bbq photos

Here is a round of photos from our "hanami" cherry-blossom viewing bbq. It's hosted via Facebook but anyone can look even without a Facebook account.

Link

He's not a pitcher, he's a ... wait, yes, in fact, he is a pitcher. Excuse me.

Yesterday, before the school-year-ending ceremony, students and staff gathered in the gym to practice the pre-planned set of cheers to be dispatched during Yamasho's opening game tomorrow at the spring national high school baseball tournament, known generally as "Koshien."

Koshien, which has a summer version as well, is a major deal, with national media attention and live television broadcast.

In what was perhaps a bit of accidental foreshadowing, I attended a day of the Koshien tournament in 2003 when I was just visiting Japan. That summer, as it happened, Yamasho was in the tournament, though at the time I was unaware of any alleged "Mie Prefecture."

So in the summer of 2003, and again in the summer of 2007 just after I arrived in Ise, I was able to experience the organized craze that is high school baseball in Japan.

What struck me most originally was the organized and civil nature of the cheering sections. For an American, cheering on your team is about making noise, shouting insults, or in high school student sections, coming up with clever cheers or personal attacks.

In Japan, by contrast, the cheering routine is rehearsed and polite. When our team comes up to bat tomorrow, our student section will rise and offer a cheer song, backed up by the school band, a group of "cheer girls" in the usual cheerleader uniforms and a unit of "cheer guys." The guys seem to be the leaders while the girls focus on dancing and pom-pom control. I should also point out that these guys and gals have rehearsed dance moves to go along with the cheers, which they do without any apparent embarrassment (I have not found a Japanese person who cannot dance, if pressed; it seems to be a highly respectable thing to be able to do).

When the other team is up to bat, despite better logic, we sit quietly, showing respect to the other team. Meanwhile, that team's cheering section, located across the big league ballpark, stands at attention.

There is no unfounded but widely accepted belief that the opposing team's pitcher may be, in fact, a belly itcher. In addition, no one, at any time, asserts that the umpire should submit to a previously unscheduled eye examination. (Or perhaps in deference to maintaining the harmony of social relations, such suspicions go unsaid.) To the American baseball fan, these facts are difficult to understand.

So here I am, the day before the big game, and I am not, despite instincts, coming up with a clever ESPN acronym to try to get on TV. Instead, I'll have to hop that the camera men take a liking to our cheer girls or our neon green trucker hats with the school name across the top. Or, in an attempt at internationalization, I could probably get on TV by introducing to Japan the U.S. sports tradition of streaking through the outfield.

This way for naked men

Somehow, I had gone six months without stripping down and getting into a hot tub with a bunch of Japanese men.

Fortunately, this major oversight was rectified last night, after my friend Mayumi responded to a "what are you up to tonight" with an invitation to a sentou, or public bath.

A sentou is like the more widely known onsen, or hot spring, but is indoors. Onsen feature sulfur-smelling natural pools; sentou offer a variety of different baths and saunas. I have not been to a proper onsen.

Both feature naked men. Also, naked women, but a key feature of these places is that the men and women are separated to keep things civil. Some advice: If you ever trek to one of these naked parties on your own, I would learn the Japanese kanji for man (男）and woman（女）.

There comes a time when you have to choose one of two directions, and it is probably a good idea to avoid an incursion into lady-land.

Once I was safely inside the naked man area, I was, not surprisingly, surrounded by naked men, casually walking around, relaxing, or filing their tax returns. They were everywhere, and of all ages. Things started out in a traditional locker room, which I would describe as like a health club locker room back home, but with more naked men.

And the naked men here are not concerned about limiting their naked exposure time. This is a public bath, not a public pool. Being naked is not an unfortunate side effect of the experience, but rather the point.

So I quickly found a locker, dropped in a 100 yen coin, threw in my backpack, and ran for the exit.

OK so I didn't really run away. I had already made the decision to not be a wuss. The only reason I could think of to turn down the offer was fear or embarrassment. I decided these reasons were not good enough. And this is Japan, after all, and being naked with a bunch of men is a key cultural experience that I had somehow escaped on three previous visits and half a year of living here.

