find a small bookshelf, a large shelf for dishes and other miscellaneous items, a "normal" size table, two "normal" size chairs, and a low table. That's it. No recliner, no couch, nothing to sit in while enjoying, for example, television, or a book or an impromptu nap.

The bedroom isn't much better. It features a twin small bookshelf which actually stores clothes, a tiny bedstand, a tiny ironing board, and two futons, one stacked on the other, representing my bed.

To an extent, this is the Japanese style ... people often sit on the floor, or on thin mats, when having meals together around the low table. Futon mats are your basic bed setup. But go to most Japanese homes today and you'll find couches or recliners.

So I need to do some exploring. Can I afford a couch? Or a maybe a sort-of-couch-that-folds-into-a-futon? And how I can I get it home? Do they deliver? Is that crazy expensive? Will I need to bring a a real life Japanese person along to set up this alleged delivery service? Can I find a good deal at a second-hand store? Where ARE the second-hand stores around here, anyway?

Well, at least I've identified the questions.

Which far-flung country are YOU traveling to?

Many JETs go back home at Christmas. Others travel to exotic or interesting or cheap-to-travel-to Asian countries. Others, of course, stay in Japan and travel domestically.

I flirted with going home for Christmas, which would certainly be nice, but airfare was through the roof when I started looking.

There's a lot of pressure to have exciting plans for the winter holiday, which spans about two weeks. The pressure comes from other JETs or people at school. "Have you made plans for winter break yet?" they'll say knowingly. "You better book now! Flights are filling up!"

Well, even though we JETs get paid fairly decently, I don't have loads of spare cash on hand to just "book now" for some big trip to Thailand or Cambodia or Islamabad. So for the last few weeks I've been deflecting such questions with half-answers fit for the White House press secretary.

"I'm looking into some possible options."

"I may go home, but it's too early to tell."

"This is really up to the American people to decide."

And so on.

Mr. Suzuki, the principal at my school, seemed shocked, in a muted way, when he heard I wasn't going abroad. Since I wasn't going home or to Vietnam or something, he suggested that I head to Japan's Great White North -- Hokkaido.

That sounded fun, but also pretty expensive and also requiring fast action.

I hedged.

"That would be really fun," I offered. "I'd really like to go there."

And I would, no joke, really like to go there. Some day I will. But I managed to put off travel planning so long even Hokkaido is now in the "maybe next year" category.

Then came today, when I chatted with a Tokyo friend about the holiday break. I ended up deciding to go to Tokyo from Dec. 23 until Dec. 26. The plan is to visit various Tokyo friends whenever they have free time.

At least one friend will be available for nearly all of my time there, so that's good to know. Others will likely be available to meet up for an evening or a lunch or a drink.

I'll travel by overnight bus, saving loads since I'm avoiding the bullet train. The hotel is booked via a discount Web site that'll save me about $100 on my three nights. I'll be in Tokyo at Christmas, and back in Ise on New Year's. Ise is a major New Year's magnet, since it's home to the holiest of holy Shinto shrines, the Ise Grand Shrine.

I'll spend New Year's with whatever members of the local crew aren't off on exciting trips which they certainly booked in, roughly, 1992.

And the bunny goes bust

As I settle into my third month in Japan on the JET Program, thousands of other foreigners in Japan are facing eviction from their apartments, searching for new jobs and going day-to-day unsure about from where they might get their next meal.

This is because Nova, Japan's largest English conversation school and the nation's largest employer of foreigners, has gone belly up after months of scandal that highlighted years of shady business practices ... that short-changed students and treated instructors and domestic staffers like, well, bunny crap.

The story is still making headlines. Here's the UK's Independent from the Nov. 5 edition:

In a country teeming with cute cartoon characters, few are cuter or better known than the Nova bunny. The pink mascot stood in the doorways of language schools across Japan, promising a short educational encounter with an exotic foreigner. But now, thousands of teachers and students have found that the bunny bites, hard.

The collapse of Nova, Japan's biggest employer of foreigners, has left 4,000 teachers – including more than 900 from the UK – stranded without work, money and, in some cases, a place to live. "There are people who don't know where their next meal is coming from," said Bob Tench, an official with Nova's union. "It's very distressing."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3129679.ece

Nova started back in the early '80s, when Japan was booming and so too was English. Native speakers of the world's language to come to Japan and make $100 an hour, says this take in the Christian Science Monitor.

But in recent years, the demand for English has been dropping. Wages for foreign teachers have fallen as more candidates put in for positions. (The JET Program, meanwhile, hasn't changed its flat-rate salary since it started more than 20 years ago ... it's still a decent salary but maybe the program is due for a raise?)

When I was doing my "what if I went to Japan and taught English" research on the Web, I found mostly bad reviews for Nova from past and present instructors. Some of the complaints were common to all English conversation schools -- the emphasis is on sales, they only want you for short periods, little chance for promotion, little valuable work experience. But Nova had the worst deal, said the consensus. They sometimes shoved three instructors into one apartment and made them all pay full price. (They also paid the rent directly, deducting from salaries, so when they went bush they also forced their screwed-over teachers to deal with angry landlords.)

In recent months, more and more complaints from students came to the surface, which got more attention in the Japanese media. Nova was signing up students for up to three years in advance for lessons. If students ever decided that they didn't like what they had paid for, Nova wouldn't offer refunds. Japan's high court squashed this practice in the summer and governing bodies imposed limits on Nova's operations. Then as October faded to black the Pink Bunny filed for bankruptcy, closing its doors across Japan and leaving students without refunds and teachers without livelihoods.

In Ise, a couple from England who had been working for Nova got out just in time and found new jobs in the area. They also traded in their Nova apartment for one just as big but for half the price. They're wise; they're lucky. One other local Nova teacher, who had just arrived this summer, left Ise last week to stay with her sister on a U.S. military base near Tokyo. She's also lucky in that she has a place to go but she would like to stay in Japan, and finding a job right now is going to be tough for anyone in the English industry.

Meanwhile, the word is that court-appointed overseers, who fired the corrupt president of the company last week, are trying to line-up a savior for the chain, somebody to re-invest, pay off debts, and give some teachers their jobs back. But it's unclear if any company is willing to scoop up the damaged goods.

