You're a good man, John Edwards ...

... but the Obama-Clinton star power was too much to overcome. My friend Andrew was an Edwards guy from early on, while I was already caught up in the Obama mystique. Back then I wasn't sure if Obama was another Howard Dean, who swept me off my voting shoes a few years ago before his famous yell-a-bunch-of-states speech and reality kicked in.

I like John Edwards. I liked him better than John Kerry in 2004. I like also how he has at times defended Obama against silly or simply incorrect attacks from the Clinton camp. But there was no room for him at the dinner table. It's hard to imagine him running as a veep candidate AGAIN, but I guess it's possible. If not that, then what? Secretary of something? Hold out for another run in a few years (he's still young). Hard to say. But getting back to this year's race, the question is this: who will he endorse? Probably Obama?

Obama now has Teddy Kennedy in his camp. The biggest potential endorsement I can imagine though ... Al Gore. Unless Al is planning to swoop in at a deadlocked convention and emerge as the nominee ... hey not a bad idea. That's why he's laying low. He's on the treadmill at an undisclosed location, getting down to presidential weight, brushing up his position papers on his brand new super-thin Mac and ordering opposition research on this up-and-coming John McCain fellow.

That's it! Gore for President. I knew his time would come. I guess that pushes Edwards out of the veep game. Which means ... Gore-Obama 08.

Imagine.

(Oh yeah ... Edwards-drops-out article is here).

Examples of why I prefer Obama to Clinton ...

... there are many, but here's a good one. Fake fake fake fake fake! (in Seinfeld voice)

The victory party, minus the victory

Private Business

I am sitting now at Deko Boko, the cafe/shop by my house which I visit frequently (it's basically right outside my door). The owner speaks English and is trying to study more. I come in on free weekend afternoons for lunch, which includes a nice salad bar and all the juice you can drink.

Tonight I have a private lesson, a common side-job for ALTs with spare time. I put my profile up on a Web site which lets students search for potential private instructors. I charge an hourly rate and so far the lessons with my one customer have been free flowing conversation. Tonight I'm steering into a lesson about gestures in the US vs. Japan, always a fun topic in classes at Yamasho.

Speaking of Yamasho, I started a new blog for classroom projects there. The link: yamashoenglish.blogspot.com. Soon I'll have a "letter to the editor" project posted. There is one sample letter there written without editing by one of the higher level students. In the future, I hope to use the blog for various classroom projects and for showcasing the students' work. Let me know what you think.

Time for a water re-fill. My student is late! No worries. I'm an easy-going instructor.

The Heat is On (but not so much for the students)

It's getting colder in Ise. We'll drop down to freezing tonight, about the same as Portland, but tomorrow is a crazy weather day with 30-plus mph winds (gusts at 50) and a "feels like" high temperature of 23.

Today was the coldest day I've seen in Japan (not sure what the temp was). In the hallway at school, I could see my breath, a first-time in-doors experience. It was the first time I joined Sam in really truly complaining about the cold. Usually while she is shivering (she's from Singapore, where it's warm ... always), I am talking up how the cold doesn't get to me. Today, it got me.

Japanese schools, like Japanese homes, do not feature climate control. No central heating. No century-old furnaces in classrooms. At Yamasho, not even space heaters in the classrooms.

Only the administrative office and the teachers' rooms host kerosene heaters. I sit right next to one of them, which is nice on the cold days and annoying on the sorta-cold-but-not-really days.

The students freeze all day. They probably make up excuses to come into the teachers' room to get a few seconds by the heater.

But mostly, they suffer.

It seems cruel. It's certainly unusual. Why no heaters? Is it a budget thing? Are they trying to build character? Has no one thought of it? Should I tell them?

"Hey, uh ...," I could say to the principal after the morning meeting, "don't you think the students might be a ... err ... a little too cold ... to ... what do you call it? ... study?"

Maybe this simple comment would set it motion a revamping of the entire educational structure in Japan. The new system would involve heaters. But, you know, of course it wouldn't, so I'll keep quiet.

I really don't understand why there are no heaters. Or air conditioners for the brutally hot/humid summers.

Also, this: They are forced to study in their cold classrooms and the girls can't wear pants. Now, I don't have a lot of skirt experience, but I imagine pants provide a little more warmth. But no, during class and in the halls, the rules state that they must wear their uniform "correctly."

So. This issue annoys me. I cannot change it. So I blog it. That's life.

Japan News Roundup: The rise of cellphone novelists

The New York Times has a piece about the rise of "cellphone novels," serial dramas, usually first person, written by the thumbs of young women on cell phones. Millions of people are composing such "novels" and posting them to a popular Web site. Some actually hit it big, with their stories published in print. Last year's top-selling novel in Japan was one such wireless composition. Says the Times:

Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.