So I stripped down and headed for the bath area. Now here is where I realized I had made a mistake. I had brought a full-sized towel for drying off after the affair, but when you walk around the bath area you are supposed to carry a small towel you get at the public bath. I failed to get this towel. This was a result of confusion out front, when Mayumi said I didn't need to buy the towel from the machine. Turns out, one requirement for having such a towel would have been buying said towel from the machine out front. The little towel is used for washing up before you get into the bath, and, for some, as a private-parts-covering-device.

But covering up is not really a major need. Some people seem concerned with covering up while others let it all hang out. I decided to forget the little towel as I went to wash up before getting into the bath.

This is a key rule of bathing in Japan, weather you're at home or at the naked party. You wash up first, then rinse, and only then do you enter the bath water. At home, bath water is shared. Of course, the water is shared at the public bath too. So it makes sense to clean up before you get in.

After I scrubbed up a bit, I got in the largest of the baths, which I would describe as being about as big as a Starbucks. By this time, I had gotten over the naked factor, and I was actually enjoying my time in the hot water. But I couldn't help but wonder if I was doing something "wrong." Am I allowed to sit here? Can I go over by those bubbles? Is that guy looking at me funny?

By the time I decided to relax, it was already time to go. But fortunately I've gotten over my fear of Japan's public bath culture. I now have a deeper appreciation for culture. And I now can avoid it for another seven months.

The weather outside is ... nice. Prettty nice.

If I could ignore schedule conflicts airfare spikes and general financial concerns, I would not be leaving Japan this month. Spring is on the way. Today is offering some foreshadowing. We are 50 degrees with little wind, which means it actually feels like 50 degrees. This is new.

And then summer, which I've mentioned a few times maybe, is so uncomfortable that it's hardly worth trying to describe with words. It would require kidnapping and some airplane tickets.

Anyway. My point is that as I was outside just now, cycling from work to the department store and then back home, I was comfortable.

We still have some more days of severe cold and nasty winds (tomorrow included) but spring is out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Then, when it's ready, and the cherry trees give the go ahead, it happens.

---

Tomorrow, as it happens, is Yamasho's graduation. This is a very formal affair. No silly student speeches. No serious student speeches, either. No musical performances. No gowns. No caps.

To be fair, there was a farewell ceremony a few weeks ago that included students performances. So they keep the fun separate.

Tomorrow's affair will be serious. I've been told to dress formally, meaning a black suit, white shirt, and here's the wild card, a white tie. Which I had to go buy today.

We ran through the ceremony in a practice today. There were a few rows of chairs for parents off to the side. The graduating students will file in and sit with their homeroom classes in the front, with the rest of the students sitting by class behind them. All are in their regular uniforms. Today's practice was abbreviated, but from what I can tell there will be a lot of standing and bowing, followed by sitting down, standing up again later, and bowing some more. I'm sure when the real thing happens there will be more time between stand-and-bow routines.

There is one element that reminds me home: They play Pomp and Circumstance.

Next Stop: America-Town

After seven months away from Freedomsville, my return is imminent. For 12 days in Oregon, I will eat pizza without corn on there, enjoy sandwiches with wheat bread, sample microbrews that don't cost six dollars a pint, avoid Japanese restaurants and sushi, read the Oregonian in print, and who knows what other things I haven't realized I've been missing.

Of course, the trip will be framed around visiting family, spread across Oregon, in Portland, Pendleton and Corvallis.

I will arrive in Portland next Friday, March 7, in the early afternoon, departing again for Japan on March 18. When I write that it seems like such a short trip, but it was quite a thing to squeeze it in amid a host of things happening here at what has become "home."

I am leaving immediately after my duties end for the final exam period of the third and final term of the school year. I will get back just in time to go along with the students and teachers to watch the baseball club participate in a national tournament, much like they did in the summer.

The baseball tournament, and one other major event, is what kept me from traveling during the proper spring break, though that would only have been about 12 or 13 days anyway.

The other option would be putting it all of until summer -- but summer would be more expensive to fly, I think, so I wanted to push for a spring trip.

Also, I want to do a little shopping for clothing, which isn't impossible here but is certainly inconvenient when it comes to sizes and styles.

But enough about shopping ... I nearly got a headache just thinking about it.

The key here is that in a week I will land in the U.S. -- in San Francisco, where I will change planes -- and enjoy what I have left behind. Exciting, much.

Run, sensei, run!

Another successful Beer Wednesday at the brewery last night. I wasn't hung over so much in the traditional sense but I felt and still feel run down. I think the twice a month thing may be a little much for what amounts to competitive beer drinking. You are competing against yourself of course, striving to drink all 10 of the day's offerings.