And finally, enjoy this video for some backgrounds on the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad company:

Three months then?

Suddenly, and without warning, it became November. We are approaching three months in Japan, which seems like kind of a long time. But since I do expect to stay here for at least two years, and more likely three, and possibly more, it seems like I can still call myself "new."

Routines have been set. Alarm bells ring at the same time every morning. I know which room all my classes are in. I don't second-guess my route to the train station. Life is normal.

I still haven't explored everything. There's so much out there, but not so much with the free time or means of transportation.

But at home thing are normalizing. I recently moved in to the bed room, which for the summer was used only as a storage space for a mess. Since the air conditioner was in the main room, that's where I slept in the Period of Brutal Heat which will sadly return in a year.

But as the temperatures mild-ized I expanded to the bedroom. The mess, naturally, has migrated to the main room, and I'm still waiting for a free day so I can sort through the crap and finally achieve balance.

Meanwhile, this weekend marks the end of speech-contest-season, which was in full swing when we arrived. This has meant almost daily meetings of the English Speaking Society (ESS). That means working past our contractual go-home time for 4:15, usually until 5 or 5:30. It also means occasional treks to speech contests, which are strange affairs indeed. Perhaps some time I'll write about them, but for now, this posts is begging to be submitted.

Good day

Halloween Photos

See the blue and red folks? Tetris blocks. Fantastic costume. Which I'd thought of it.

Yes. It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Fortunately, these guys are not, according to what they told me, afraid of any ghosts.

Perhaps the best in show.

School festival photos

Prep for the school festival. Each home room made one of these poster things and then teachers voted on the best in each grade level.

The preparations are elaborate and the entire school is made over. Homerooms are decorated and special displays and created around the campus.

This is a dark room.

During the opening ceremony. This stuff blasted from some kind of cannon. Didn't see that coming.


During the afternoon on the first day of the festival, food was available at booths outside, though it was pouring down rain. Meanwhile there was a sort of open mic thing in the gym so student musical groups could perform.


This is one of the classroom displays ... some sort of jungle. The third-year kids (seniors) really liked making it so visitors had to crawl through tiny spaces.

During the preparations, some softball club members take a break to practice their swings.

Mormonaryianism

The weekend came and went without the issue of Halloween being settled. Because I likely wont' have a chance to get to a store to buy any materials for a more creative costume, I think I'm leaning toward a repeat of the Mormon Missionary idea.

Before you fret, note that this is a Halloween party which will be dominated by JETs from Mie, so I'm guessing they'll get the joke. They have Mormon missionaries in other countries right? All over the world, roughly? Right?

The outfit: Black slacks, a white dress shirt, a black tie, black shoes.

The accessories: A backpack, a bicycle helmet (never taken off), a name tag (Elder Walter Romney), and a "Book of Mormon."

The beverage: Just juice sanctioned by God himself.

Stay tuned for the results.

God bless you.

Three Elephants and a Pimp

Her name is Rie, and she once dated a member of the Asian Pimps. The relationship has faded, though she talks about it like it was two days ago. "But I lost my boyfriend two years ago," she says, in a tone that suggests she has not yet fully recovered.

Her five-inch-tall stack of photos, held together by a hair scrunchy, features the former boyfriend more prominently than anyone except herself. One photo shows the couple on her birthday. She sighs, as her pair of fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dogs dart around the apartment oblivious to the somber mood. "Two years ago."

We met Rie, a friend of a friend from Ise who had traveled with us to the city, earlier in the day in Nagoya's trendy shopping district. After trudging through the area for an hour or so, I had managed only to buy a CD. Rie had three gigantic shopping bags. We later learned that one of her nicknames is "bag monster." It fit. I wondered how often she goes on such sprees. How can she afford it?

Maybe it's the three jobs. She works at Toyota in a department involving finance. She works at an unnamed location as a designer. She works three nights a week as a hostess, which requires further explanation.

Hostess bars, also known as snack bars, are incredibly popular among the men of Japan. A snack bar features drinks, often karaoke, and most importantly, young attractive women who engage you in conversation and pour your drinks. Of course, you're paying for the company. Normal operations are nothing too shady. It's not part of the sex trade, though the seedier options could probably be found in the same neighborhood. You pay for a nice-looking woman to sit with you and talk with you. The bill runs up, especially if you're like me and require a couple of drinks to actually enjoy the fake, sometimes dull atmosphere.

At any rate, based on how much I paid when I went to a snack bar with some teachers the other week, I imagine Rie makes plenty of spending money from this gig alone. She fits the part. A sometimes model, she's attractive and interesting to talk to. And, she paints.

As we prepared to watch her friend's live show at a tiny bar in another part of Nagoya, Rie told us about the three elephants. She had to paint three elephants, she said, without much more detail except that it was for an art class she takes. At her apartment, we discovered that she had already painted the three elephants, but had to finish up the project and perhaps try it all again. She filled in the white space around the elephants with a border made up of different degrees of gray. The elephants themselves, stacked on top of each other on one sheet of paper, were a variety of colors. The point wasn't to learn how to draw elephants, Rie stressed. The lesson was about color composition.

The mix of colors that made up the elephants seemed to fit for Rie, the hostess, the painter, the model, the former reggae DJ, the dog-owner, the bag-wielder, the designer, the office worker. There was so much going on in her life that it would be hard to image anyone painting her without using just as many colors. It's cliche, yes, but sometimes art mimics life ... even when it's just a lesson about colors.

---

So instead of going to Matsusaka, Sam and Mami and I went to Nagoya, where we met Rie, who inspired the above sketch. She was quite a character so I took a stab and writing her down. Thanks for the comments on Halloween. Any more ideas out there?

Halloween!

It's Saturday and I'm just getting over a cold which began on Tuesday. Its lingering effects are still quite annoying and I'm sure my energy level is nowhere near its usual "medium."

Sam and I, and possibly others, are heading to the nearby city of Matsusaka, which is a little bigger than Ise. Just a little bigger, but enough to draw us out of town in search of new entertainment or shopping.

A huge box of warmer clothes and coats arrived two days ago (thanks Dad and Steph) but I am still in the market for some seasonal clothing. I may not find much in Matsusaka ... I might need a trip to the big city soon for that sort of thing.

Halloween is coming, and there's a big JET costume party on the slate. I have no idea what I'll "be" for the party, but I must decide soon or I'll be "that guy" without a costume. The last time I dressed up for Halloween, during college, I was a "Mormon," complete with a white shirt, a black tie, black slacks, and more importantly, a backpack and a bicycle helmet. Credit goes to older brother Phil for the inspiration.

I could go for a repeat of the Mormon thing, but Kentaro (the owner of Nanaimo) suggested a couple other ideas, including:

-Japanese construction worker. They tend to wear a stereotypical outfit including oddly baggy pants and a vest. I cold add a hardhat and some kind of power-tool and I'd be set for the evening.

-Japanese high school student. This would probably require only borrowing the outer jacket from a Yamasho student. A really easy idea.

I've always wanted to use one of those full-body costumes ... like ... as a bear or something. Not just me in some outfit, but me as a bear. Not sure where you can find bear costumes around here. And the clock is ticking.

Any other ideas out there?

Oh, hello, blog

It's been a while, old blog. The last post was made way back at the end of September, just before Yamasho's two-day school festival was about to begin. I'll try to highlight the ... highlights of first two weeks of October.

First, backtracking a bit, there was Yamasho's Sports Day. Basically it's like an elementary school field day on steroids. All 800 students, in their matching PE uniforms, line up in the athletic field area before the official beginning. The teachers wait under tents along the track, until the brass band kicks in with some marching tune. Then the students march, each homeroom together, with the class leader holding up a flag bearing their class number. The teachers stand along the track as the classes pass. The school song plays on repeat as all 18 homerooms pass. As the classes pass the principal, who is standing on a raised platform as if he's inspecting the troops, the students, in unison, salute him in a way that looks a lot like a certain political party in 1940s Germany.

Once the students get into their places, lined up two-by-two facing the teacher-tents, the opening ceremony continues with the school song and a strange Japanese tradition called radio gymnastics. Then the events begin.

Yamasho being a school known for its strength in sports, Sports Day is taken pretty seriously here. However, the serious events like relays and dashes are counted by a few fun things, like a tug-of-war and a silly relay-obstacle course. I took part in a silly teacher relay in which I had to kick a rugby ball part-way around the track. I didn't do too poorly but our team came in third.

To turn on the "cultural analysis" switch for a second, I think Sports Day is all about the broader theme here of working for the good of the group, stressing community over individual. The jump-rope event is all about an entire home room, which is always together anyway, jumping in unison as many times as they can. Another event, a centipede raise, stresses groups walking in unison. The opening ceremony features students dressed exactly the same marching in unison. Everyone has to participate, even the kids who aren't at all athletic. I can't imagine such an event being held in the U.S.

This post will have to be continued later.

Adios

Work on Saturday?

It's Saturday, about 1:30 in the afternoon, and I'm sitting at work with absolutely nothing to do. Everyone is here today because Yamasho's School Festival, a two-day affair, begins tomorrow, and students and homeroom teachers are preparing.

I have never been to a school festival in Japan, but from the looks of things it's a big deal. The students and teachers have been preparing all week. Classes are on hold. The usually quiet atmosphere of the school is erased as students alternate between actually preparing and playing around. Some of the softball girls were playing a pickup game with a wad of paper and an umbrella. One guy hit the wad out of the park -- through the window and onto the roof.

But back to why I'm here. You would think that since I am not a homeroom teacher and since I am not responsible for creating anything regarding the school festival, I would simply not come to work. But this is Japan. Simply being at work as all that matters (to an extent). My theory is that we have to work today beacuse everyone else has to work today. Everyone else will take a make-up holiday on the same day next month. So I sit here doing nothing. Or I roam the halls playing with my new camera. Or I read the newspaper. Nobody is watching over me, prodding me to 'get to work.' Nobody is taking note that instead of creating a lesson plan I am checking Facebook, writing e-mail, or taking a silly 'which character from the office are you?' quiz.

I am here, earning my wages. It gets old after a while ... I've got three more hours today. I think perhaps I will go take another lap around the school grounds.

Take One

The battery finished right after I submitted the last post, so I put in my memory card and began shooting. There's not much to shoot around the house so I opted for a self portrait:


Fear not -- the smudges are on the mirror in the washroom, not the lens.

Stay tuned for more.

Nee-kone!

Earlier today I bought a Nikon D40 digital SLR camera. This is my first high quality digital camera (as in, not a small point and shoot, although these days those are pretty good quality too). The SLR, which stands for "single lens reflex," basically means you can interchange the lens. The kit I bought comes with a basic lens and I can save up to purchase bigger lenses if I so please. The kit -- the body and the basic lens -- cost less than $500 at the electronics store.

I have not been able to play with the machine yet , as the battery is currently charging. I'm hoping it finishes soon so I can try it out.

It appears that I'll be able to load pictures to the computer, and therefore the Internet, with a USB connection.

This is my biggest purchase so far and perhaps my last big purchase for a few months as I save up and let funds regulate.

But this has been on my wishlist for a few years, so it's nice to have the new toy. Gift ideas? Any sort of accessories. Memory cards, camera bags, or lenses (however lenses are often more expensive than the bodies themselves so that might not work as a gift).

Anyway, I'm excited.

Meanwhile, one of the English teachers in town, who has been here for three years, is celebrating his birthday tonight down at Nanaimo, so the place will packed and festive. I'll make my way down there in about half an hour. I'm thinking about bringing the new camera but as I type that I'm realizing how bad an idea it would be. First, it will be dark in the bar and photos won't likely turn out. Second, it's a party, there will be drinking, movement, loudness, and too much potential for a $500 accident. So there. Seeing it writing sealed the deal. The camera stays home and I play with it another time.

Oh, and while we say "Ni-kon" in the states, this Japanese brand is called "Nee-kone" over here. That will require an adjustment period, but I can change.

Sports Day

Quick update on Sam -- it was a fracture indeed so they have updated her to a full cast which she gets to sport for two weeks.

Today was "sports day" or the "sports festival" at Yamasho. All the students dress down and spend the day outside competing in both fun and semi-serious events. Teachers too get involved -- I did a relay with other teachers in which I had to kick a rugby ball a quarter of the way around the track. Later I ran a more serious relay on a teacher team.

My high school certainly had nothing like this sports day, which is so serious that it required a half-day "rehearsal" the day before for some reason. Sports days are found in most Japanese schools, but since Yamasho is a sports-oriented places, it's more about actual events than a festive atmosphere. Fun things are mixed in with the serious races, though.

But I have to go to Japanese class at the moment. I've got Friday off and then I'm working straight though the weekend for Yamasho's school festival, which is also much bigger than any U.S. counterpart I've ever heard of. When they do things here, the REALLY do them.

Gotta run!

Crash Crash Bang Bang

In a flash of speed, propelled by gravity, she zoomed by me down the hill from Yamasho. I knew she was going down. It was a matter of how bad. Would it be my first time calling for a Japanese ambulance, or would she simply need some Band-Aids?

After smashing into the wall at full speed, I was truly surprised to see Sam get up and shake it off. She appeared to have no serious injuries, so we rode home. Later, we went to a festival which reminded me of Portland's Saturday Market. After getting back home, her left wrist (she is also left handed) began to swell and her pain began to grow.

We tried calling friends with cars to get a ride to a hospital, fearing that there may be a fracture. Turns out, both friends with cars were fast asleep after a day out. Our next plan was getting a taxi somehow. Taxis don't just drive around residential neighborhoods looking for customers. They hang out at stations and hotspots. So we went to a nearby cafe where we know the owner. We asked him to call a cab for us. Instead, he called around to hospitals to find one that would take an accident victim even though most hospitals are closed Sunday for a day off (weird, yeah?). Fortunately some emergency rooms do operate around the clock even this strange society (ATMs actually close here ... why?). After finding an ER, the cafe owner went so far as to insist that he drive us there.

So Sam had an x-ray. Turns out it is not likely a fracture. They demobilized her left arm and told her to come back in a few days to have it checked again.

So now she's getting used to operating with only one fully functioning hand, and it's not help that it happens to be hear weak one. She will take the day off tomorrow as I travel with the English Club to a speech contest. More on that later.

Whew!

Apartment Tour

My apartment has some shelving. The box in the upper left corner is what allows me to continue living. Central heating/cooling is pretty uncommon here, so instead people use these awesome air conditioners, which are effective for a closed off room. I can't wait for fall so I can let the thing rest.

Nearby, rice is grown. They harvested (is that the right word?) it recently so the green has given way to barren emptiness.

The view out the front window of my apartment.

Upside-down pants. Rarely does anyone have a dryer in this country, so things hang.

You can see my low table and my "recliner" (the square the green thing ... I need a new chair).

This is my fridge. Shown here at actual size. But really, that's a regular standard water bottle, so you can see what we're dealing with. My friends had bigger beer coolers in college.


The kitchen. Now much to it. Looks like I need to do the dishes. Toward the back you can see the two burners that make up my "oven." There is no stove. I have a rice-cooker (at right) and a sweet toaster oven, so all is well. Also, you can drink tap water.

Not pictured is the "bedroom" which I use only for storage (I sleep in the main room with the air conditioner). Also not pictured: The toilet room, the shower/laundry/washroom area, and the steps leading up from my outside door to the second floor. Also not pictured: The spider who lives on my veranda the little tiny frog who was sitting on my bicycle one morning.

So that completes the apartment tour. In a couple hours I'll head for Nagoya ... for a couple hours before heading back. I'm beginning to curse the unfortunate planning of this Nagoya jaunt. If I had it my way it would have been an overnight but for some reason it had to be a Monday. Still, it will be good to see these people.

Some photos

This is the aforementioned Cafe Brian. Note the neat world map in the background which puts the southern hemisphere on top. Weird! Most of the others here are other JET people. The one dead center is my colleague Sam.


Can you tell which set of legs belong to me? Should be hard. This is where we had our welcome beach party for the Mie JETs on the first weekend.


Did I post this already? This is the day we arrived. I was exhausted after traveling from Tokyo and walking around for a while. You can see my apartment building back and to the left. Three Yamasho students greeted us when we arrived in Tsu before being driven down to Ise.


More people this time in a karaoke box, a private karaoke room. They are not at all expensive especially when you jam a lot of people in there. There are usually some English songs so even I can participate if I feel so willing. The girl second from the left is one of my predecessors. She has returned to Canada I believe. The guy on the right is Shun, friend of one of the other Ise JETs. They are a very friendly and nice pair as Shun often acts as the transportation for rowdy drunken JETs after nights out.


Here we are at a Nepalese restaurant in Ise. Good curry, fantastic cheese nan.

Update!

SUNDAY AFTERNOON -- I'm in the middle of a three-day weekend, so my current activity of sitting around the house at 3 p.m. seems about right. I have been out of the house for most of the weekend so far and I'm leaving again tomorrow afternoon, so I'm on a little break from my break.

On Friday, I went to a place called Cafe Brian, a restaurant that serves international food and caters to an international crowd -- and a lot of regular local customers -- near the Ise Grand Shrine. Two Fridays a month the place hosts an "international conversation dinner" or something like that. Up to seven foreigners can have a free meal and a few free drinks in exchange for speaking English to Japanese customers who pay a cover charge to get in. Obviously it's quite nice for the foreigners who get free stuff and have a chance to make local friends. And for Japanese people looking for a chance to practice their English or make new friends, it's also not a bad deal.

At Cafe Brian on Friday, myself and another area ALT sat down with a couple of women. Both were near 30, both were married, and both had kids. One spoke near perfect English because she's married to a New Zealander, the other hardly spoke a word. But we got along well enough that they invited us to join them the next night for some volleyball. Yes, volleyball. The one who doesn't speak English organizes via the Web what is called a "friends circle" over here. The meet for different events for time to time and we happened to cross paths with the circle in time for volleyball.

So maybe we felt a certain pressure to say yes, or maybe because we are living in Japan and have that sort-of "always say yes" attitude, we said yes.

The volleyball, on Saturday evening, took place in some kind of public gym much like you would see back home. There were several courts going at once in the big open space. The friends circle we had infiltrated was made up mostly of married people near 30 years old with children. The children -- maybe 10 of them in all -- were running around while the parents volleyed. Sure, it was fun to do something active, and obviously the people who invited us and the others were nice. At times the thought that it was strange to be hanging out with older people crossed my mind -- then I reminded myself that at 24 I'm not THAT far away from their age-group. It's just that they were all so far along in their life-making. Babies. Spouses. Mini-vans.

In the end it was quite nice to do something other than our normal routine of heading down to the same bar seeing the same friends. I love that same old bar, and my friends here are great. But it's good to mix it up a little.

So now that I've been well mixed, we arrive at Sunday. Monday is a national holiday ... respect for the aged day or something of that sort. In honor of that I'm going to Nagoya to hang out with some college students.

If you're reading this blog you probably already know that I worked with Japanese students for three summers at OSU. Each summer I stayed in the dorms with about 40 students from Meijo university in Nagoya. They were at OSU for a three-week language and culture program, and I did everything with them except go to their classes. So during the three-week program you become quite close with at least some of the students. So tomorrow evening I'll take the two hour trip to Nagoya to meet with about 15 of the students. I have no idea whether they're all from last year or if it's a mix. One of last year's students organized the whole thing, so it may be tilted toward the 2006 group. The 2004 group people have likely all graduated and some have probably moved on. I've lost touch for many of them. I'm happy to have a chance to see them again, but the downside is that it's going to have to be a quick trip as I have to work bright and early on Tuesday.

That about brings us up to speed. All is well at school, but more on that another time.

Some more things even

I have finished my class work for the day so it is back to killing time until the final bell. I am also hoping to talk with a couple of teachers about lesson plans for tomorrow ... some of the teachers seem to prepare at the last minute, which I must say is more my style, but when I am put on the spot in an unfamiliar situation I like to have some idea of what will be happening.

No English Club today (they actually call it the English Speaking Society, or ESS), so Sam and I are visiting the akido and kendo clubs. I forgot to bring athletic wear so I think I will just be watching today, but I think Sam may actually be aiming to participate. There are a lot of clubs at Yamasho, and not clubs as you imagine them back home. Baseball is a club; so is word processing. Baseball competes (nationally this year) and I assume word processing competes as well. I have not yet made contact yet but I am interested in visiting the photography club and the broadcast club -- perhaps visiting once in a while in those cases. We really can only visit non-ESS clubs on Tuesday and Thursday, so our options are kind of limited.

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SOME DIFFERENCES IN SCHOOL

-Did you know that in Japan the students clean the school? In the U.S. we are used to a janitorial staff keeping the school up to par. But in Japan, every day after 3 p.m., the relative quiet is broken by the thunderous roar of shifting desks in classrooms above the teachers room. Students fan out across the school grounds, under the supervision of teachers, and sweep or mop or pick up trash. You could hardly imagine kids in the U.S. going for a plan like this, but it is just a part of life here.

-In the states teachers generally work out of their own classroom, where they keep a desk and allowed out decorate as they see fit and store various materials. In Japan teachers keep desks in a teachers room. At Yamasho there are a few different teachers rooms. I work in the main one across from the administrative offices. In the states, the teachers room is considered a no-students area, a hiding place for secret soda machines and much more, at least in the imagination of creative students. In Japan, students pour into the teachers room between classes to check in with teachers, deliver messages and turn in work. After school students stay late to study for special exams or prepare for university entrance. Every morning at 8:30, the day begins in the teachers room with a staff meeting. The vice principal, who holds court over the room with a desk in the corner, moves through agenda items. It is all in Japanese of course, and I only pick up little bits of it. We have to operate under the assumption that if there is anything important for us to know, somebody will tell us. So far, no problems.

More later, perhaps.

A really long post about some things

My mother pointed out in an e-mail this morning that since my post about the approaching typhoon the blog has fallen silent. However, the typhoon merely brushed across the Ise-Shima peninsula on its way to Tokyo. On its course it left at least one dead, another missing and several others injured.

All is well in Ise, then, although it has been raining off an on in the last few days making bicycle travel an uncomfortable affair.

As of Monday of this week my marathon run of self-introduction lessons is over. I teach with eight classes this term, so that means I introduce myself eight times. Most teachers wanted me to use the full period for this task, so some creativity is required.

After some trial and error, I have settled on what I plan to use in the future. First, I hand out a sheet with questions about me and make a quick introduction speech covering only the basics. The students mark the answers they hear and/or slip into a boredom coma. Then I announce that the students will have a chance to ask me any question they would like.

The students then work in pairs to generate ideas for questions. After a few minutes of this, the press conference begins. They ask about hobbies (photography), whether or not I have a girlfriend (nope), what kind of Japanese food I like (just about all of it), whether I know about famous American track and field stars (nope), or what kind of music a like (Jazz?).

If there is more time, I usually try to engage some of the students in conversation about themselves, perhaps based on their own self-introduction sheet that they are asked to fill out.

This works much better than me talking for a long time and expecting them to follow along. Getting the students involved somehow -- forcing them to think of a question -- makes for a dynamic atmosphere and keeps everyone but the super-slacker crowd interested until the bell rings.

Although it can be good for the ego to be the center of attention for 50 minutes, I am glad to be done with self intros for now. In the spring when the new first-year students come in, I will get to try it again a few times, perhaps with a new spin. I would like to somehow incorporate more photos, but only one classroom I work in has the ability to display photos in a way that students will all be able to see them.

The commercial track and computer track classes each have 40 students, while the the international track classes are split into 20-student groups. Naturally the smaller classes are easier to work with, and it helps that the international track students are generally more enthusiastic about learning in general and learning English specifically.

The commercial and computer classes are more difficult both because of the class size and because many students do not seem to be interested at all in English. Whether or not these classes feel like a success depends heavily on the classroom atmosphere, which depends heavily on the Japanese teacher of English, because the classes have already been meeting together for a term before I arrived (this is the middle of the school year). But once I get more of a feel for what I am doing here I am sure I can play a larger role in the classroom atmosphere, hopefully figuring out ways to engage more of the students (some students I am sure are never going to change their attitude, but others probably could if prompted somehow).

Outside of work things are also fine. It is still humid and hot, but not as hot as when we first arrived. As September fades we should see a shift into more comfortable temperatures and therefore a shift into a more comfortable everything.

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And now, partially to organize my own thoughts and partially in response to feedback from my parents, I will attempt to outline the pros and cons of car-buying.

THE MAIN CON IS ...

The cost, obviously. First, you must buy said car. You must may insurance every year. You must pay a vehicle inspection fee. You must buy gas. While I do not have a good estimate for how much this would be, it definitely falls within an average JET budget. Of course not spending any money on a car would mean available funds for other things, like traveling (by train!) or going out on the town (karaoke nights build up).

A SORT-OF CON IS ...

The rules, and things. First, in Japan, they drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is also flopped. Also, phantom one-way streets that Japanese drivers seem to know about tend to surprise some foreign motorists. Also, while in the states you can go out for a beer and be OK to drive, the legal blood alcohol limit in Japan is zero, meaning that if you are driving you not drinking at all -- not even a sip would be wise. But these are small concerns, in that after I while I would get used to driving here, and not driving to bar excursions is a good habit anyway. At other times I could be the responsible designated driver and save money by having an iced coffee instead of a beer.

ANOTHER SORT-OF CON IS ...

The laziness factor. The fact is without a car I do a lot of walking and cycling. This is surely good for my health. If I had a car, would I use it for a lot of the small to medium trips even though a bike would be fine? Would I completely stop using the bike or walking? Hard to say exactly how I would use the car or how I would balance the car-bike situation, but it is certainly a concern.

SOME PROS ARE ...

Commuting! I live pretty close to school ... about a 10-minute bike ride. But sometimes it is either really really really hot and humid or pouring down rain. Rain is more survivable because I can wear a rain jacket or walk with an umbrella, but the summer heat is brutal. On the worst days you pretty much have to expect to be drenched in sweat by the time you get to school and then you hopefully brought some extra clothes or you will be dreadfully uncomfortable all day.

The staff room may be air-conditioned, but most classrooms are not. So the bottom line is I could drive to school when the conditions make driving to school the best option.

Getting around. This is obvious. With a car you can drive places. My mom asked if the public transport is insufficient. Well, sort-of. I am about a 15-minute bike ride from the two train stations in town (I do not know why they are so close to each other ... literally a four minute walk from each other). The train grid in Mie is great for getting around Mie or getting out of Mie, but it does not get you all around Ise. The key here -- and perhaps broadly this is the overall pro -- is freedom and flexibility to go where I want when I want, a luxury I enjoyed in the US. The question is do I really want to pay for it?

I can survive without a car, no question about it. But it would make things easier.

At this point I am not pushing for buying a car, I am simply outlining some factors. Most of the advice I have received on the subject suggests waiting it out for a bit, which I think is a good idea. But I would want to figure it out before the year is up because by then I would have to get a Japanese licence, which allegedly can be difficult.

Longest post ever. It is over. Carry on.

Inverted Orientation

All I wanted to do was make it home without the umbrella inverting. But on the final stretch, with Apollo USB only a few steps away, a vicious gust of sea-brewed wind whipped by, turning the rain-blocker inside-out -- I'm lucky my convenience store yakisoba was safely secured in its plastic container. Just after the first gust, another came from who knows where, restoring the device to its proper orientation.

So it's a little stormy here. A few days ago, the forecast was that a typhoon (tropical cyclone) was coming directly for Mie prefecture. Since then it's made a turn toward Tokyo as a category 1 storm (I believe the same 5-point scale they use for hurricanes back home). But the storm has not completely forgotten Mie, it seems. The wind and rain make walking, cycling or anything outside pretty uncomfortable.

It's not enough to cause worry over damage here; if it were still coming right for us that would be a different story. It is making question whether or not I'll go to our weekly Japanese class tonight. I probably will seek out whatever's left of my rugged Oregonian spirit and tough it out. Also we go to the bar after and see friends, so there's even more motivation.

This of course is Thursday night, so one more day and the first week is over. I'll try to post an assessment of the first week at school sometime over the weekend. For now I've got to figure out how to get across town without ending up drenched. I left all of my rain-gear back home planning for it to be shipped, but I really didn't anticipate this sort of rain this time of year. But I should of ... in the weeks before I came another typhoon buffeted Mie. A Columbia Sportswear coat would be solid right now. That's your cue, parental units. Bottom drawer of the dresser in Corvallis.

THIS JUST IN: We may have a ride to Japanese class. Alllll riiight.

It's the end of the beginning

It appears I am slacking on the blogging.

I have a very early morning so this won't be a big post, but here's a quick update:

Our three-week period of sorta-work-sorta-vacation-partying-all-the-time is over.

Tomorrow begins the second of three terms in the Yamasho school year. There will be an opening ceremony in which I'll give a speech to the entire school using English and Japanese. It's a half day, so after the ceremony I believe we'll be meeting with our supervisor and perhaps the members of the English club.

And then it will have begun. My real routine will be established. While I will miss the fun times, the non-stop doing stuff has been exhausting, and the kind of exhaustion from real work is much cheaper than the going-out-all-the-time plan. So I'm ready for regular.

Plus, September features two three-day weekends. In a couple weeks I'll go to Nagoya to meet with a bunch of the Meijo University students who I worked with at OSU.

Also, my bicycle is doing well, but I'm secretly thinking about casually shopping around for a cheap used car, perhaps one another ALT in the area is selling. None of the new area ALTs seem to have cars, and of the people we hang out with, only an ALT's boyfriend and a non-JET teacher in the area do the driving.

Yes, I would survive with no car, but it would make like much simpler when it comes to buying things that do not fit in my bike basket, traveling to various area places that are just too far to ride comfortably, etc.

I have not yet made up my mind, but I'm looking into it. There are a lot of benefits to riding around. For one, it's physical activity that counts toward exercise some of the time. Second, it's cheaper to get around on a bike, of course. Third, I wouldn't have to worry about trying not to drive the wrong way down one-ways or other such mistakes. And finally I wouldn't have to worry about passing the Japanese driver's test after my international drivers' permit expires in a year.

So ... no decision. Feel free to vote in the comment section. What say you?

meeerp

In a comment on the previous post, my friend Ellyn had this to say: "nope."

Thanks for reading, and I anticipate more thoughtful commentary.

Obviously I still have not figured out which way I should tilt the phone to get the photos to transmit correctly.

TONIGHT Sam and I are meeting with our kocho-sensei (principal) for a dinner. Then there's a welcome party at you know where for a late-arriving new JET in the area.

More later.

I have no idea if this photo will be tilted correctly. It shows Ise from a limited express train boumd for Kyoto. There I will meet a friend who studied English at OSU. I will stay at his place in Osaka and return home tomorrow.

Back to School

After more than two years of no formal Japanese language study, I had my first local Nihon-go class this morning at some kind of community center just down the road from our regular bar in central Ise.

Normally the sessions for me will be on Thursday evenings, but since I'm off this week I decided to sample the Tuesday morning session as well. It's not a class in the traditional sense -- as in, it's not one teacher lecturing to a group of students. They break people off into roughly the same skill levels and one teacher handles their tailored lessons.

Myself and Elizabeth, another new local ALT, ended up with the same teacher for our introductory lesson, some of which was review and some of which was new to me. It seems that most of the new area JETs, along with a couple of the folks who have been here for a while, will be taking the Thursday class, which is regularly followed by a stop at Nanaimo for dinner and or drinks.

In addition to the Thursday class, which costs less than $1 per lesson, I'll be taking a free correspondence course offered by one of the governing bodies which administers the JET Program. Material for that course arrives later on this year.

Today was also the first time I attempted some real exercise. Every day include some cycling or walking, but today I actually went for a jog. There is a path along the river that's just few steps from my place -- a river that I didn't know was there for the first week living here or so. As the weather begins to cool a bit in the coming weeks, I hope to get out and exercise with a greater frequency. It's hard enough in the brutal heat to bike to school without dripping sweat.

So day one of our vacation period has gone well so far. Not sure what I will do this evening, but I may shower and check out a cafe that is just around the corner and see if it's the kind of place that doesn't mind me ordering a tea and opening up a book for a while. I'm currently seeking some leisure activities that do not cost as much as going our for a beer. The party season, fueled by leaving JETs' going away parties and new JETs' welcome parties, is winding down, with almost everyone settled in or back in their home countries.

That is all for now.

Various family members have requested more photos showing me and friends and what I have been doing. The problem of course is that I am never in any photos that I take, so I need my friends to send me photos before I can share them on the blog. So stay tuned and hopefully I'll have some photos soon.

Taiko drumming near the grand ise shrine.

EDIT: So the above was done with my cell phone. On the phone, the picture was tilted correctly. Somewhere between the Softbank network and Blogger, it moved 90 degrees. Why?

I am pretty much at a train station right now

Spending the yen

Turns out it was really easy to change the blog publishing thing back into English, but I just found it today. And that meant I could finally change the settings so that the time on each post is Japan time. So from this post on, you will be reading the future. Think about it.

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As you can see in the previous couple of posts, I set it up so I can update the blog from my cellphone. I can do basic text posts or I can send photos I've taken with the camera on the phone. For some reason it took me several tries to get the photo to turn up right-side up (I left one of the messed up posts below but deleted three others). Anyway, my phone has a pretty decent camera -- and I'm out and about alot -- so the phone=posting will be a good feature.

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This has been another active/expensive week and weekend. Most of the new Mie JETs were led to Nagoya on Thursday to get our re-entry permit in our passport, allowing us to leave the county and enter again on our 3-year visa. After that I blew a couple hundred dollars on a few things I needed (we just got paid). I bought a nice small bag for my Macbook, some pants, a hat and various other small items. We also went to both Starbucks and Outback Steakhouse, indulging in the benefits of a big city.

On Friday we went to Nabari, about an hour away by express train, for an English seminar for high school students consisting of games, songs, skits and demonstrations by the dozen ALTs and Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) running the show. Friday night, back in Ise, we went out to a going away party for one of the leaving JETs. As is often the case, this was followed by karaoke.

Today was much more laid back. I slept in, watched a movie, and just now I got back from Nanaimo (that bar I wrote about before) where I had nachos and a cafe aulait with a few other area JETs and Mami, our first "close" or "main" Japanese friend, if that makes sense.

Tomorrow I'll probably fork over a little more yen on some new sheets for my futon and a "welcome back" party for yet another area JET. Oh, my. I assume this never-ending party schedule calms down by the fall. If not I'll be forced to moonlight on the weekends.

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We have a mandatory medical checkup on Monday that probably includes a blood test and who knows what else. I wish I could avoid it ... and I did just have a physical to get IN to the program ... it seems a little unnecessary at the moment but hey, I'm not paying for it. Then Tuesday through Sunday is vacation! Woo! I may stay firmly planted in Ise with the aim of saving money, but I might dart over to Osaka for a couple of days to see a friend or two. That's the story, then. I'm behind on the blog obviously so I'll try to add more "observation" posts so it's not all just a log of what I've been doing. And finally, I cleaned the main room of my apartment today (the main room being the dining room, living room and sleeping area, as I've noted), so soon I'll take some photos of the place and get them posted on here. Good night.

Testing cell phone posting

Busy Week Ahead

We've got a fairly busy week in progress here, despite the fact that the term doesn't start until the beginning of September. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Yamasho is hosting an "open school" for prospective students. Sam and I will each give a five minute presentation four times over the course of the two-day event, talking about our background and our country. I'll use some photos of family and home as well as a couple of cool colorful maps showing the states and the Northwest.

Then on Thursday we have a day off to travel to Nagoya with several other Mie JETs to get re-entry permits stamped onto our passport in case we ever decide to travel abroad while our 3-year visa is valid. After the Nagoya trip we'll head to Nabari where we'll stay until Saturday -- we're helping with an English camp there on Friday but staying overnight because it's a bit out of the way from Ise. At the English camp we'll lead small groups of high school students in games and other activities aimed at English conversation.

Meanwhile, backtracking to Wednesday evening, we have our first official "enkai," or office party. From what I gather, this will include most English teachers and several other teachers from the school. Not sure if the principal or vice principal will be there, as we have a separate dinner meeting set up for them, I think.

So this week is really going to fly by. The following week, except for a couple appointments, is vacation time. I don't plan to go anyway big but I might try to dash off to Nagoya, Osaka or Kyoto (all within reach by a couple of hours on the train).

Then after my summer holiday, our truly busy schedule will begin. I am definitely looking forward to starting up classes. Today we attended a session of a special summer class of the first year (10th grade) international track students. We gave a quick introduction in English and then assisted with a few activities. It was a nice intro to some aspects of "team teaching" and the students were quite good an English and pretty high energy for being in school during what is technically summer break (here, summer school isn't for slackers trying to catch up, but over-achievers trying to jump ahead ... I think ... I may be wrong but that's what I gather.)

Now, we're heading out to meet a Japanese friend we've made, and I'm hoping the outing includes dinner because I had only a tiny sandwich for lunch. Gotta run ... I'm due outside in 120 seconds.

A couple more photos

On the way to work. I wasn't actually lost, just letting the map sink in.

Me at work.

Ya-Ma-Sho!

I had already been chatting with the pair of 50-somethings in the izakaya in Tsu, already enjoying a glass full of the booze they offered. But it wasn't until they heard I worked for Yamasho that they really lit up. One man reached over to shake my hand when he heard this development.

That's because Yamasho had been playing at Koshien, the national high school baseball tournament. After their 15-inning tie no decision opener, which I attended, Yamasho lost, ended their run. Nevertheless, Mie still appears to be proud of their representatives to the Big Show. And why not. Making it that far is certainly an accomplishment.

My trip to Koshien began early Tuesday morning, when I filed on to bus 11 -- one of dozens making the trip -- and headed west for Osaka/Kobe. Six hundred of Yamasho's 800 students, and nearly all of the 60-some teachers were making the trek, along with members of the PTA and family members of the players.

In the cheering section, a brass band, cheerleaders and rank and file students sit quietly while the opposing team is up to bat, unless they want to politely cheer on the pitcher toward the end of an inning. But when Yamasho came up to bat, the entire section stands up and begins a cycle of cheers, each player earning his own theme.

Right in the middle of all of this, I tried to keep up, learning at least the clapping rhythms of the cheers and when to sit and stand. I applied and re-applied sun screen often, hoping to avoid a repeat of the beach party burn.

The whole experience was like a flash of excitement, bookended by marching to or from the bus and driving to or from Ise.

Back at the bar, it turns out the pair of 50-somethings were teammates at the Koshien tourney back in their high school days, also representing Mie.

AND now it's late Saturday afternoon and I'm heading to some kind of festival in a nearby town. Fireworks are involved. More later.

quickly!

It's bed time, but quickly here is a shot taken by Sam the other ALT:


This is our building, which mysteriously holds six dwellings. Not sure if they're all the same size, but Sam's and mine do match. I live toward the left.

I'll post about the baseball trip later. Turns out, it was hot.

Some photos

The beach at Shima. Lots of people were surfing but the waves weren't so big. I got sunburned
(surprise!) but thankfully Japan has the aloe vera.

This is my desk at school in the teacher's room, which is perhaps one of the only places on the whole campus which is air conditioned. This makes up for not having much to do this week at work, because, as I've mentioned 304 thousand times, it's hot and humid here. Really. You would have to experience it to know what I'm talking about. You have a version of hot and humid, but this version is worse (I'm speaking here to my friends and family in Oregon ... surely there are places much hotter out there, such as the inside of a volcano).

I'm not sure what this river-stream-creek is called, but I cross over it every time I head to the post office, the train station or the busier more happening parts of Ise-shi.

I've been bad about taking photos; it's probably because I feel no sense of urgency since I'm not leaving after a couple weeks. I'll get more photos of other things up later. For now, good day. How is America?

Exploring Ise

As my previous post suggests, I drank a bit too much at the Ise JETs welcome party on Friday night. The evening started at an izakaya, a Japanese style pub which serves a variety of snack items and drinks. Rather than ordering a "meal" all at once, you press a button on the table that calls over the staff and tell them what you want. This goes on over and over until it's time to move the party on. On Friday, round two was karaoke. This explains the excess drinking. Or perhaps the excess drinking explains the signing. At any rate, I had too many beers from the conbini (convenience store) downstairs, and I was not feeling so grand in the morning. (In Japan, karaoke is usually among friends in private room rather than the open mic style more common in the U.S.).

Despite a nasty hangover, I woke up Saturday with a couple hours to spare before heading about 90 minutes away to a beach in Shima for the Mie prefectural welcome event for new JETs. I wanted to find a cooler to transport food and drink to the beach, as well as an ATM to replenish my Yen-on-hand supply. I failed on both counts after walking a few laps around my neighborhood. I've since found the postal ATM which works or foreign withdrawals ... it's a quick bike ride away.

And it seems that most everything is a "quick bike ride away" if you allow "quick" to stretch once in a while. In my time off on Sunday, I cycled around the area a bit. My neighborhood is a patchwork of rice fields and two-story structures. To walk or bike to school, most of the trip is through one-lane roads separating homes and rice fields. To get to the post office, the train stations, or several bars and restaurants, you head the other way down a some busier roads.

I've still only seen a small slice of this little town (about 100,000 people live here I'm told). But having been here for only a few days, that is not a problem.

On Monday after work I'm heading to a birthday party for one of the other Ise JETs who has been here for a couple of years (she is the one tasked with organizing the social events for Mie JETs ... and her boyfriend drove us all to the beach ... many thanks to her and her people). The party location is "Nanaimo," a fantastic bar that we visited after the beach party last night. Just a short bike ride away from home, the bar's night menu offers a lineup of Mexican food, a rarity in Japan. I had the nachos, which were great, and I can't wait to sample the whole menu as the days pass (the prices are not bad). They also offer a small lineup of international beers, including Corona via Mexico. Sadly, the offering from the United States ... is Zima. So we've established that the menu is great, but the real fun of the place is the atmosphere. I was only there for an hour at most, but the owner was very kind, funny and welcoming. Another English teacher from the area says he often eats there twice a day (there's also a lunch menu which I haven't seen yet). He's so close with the owner and staff that he helps buss tables, refill water glasses, and even suggest new menu items. I have a feeling I'll be visiting fairly often.

It's another day at the office tomorrow morning. I hope to spend the day reading through some "team teaching" guidebooks or other material I may be using. Unless something else comes up, which would be great, because we really truly don't have much to do right now.

BUT -- no worries, because on Tuesday we're going to the Koshien tournament to watch our baseball team vie for the national title. Then this Thursday and Friday we have to head up to Tsu for the Mie orientation for new JETs. Then, all of a sudden, the next term will start at school, and I'll have to figure out how, exactly, to be a teacher.