Later the article they note that young people here grew up using their cellphones -- not personal computers -- to live their digital lives. That makes sense from what I see. When we assigned a class of 40 high schoolers here to send me an e-mail, all but one came from a cellphone. Meanwhile, one of my friends in Tokyo, also 24, is using her cell when she's chatting with me on MSN Instant Messenger. When we tried to sign up a class with Web-based e-mail accounts, a task I thought might take 20 minutes, it took the whole class because of confusion, and even then there were many who didn't do it right.

It's all about the cellphone over here. Though I still hate using mine for messaging because of the slow-ness and sacrificed quality of language. I do it, though. I almost always use messaging instead of calling. I could really go for a phone with a qwerty keyboard. Perhaps this summer when it'll be time to re-new my phone contract.

The Asahi Shimbun reports in its English edition (this story is not available online) on a 16-year-old boy in Saitama who went on a more than $3,000 binge at a bar, which he was unable to pay ... because he didn't have enough money (surprise).

The news brief says that the boy ordered "two bottles of expensive champagne and 60 glasses of whiskey and cocktails." On top of that, he asked for four to five hostesses to chat up his table (hostesses are attractive female bar staffers who will sit and talk with your for money).

Here's the kicker ... the boy told the cops that he did the whole thing just to see how it would pan out. Enterprising young man.

Beer Wednesdays

Soon I will join the regular all-you-can-drink crowd at the Ise Brewery down the street. On the two middle Wednesdays of the month, Ise's only brewpub hosts a special all-you-can-drink event. For 1,000 yen, less than 10 bucks, you can enjoy as many pints as you can handle in an hour. These tap beers, which range in variety from dark to crazy-town, normally cost not-much-less-than-1o-bucks for just a regular single helping.

So it's a good deal.

But there are things to keep in mind. It is important to:

1. Eat something first. While they do have some bar food available, the focus is drinking, and it starts right away, and it usually doesn't let up for the first hour, which often leads in to a second hour. When you arrive you get a sheet listing the day's beer selection. There are 10 of them. You can have them in sampler size, in a glass, or something closer to a pint. There's also an even bigger one that I've never tried. I always aim to try everything on the list, at least in sampler size.

2. Start early. Don't wait to the normal "go to the bar" time. Get started as soon as you've had time to freshen up from work and down a tuna sandwich. Our appointment is set for 6:30, which means a 2-hour session has us out quite early. Whether we decide to keep going in some after-party formation or to throw in the towel weighs heavily on how we feel at work the next day.

And with that all should be well. What really sells this thing for me is that I live three-minutes away on foot from the place. Another thing: Because there's always a chance I'll be hosting an overnighter who cannot drive home because of alcohol, I'm always inspired to clean up on these Beer Wednesdays.

Here's to hoping it all goes according to plan. Cheers!

This post will shock you. Get mentally prepared.

I sometimes forget that people (family members, mainly) read this blog and wonder if a long period of no posting means I have fallen off the face of Japan, presumably into the sea.

Well, no, I have not fallen into the sea. All is well, in short.

Since the new year's activities, I have not done anything I consider very noteworthy. Just the routine stuff. Meeting friends, going to the bar, going to work, etc.

We did have our mid-year ALT seminar on Thursday and Friday. This took place in Tsu, Mie's capital city but not its largest, less than an hour away by train. Unlike the welcome seminar back in August, which was geared toward getting used to living here, this set of presentations was focused on our role in school as ALTs and improving our skills yadda yadda yadda. Some good material here and there, but mostly a lot of stuff we have heard or read before.

It is a good chance to see all the other ALTs from outside of Ise. This year I acted as a moderator for one discussion, but the role is easier than it sounds. I simply introduced the discussion topic and let the presenters present. If something had needed moderating, I would have been there at the ready. Fortunately, my most difficult task was taking the microphone around to people who wished to make comments.

So yes. Seeing as how that rates as my most exciting story, you may understand why blogging has been light. Maybe I should aim to mix up the posts and include more commentary on news items here in Japan and back home. Who knows.

Oh! I re-arranged my main room in the apartment. I have been cooking a lot of omelets (is that spelled right?). These two things are un-related but they both occurred to me at the same moment.

That is all for now.

Sorry about the post title, which you hopefully did not believe.

Happy New Year

The following photos are in roughly chronological order.


We kicked things off at Marsha's apartment, down the road and up the hill from my own, where friends foreign and Japanese gathered for food and drink. He is the "kanpai," or "cheers." I had already started my beer. Oops.

This is Shun, from Ise; Marsha's boyfriend. He often gives us rides places and tonight was no exception. He picked up a bunch of us at the station saving us a terribly long walk in the blistering cold (we were saving our terribly long walk in the blistering cold for later in the evening, after all). Note his silly T-shirt, a gift from Marsha, who got it in Thailand on holiday this winter.