We started at 6, ended a few hours later. Sleep comes easy, naturally.

Our marathon beer-drinking is pretty impressive, but earlier Wednesday, the Yamasho kids ran a "marathon" of sorts ... not a real marathon by distance but a lengthy run. It's a big school event. Everyone has to join. The girls ran about 7 kilos while the boys hit 10. The longest I was ever forced to run in school was a mile. We all hated "running the mile," didn't we? I wasn't fond of it. But we should be thankful we weren't Yamasho students.

The weather was quite nice, as it is today. Mostly sunny with temperatures near above 50. We still have some coldness ahead before spring turns on for real.

For the boys, the best times were around 30 minutes, I believe, while the slowest of the bunch topped an hour. Best times for the girls were near 2o minutes.

A few people asked me why I didn't join ... I usually dismissed such comments with "maybe next year."

But really if anyone actually feels I should join, they should consider telling me about the event earlier than the week of. Maybe, say, a couple months out, when the kids start training, so I too could train a bit and be a good ALT and join in the fun.

Really though, among the staff, only the principal participated. But a lot of the students seem to think I'm more on their level than being seen as a teacher. Oddly, if they see my cellphone out in the school they'll tell me that "we're not allowed to use a cellphone," with the we seeming to include ALT Dan. In my book, such a rule applies to students. Maybe it does apply to teachers ... maybe we're expected to use cell phones only in the teachers' room ... but that's just silly.

I decline to participate in such silliness.

Chocolate Day

Mom e-mailed asking if they have Valentine's Day over in Japan. Below is my response:

In short, yes, they do have Valentine's Day here, but it is its own animal.

For some reason the tradition morphed here into women giving chocolate (only chocolate) to men they like or to their boyfirends. Men, meanwhile, wear black on the day if they are "available."

Some time down in March, on "White Day," men are expected to return the favor. Giving chocolate (only chocolate) back to someone who gave it to you means you are accepting their proposal to ... start something romantic?

I am not sure how rigid these rules are, or if they're widely practiced, but the basic idea is that on V-day women give men chocolate and on White Day men give women chocolate. I assume the choclate industry (Big Cholocate?) has something to do with this.

I had a private lesson on the night of V-day and I got a small box of chocolate from my student (a 20-something woman). Now I do not know if that means she has a thing for me ... it's possible. It's also possible that she's just letting me in on the fun since we had a lesson on The Day.

So when White Day comes around, I suppose I will have to decide if I owe her a small box of chocolates in return. Seems complicated. I like the U.S. system which only requires couples to act on V-day, leaving singles off the hook to mourn in solitude. Ah well. New culture, new rules. Maybe this way IS better. It at least provides more suspense.

G'day.

Dan

Went to Nagoya today. There was some snow. This via my cell. Is the photo oriented right? Probably not.

Edit -- The photo was OK but I spelled the word "to" wrong. Corrected.

Red Wine, Pink Blossoms

I think I need a new pair of jeans. A couple weeks back at Nanaimo, a strange spell of spill-related incidents made its way to the end of the bar, leaving my secondary pair of jeans red-wine-tinted. It started when Aya spilled a beer on Sean. A bit later I spilled some water, but in doing so I passed the curse one chair down to Hashimo, who must have been clutching his red wine class with some determination, because it was reduced to shards, expelling wine onto the bar, and of course, onto my pants. Fortunately, the glass didn't do any damage to Hashimo's hand.

So the pants, and the glass, were the only real victims. More domestic types might know a trick for saving these pants, but they have also developed holes and other problems.

It's time to move on.

Spring being on the horizon, new beginnings are all around here in Japan. This school year ends in March, the new year starting in April. Of course that means a new round of first-year students.

This year, it also means a new direct supervisor, as the guy in that position now has been here for 13 years and is ready to move along. The principal too will end his three-year stint at Yamasho.

In addition, many teachers will move on, new ones filling their spots. Teacher turnover is much more common here. Three years seems like a standard posting, though we do have a few long-term Yamasho people on staff.

Meanwhile, the ALT community in Ise will also see change, but not for another few months. Every year some ALTs move back home or to a bigger city in Japan, seeking excitement, or, possibly, the comfort of living within walking distance of public transportation. That means new faces every year. Sam and I are staying on at Yamasho for at least another year, and a third ALT will join us in the summer when the new contract period starts, working here and at another local school.