Mike in the foreground and Dipika looking on. This couple hails from England and are part of the foreign teacher community in Ise. Mike is looking rather stately ... it could be the sake.

The crowd picks up in the historic shopping district near the Grand Shrine, not usually a night-time destination but certainly a hot spot on New Year's Eve. We walked here from Marsha's place. I don't recall how long it took but it was a good hike in at or below freezing temperatures.

Approaching midnight, revelers handed out little pop-it streamer things. Even the little humans got to create little explosions.

A small celebratory blast marked midnight after a poorly metered countdown came via the PA system. Followed a blink later by ...

.. everyone's pop-it thingies up in the air. And then ...

.. some celebrating ...


And more celebrating. Then it was time to hike into the shrine area.

After navigating baby-step crowds through the tree-lined paths for about half an hour, we arrived at the base of the steps heading up toward the inner shrine. You cannot actually enter the shrine; you look at from a distance. No photos once you get to the top of the stairs either. Instead people take photos from the base of the steps, which are pretty boring unless it happens to be time to celebrate the new year.

We were in an "express lane" of sorts ... opting to just pass by with a glance instead of stopping to pray as many do.


After somehow getting out of this mess with everyone accounted for, we rode taxis back to Marsha's place for a short after party. I got home by 4 a.m. exhausted, a little drunk, and ready for 2008.

Blockery and Things

YAMASHO, 9:21 a.m., 4 Jan., 2008 -- They've done it. Facebook, MySpace and the like have been blocked on the teachers room computers, the pair of slow, shoddy machines we ALTs are forced to use because they won't let us plug in our fancy Macbooks to the Internet, even though our predecessors could do so (when I asked I was simply told that it was not possible, an obviously lie to which I responded with a knowing, anger-laced smile).

I don't know if this is in response to the fact that Sam and I often use Facebook at work in our down time. Or if it's policy handed down from the powers that be at the Mie board of education. Or if it's temporary. But I do know that it's stupid.

For one, it's blocked under the category of "personals and dating," which is not what Facebook is used for, at all. Facebook is used primarily for time-wasting. Or keeping in touch with friends. Or contacting friends and colleagues. In fact, I use Facebook sometimes for work purposes -- recruiting ALTs to come to Yamasho seminars.

And here now, a work-day that is entirely down-time, I wanted to access some photos of my New Year's Eve I had posted on Facebook to use on the blog. But that will not happen. Because somewhere, some ignorant authorities don't want me on Facebook. Forgive me if I seem overly worked up about being denied access to a social networking Web site. It's just regular-level employee angst at silly regulations. Also I've got some spare time today.

I already finished my can of Boss black coffee. I have read the International Herald Tribune. It's only 9:30 and the earliest I could potentially escape is probably around 3. So here I am, on the blog, able to vent and look back at days unblogged.

---

I did not blog much from Tokyo because there really was not much to say about it. I did not do any sight-seeing. I didn't even leave Shinjuku, the bustling district surrounding what is often cited as the busiest train station in the world.

Shinjuku is divided into two parts -- East Shinjuku and West Shinjuku. East Shinjuku is the skyscraper district, a look into salary-man life, a mecca of all-night McDonald's restaurants and mini-marts. This is where my modest hotel was found, a five-minute walk from the station.

Across the tracks, you find East Shinjuku, the night-life district full of restaurants, bars and karaoke rooms. Also found here is the red light district (I did not make it this far, but I assume it is an interesting place). By nightfall, not just on the weekends, East Shinjuku is packed with people moving in every direction. Bars or restaurants are found tucked away inside tall buildings. Ride an elevator to the sixth floor, put your name on the list, wait a bit and sit down for a two-hour drinking and snacking session. This area is also dirty. A futile "clean Shinjuku" campaign is in effect, with trash and recycling bins placed throughout the area. But the hordes of people ignore them, and the locals probably scorn them as unflattering plastic eyesores in a place dominated by tall, gray buildings covered in flashy neon lights.

I spent my days sleeping in at my quiet hotel in West Shinjuku. Then as the sun set I would trek across the tracks to the fun side, meet friends, and head out into the mess. I am proud to say that I did not go shopping, despite a few unfortunate trips into department stores. On one such trip I found myself surrounded by women's clothes. So I decided to ride an escalator up. More of the same. I finally reached a floor filled with women's undergarments and decided to evacuate down to ground level and seek other entertainment.

On New Year's Eve I woke up at 6 and walked to the bus loading area, tucked underneath a roadway adjacent to the nice hotel I stayed at when I arrived in Tokyo back in August for the JET orientation. Five months ago tomorrow, that was. One month shy of a half-year in Japan? Really?

When I get home, and once again am allowed to access my photos, I will post about New Year's Even night in Ise.