I have never been in Japan for spring. This country is wild about seasons. Locals tend to boast to visitors about how they have four of them, only to be somewhat deflated when people like me tell them that we have this in common. There are certain things to see or do in each season here. When I arrived in summer, it was the season of fireworks and festivals. Also, the season of cursing the heat and the humidity. In the fall, it's time to see the leaves change color. I failed to take part. I was busy enjoying mild temperatures and getting used to life in Ise. Winter is dominated by greeting the new year, with shrine visits and a host of other traditions I did not observe first hand.

Spring, it seems, will be cherry-blossom season. On the TV news, forecasters note and predict the progress of the cherry blossom front. I read a book last year by a former ALT who hitchhiked the length of Japan, from the far south to the northern-most tiny island off Hokkaido, following the cherry blossom front. Now I'm afraid I would need a little more vacation time to go for such a journey -- and let's face it, somebody beat me to it -- so I'll settle for some regional viewing.

And while a nice sunny day sounds great right now, I truly fear the return of summer and the sweat that comes with it.

But all I can do is put those memories aside, face the cold February, and prepare for the wave of pink cherry blossoms to emerge from my built-up expectations into some kind of reality.

Why all the shouting?

I think I've mentioned it before, but the teachers' room in a Japanese school is quite different than what comes to mind when you hear those two words back home.

Let's go back in time a few years, when I was walking the halls of McLoughlin High School in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. Besides the administration office -- from where the school is run, from where discipline falls, from where announcements are born, to where sick notes are delivered -- besides that, in an infrequently traveled section of the hallway there was a secretive teacher's room. Students are left to wonder what goes on inside. Our intelligence reveals that they have vending machines, maybe two. A fridge. A microwave. Perhaps a coffee maker. Traces of inside jokes, things too naughty for the the students being shaped and molded and taught to be good in the classrooms that surround it.

The teachers' room, in the states, is off limits.

Cut to: Japan, a few years later, where at 8:25 in the morning, five minutes until the morning meeting in the teachers' room, uniformed students scurry in and out to check something with teachers, grab something for class or deliver a late assignment.

Back home, the teachers' room is really just a "break room," only noteworthy to students because they can't go inside. In Japan, the teachers' room is the nerve center of the school. Instead of keeping desks in their own classrooms, teachers keep desks here. Students stay together in the 40-person homerooms, most of their classes taking place in their home classroom with various teachers coming in for different lessons.

The teachers' room, then, feels like a hyperactive office environment, with teachers rushing back and forth between classes. The grouping of the teachers in one place (well, not exactly one place as there are several teachers' rooms in larger schools; there is always one "main" teachers ' room) reflects the communal aspect of Japanese culture, which gives preference to the group over the individual.

Back home, teachers, along with students, are encouraged to be individuals. Teachers have their own classrooms, which they can decorate as they please within reason. They can choose to hang maps or flags or comics to lighten the mood. In Japan, everything happens out front, in the teachers' room, within and among everyone else. Quick meetings take place from across the room, with people shouting their side of the conversation without looking at the other person. It can get incredibly noisy at times, which is really quite annoying, and some things that I would think should be discussed privately just unfold on the stage.

Another annoying aspect is the hovering. Oh, the hovering. Nearly every day, a woman from the administrative office across the hall comes in to the teachers' room looking for someone. If this person is not readily available, which they often aren't, she stands there waiting, hovering, making those of us not used to this environment go on edge, looking over our foreigner shoulders to see if there's anything we can do to help the hovering office lady (there isn't).

Yes, I could do without the shouting and the hovering (and of course the lack of freedom and independence that is inherent in this system, but this is Japan and we bid farewell to independence when we got off the plane). But I do like that teachers and students can interact freely. It can be fun to chat with students who have stopped in. Often they're curious to know what their ALTs are up to (and often, the answer ... is nothing).

Although I've never experienced the back-home system from the teachers' perspective, I feel that I would prefer it. Having your own classroom to shape as you wish, essentially your own really big office, is appealing. And I would rather not be tossed in to the middle of so many on-the-spot meetings at unnecessarily high volumes.

But this is Japan, and we teachers and ALTs work together as a unit, not as a independent operators. So it goes.

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!

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.

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.

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: