Saga Jet Blog

Farewell, old friend

2007-06-25T13:15:00.000+09:00

Well, sagablog, it's been something like 8 months since my last post, but something happened to me today that I feel the need to talk about, and a high-traffic spot such as this seems ideal.

I happened to be in Kumamoto on Saturday morning, after a night of not drinking and not acting stupid and not sleeping in the rest area of a sento. On the way back to Kumamoto station, I decided to head over to Tsutaya and pick myself up a copy of the new Zelda game for DS (having bought the DS under no peer pressure at all from the other members of a group whose name is not Ichiban).

Needless to say, I spent much of the remainder of the weekend not at all playing Zelda, and not at all finishing a good chunk of the game. And, of course, I didn't decide to go home and play during my lunch break today, because that would be silly.

On the way not back home, I stopped into the Daily Yamazaki on the north side of Saga station for my first "Daily Lunch" in quite some time. Barely had I put the side stand on my bicycle down when I noticed a sign in Japanese.

本店は今月、６月３０日をもちまして閉店させていただくことになりました。

Translation: don't come here after June 30th, cause you will be SOL.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooo

Why the big fuss, you say. It's just another combini. There's one right down the street.

Just another combini? If Daily is just another combini, then Cocoa Puffs are just another kind of cereal, beer is just another kind of alcohol, hurricanes are just another kind of rainstorms, air is just another mixture of gases, LIFE ITSELF IS JUST ANOTHER STATE OF EXISTENCE.

No, friends, Daily is not just another combini. Daily is where I stumbled in one January night, bleeding profusely from my left hand (after a completely undrunk run-in with the sidewalk, I swear), and bought milk and cough drops.

Daily is where I stumbled in after falling off my bicycle completely undrunk to wash the cuts on my face.

Daily is an integral stop along the hallowed Trail of Beverages that do not include Beer.

Daily is where I bought flour and eggs at 1 in the morning to make okonomiyaki.

Daily is where I learned that Saga is the nanpa capital of central northern Kyushu, with people coming from all over the prefecture and even from Kurume and the Chikuho region of Fukuoka.

Daily is where I ended many a completely sober night, buying some snacks that I would find the next morning partially eaten.

In short, Daily was my life in Saga.

Daily Yamazaki, thanks for all the good times. Thanks for all the food. Thanks for being the best second-rate combini in Saga. But most of all, thanks for the memories.

I saulte you, Daily Yamazaki, and pledge that I shall never forget your existence for as long as I should live. Rest in Peace, good buddy ;(

PS: Daily-Y closes at 6:00 PM this Saturday. They are having a closing sale starting on the 28th and going through to the end. Feel free to stop in and pick up reduced price stuff, but hands off the beer. It's mine.

2007-05-31T20:06:00.000+09:00

Give-up します

2007-01-26T14:54:00.000+09:00

I, after much thought, have decided I'm too busy to be chasing people down to write and am tired of lame excuses of why people can't write a few blurbs. Therefore, I am resigning my post as moderator of the Saga blog. I've put a post on Saga Jet to see if anyone wants the job and as of yet, there have been no offers. I wanted to thank all of the people who read this blog and/or have contributed to the blog. If any ALT reader out there would like a chance to revitalize the blog once more and become moderator, please feel free to e-mail me at cardensarah@yahoo.com. As far as I'm concerned that means open blogging until we get a new moderator and/or someone who wants to write for a week. Take care and my apologies to the blog's founder, Matt for the slow state of affairs.

A Japanese Job Interview

2007-01-17T18:18:00.001+09:00

This past weekend, I traveled to the Kansai area for a job interview. Since about last September I have been looking for a new job instead of JET. Lack of satisfaction, lack of classroom control, lack of a lot have things have built over the course of 2 years, ultimately resulting in my dissatisfaction with my current situation. Looking for a solution, I threw myself into a self imposed job search. I asked myself, what do I want to be doing? The answer was teaching, something I find myself, sadly, not doing now.

(On a side note: Generally speaking, I think ALTs with backgrounds are teachers are more often fed up with the system. The complete lack of regard for one's teaching background is enough to drive a person crazy.)

But I digress, in September I updated my resume, wrote a Japanese version, obtained my grades from overseas, asked my graduate school advisor for a letter of recommendation, asked my supervisor and 2 JTEs and the BOE for other letters of recommendation. (mind you the LOR from overseas came faster than the teacher sitting next to me in Japan ... go figure)

I sent out about 20 resumes to private high schools and universities looking for someone who would hire me. The universities it seemed want people with university teaching experience. Something I lack. Many of the private high schools were only hiring part time with no health insurance or any real type of job security. So of the 20 letters I sent out, 10 positive responses came back. And of those 10, about 4 seemed promising.

Fast forward to last Friday. After work, I hopped on the Shinkansen for a “mere” 2.6 man and set off for an interview in one of Japan's more reputable private high schools. The job posting required an undergraduate degree as well as "intermediate Japanese a plus" not required, but a plus. This job was also full-time and offered an indefinite contract.

I arrived 1 hour early to my interview, because I did not know the location. I made small talk with the guard and followed the large English signs. THIS WAY PLEASE, and PLEASE SIT DOWN HERE. I complied.

About 15 minutes before my scheduled time, an elderly gentlemen introduced himself as Mike, shook my hand, and guided me to the interview room.

I opened the door and was greeted by a panel of not 2 or 3 people as I had been expecting but instead 12 people! 10 Japanese people and 2 foreign nationals. Immediately I was barraged in polite (Keigo) Japanese. I was asked to introduce myself. Which I did, OK, I suppose. But then the interview descended further into a personal hell.

I was handed a Japanese newspaper, and asked to read it aloud. ??? I would image this would serve as a daunting task to even the most fluent 2 language learners of Japanese. Needless to say I was stunned and muddled my way through something to do with a Historic Anniversary??? Then I was asked my opinion on the matter.

I froze. What did this have to do with teaching??? And the posting stated, spoken Japanese a benefit not a requirement. I looked around the room and noticed that everyone was at least 40 and above. (and really bad dressers too … a little humor here and there) I started to question if this is what I really wanted.

It got worse.

The ringleader of the group asked me to pick up the phone on the table next to me, and make a mock-phone call in Japanese to the parents of a student who was bullying other students. I told them that while I cannot do this well now, in the event I would have to do this, I would conference with someone prior to making the actual call. They nodded and asked me to continue.

I asked the imaginary parent to come in, and his/her earliest convenience due do my poor Japanese telephone etiquette, and have a face to face discussion.

The rest of the interview seemed to blur together. I was asked about my high school AP courses, how long I wished to stay in Japan, the idea of being in charge of a club, and if I had any other questions.

After a few questions on my part, and in a sort of blurry daze, I got up from the table bowed, thanked everyone and got on the shinkansen as fast as I could ...

Needless to say, I don't think I'll be hearing from them anytime soon. But you never know, perhaps this was some kind of bizarre test to see how people react under pressure. Who knows? Luckily, I have a different job lined up, and I will be outside of Tokyo to pursue my true passion, teaching.

Good luck to anyone returning/moving on. Any job interview questions please feel free to ask.

Kabocha Soup

2007-01-15T15:55:00.000+09:00

I was in the mood for something nourishing and warm and easy. This hit the spot. I didn't measure anything. It's another "key recipe." Just add and subtract stuff till it suits you.

* 1/2 kabocha, scooped, peeled and cut into 1" (3 cm) cubes.

* 1 tomato

* 1/2 onion

* about 1 liter chicken stock or 2 bouillon cubes + 1 liter water.

* 1/2 package frozen green beans

* 4-5 small sausages. I used "Arabic wiener," expecting something like merguez, but they weren't spicy at all (surprise surprise in the land of "Dear goodness! That Cream of Wheat was karai!!")

* Potato flakes (I dunno ... like a handful or two)

* Milk (about 1/4 liter, maybe a bit less)

* Paprika, salt, black pepper

1. Prepare the kabocha if you haven't already. Also, slice the top off the tomato and dice the onion. Cut the sausages into long slices (instead of cutting perpendicularly, slice at an angle).

2. Add some olive oil to a wok or deep skillet. Fry the sausage for a bit. When it starts to cook, toss in the onions and cook those until they turn translucent and fragrant.

3. Don't worry if residue is sticking to your pan, because you're gonna fix that in this step: pour in a little of your stock or water and work your spatula against the bottom of the pan to un-stick the fried residue. Now that you've gently lowered the temperature of your pan, you can add the rest of the water or chicken stock. Toss in your bouillon if you're gonna use it. Work it around until it's dissolved.

4. Add the kabocha chunks. Bring it to a boil. Toss in your tomato, skin and all. You're going to use the soup to blanch it. After about a minute, retrieve the tomato. The skin should slip off. You can then return it to the pot and mash it up a bit.

5. Now reduce the pan's heat to low. The surface should still be simmering. Let that cook until the kabocha begins to get soft. Whisk/mash it around if you want a puree. Otherwise, don't.

6. Ideally, you don't want to cook this too long because the heat will break down a lot of the nutrients in the vegetables you've added. On the other hand, the soup needs to simmer a bit if you want the kabocha to be creamy. Use your own judgment on this. Add the green beans. It's okay if they're still frozen. Let it all cook until the green beans start to get soft. Then add your potato flakes. They add a certain heartiness, I think, and they also thicken it all. And they're easier than throwing in a potato and cooking it. Potatoes take freakin' forever to cook. I almost exclusively microwave them these days.

7. So now you should have all of the major ingredients incorporated. Here is where you add the milk (dairy doesn't generally handle long cooking spells well). Just stir it in until you like the color and the flavor.

8. Another thing that does not hold up well to long cooking are dried herbs and powdered spices. Now is the time to add these. I use the paprika mostly for garnish cuz it looks cool...but I stirred a little in for the pungency it adds. Sage is a classic match for butternut squash (which tastes the same as acorn squash, which is the most commonly found form of kabocha.) but I didn't have any sage. So I didn't use it. Also, now's the time to add salt + pepper, unless you prefer to salt/pepper at the table. Be advised that both potatoes and, to a lesser degree, tomatoes, counter salt. So if you added a lot of either, you'll need to add more salt.

9. Once everything is cooked through to the texture you like, and once you've seasoned it, you're ready to chow down. I would say this can be done in under an hour. I think it only takes about 30 minutes to cook over a gas flame.

--

I ate like 6 cups of it when I was hung over from Lizzie's birthday and it made me feel 100% more human again :o)

Pancakes!

2007-01-10T06:13:00.000+09:00

Feeling exhausted and not motivated, I decided to pull a "finals week schedule" which is where I go to bed at an ungodly early hour, get plenty of sleep and wake up at an ungodly early hour. (in this case, 4 am) .

So I was up this morning, fiending for food, and I decided I'd do pancakes. But I never really bothered to memorize a recipe...and I was too lazy to find one that I usually use, so I hopped on Allrecipes and dug one up. I changed the white sugar to brown and man, it turned out well!

So here is it. It makes 4 servings. Which is enough to feed a really hungry me. Or two normal people. If you have extra, you could probably wrap each in plastic wrap (or put waxed paper between each), toss them in a Ziploc, and put them in your freezer. Breadlike things tend to freeze well.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup / 125 g all-purpose flour (I sift mine because of the humidity here. But it's no biggie.)
1 1/4 tablespoon / 15 g brown sugar
2 teaspoons / 9 g baking powder
1/2 teaspoon / 3 g salt
1 egg
3/4 cup / 180 ml milk
1/4 cup / 50 g shortening, melted

1. In a small bowl, thoroughly combine all the dry ingredients.

2. In a separate bowl, beat all the wet ingredients together well.

3. Heat your frying pan until water sizzles when you flick it across the surface of the pan. For me the lowest regular setting on my gas burner was ok.

4. Add a little butter and tilt the melted butter around to coat the bottom of the pan.

5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, stirring until just mixed. (The baking powder begins reacting immediately when it gets wet, so you shouldn't mix it until you're ready to use it.)

6. Add 1/4 cups (about 60 ml) of the mixture to the pan. When the top begins to bubble, flip the pancake. Repeat until you have a platter of golden delights.

7. Serve immediately with some of the horrendously expensive pancake syrup they have here. Unless you can get your hands on the even-more-expensive real maple syrup, in which case I envy you so you should be especially smug when you enjoy these pancakes.

Also, I finally got around to finishing the last recipe from my December week of cooking. It's not much of a recipe. It's really just an excuse to talk about Epicurious.com, which I review in the "Resources" section. Huzzah.

Pota-toes are cozy toes

2007-01-04T11:13:00.000+09:00

Looking for a tasty treat to keep you warm this cold, cold winter?
Why not take a page from the Little House on the Prairie (Big Woods volume) and cook a potato?
It's easy: microwave one potato and take to bed with you. The little angel will keep you so warm you're actually at risk for skin burns - for real, be careful. Then, in the morning, you've got a potato, ready to eat!
I'm serious, this works.
American Pioneer Seal of Desperate Approval

Happiness

2006-12-28T14:29:00.000+09:00

Here in Morodomi, the sun is shining but it's snowing!

It feels like it must be mid 40s, (7.2 C) but the weather report is saying it's 36 degrees F (2.2 C). The snowflakes are immediately turning to water as they land on things, but it still makes me happy. I feel like I'm finally settling in properly. Things are coming together. For example; I have just learned where to pay the last of my bills (natural gas was a tricky one; who knew you had to go to a gas station to pay it? In America, natural gas companies don't sell gasoline--at least not under the same name).

Part of this, of course, is that I'm now able to string together basic sentences, since I've had enough time to pick up enough useful words. Shame on the mandatory Japanese lessons for not teaching us a single verb form. Knowing basic verbs would have been waaaay more useful than learning to say the Japanese equivalent of "Honey, I'm home!" (which I forgot anyway, since I live alone).

Another part of it is that more people in town are used to seeing me around town. That awkward "getting to know you" stage is a real drag when its simultaneously happening to you and 11 thousand people.

Also, I've had a really relaxing long weekend, followed by a two day workweek--with cocoa(!) in the staffroom coffee bar. That alone sent my spirits soaring.

So all of these things are coalescing into a sense of utter well-being. I know that this is not news to a lot of people. Most of you have already hit this point. But I feel like I'm always blogging about the bad things that happen to me here that I should try to give equal time to the really good moments, too.

I hope everyone's having a nifty holiday. If you're still in Saga and want to hang out, drop me a line. Otherwise, I'll see you later.

Happy Holidays

2006-12-17T13:56:00.000+09:00

Hey everyone,

Blog moderator here with a very short message. First thank you to Brett for writing last week. It's always nice to hear from new people. This week starts open blogging on Saga blog. Anyone already signed up can feel free to log on whenever the mood strikes and blog your heart out. If you want to blog, but haven't signed up feel free to send me an e-mail at cardensarah@yahoo.com and I'll try to get back to you when I can. I may get to it late as my internet access will be limited for the month. Open blogging will last until January 21st. Thanks very much and happy holidays everyone.

The Teacher Shuffle

2006-12-15T15:12:00.000+09:00

While this might well be the subject of a previous post - or perhaps common knowledge - I only recently managed to learn about how the teachers are moved around here. So before my rant, a quick lesson...

While public school teachers may have a somewhat secure job, it turns out they are subject to the whims of the Board of Education just as much as we are. One of my teachers told me that a teacher can only stay at a school for a maximum of 6 years, after which they HAVE to move to another school within the same system (pending some special circumstances, like pregnancy, marriage, etc). This doesn't just mean "teachers in Saga-shi will be moved to other Saga-shi schools", it means "The teacher in Saga-shi might be moved out to Karatsu, or visa versa, and the teacher must then either face the commute or move." If this sounds like crap, my teacher told me about a school in the Nagasaki prefecture that's located on a little island. If you get moved to that school (which you have no power over), you HAVE to move into a ready-made house that is adjacent to all the other teacher's houses, and more or less isolate yourself for 2 years in order to teach at this school. Yikes. That is the weaksauce.

I was debating the pros/cons of this system with my teacher. She more or less ardently supported it while I thought it was ridiculous. In defense of the system, she said (and with some points I agree) that this enables the school system to move teachers where they are needed. Our examples usually centered around Jyoto, or as Jay will tell you, the shittiest junior high school of Saga-shi. The school is supposedly flooded with punks who often pick fights with eachother and sometimes even with the teachers. Point in case, yesterday Jay had his bike stolen, by a student no doubt. Fun times for all.

Her argument was that if a teacher ended up at a crappy place like Jyoto, at least then they could relocate to another school after a year or two, and not have their spirit totally rent asunder. Also, teachers who are known for being excellent disciplinarians with strong dispositions - which one of my Shoei teachers fits to a "t" - could be moved to Jyoto to try and make things better there. Beyond that, it keeps a teacher on their toes and prevents them from getting lazy, as you essentially have to get used to a slightly different curriculum every few years.

My argument was that this is exactly one of the reasons that teachers are staying so damn late at their schools - being forced to set up camp all over again every few years. I also thought it was difficult to establish a really unified front or any kind of community as a group of teachers when your coworkers would be changing constantly. After all, even if you didn't leave, somebody else in your school will be changing. There's not a lot of incentive to get to know the other teachers outside of your department when you probably won't have to deal with them after a year or two.

I also thought it was unreasonable to demand so much from teachers in the terms of a commute and accommodations. I even ended up teaching her the word "pissed" as my feeling of choice for how I would react if I worked in Nagasaki and somebody decided it would be grand for me to move to an island for 2 years. As a side note to Elisabeth, I then said another way to say "pissed" would be "mukamuka" ;)

Anyway, I guess this goes a long way in explaining why the JETs are shuffled around, too - it's actually treating us more like the other teachers than we'd think. Not to mention the students stand more to gain (culturally, anyway) from a diverse set of foreigners than they might from a diverse set of math teachers.

The conversation ended up steering towards the situation of teachers in general, in that they have VERY little vacation time. They have nenkyu, yes, but I was told that some teachers are in the position where they cannot possibly use all of their nenkyu without being powerfully disruptive to the school schedule, which no doubt behooves them to be the loyal workbots Japanese society intended. All of this just makes me even more wary of our new man Prime Minster Abe...

Coming from America, I only really know one system, and that's teachers staying where they like as long as they like..unless they're fired. How are things elsewhere? Your input is welcome!

It's about You. It's about Me. It's about YouMe Town.

2006-12-14T10:50:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I proved a bit too busy to make a post here... not sure if I'm going to try and double-up for the day, but at least I'll get one more out!

So! YouMe Town! Which for awhile I thought was a franchise separate of the now-famous mall. After all, people kept referring to it as "yume town", and CLEARLY the sign says "you me". I guess I haven't been here long enough to realize that most Japanese could not care less about the proper pronunciation of a word/s, as long as it seems like a clever association to those who kind of know English.

Saga may be more or less Bumfuck, Japan, YouMe Town is a big deal. I have it on good authority that people traveled to Saga from other prefectures - even those on Honshu - to come and witness its colossal opening. While I initially reacted to this claim with a bit of incredulity, actually going to YouMe Town made me understand why this might be the case.

First, a tangent - Tokyo is a pretty crazy place. Hell, even Fukuoka is a madhouse compared to Saga-shi. There are so many people crowded into so little space that all the shops are build and indexed vertically. Getting a directory of the various bars/restaurants/shops you can go to usually involves a lot of neck-craning, and once you get inside things are still cramped. This is one of the down sides to living on a tiny, mountainous island - real estate stacks before it sprawls.

But not in Saga. Here YouMe Town's enormous pink cube of a sign can be seen far, far in the distance, a Sanrio-esque monolith amidst a slew of buildings that rarely push five stories. But for as high as it goes, the real immensity of the place is in how is spreads out, taking up space unapologetically. If you go to Mallage, you are probably going to be navigating around a lot of people. The walkways aren't exactly narrow, but some - those on the second floor especially - usually prohibit you from walking more than two or three side-by-side, and in this way it adheres to the "space is precious" mentality of Japan.

YouMe Town strives to overcome this problem and does a good job of it. It's so big that a few things even seem TOO large. The handrails on the second floor, for example, aren't really handrails at all - they're really more like fences. While in America you can comfortably set your hand on the rail and even bend over the barrier at your waist to have a look down, the Japanese are either scared of falling or never have tired arms. In either case, the oversized handrails take the fact of the mall's enormity and embellish it further with the illusion of scale - if the handrail is taller than you, then the rest of the place MUST be huge, eh?

I did not stay long enough to explore the entire mall, but i have to say there's a pretty intimidating selection. I found shops that sold things I couldn't find in Saga before, and the restaurant section has a strangely ritzy feeling to it, trumping American food courts by far. My only real complaint thusfar is that it's a little labyrinthine. The organization in some places seems VERY haphazard, with many shops getting tucked into weird holes or halls that must be murder on their number of passersby. I'd also be curious to see the exact structure of the thing, as American malls generally don't wind and interconnect in the ways Japanese malls do. I got lost a few times just walking around, only to make a loop I didn't know existed and end up back where I started -_-

Kind of a ramble there, but the final verdict is that you should definitely go, even if it's only to see the place and walk around. You'll also probably be able to do any shopping you were looking to tackle, so there's another reason for ya, too.

Anyway, still at school, feeling kinda sleepy, think I might walk around a bit. Peace.

No Cake on Christmas?! mind explodes

2006-12-12T12:57:00.000+09:00

Whew, this one is even later than yesterday's, and I'm afraid that if I don't do it before I leave work it just won't happen until tomorrow. So here goes!

I've recently started doing Christmas Lessons (or at least 10 minute blurbs depending on the teacher) and it, like so many other lessons, has left me realizing all the things I know of, but not too much about. Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, for example. I have little vague ideas about both, but I don't know what days they happen on and I'm pretty hazy on the meanings of their various symbols. For all I know, SNL's depiction of Hanukkah Harry as the Santa Claus of Judaism doesn't venture far from the truth, and Kwanzaa... if only I could access Wikipedia IN CLASS.

The worst part is that our situation lets us bullshit with impunity. Some of the teachers might be the wiser, but most of them don't even know Hanukkah exists, let alone any other Decembery holiday. I'm not sure how tech savvy the kids are, but most of the adults aren't exactly 133t haXors, and so I'm never too worried that they'll look up some fact I might have taken some liberties with. This is not to say that I'm constantly making things up - but rather that I sometimes feel much better equipped as an emissary from the suburbs of Colorado than I do as the source on all things American.

I think it would be sweet to make up your own fictional winter holiday and teach a class about it. In fact, treating any work of complete fiction as fact is something that appeals in the deviant in me quite a lot, even if my moral compass doesn't permit me to indulge often. Japan has just the right amount of isolation for this, after all - the odds of most of the people traveling to America is pretty low, and even those that do are likely to only see a tiny fraction of the country. Hell, most Americans only see a tiny fraction of the country...but the difference is that we learn a whole lot about the other States from various sources. The number of "well-known" States barely spikes past the single digits, so whose to say that Nebraska doesn't build huge sculptures of corn every winter to worship their heathen God, Cornar the Everbuttery? I smell a lesson plan already.

The original reason I was going to make this post was to reveal some of my discoveries about Japan's Christmas, and to ask a few questions as well. Did you know that there's an old Japanese God who bears a strange resemblance to Santa? Hoteiosho is this fat and jolly fellow's name, and he roams the land with his sack of valuable things he gives to good children. He also doesn't need a "naughty/nice" list as he sports a pair of eyes in the back of his head (so they say), and thus always knows if you're sleeping, awake, bad or good. I have no word yet on whether or not he's quoted saying "ほほほ!", but I'll let you guys know if I find out.

One thing I haven't been able to figure out yet is the significance of the white Japanese cake with strawberries. I did a brief search online and found an article that SEEMS like it would have the answer...but the sites I went to thought the article was worth enough to demand charging me to see more than the title and a paragraph or two. Balls.

I know the meaning must be recent - Christmas is super new in Japan, and so any related traditions should still be traceable. Does anybody have an idea of where it came from?

That's it for today - peace.

Specialized Vocabulary

2006-12-11T10:36:00.000+09:00

Learning a new language presents you with some interesting choices. Does grammar come first? Should you put that on hold and just try for as many phrases as possible? How important is it to be able to correctly say "hey, look at those 3 small animals!" without using "ちさい" or "動物"? If I skip "please" and "thank you", will an angrily muttered "日本語分からない!" suffice?

We're in an even more unique situation in that learning the language is optional, and what path we take towards proficiency (or adequacy/fluency, take your pick) is likewise our prerogative. You can forgo reading/writing and instead try and hazard any and all conversations. You can hit the Kanji books like they owe you money. You can even sit on your duff and watch Hard Gay online all day, gleaning bits and pieces of Japanese between pelvis thrusts.

One of our greatest advantages, of course, is being able to go straight for the gut and learning only those phrases and words which apply to and interest us. A lot of you no doubt started that journey with your now trilingual translation of "mas cervezas por favor", and personalized it from there. That the kids shout "PENIS!" at you in the halls is no coincidence (although it is something of a miracle if it's not "PENNISU!"). Case in point: at the Balloon Festa, I spent a bit of time looking for a place to deposit some trash I had before finally deciding to ask one of the cuter yakitori stand girls. She said she could take the trash, and after the usual "oh no please don't inconvenience yourself", "no I insist it is my honor to receive your garbage" exchange, I finally gave her the refuse, to which she belted out an impassioned "I LOVE YOU!". If her hands were not full of trash, I'm pretty sure she would have pulled me over the counter for sloppy make-outs. Ah well - c'est la vive.

If you think about it, you no doubt have your own specialized vocabulary, and it probably reveals something about you. If you have a car, then your motorist's lexicon will likely dwarf that of the average gaijin pedestrian. Any sport will leave you more learned concerning the various equipment you use, and also about the finer anatomy that might be important for issuing/receiving instruction. How can a movie buff be prepared to answer the question of his or her favorite actor or actress if they don't know the words? Nevermind explaining your panty fetish (although there are shops that can probably help you with enough embarrassing gesturing).

My case was somewhat odd as I entered Japan with a vocabulary largely borrowed from manga and anime, meaning I could identify a slew of old weapons and specialized attack names before I could name all of the animals in Japanese. A few days ago my inner otaku became a little more apparent to my coworkers when I was surprised to hear them using the word "さっき" over and over. I tried to join in, but it became apparent pretty quickly that we were using a different meaning. Mr. Dictionary to the rescue:

Their definition: a little awhile ago.
My definition: bloodthirst potent enough to be physically felt.

You can understand our mutual confusion. Turns out there's slightly different intonation between the two, so now I can tell whether somebody became sick just a little awhile ago, or wants to kill me so badly they became sick. Learning's fun!

Not sure what I'll throw up here tomorrow, but it should be something. The posts have a good chance of becoming increasingly ridiculous, so...check back soon, eh?

Why so reserved?

2006-12-10T00:10:00.000+09:00

sarah and I just got back from the Billy Joel concert in Fukuoka. I am a very happy girl now...I grew up listening to him on a daily basis...Some kids listened to Raffi, for me it was BIlly...My parents were huge fans so now my sisters and I follow in their footsteps...This was the 6th time I have seen him Live...Yes I admit I can sing every song and dont miss a lyric(yes I know its not healthy)....While he was just as amazing as always(just a little older and had no hair) there was something strange about the atmosphere....

That is...EVERYONE was sitting in their seats like good little middle school students...No one was talking, singing, or dancing...they were just contently listening to the music and occassionally clapping their hands.

Ive been to a lot of conerts before but this is the first one where the audience did not go wild...(and by wild I mean singing along to their songs or even standing up at the end for an ovation) When he was finished playing, no one but sarah and I were yelling Encore..they just sat in their seats in the dark waiting...An occassional head bop came from the guy sitting next to me, but that was about it...I mean I dont understand how people didnt get hte least bit into it...he was jamming for a while, playing the piano incredibly with his ass, while playing the hamonica and singing...it was very impressive to say the least...And not to menion when he random stopped the concert, picked up a guitar, started playing, and had one of his driving maintenence crew guys sing "Bad Religion" The looks on their faces were hilarious when that started.

Thanks to Sarah and my crazy singing, enthusiasm, and dancing, I think we got a few people around us a little more into it than the average joe, but still it was quite a sight to see...The only spec of excitement they showed was during the final encore when he played Piano Man...someone must have told him that Japan is obsessed with the Beatles bc he introed it with "Imagine". You started to see a few hands raise and sway left to right...well not really but sllightly moving...

But has anyone else experienced this total lack of energy in events like this? I see them at Kunchi and know that Jpaanese people can get excited...Ive seen them at karaoke bars and know they can sing. Ive seen them out at clubs and I know they cant dance(but they surely try)...so why when there is a event they go to, why wont they just let loose? What is it that would get them to let go of being so reserved and just allow themselves to have a great time?

After the concert, we went to Hard Rock Cafe...im usually not a big fan of the place, but that Chicken Cheese Melt Burger couldnt have tasted better....The waiters spoke perfect English, and it was a good escape from remembering that I did infact live in Japan...Sometimes that is needed...especially when youve got your heart set on going home in 8 days! If you ever need a good place to eat a real hamburger or meal, go there...its right under the dome...and the food is delicious!

off to bed I go...Got school in the morning...Yes on Sunday..why? I dont know...but they think its a good idea..Remember its the XMAS Charity party tomorrow night too...see you all their! You can even get your face painted by yours truly if youre lucky!

random thoughts...

2006-12-09T01:06:00.000+09:00

What this week taught me:

1) Japanese elementary students are so awesome..they might be little rascals but they are so damn cute...Even though my schedule is wicked hard and busy, I love it...The amount of energy and smiles they have are contagious.

2) Rice can be as painful to eat as natto sometimes...if youve been on overload

3) Mochi is like playdoh...but if you try to make animals and stuff out of it, it just molds right back into a circle...

4) RISK is the longest game ever...if you are ever playing with Rik, Joe, Colin, or me, make sure you dont start at 7pm or you wont ever sleep...

5) Charades is awesome...looking for a good laugh?

6) Winters in Japan are cold....very very cold

7) Billy Joel is the greatest singer ever and Im gonna see him live again in 19 hours...good things do come to those who wait!(its been 4 yrs since my last concert...yes im a little bit of an addict)

8) I really really miss my family and friends...and will be home so soon...

9) I need to sleep more...my winter insomnia has set in again.

sorry for the lack of content and interesting writing...Too much rolling of the dice, apple juice, and double dutch....

Rice...

2006-12-07T22:55:00.000+09:00

i just got back from a meal at Joyfull... i ordered the ebi fry side but they gave me the whole meal...rice and miso soup included...Usually when served rice I can suck it up and eat it...but today I was just riced out...It still amazes me how they can eat rice about 5 times a day and never get sick of it..

At my mountain elementary school this morning, I made mochi with my 5 and 6th graders(all 12 of them) If you have never made it before, you should definitely try...its a lot of fun but tons of work. Heres a quick overview of the process...Make a fire and boil some water. Steam up a whole pot of rice.... Put the cooked rice in this big stone thingy...then take really big mallots like a judge uses and beat the crap out of the rice for about 20 minutes. It takes about 3 people to pound it in sequence...It was great because I was sick of hearing ichi ni san ichi ni san over and over again so I decided to teach them the names of Santas reindeer...Next thing i knew we were pounding mochi in sequence singing "Dasher dancer prancer vixon comit cupid donner blitzen RUDOLPH! then would repeat it agian....sounds ridiculous I know but they loved it...They couldnt understand why I knew all the names of santas reindeer since Santa only has 1piki in Japan...I quickly responded with "well why can you sing the names of all the kunchi floats and neighborhoods in about 2 seconds" Then that turned into "Akajishi, aojisihi... la la la) Yes I am damn proud that I now know the order of all the Karatsu Kunchi floats in chronological order. Moving on...Once we finished making about 3 kilos of mochi. it was time to make them taste delicious...We had to take the sticky mochi, roll it into balls, and then put powered sugar on them so they didnt stick to our hands...We had toppings galore..I felt like I was at an icecream sundae bar, only instead of chocoloate and sprinkles we had daikon, soy powder, beans, and soy sauce.(only in Japan) I like mochi but dont tend to eat tons of it...however, when they realized that I would eat everything that they gave me, they decided to have fun with it and make all sorts of special mochi suprises for erin sensei...once i was finished I was full of rice from head to toe..we packaged all the mochi into bags and then cleaned up..it was now lunch time....

yay! whats for lunch? Egg soup(ok...no soup for erin today says the soup egg allergy nazi), seafood salad, and...you guessed it...RICE....since I couldnt eat the soup they gave me extra special amounts of rice... I was already full from all the rice mochi I had only 30 before so eating today was painful...they were laughing when i said i was full of mochi bc they were like but its not food..its only mochi...I tried explaining that it was rice all the same, but htye just wouldnt believe me...Erin...its only mochi...they are small...it doesnt even look like rice..Little did they know that each student had had me sample like crazy....My school is very serious about wasting food so i had to eat it all...I was now beyond full of rice and felt slightly sick...after school, they gave me mochi to take home with me...
The crazy amounts of rice that were served to me today put me on overload...I couldnt even look at it at Joyfull.

How can they eat it all the damn time and never get sick of it? Breakfast, rice....lunch, RICE, dinner, rice, dessert, rice...drinking...rice wine...snack...rice crackers...job...rice farming...What would Japan do without rice...I dont think they could survive. Whenever im asked the question what do you have for breakfast. I always answer something like toast, bagels, oranges, or whatever...they all go...ehhhh...erin sensei you dont like miso soup and rice? Even though i explain that I have miso soup and rice with school lunch 5 days a week the last thing I want is that for breakfast, they just dont get it...But its the Japanese way they say....When I was in the hospital i got rice and miso soup for breakfast...that was the only time ive had it for breakfast and it just didnt feel right...i never really enjoyed eating it but they doctors made me eat it all...I like miso soup, yes...but to have it 3 times a day from the time I am born to when I am 105(the age of the average obachan out where I teach on Thursdays) thats just too much miso soup. Maybe thats why they can live for so long...rice, green tea, and miso soup...

so ya...rice...tomorrow once again im at a different school and rice is on the menu..as well as egg soup...so my lunch will once again be the same...a big bowl of white rice, seafood salad, and cream(milk) I will once again exlain to the students why I am missing the soup from my tray(bc they all freak out when they realize I am not getting enough food), why I can use chopsticks with my left hand(and then they try and spill their food all over themselves...ahhh hidarikiki!), why I always janken my milk away on Fridays(bc 5 days of cream is just too much), and how rice is just oh sooo oishii!

I think I am going to boycott rice when I go home for xmas..3 weeks, no rice...I think its what I need...1.5 years of eating rice has just been too much..todays rice overload was the last straw...i need a mental break from gohan and get some good western food in me(mmm...i can smell it now!) anyway..enough about rice...time for my green tea and sleep...

Staying warm...

2006-12-06T22:57:00.000+09:00

Its freezing...im from one of the coldest places in the US where the average temp falls about 30 degrees F lower than the coldest day in Saga..but last winter in Japan was the coldest I have ever been...I know the 2nd and 3rd years have probably mastered how to conquer Samui Saga, but for all you 1st years, i hope some of these suggestions help you out..Because when we say its gonna be a cold one, you have NO idea...

so here are some tips that helped me stay warm last winter.

1) LAYERS:
Long underwear is COOL....Invest in good long underwear...you will need it...pants and undershirts...I had my dad send over all my ski stuff and it became my best friend.Go to Uniqlo and buy lots of their long sleeve layer tshirts. they are perfect to wear over the long underwear and under your sweaters and jackets...buy a few and layer...Make sure you have lots of heavy wool sweaters...and dont get them too small bc you have to have layers. Pants: Long underwear(either 1 or 2 pairs at once) then your pants(trousers for you brits)....socks: I wear 2 or 3 pairs to school...your feet can never be too warm.

Layers are key...The NAN MAI game is always a fun game to play....its very easy...you ask a kid in the class, nan mai! when they ask how many what? you say...layers! They count...they always try to beat me but always fail...bc Erin sensei is always freezing and wearing layers layers layers.

You may think that wearing 2 pairs of socks, 2 pants, and 5 shirts is a little extreme...but just wait til you have to ride your bike 30 min, get to your Junior high school, and teach 6 classes, all without heaters...you will soon realize that it is colder inside than outside and you are literally still frozen from head to toe...trust me...all of you will probably experiece this..unless you are lucky enough to have heaters at school! (On a side note, I am very excited this year....I have 8 schools, and 7 have heaters in every classroom! thank god for teaching elementary school this year! All my prayers from last winter were answered minus my MONDAYS...gaman suru)

2) HEATERS: I hear those scary 1960 gas heaters work pretty well for heating up a room quickly..however if you have asthma like me, you can be in the room for about 10 minutes before you are in big trouble,...Im not a big fan of gas poisoning so i go with the electric heaters. ya my electric bill is more expesive but its worth it to me...I bought a halogen spot heating fan at jusco last yr...The sun now rises inside my house bc its the brightest thing in the world and I even resort to wearing sunglasses but it keeps me really warm! if i dont move...the air con is good too..takes a while to heat up the room but my house is so small i can close the door to the kitchen and it stays warm...set the timers on the aircon so it turns on 40 min before waking up....getting up in the moring is the worst...its wicked freezing....if you havent set your timer, you cant get out of bed...I dont have a kotatsu but I do like them...although its kinda weird when your legs are burning and your head and hands are frozen solid...but if i had a bigger house Id get one...Hot water bottles(thanks to the brits for introducing them to me) are great too! just boil some water pour it into your fun shaped hot water bottle(I have a frog...got it at bulldog..its wicked awesome!) and you have something to hug and keep you warm when you fall asleep!

3) FUZZY AND ELECTRIC BLANKETS: I received electric blankets from one of my Japanese friends last yr as a gift...it is the greatest thing that ever been given to me,...turn it on about 30 min before getting into bed...your bed is all nice and warm and it helps you fall asleep quickly... Buy the big fuzzy heavy blankets from JUSCO...they are great to put on top of the electric blankets.. i have 2...and 2 duvets, so ya...i have 5 blankets on my bed...you can never have too much...

4) TOLIET SEAT COVERS AND MATS: getting to the Bathroom sucks...its so cold in your kitchen....the last thing you want is cold feet and a cold ass...enough said,...Showering sucks bigtime, esp for girls bc your hair never dries...run from your shower to your bedroom and change in record time...youll become a pro!

5) GET A HOBBY: the less time you spend in your house the easier the winter will be...I found that I became very lazy bc all i wanted to do was cuddle in bed and go to sleep...if you are not at home, you wont realize how cold is really is as much**(but dont stay at school..bc its freezing there too) dont let yourself get down bc its REALLY easy to get down in the winter here...

6) CAMBELLS CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP and COCOA: Cooking in the winter sucks bc your kitchen is so cold. get soup from costco and warm it up...with a cup of cocoa its sooo delicious and warms you up!

7) GLOVES AND HAT AND JACKET: wear them all the time...to bed, to school, to soccer practice,....never take them off...

IF YOU DO ALL OF THESE THIGNS LISTED ABOVE....YOU WILL STILL BE FREEZING ALL THE TIME...you get a chill that just never goes away...I hate Japanese winters....esp since it doesnt ever snow in Karatsu....if it snowed i think it would be ok...but the bitter cold is just too much...BUT BY LAYERING UP AND STAYING WARM YOU CAN GET BY! I know it probably sounds like im exaggerating...but really...im not! it will be cold so just do all you can to fight it!

If you have any other suggestions of how to stay warm, please let me know!...Even with all these things im still always cold...

Im looking forward to heading back to MASS to below zero weather, cuddle up with my dog by the warm fireplace, listening to xmas carols, reading a book, while eating moms mac and cheese and sipping hot cocoa.. oh man..HOME SWEET HOME soo soon! and i apologize for my terrible grammar and spelling...im on a 2 yr mind hiatus from academia and being in japan has helped that cause a lot...just hope I get it all back before starting up school again next Fall)

Good luck, stay warm, Happy Winter.

Info from the pro...

2006-12-05T20:37:00.000+09:00

Not really sure what to write about today..had an amazing day at my Eutopia island elementary school this afternoon...The kids (all 12 of them in the whole school) are all perfect...they learn English better than any of my junior high kids,(For the entire afternoon, no japanese is spoken from them or me and I just started working with them in April) always have a smile on their face, and have the funniest sense of humor...If only every kid in Japan could be so carefree like them... maybe Japan needs to split totally into more tiny islands of only 300 people...(just kidding but this is a very special place) We played charades today...Charades is awesome...(I actually played last night as well and if you are ever in need of a quick laugh or a washboard stomach, just play charades with Chris D and give him to be Maryline Monroe..._) Its amazing how well a 5th grader can impersonate Johnny Depp when given the word "Pirate".. And also my boat man gave me my ride home for free, I made handprint wreathes with my 1 and 2 nens(all 4 of them) then a random obachan who lives on the island gave me a ride all the way back to my house so I didnt have to wait 50 minutes for my bus to come and drive me another 30 min home...Tuesdays are always the best days! if only I could go to my island everyday... Anyways, moving on...

I guess Ill grant Nicks request today...Hospitals in Japan...this is something I know a LOT about...I am the first one to admit that my body and I are not very good friends. It is always something, be it a cold, food poisoning, anaphylactic bc of bee stings, the obachans at the restaurants hiding mayonaise and eggs in my food, or most recently, having an EXTRA bone in my mutant foot shatter and dislocate while walking in Tokyo....So here it is. THE PRO GAIJINS GUIDE TO SURVIVING THE HOSPITAL...

My first experiece was within the 3rd week of arriving in Japan last yr, After enjoying myself at the Beach party and getting stung by jellyfish, i went back home and fell asleep. 1 hr later i was in shock, had to call My 2 rescuers and the ambulance, and head to the E-room...in KTOWN(never do that...ok?) The dr looked at me funny for a while then gave me this bong to smoke(i dont remember anything but i assume it was laughing gas to open up my throat) bottom line is i still dont remember anything from that night...so talk to Dabs if you are interested in emergency room visits in the middle of the night....sidetracked again...im very guilty of that,,,gomen

This time I was in the hospital for 4.5 days...in Japan before surgery, you have to check into the hosptial a full 24 hrs before...I was baffled why but they told me it was to check on me and make sure that no one drank smoke or ate before surgery.(business men ruin it again) I didnt go in until 3pm the next day so for 30 hours I was on an IV just waiting, reading, studying japanese, sleeping, and trying not to go crazy while confined to a bed while feeling totally 100% fine..no food allowed so that day was painful....They woke me up at 5 so i had to wait a full 10 hrs and wasnt allowed to go back to sleep...not really sure why...When going into surgery i was totally awake..they made me wear a sumo diaper...they strapped me to this table, told me that I would go to sleep soon, and that was that...next thing i knew I was awake...When I woke up it was bizarre...my Japanese friends were in the room and so when I saw them I apparently started speaking Japanese.. I was so disoriented....The drugs in Japan do 2 things, both bad...1_) they make you really tired and nauseous so you just sleep all the time 2) they SUCK so they have no pain killer in them at all. just make you sick...People came all night to visit so if you were one of them, thank you very much again! Sorry I was in a whole other world.

they made me get up a lot and woke us up every morning at 5am..the day nurses were wonderful with me...the night nurses were TERRIBLE...i swear anyone off the street could apply for the position and get it...One guy the night after my surgery told me that if I needed to go get to the bathroom I had to get there myself (which was all the way on the other side of the hosptial...which is impossible for me to do since i cant even sit up at this point. I was attached to an IV and he handed me one crutch...I just starred at him, asked very rudely(oops..that was the pain talking) for a wheelchair and his help...and he finally was like...oh ya..i forgot you cant do this yet.....DUH!).They werent use to people my size so helping me in and out of the bed/wheel chair always required at least 1 nurse, and 3 onlookers...Thank god im not very tall bc i had the tallest crutches they had and I was all the way on the last level...Bc the meds were so bad, I spent most o the time beggiing for more medicine...The attitude in Japan hositals is GAMAN SHITE KUDASAI* (or in other words...suck it up and deal with it)...later I find out that they were only giving me half the medication most people get bc I have asthma(note above...) and they were afriad it would send me into attack...I was suppose to go home after 3.5 days but they kept me another day...I think bc they were afriad bc I didnt have a mommy to take care of me...The nurses couldnt speak any English at all, minus my translator nurse who came to see me 2 times a day to make sure everything was ok...otherwise it was all Japanese...i wish i was in a better state bc i could have learned so much more!

They dont care about pain..they wanted me walking the next day...It was pretty cool...they saved the bone and tendon that they removed from my foot, put it on a dish, and showed me the next day...they gave me the option of keeping it but i decided against that...I thought that was kinda strange...but then again...its kinda strange that I had an extra bone for them to remove anyway...

really my time in the hospital was noneventful...the other patients in the hospital were interesting to talk to..they were fascinated with me..that I lived in Japan, that i could use chopsticks, that i could eat miso soup(although it was the last thing i wanted to have while not feeling well), that I could speak enough Jpaanese to get by, and also that I was only staying in the hospital for a few days...Some of them had been there for 3 weeks for a tor ACL or a broken foot, or even just simple surgery..I told them that in the states you are only there for a few hours..they thought i was crazy for only wanting to be in there for 5 days...R
eally, it was just like any other time you meet new japanese people..its just we were all on crutches, pain meds, and casts.... I had drs apts quite a bit then had to go to PT 3 times a day* the dont mess around. The food is so much better than that in the states...but its Japanese...i love japanese food but i cant eat rice and miso soup every meal when im sick...I want Cambells chicken noodle, saltine crackers, and gatorade...i cant complain though. The cooks were veyr nice and made sure that they didnt give me anything with eggs...Thats the last thing they wanted...A gimp, drugged up crazy foreigner with a tamago allergy...I was the first gaijin the dr had ever operated on so he was amazed at hte size of my bones and my feet. He also told me that he thinks gaijins heal slower than Japanese....he still doesnt understand why im not healing faster..so that was exciting. I go
down in the record books as the first gaijin to have an extra mutant bone in her foot in saga ken..

umm..ya the hardest part really was dealing with my BOE and getting insurance stuff done...If you ever get hurt or whatever, make sure you have that all worked out and are stubborn ab out it...thank you Elizabeth for dealing with me when I was such a disaster! The 30% of My time in the hosptial and surgery ended up being a little over 10man so i had to pay that upfront...Now im still having to pay about 5000yen every week for visits and stuff..insuracne does cover it but you have to pay everything first and submit requests and get a refund...In order to make myself feel better about spending so much money over hte past few months, i just tell people I had a 5 day personal vacation...I was able to get the doctor to give me 3 weeks off from work...definitely needed more than that too...but dont worry...i didnt do much but go back and forth 3 times a week to the hospital and sleep...

overall was it worth it.?..well at this point im still not better, but i guess im on my way...i learned a lot about medicine in japan, left a mark in saga ken, learned how to deal with pain, got really strong from crutching around, had a 3 week hibernation, and had lots of great friends help me out, come visit, and make me lots of delicious food! SO ya..it defintiely could have been worse....im not afraid of japanese hospitals anymore..they did what they needed to do...

no complaints...just next time....im going to take a trip to the yakuza and buy some Codine and real stuff...enough of this Japanese crap.

fun with discipline...

2006-12-04T23:57:00.000+09:00

I had a lot of expectations of what Japanese school children were like before arriving in Saga....One of those expectations was discpline and respect...While students in the US could be tough at times, I never expected that I would experience any problems with discpline in Japan....boy was I wrong...(well only one school, one class...but they make up for 100 devils)

I am lucky enough to teach at a small country school along the northern peninsula..While the 1 and 2nenseis are amazing kids, the 3nens are famous throughout saga for being Punks and delinquents...To put it in perspective over the past year, they have pulled out dildos and vibrators on me in the middle of class, beat up a teacher, and had issues with bullying and vandelizing...Because of the 10 extremely wild and rude boys, the 3nen classes are known as the ZOO....

Since I started working ath the school over a year ago, I was shocked a thte lack of discipline....While the teachers all accept that the boys are terrible and lack respect for all people, they do absolutely nothing about it...The kids have been able to take full control over the school and know that htey can get away with everything....

With the change oft he school year, we got a new principal and things started to improve..ring leader #1 was removed from the classroom for violence and agression finally...he now stays in the principals office all day doing who knows what...the other kids are getting better, but still have a LONG way to go...they just have no respect for anyone, dont study, and threaten other students..

After taking 4 weeks off of school because of foot surgery, i retruned to my school on Monday morning...I had all I could do to make it up the stairs to the teachers room, never mind teaching my 6 classes ad walking....One of the punk kids decided that it would be funny to make fun of my limping and try to get me pissed off...After calling me many names, being rude, and getting no response from me, he decided it would be funny to come over and kick my bad food and push me so i fell on te floor,..After a head on shot to the foot and a good push in the back, i was pretty pissed off and in pain, I yelled at him in Japanese, gave him a nasty stare then walked away to work with anotehr student...he wasnt satisfied and came over and did it again...this time the whole class heard me get angry, saw my nasty look, and I left the class...

After class, the teacher came to me and asked if I was ok...i was so angry at the fact that the students were allowed to continuously act like animals and be so disrespectlul and demanded an apology from the student...i told her that until he grew up and apologized I would not return to the class...She keot apologizing and saying that it was her fault that this all happend Had she been a better teacher none of this would have happened. The amazing thign was that she never acted in class...that was because she was so use to the class being a zoo she didnt notice anything different than normal...that was until I stormed out of the room

The teachers and principals all took responsibility for his actions, claiming that it was their fault that he had not learned proper behavior a morals...I responsed that I was not looking for their apology.i wanted it to be from HIM and be sincere....He is a teenager and is old enough to take responsiblity for himself, and should know right from wrong...I demanded that he met with mem apologized, and got disciplined.

Today I returned to that school....He came into the staff room and asked to speak with me..my JTE came with us to help translate...Turns out that he did give me a sincere apology, however there was still something about it that just wasnt right,....That part was when I was stating what I expected him to do(respect me, apologize, start working in class, and never ever threaten or hurt teachers or students again) the teacher was translating it toally inaccuratley....If I said, please learn to respect people and act your age, he was told" Be good:. When I asked him why he kicked me after knowing I was really hurt, he claimed he didnt believe that I was really bad...He wanted to see if I was faking it and wanted to see evidence....I setteld that very quickly by taking off my shoe, revealing my oversized and scarred foot and saying...is this enough for you?...I think that freaked the shit out of him and I dont think he will ever disrespect me again....today he was bowing like crazy and gomenig every time i saw him...

The bottom line is that too many teachers take full responsibility for students actions...they dont discipline for teh most part and students never learn to take care of themselves and respect others....If teachers always take blame for students faults, they will never learn....I am a big stickler for people taking responsibility for their own mistakes and treating people with respect....It killed me to see the teachers saying that it was their fault for a 15 yr old boy being stupid and aggressive. While I could have just walked this whole situation off, it was ot the first time something like this had happend. I saw how the boys had driven the art teacher out of their job and I was not going to let the kids get away with it again...By making a big fuss about it and having the kid apologize to me, I made him realize i wouldnt put up with it, had him really scared and accept that what he did was wrong..He was horrified when he had to talk with me today...And during the whole day, he was nothing but respectful to me...and word must have gotten around to his friends bc they were ALL perfect angels today..Its just shocking that i am the only one who will not put up with this crap that they do on a daily basis...I was not aggressive, didnt yell, didnt make them do anything but give an apology, admit he was wrong, and made him talk directly with me and give reasons for his actions....I hope that this has fixed the issues in english class temporarily, but above all i hope that he will learn a little from this...

If the teachers in Japan always take responsiblity for their students actions, how will the kids ever learn right from wrong, mature, and take care of their selves. While this school is an extreme case, I know that discipline is a huge issue at all schools....What is taught in moral education, and how far can students push their teachers before they are disciplined? Is it ok for the ALT to discipline if the other teachers dont?

ok enough gabbing for now...

. . .

2006-12-04T09:48:00.000+09:00

Just so you know, I still have two more entries for this week. They're in draft mode right now.

I was going to publish them over the weekend, but I was never really near my laptop at any point then.

Look for them tonight... or possibly tomorrow.

Sunday: "Warm" Sweet Potatoes

2006-12-03T11:27:00.000+09:00

When I cook, I don't usually cook by recipe. I might look up a couple of recipes to use as "key" recipes. They help me decide things like flavor combinations, proportions of major ingredients and temperatures/times.

So this is one of mine that evolved over time. A few years ago, I was thinking about sweet potatoes and how I never really liked them at Thanksgiving with the marshmallows and everything, but also how good they are for you. I was trying to find other ways to use them (they're great mixed in with vanilla ice cream) and realized that I also dislike ginger when it's used in sweet foods. . . but I like it a lot in savory foods. I decided to try to cook sweet potatoes in a non-sweet way.

Since satsuma imo are not quite the same as U.S. sweet potatoes, I use kabocha for this recipe. It works just as well.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1/2 kabocha
ginger (optional)
garam masala mix (or your own homemade if you can make it yourself)
cumin
cinnamon (just a little)
salt
black pepper

heavy cream (about 1 1/2 tbsp, optional)
curry powder (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Scoop out seeds and string from the center.
Wrap in plastic or cover tightly and place in a dish. Micro on high for about 6-8 minutes, or until soft.
Scoop the kabocha out of its now-softened shell.
Add all of the spices, according to taste. Start with a little bit and add more until it suits you.
Stir and eat.

The Notes

My favorite quick meal for one is: thin-sliced turkey breast, pan fried in butter and fresh thyme, brussels sprouts steamed and tossed with lemon pepper and seasoned salt, and a big dollop of these potatoes, taken from the fridge and microwaved. I could make the entire meal in about 10 minutes.

The Resource

Epicurious

I first started using Epicurious a loooooong time ago. Way before AllRecipes. What attracted me was their advanced search function. It doesn't seem so advanced anymore, now that other sites have caught on. But it works a little differently than AllRecipes' search by ingredient function.

Besides the format of the search, you should keep in mind that you're searching different databases! Nearly all of the Epicurious recipes come from Condé Nast publications like Bon Appétit. None of the recipes are submitted by home cooks. So they've all been professionally-tested.

The disadvantage is that this means that Epicurious tends to favor fancy recipes. They usually involve exotic ingredients or some sort of trendy gimmick. There is some overlap: you'll find simple recipes on Epicurious, just like you'll find a few ambitious recipes on Allrecipes.

My advice is to use Epicurious when you feel like a cooking adventure, or you want something show-stopping to impress people with. Use Allrecipes when you are just doing simple everyday cooking for potlucks, close friends, or home.

Like Allrecipes, Epicurious includes ratings and review feedback from anyone who feels compelled to speak his or her mind about a recipe. Epicurious also asks reviewers "Would you make this again?" Which is really useful to judge whether reviewers thought the recipe wasn't top-notch but perhaps it merits a second chance. (This is a nice correction for those cooks who make a lot of recipe changes and then judge the recipe "not very good")

Finally, Epicurious has resources, too! I think they assume more familiarity in the kitchen, so there seem to be fewer basic tutorials. However, they offer some step-by-step video tutorials (including one for gravy, it looks. Julie, take note!). They also give you access to a comprehensive food dictionary, as well as a wine dictionary. I find both handy.

Saturday: Brownies In Your Rice Cooker

2006-12-02T11:26:00.000+09:00

I have tried this recipe twice so far. It failed both times. I had to finish the thing by putting my rice cooker's pot in my toaster oven. But I think the real problem was not the recipe, but the fact that my rice cooker's pot fits in my toaster oven.

You see, my rice cooker is a pint-sized Winnie the Pooh number that looks like something straight out of a Playskool catalog. Predictably, my branch supervisor (who is a middle aged man) found it adorable. He thought it was the cat's meow--especially when he discovered that it plays the Winnie the Pooh theme song when you turn it on. I think it was Nick D. who agreed with me that men here can demonstrate the aesthetic sensibilities of a 13 year old American girl...

Anyway, give it a try in your rice cooker. If it doesn't work, just scoop it into your oven-micro thing and finish it off. It's tasty, even if the brownies aren't brownie-shaped.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

250 ml (1 cup) white sugar
125 ml (1/2 cup) butter
2 eggs
30 ml (1 tbsp) cocoa
2 ml (1/2 tsp) baking powder
2 ml (1/2 tsp) salt
150 ml (2/3 cup) flour

5 ml (1 tsp)
175 ml (3/4 cup) chopped nuts (optional. My filthy-minded-yet-piously-Catholic-grandmother used to say that this is what made your brownies "male." Insert eye-roll here.)
1 chocolate bar of your choice, crumbled (optional)
1 more chocolate bar "spare" --in case you eat the first one.

DIRECTIONS

Mix sugar, butter, and eggs.
In a separate bowl, mix cocoa powder, baking power, flour, salt.
Add this to the liquid mixture and mix well.
Stir in your vanilla, chocolate bar pieces, and nuts, if any. Hey, stop snickering! You know what I meant. Honestly, you're just as bad as Granny.
Place in a greased rice cooker and bake for 60 minutes.

If the rice cooker thing isn't for you, scrape the mixture into a 20 cm (8") square pan and bake 1 hour at 190° C (375° F) for about 20 minutes.

The Notes

Take your butter out of the fridge ahead of time to soften it. This makes it loads easier to work with.
You can tell it's done by inserting a toothpick or clean knife in the middle and pulling it back out. If it comes out clean, it's ready to eat.
If you can get your hands on mint candies, you could add them to Christma-fy your brownies. But I haven't tried this yet.

The Resource

Hokkaido AJET & their Publications

http://hajet.org/publications/books.html

I have absolutely no financial or personal interest in this, but just like the nation-wide AJET, HAJET (as it's called) puts out some nice publications. The reason I'm plugging them is because I found Japan on a Full Stomach in my apartment's library and it makes a good all-purpose cookbook. Also, the recipe I just gave you is from this book, so I figured it would only be right to publicize them when I cited the book.

All of the recipes are provided in US/metric. They have handy conversion guides and a bilingual food glossary in the back, as well as articles on stain removal, how to cook _____, and finding foreign food.

Along with your typical cookbook sections: (breads, breakfast, salads, etc.) there are special sections for Japanese food, oven-less dessert recipes, and holiday treats.
--

HAJET also publishes two vegetarian guides, so if you don't eat meat or are looking to cut down, those might be helpful.

Friday: Meatloaf

2006-12-01T12:46:00.000+09:00

I think this was the first thing I ever made in my toaster oven here in Japan. I don't usually eat large slabs of meat, but meatloaf always brings back memories of my grandma's house and all of the comfort food she used to make for us. You can always slice the leftovers and make sandwiches from them if you like.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup (120 ml) ketchup
1/3 cup (75 g) brown sugar
1 tablespoon (15 ml) lemon juice
1 teaspoon (3 g) dry mustard
2 pounds (910 g) lean ground beef
3 slices bread, shredded
1 small diced onion
1 small green bell pepper, also diced
1 egg, beaten
1 cube beef bouillon, crumbled
3 tablespoons (45 ml) lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

If you're using a regular oven (ha ha—fat chance!) preheat it to 175° C (350° F). Otherwise, hold off. Toaster ovens heat quickly but lose most of their heat when you open them. If you're one of those people with a fancy microwave that also bakes, I don't really know how to help you.
In a small bowl, combine the first 4 ingredients until smooth.
In a large bowl, combine everything else, plus 1/3 cup (about 80 ml) of the ketchup mixture. Use should dive in and use your hands.
Once well-mixed, form this into a loaf shape. Like burgers, you shouldn't compress it too much or it'll be tough.
Put this into a greased loaf pan or high-lipped baking sheet.
Bake 1 hour at 175° C (350° F)

Wait! You're not done yet! Take the meatloaf out of the oven, Pour off the fat, and dump the remaining ketchup mixture over the top.
Bake 10 minutes more and it's ready to eat.

The Notes

Meatloaf is really flexible. All it really requires is a base (meat, usually, but you could make it out of TVP or some other protein source, I suppose), a filler (bread), seasonings, and a binding agent (the egg).
This recipe calls for a sweet glaze, which is kind of non-traditional. Most Americans glaze this with ketchup or gravy, depending on their family's way of doing it.
Never pour hot fat or grease straight down the drain! You'll need to pour it into a heat-proof container and let it cool. Then, throw it out with your solid waste. There are also things you can buy here in Japan (a cellulose powder or something) that make grease clean-up easier-- but I just do it the ghetto way and use a coffee can.

The Resource

Your neighborhood, part II

So we've talked about finding recipes from friends and people around you. What about finding the actual ingredients? The nearest supermarket to my apartment is the vaguely antebellum-named “Mammy's.” They're kind of takai . . . and my kids confirm that only old ladies shop there.

But since I arrived, I've taken some time to poke around my town. Lo and behold, there's a former grocery store than now only sells fruits and veg right by my bank branch. They tend to have better deals on things, as well as a nice selection. Finally, one of my student's families run it, so I like the idea of supporting them. I usually swing by after I've made a withdrawal to buy a few things.

Especially since I hope it atones for my rampant use of the AEON supercenter in Higashiyoka. I found some backroads that get me there in about 15 minutes. I like to buy foreignish foods there between Costco trips. Oddly enough, cereal is less expensive at Mammy's, though.

Finally, A-PRICE (or is it A-LIST?) in Saga (from the eki, go south, turn left at the first intersection. It's on the right just before the Saga City BOE) is a cook's best friend. The Indonesian ladies that came to Turkey Day were singing its praises. It can be expensive (check out the crazy price of things like ice cream or cranberry juice) but it's good for a splurge. Also, they have some spices and herbs in bulk. So if, like me, you use a LOT of oregano, they can hook you up.

Most of you have probably already done this. But think of this as a friendly reminder to spend next week checking out that farmer's market (or whatever else) you've been hearing about.

Thursday: Corn Chowder

2006-11-30T14:41:00.000+09:00

So last Thursday I made this and people seemed to like it. The recipe below only makes 5 servings. It keeps well, though, so that should be a manageable amount.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 pound (455 g) potatoes - peeled and cubed
1/2 pound (225 g) bacon (see note)
1/2 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons (15 g) all-purpose flour
4 cups (950 ml) milk
1/4 teaspoon (2 g) salt
1/4 teaspoon (0.5 g) ground black pepper
1-1/2 (14.75 ounce) cans (or just 620 grams ) creamed corn
2 tablespoons (15 g) shredded Cheddar cheese
dash paprika

DIRECTIONS

Boil potatoes in salted water until soft. (see note, below)
Drain.
Mash half of the potatoes and set aside
Fry the bacon until very crisp. Crumble the bacon and set aside.
Dump the cooked onions into a medium stockpot. Add the flour and heat until the mixture is bubbly and the flour is well dissolved. Add the milk and bring to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring frequently. You need to watch your pot pretty carefully while bringing to a boil and heating. The bottom tends to easily scorch. Once boiling add the salt, pepper, bacon, corn and all the potatoes. (If desired reserve some of the bacon for the garnish.)
Heat soup until hot. Serve garnished with a dash of paprika, a sprinkling of cheddar cheese and some crumbled bacon.

The Notes

I made a veggie version of this by striking the bacon and replacing it with 1-2 chopped green bell peppers. Fry them in butter and add the onions when they're mostly cooked. Then continue as usual.
I also like to increase the salt and pepper to taste and add ancho chile pepper to the oil at the beginning. Really, any roasted pepper would work, too. You're looking to add a smoky warmth to the flavor. Chopped green onions / chives make a fine garnish to this soup.
Consider microwaving your potatoes. Not only is it faster, but it uses less water and minimizes the leaching of nutrients from the potatoes. Cut them up roughly, put them in a tightly covered microwave-safe container and set them on “high” for 6-8 minutes for two medium (probably “large” in Japan) potatoes. If you like potatoes, it's worth experimenting a bit to see exactly how long they take in your own microwave.
I find a wooden spoon works well for mixing the flour and oil
If you can't find creamed corn, substitute canned sweet corn: drain 1/4 of the juice from the can and replace it with half-and-half or cream. Puree if you like. Otherwise, just toss it in.

The Resource

Your own library / your neighborhood

Call it a cop-out resource if you like, but I've found a lot of cool stuff by digging through my predecessor's library. In my apartment alone, I have a massive vegetarian cookbook, Vol. 1 of the Joy of Cooking, paperback edition (it's so comprehensive: it tells you how to cook everything from rhubarb to brains.) and a couple of others.

Holding a book swap is a good way to exchange resources.

Another idea would be to do a cooking exchange with someone (works like a language exchange, except you bring/teach each other typical foods from your countries).

Finally, don't forget the delicious recipes that your fellow JETs shared at the beginning of the year conference!

Wednesday: 2-Ingredient Biscuits

2006-11-29T11:25:00.000+09:00

When I saw the title of this recipe during my search for a biscuit recipe--a-HEM-- which I first did a month ago when I made these--, I thought, "yeah: Bisquick and water, right?" But this is the real deal. At the very maximum, you'll have to do it with four ingredients. And that ain't half bad. Incidentally, when I say "biscuits," I'm talking about the American variety, which are kind of like scones...but not entirely.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

2 cups / 250 g self-rising flour
1 cup / 235 ml heavy cream

DIRECTIONS

Put the dry ingredient(s) in a large bowl. If you're adding salt and baking powder (see the note below), then mix them in well.
Add the cream. I find that a wooden spoon is the best way to start out with the mixing. Once the mixture is more solid, I use my hands. Mix just until combined
Scrape out onto a clean, floured surface and knead together no more than five times.
Roll them to about 1/2" thickness and cut them into 3" circles. Or just make little balls with your hands and smash them down with the bottom of a glass until they're 1/2" thick and about 3" across. Metric: 3" ≈ 7.6 cm ; 1/2" ≈ 1.25 cm
Place on a greased baking sheet.
Bake: 450°F / 232° C ; 8-10 minutes.

The Notes

If you can't find self-rising flour just measure out all-purpose flour and add 1tsp salt and 1 tablespoon baking powder.
If you have experience working with dough, it helps. If the dough is really sticking to your hands, it's too wet. work a little flour into it. If you've got things incorporated and they're still crumbly, add a bit more cream.
Try to mix the ingredients but don't knead them too much. Doing so builds up the gluten in the flour, which will make your biscuits heavy and dense. Nay, you're trying for light and flaky.

If they get hard before you can finish eating them all, simply wrap them in a dishtowel /tea towel and toss in your microwave for 15-30 seconds.

Biscuits are generally consumed with jam and butter, but in the American South, it's fairly common to slather them with sausage-laden white gravy. Some people eat them with honey. Finally, you can make little breakfast sandwiches by filling them with egg, cheese, bacon, sausage, whatever.

The Resources

Wikibooks Cookbook + Wikipedia

Together, these are great resources for learning about food all over the world. The encyclopedia has Latin names for plants (which you can use to do things like discover that acorn squash is one of the vegetables that Japanese people call kabocha). The cookbook has a nice variety of recipes.

Tuesday: Hot Toddy

2006-11-28T08:08:00.000+09:00

This week, my nose is runny and my throat is sore. After the second kid threw up in class Monday, I'm officially calling that elementary school "the vomit school". I hope I don't have anything. As a reminder, be sure to wash your hands often and with soap for at least 30 seconds. However, if you are feeling under the weather and want something hot to help you sleep, try this.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1.5 ounces whiskey of your choice
1 ounce honey
1/2 ounce lemon juice
3 ounces hot water

DIRECTIONS

Dissolve the honey in hot water
Add lemon juice
Stir in whiskey

The Notes

So I realized in the middle of this post that I've been posting these recipes in U.S. measurements. D'oh! I've seen Imperial measuring spoons at my local supercenter, but I don't think people really use them. I'll append the metric conversion to the last recipe when I get a chance.
For this recipe 1 ounce ≈ 30 ml.
1.5 ounces = 1 standard shot glass
Google will do conversions for you if you type them in the form "how many km in 5 miles" Firefox 2.0 users will notice that if they type this into the Google search bar, it actually suggests the answer for you without you even having to go to the site.

The Resource

webtender.com

There are a lot of mixology sites on the Internet today. Webtender has been around since 1997-- and doesn't seem to have changed much aesthetically since then. So it's ugly but it gets the job done. Entire New Years Eve parties have been centered around their "In My Bar" feature, which lets you plug in the contents of your bar (tedious, but gets saved as a cookie) and automagically receive a list of drinks that you can make with those ingredients. Handy.

Monday: French Onion Soup

2006-11-27T13:29:00.000+09:00

I always thought that French Onion Soup would take forever to do, but this recipe comes together pretty quickly. This makes a couple of bowls for you to enjoy.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

2 onions, sliced as thinly as you can
3 cups beef broth I use bouillion. I think it's beef
1 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 handful of bagged shredded white cheese. I get mine from AEON It tastes like it's got emmenthaler in it
1 teaspoon white sugar I actually use brown
1/2 cup white wine Drier is obviously better, but I used some boxed from my predecessor. with decent results
salt and pepper to taste
sliced bread I like the Slow Bread brand, it's fairly easy to find

DIRECTIONS

In a medium stock pot, heat beef broth over medium-high heat.
In the meantime, in a frying pan, add butter and oil and cook over medium-high heat. Once heated, add onions and stir, until onions are tender and transparent. Stir in sugar and cook until the onions start to brown.
Add onions to heated broth, stir and let simmer for 20 minutes.
Add wine and season with salt and pepper, simmer for 10 minutes.
Pour soup mixture into individual serving bowls and place a slice of bread on top, making sure bread gets well soaked. Place shredded cheese on top of bread and broil, 3 inches below heat, until cheese bubbles

The Notes

The butter adds flavor, but vegetable oil helps stabilize it; butter has a low smoke point, which is the temperature at which it starts to taste bad and gives off foul odors and smoke. All oils/fats have a smoke point, by the way. Reusing an oil (say, for frying) will lower its smoke point.
Shaving (really thinly slicing) the onions is important because you want to caramelize them to contribute to the flavor. It helps to use a heavy (seasoned cast iron or carbon steel is best) pan for this. Ideally, you'll convert some of the sugars in the onion to carbon, giving the onions a nice browned color where they contact the pan.
If you have residue that sticks to your pan, you can deglaze the pan to get it into your soup. Just scrape the onions out, then work a little broth over the surface of the pan and scrape it back into the rest of the broth.
You could probably substitute beer or apple cider vinegar for the wine if you prefer.
If you don't feel like fussing with the bread step, just stir some cheese into your bowl.

The Resource

Allrecipes.com

I discovered this site in 2001. It actually went through a site-wide face lift a few weeks ago, so now it's much nicer on the eyes. You'll find a wide range of recipes there, though if I had to pin it down, I'd say it's the sort of fare typical suburban parents might make. There's no shortage of recipes that call for condensed soup. It's definitely the everyday cook's website. I like it because it provides nutritional info and easy conversions. It also has nice feature articles to help you explore everything from biscotti, to crockpot cooking, to do-it-yourself sourdough starter. For those of you who want to feel festive, a site specialty is their annual Christmas Cookie Countdown, which starts on Dec 1st. Finally, if soup is your thing, I found an article on making 10 soups from one recipe.

A Week of Cooking

2006-11-27T12:50:00.000+09:00

Hello everyone.

The weather is getting colder, so it seemed like a good time to do some cooking. After all, with gas burners you get the added heat benefit along with your meal. So I'm back on the blog this week with seven days of edible bliss for you to enjoy.

So here's how it works: every day I'll post

A new recipe
Notes for that recipe
A new cooking resource

The easiest way to deal with questions ("where the heck do I find cilantro??") would probably be for you to post them as comments. I'll either edit the original post accordingly or answer your question in the comments section.

Since I rarely manage to do anything on a daily basis (breathing seems to be the sole exception so far--and I have no voluntary control over that) this ought be a major endeavor for me. But if you're willing to toil through my posts and dirty up your kitchens, then I'm game, too.

Bon appétit, cats.

Open Blogging, again...

2006-11-27T10:10:00.000+09:00

Good morning people. For the third week in a row I've had no one volunteer nor accept an invite to write for Saga blog. I'm now asking DRs to possibly send a request to new people out there and see if they want to write for a week this month or even next month. Since the seven people that voted on the poll I put up a while back on Saga JET forums, all voted for Open Blogging, from December 18th ~ January 22nd, that's what will happen and hopefully people will take advantage of that.

I'm sure people are tired of me blogging so I'm retiring myself this week and will open up the blog to anyone this week too. Hopefully we'll get 3 volunteers so that the next 3 weeks will be fun and interesting but, I fear there is a fat chance in Hades for that to occur. For those of you who do blog upon occassion, thank you. Lots of people read the blog even though very few comment. People that read, thanks for reading and occassionally commenting. I appreciate all your efforts to keep the blog alive.

Some days I love my job and some days...

2006-11-21T17:15:00.000+09:00

I have a constant reminder to take my birth control that day. Today is a birth control day. I swear that some children just wake up that morning with a plan to be annoying.
Me: "Do you want to play the game?"
Everyone: "Yes!!!"
Me: "Okay, then you have to be quiet so you can listen to the instructions right?"
Good kids: "Yes!!"
Annoying children: "I don't know how to play the game, I don't know how to play the game, I don't know what she's saying, hahaha, (to the kid next to them) haha, do you know this game, what does this sign say? (As I am explaining, the rules and what the sign says.)
Good kids: Shut up! Didn't you hear her? We want to play the game!
Annoying children: "What, what, what did you say? I can't hear you cause other people are talking."

And so on, and so on... It always bothers me most when best classes that you've had are the youngest children in the school and the older kids act worse than the young kids ever do.

The only thing that made me feel a little bit better was when I was untangling a mass of strings and clips after school created my the annoying children and I had some of the 1st and 4th graders come in and start playing with my picture cards. Instead of saying them in Japanese they were saying them all in English and asking each other how to pronounce things. While that was going on, I had another 1st grade boy walk outside of the classroom yelling, I'm happy, happy, happy, happy, happy.... which was one of today's new phrases. Thank God for little kids.

How most people get to Saga

2006-11-20T22:59:00.000+09:00

Vicks

2006-11-17T15:45:00.000+09:00

I miss my mom today. I was doing so well all week of keeping busy and not really focusing on anything but the work in front of me and what I had to do. But today as my work day ends I miss my mom. My house is a shambles from the abuse a weeks worth of laundry, severe neglect and a 20 minute battle with a spider last Friday. Half my living room wall probably has bug spray residue on it and is probably killing me slowly with each breath I take in my house. I can't remember when I last made a proper meal for myself. My back is achy and although I don't feel that sick anymore, I am reserving the right to act sicker than I am because I didn't take a day off when I should have earlier this week.

I remember as a kid my mother's remedy for the common cold was to get the sickly one in clean jammies after a hot bath. After some 7-up to settle the stomach, you got propped up with pillows on the couch and got smothered with blankets. Next Vicks got slathered on you like it was going out of style and it opened up your nostrils too much so that in fact you wish you couldn't breathe because so much air was going to your head. Then you got a bandana wrapped around your head in bank robber style and you passed out quickly after from eucalyptus / menthol intoxication. After you awoke you got hot food made for you and some soothing treat like pudding cup or ice cream to ease your sore throat. Damn it all if I didn't realize how good I actually had it. I'd pay for this kind of treatment now. I remember my brothers and I used to think my mom didn't know the right way to use Vicks until we saw a commercial with a little kid getting Vicks slathered on his chest too. But he looked so happy about it. I don't remember that being an enjoyable thing.

I really have no point with this post. I was just a little perturbed by how people acted shocked if I blow my nose. I hate sniffing it all back. However, I did find an article about how it's probably better to sniff instead of blowing. Eh well, some people never learn right? Hope you all enjoy your weekend and keep bundled up. Call your mother if you get sick, it's the next best thing.

Have problem, will kill for change

2006-11-15T20:04:00.000+09:00

The Ministry of Education in Japan has has a lot of issues as of late. Trying to pass laws to force kids to be patriotic, finding many high schools not teaching the required curriculum and forcing these students to take an extra 70 hrs of school so they can graduate, dealing with bulling in school and subsequently suicide due to bulling in school, etc... On all the unimportant issues they drag their feet and just say 'gambare' to students, parents and teachers and consider than an adequate answer.

Bulling is the issue that is most appalling to me because I've seen so much of it as of late. In the past few month, many elementary and junior high school aged children have committed suicide because they are being bullied so frequently and horrendously, with no aid from teachers, the school and many time parents that they feel death is the best alternative. In the past I've noticed kids beating playfully at each other and occasionally kids would cry, but since I don't usually teach in their classrooms, I get a much calmer class. Due to meetings being held in the room I normally teach, I've had to teach in their classroom.

A during recess one of my more rowdy 3rd grade classes, I was playing around with some of the kids and noticed some boys pulling on one little girl. Her friends drug me over to help the boys stay away. Okay, so that's kind of normal behavior for 3rd grade, but while I was breaking that up, I noticed one little boy with the crazy hyper kid in class. He hits people a lot and calls people names so I was keeping my eyes on them while the girls are asking questions about what I like to eat and why I'm not married. Mind you while this is happening, their teacher is in the teacher's room one floor down. The little boy starts crying and holding his neck. The hyperactive boy has one friggin' evil look on his face and is whispering things in the little boy's ear. I separated the two and the crying kid can't even talk cause I found out later that the other kid choked the hell outta him. I told him to try and calm down and get something to drink if he could. Some other kids went out to check on him. I told him to tell his teacher when she got back. The little girls I was playing with said that the hyperactive kid always beats up that kid. When the teacher got back all hell broke loose.

The crying kid tried to talk to the teacher between tears and labored gasps, but she just held up her hand in shut-up fashion and started yelling at some other kids. These kids apparently hurt another little girl badly. So badly she had to go to the hospital. After a tongue lashing she said, we wouldn't be having class normally, but since I was a guest and this class was rare they were going to carry on like normal. She then took the crying kid out of class and grabbed the hyperactive kid later. On the plus side, she actually disciplined them, something she never does during my class and the kids were uber good even with her not being there, but damn, everyday?

I felt bad for the crying kid and bad for the teacher. The teacher obviously had a lot on her plate and I always thought she was just a push over. The kid is one of my favorite kids cause he tries really hard in class and is super cute. And the hyperactive kid, I knew so many kids like him when I was in elementary school. He's not a bad kid, normally he's pretty good with me, just noisy. At home though, you never know. Maybe he's beat up, abused / learning disorder / discriminated in class / ADD / etc.. he's taking up all the angry inside of him and placing it on someone else to feel better. Maybe he's just a bad seed. Maybe that's just all child psych garble left from watching too many Discover specials, I dunno. I see these teachers try so hard to do so much and at this school they get lots of support. At my Junior High, the teachers are so tired of trying with kids that are even more messed up. And the parents are insane, blaming the teacher for the kids going bad and there is no one that supports the teacher because they have to pacify the parents.

Last week the during a meeting at Junior High, teachers discussed problematic kids and ass-kicking areas around school that should be monitored. Not much got said one way or the other. Parents get told, your son or daughter kicked so and so's ass or your son or daughter was beat up by so and so- we apologize on behalf of the school. That's about all. I had a Japanese friend before who said he was the problem child when he was younger and all his parents did was buy expensive okashi and gave them to the school and parents of the kids he beat up. Is that all? I'm old, when I think of back in my day things were ... different. Who should take or share the blame? Certainly the Ministry of Ed thinks it's not their problem. The principals are taking some responsibility and some are hanging themselves. Teachers begrudgingly take responsibility of this and a million other things. Parents, I'm sure some take blame or responsibility but some pass the buck straight back. Jeez, I'm gonna get in trouble for writing all this.

I was talking with a teacher today as she told me about how she never has any time to herself and how there were some recent problems at school. I asked her about the teacher's union as in, does it exist and what does it do for you? She just responded yea, it'd be nice for them to do something. How can they do something if the teachers don't complain? How are the kids supposed to learn to stand up for themselves if adults they see all just take all the crap their given? Aren't these kids that are threatening suicide saying well, I don't want to take all this crap, but I don't know what to do about it, so I guess I'll just do this. I hate that little kids are resorting to this, but a part of me absurdly admires them for forcing the adults and the nation around them to do something. I hope the kids find another way to change people and God, I hope the adults in power do something. I know I'm contradicting myself left and right, I just thought this was interesting, I don't have answers for a solution, but thought maybe some of you would have some ideas.

Puppy loving

2006-11-14T18:14:00.000+09:00

Hello, all those out there in Saga. For those I've not met, let me introduce myself. My name is Sarah and I'm living out in a little city I like to call Takeo. I've been here 2 years, 142 days or 872 days. Most days I love my job cause I teach some pretty cool kids, but lately energy has been lacking in a big way. At least, that was until last week or so. I finally got the chance to take any seat in a bus, haha, sorry I meant I meant I finally got the chance to take some me time and got some of my act together. Maybe that's not the sole reason for my change of heart and motivation, but dammit all if I don't give a poop and am just grateful for the change.

Today was the best day in the world. Not for any one particular reason, I was just happy. Kids were attentive and interested, oragami hand turkeys came out better than planned, kyushoku wasn't half-bad and I got to hug two puppies at work today. I think if they gave every ALT a puppy (except those who are allergic) to hug every couple days or so people would be a hell of a lot happier. I was laughing at myself in the grocery store after work today thinking how adorable those puppies were. Puppy buries it head in my boobs to get away from kids- adorable, precious. Person tries to do the same- I'm gonna have a sore foot from kicking someone.

Anyway, though instead of bugging someone to blog this week I might just take this week myself. My apologies for the randomness, I'm not on drugs, I've been here 872 days.

http://www.easysurf.cc/ndate2.htm

lumberjack

2006-11-10T10:07:00.000+09:00

actually i planned to write about an exhibition which is currently held in arita-cho.the title would be "things you may not need...now made out of porcellain".i have made a some pics and will tell about that later.why...?

because i don't have time at the moment.precisely i don't have much time using a computer or the internet.the reason for that is, that i spent the last days out in the mountains chopping bamboo.well, that's no joke.me and two co-worker from my division went into the mountains and cut every bambo we've see.it was the first time for me to use a chain saw...so i was very exited about this.the other thing i was exited or say which shocked me a little bit was the fact, that i was told to wear wellingtons (rubber boots) so that sankes can't bite your foot.among all animals i hate snakes the most.luckily i havn't seen a single one during our lumberjack-mission.i guess if one shows up i will scream so loud i may cause an landslip.

the reason behind chopping bamboo and other trees is that bamboo is growing so fast and high that it takes the sunlight from other trees.so other trees will die.another reason is that the town is planning to plant some trees next year there, which do beautiful "kouyou".(there are so many bamboo that even if we chop all day we won't finish it in one year.) bamboo's leaves don't turn into colour.so that won't attracts tourists.and as i'm working in the tourist division in the town hall, it seems to be one of our duties.or maybe because or kacho is a big gardening fan and just wants to be outside the office.well, to me it was fine.as long as there are no snakes and it's not raining.

i will write about the exhibition as soon as i'm back to normal office life.
see you out in the mountains surrounding arita-chou.and watch out for falling trees, they might hit you.in the case of bamboo that doesn't hurt that much.but that's just my experience... (stupid colleague was chopping trees in my back)

On Names, and the importance thereof...

2006-10-31T23:48:00.000+09:00

I remember how it felt when I first came to Saga. I was enthused, ready and lost all at the same time. This eagerness and lack of understanding tumbled me into many a situation but one in which I remember most clearly was my first English class. It was a demonstration class put on by Mr. Nakamura and the first year Junior High kids to display what a model English class would be like. I remember leaving the class beyond distressed, shocked and speechless at the high level of Japanese used, the vast majority of it far beyond my comprehension level. But, this was only the start...

The students were asked to line up, and one by one introduce themselves to me by name and say how nice and pleasant it certainly must have been to meet me. Now, being the person I am, I place the upmost importance on names. Granted, they're arbitrary, loved, hated, here, and there but it's what our mothers' and fathers' choose for us, and well, it's what we go by. So, to try and show my appreciation for the value, the uniqueness and importance that a name has I attempted to repeat the names back to my students after I heard them. Wow... yeah... I failed miserably. I listened and they repeated... well, at least the first fifteen of forty repeated a couple (or a few times) until I discarded my policy and just nodded my head politely and said, "nice to meet you." I couldn't grasp the names. I simply could not. They were too foreign to me... The kids repeated, sometimes quietly, sometimes not, and I just listened, amused and bewildered by our lack of continuity. It was certainly a lesson in communication, for me, more than them.

So, now a year down the line I've grown accustomed to the sounds of Japanese and find myself calling my students by their names, even when it's not necessary. I find myself in the ever so rare position of being at the same Junior High day in, day out. So, I think this has allowed me to be on a name to name basis with my students which I think, unfortunately so, many ALTs do not have the opportunity to do so. I simply think this is a huge fault of the JET program. For who is a teacher who doesn't know their students, who can't address them by their given names? What does it mean when a teacher is not even given the opportunity to learn their students' names? I dunno... really, I don't.

Being at one school though, I've also been able to memorize the names of my fellow staff members. But, like hell do I know their first names, and in the same regard I don't really mind or care if they don't know my last name. Afterall, Dustin is the name I was given and well the rest just came with the territory, so to speak. On another tip, I go to my elementary school twice a week and all of the 25 staff members or so know me by name, my first name. And I stumble around, teaching, playing, running around aimlessly, shaking hands, disciplining out of line children, encouraging the overly ambitious children, and constantly I forget and am reminded of the names of the teachers whose classes I teach every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.... Damn, I try, but names, man, they're difficult... and ever so necessary... So, I understand our names have to be taken seriously, but don't we have to take the names of others just as seriously?

From left : Um, don't know, Yukino, Miho Shimizu, and me
(waiting for the emperor to drive by).

What's in a Name?

2006-10-30T11:55:00.000+09:00

First off, apologies for the cheesy title. It is Monday. Like Nick's, this post started as a comment that got big and merits its own comments.

So Florian said,

"Another thing with name, is when i introduce myself as florian axt, people start calling me florian-san. Why? As far as i know there is no such custom in japan. Normally people are called by their familiy name, even if their are friends. For me this is disrespectful. Children are called by their first name, but not adults."

That's interesting, Florian.

When I introduce myself, if the people know that my family name is "Welty," they try to say Uerutei-san (it takes a couple of tries. I keep the katakana handy, since I don't expect most people in Japan to be able to pronounce either of my names). However, I explicitly tell them that I'd prefer to go by "Jesse," and at that point they switch to "Jieshii-san".

Actually in class today, we needed to use my last name (and shame on me for slipping in class and calling it a "last name") so it would fit the dialogue and I realized that only maybe two kids in the class knew that "Jesse" is NOT my family name.

How do names work in Germany? In America, there tends to be a preference for peers (and often people above or slightly below you) to use your personal name.

Forgive me for citing Weekend at Bernie's, but people DO have this mentality:

"Please call me 'Bernie'. After all, 'Mister Lomax' is my father!"

Being called by your last name implies that you're old .... And as we all know, being old is tantamount to committing treason in America!

So a perfect stranger might call my "Mister Welty" until we were formally introduced. It's true that in America, my kids would probably use my last name, but I shudder when I think of being addressed that way. I mean, I'm only 24! I'm not ready to be a "grown up!" Also, having one title is a heck of a lot simpler.

As far as what the Japanese do, I look at this as a cultural lesson. I don't mind being called by my first name... it seems like most of the ALTs choose to use their first names only. I wonder why they do. Maybe it's easier if you've come straight out of college. (My school was small and like a big family, so I didn't know many of my fellow students' last names!)

But it's ultimately a personal choice. I don't really get picky about an honorific. If the kids want to show some respect for my by using "sensei," I appreciate the thought. (I do get annoyed when they try to translate "sensei" as "teacher," as in "Jesse-teacher!").

As a CIR, your role is different from ours and I could see where using your family name might be better, especially for meeting people and doing 1-shot presentations. I think it's more professional.

Do the people you introduce yourself to know that "Florian" is not your family name?

When I was studying in Europe, I noticed that people often put their family names in all caps to identify them. I wish more people followed this practice. I think it's a good way to clarify things. Also, surnames-as-first-names are getting more popular in America, so it's getting increasingly difficult to tell which is which.

Interestingly enough, my hanko uses my family name. And I like it that way.
For one, I think that ウエルテイ　looks a lot cooler than ジエシイ. Also, it's more official, which is what I use my hanko for--official documents.

Like Nick and Florian, I think that names are very important. I'm sorry that I can't learn all of my students names. I really try. And I always try to find out how people spell their names if there's a possibility that there is more than one spelling. My biggest pet peeve is when people misspell my name. It annoys me so much that I will almost always correct it if someone writes it in an email or on paper. I know it sounds extreme, but if I'm somehow mistaken about someone's name, I would like to know as soon as possible so that I don't keep misusing it.

What really gets me is when I change it in someone's e-mail reply text AND include my name at the bottom of an email and people persist in misspelling it. It blows my mind that people are too lazy to notice things like that. I don't want to work with people who are that careless.

Sorry, jumping in here

2006-10-28T10:37:00.000+09:00

I originally wrote this as a comment under Jesse's previous posting, but it got me thinking so much that I thought I should bring it to the front page.

There is an underlying thread here. Jesse commented on the way many Japanese people perceive us, and a few weeks back Nirav made a similar observation about the "English leech" he encountered.

I think it is important to talk about our roles, our rights, and general human decency in Japan. I wholeheartedly disagree with staring. Having lived in Japan before, and planning to stay here longer, when someone approaches me from a far distance and proceeds to stare at me, not in an “I am interested about you” way, but in the same manner one would stare at an animal in the zoo ... that is what bothers me. I am making a contribution to society. I am a teacher, and I take my job seriously. Do not look at me like an animal, that isn’t too much to ask. Is it?

Lisa, also made a good comment about children's curiosity, and our responsibility as adults, but there are 2 points not taken into consideration. One: A majority of the time it is not children staring, but other full grown adults, and two: rudeness and curiosity are two entirely different things.

Japanese people would never dream of starring at each other the way they do to foreigners. (I know the phrase Japanese people can be over-generalizing, but there is some truth to it.)

I am the king of Sabetsu. Just because you speak a different language does not make you less of a person.

How would you have handled this situation ...

I went to JR to buy a train ticket to Nagoya. I needed a detailed receipt for reimbursement when I arrive at my destination. I asked the attendant in Japanese how much the ticket was, and she replied 3.6 man ... that's different from the 2.5 man posted on the Japanese website. When I inquired about the 2.5 price, she said ...

"Oh you wanted the discount ticket?"

sigh, sure, can I have the discounted ticket ... anyway, she begins to process my request and asks for my name, this is where things turn for the worse.

Salesperson: "May I have your name?"
Me: Ni-ko-ra-su De-ru-gu-re-go
Her: (bursts in to laughter)
Me: Excuse me is something wrong?
Her: Your name, it's just so ... funny ... (more laughter)
Me: My name is not funny.

While she is laughing, she misspells my name in katakana.

Me: Excuse me, you have misspelled my name.
Her: It's okay.
Me: No, it's not okay. I need it spelled correctly for reimbursement.
Her: No really it's okay.
Me: You aren't listening to me. It's not okay.
Her: Fine, I will change it.

She rewrites it, and makes the same mistake ... still laughing. I am completely flustered and feel subhuman at this point. This woman is disrespecting my name. My identity is a source of humor for her. Call me over dramatic, but things like this happen more than I would care for ...

Me: You've made the same mistake again.
Her: Really, it's fine.
Me: No it's not.

and then I've said one of the rudest things I've said in Japan. I'm not proud and I feel bad ... but I was flustered.

Me: You can read and write Katakana, can’t you???

The whole conversation fell apart. She no longer laughed at my name, instead wanted to burn me with lasers or something, I don't know. I should not have met rudeness with more rudeness, but I think she won't laugh a foreigner’s funny name again ...

Staring Contest

2006-10-27T11:24:00.000+09:00

aka What does "Grassroots Internationalization" REALLY mean?

So today I want to talk about something that's been on my mind this week.

Awhile back, I was hanging out in town with another ALT at a restaurant and we had two kids actually come over to us and stare.

So since they were there, I smiled and said "hello," à la Sarah Busche. May as well practice English with them, right? But it's not until I turn around that I see my fellow ALT, glaring them down before asking what?! in Japanese.

I joked that it was totally a "good cop/bad cop" schtick. Well, I was amused anyway.

So then we started talking about the staring thing. If you were in the Culture Shock workshop at orientation, we talked about how you can react when Japanese people find you oddly fascinating. (I also kibbitzed that Arkies found freshman-me, with my crazy, heathen, blue hair worth staring at ... so I was kind of used to it.) Nine times out of ten, I'm too oblivious to notice anyway.

But the other ALT and I started talking about how your reaction DOES depend a lot on your mood (and to be fair, I was feeling pretty magnanimous that night. And my dining partner wasn't. We both agree that it's probably not good to be so capricious about it-- but that it's easy to forget when you feel like shit.)

Here's what I've been thinking about. During our discussion, he said something like "It's rude to stare at people. So these kids need to learn that."

And I totally agree. They would probably not do something like this to other Japanese people. But evidently, being gaijin creates a whole new set of rules. (Admit it, if you're female and like to go drinking in mixed company, you've played the gaijin card, too! We've ALL played the gaijin card at some point.) So the rules work both ways. They make life easier for us, but also give Japanese people an excuse to do things that would otherwise be unacceptable.

But we can't change the Insider/Outsider mentality here. It's pretty deeply entrenched. Hell, I find myself being vaguely xenophobic towards unfamiliar non-Japanese people!

("Who's that foreigner!? What's he doing in MY city?!" )

Of course this is ridiculous. ("Hello, whitey--Look who's talking!") But it still crosses my mind. Because being Japanese (or not) is a big deal here--and because people, wherever they are, like to categorize their world and make sense of it. This usually means having to make assumptions about people.

Sometimes, this is a good thing. It helps you make decisions on whether, for example, to trust the fellow backpacker in your hostel, or that it's probably a good idea to tread lightly when you're stranded in rural Alabama and the locals want to talk politics and you 're a firm Democrat.

But (and you know where I'm going here) other times it just leads to blanket generalizations: "Americans don't know how to use chopsticks;"
"British people are terrible cooks;"
"Japanese people are really into high-tech stuff."

But I'm digressing.

Returning to the whole "rude" thing:

Yes, it is offensive to be ogled.
And yes, doubly so when the ogler walks right up to you like you're in a zoo.
And yes, learning this should be part of children's education and socialization.
And yes, we are here for that purpose as educators in and out of the classroom.

So why did we end up doing good cop/bad cop?

I can't lie. A lot of it had to do with how I was feeling. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the intent of a teacher is not as important as what the student takes from the lesson.

I know this because I remember slogging through stupid, god-awful school projects ...only to find myself thinking two months later, "Hey, I think it would really be cool if we did [insert similar project here] to learn this thing."

So here's the big question turning over in my mind:

When you stare back at shougakkousei who wander over to stare at you, and when you ask them what they think they're doing in Japanese, what do the kids REALLY learn?

You wanted them to learn that this behavior is not okay, right?

But if I were a kid, my 5-year-old self would just think that gaijin are categorically mean and I should be afraid of them.

I think kids have a right to be curious. That's how they learn about their world. Even if we want to teach them polite behavior, is it worth suppressing that natural curiosity? I'm inclined to say "no". I'd rather let them satisfy their curiosity and try to get them to realize that people are all different and paradoxically the same. Now, I can't explain that to a 6 year old, even if my Japanese were any good. But maybe I can show him.

Eventually, I expect my novelty to wear off for the people in Moro-patch. But I don't think there is an easy or immediate way to teach kids about other people. I wish there were. I try to go into situations in good faith because I think it helps smooth over cultural differences. The best I can do is try to point things like this out in my classes and hope that word gets around.

N.B.

I know this post reads like an insufferably pedantic rant. I'm not trying to say that "my way was the right way". I'm not sure it was. I'm posting because this week sort of inadvertently turned into my blogging week and I want to see what other people think about the issue. Also, apologies for my poor examples. I know they're not water-tight, but they're the best I could do between classes.

Don't want Jesse to feel lonely on the blog...

2006-10-23T21:31:00.000+09:00

And reading his last post, I gather he is addicted to youtube so this is right up his alley!
There was more than one Diwali celebration I gather, but I thought you might like some shots of the one Badsha was nice enough to organize. お疲れ様！ It was very beautiful, much better than a simple internet video can render, but I hope you enjoy it!Btw, sorry for my lack of in-depth knowledge (I should pay better attention!), but in case you didn't catch it, the green goo I am cooking is called Saag.

Weekend Re-cap

2006-10-23T11:04:00.000+09:00

So things are definately heating up in the JET-o-sphere. Last weekend marked the last time I have free on my calendar for roughly the next 3 weeks...and I don't even get around!

For those of you who were doing other things (and also because I got tired of looking at the slippers post), here's a bit of what you missed:

FRIDAY

The little town of Morodomi (which is only remarkable for its gym, Happy Tree Pizza, and--I'd like to imagine-- yours truly) was all a-bustle as kids in the JHS prepare for their speech contests.

1nensei are learning to be excited that Japan is small and "not at the center"
2nensei are by now sharing my distaste for the word "gull"
3nensei are getting really tired of talking about segregation in America.

I ended up working with them after school that day, which was kind of frustrating because I was definately itching to get home and also itching to swing by the bank to withdraw money for savings before I could spend it for Less Worthwhile Things. (Should I come upon piles and piles of man notes one day, I have a fat list of LWTs already prepared: splurgy food, booze, electronics, etc. )

Of course, I was coaching until 5:51 pm and it's by the grace of my mad driving skills and the smallness of Moro-patch that I swung into the bank right as the ATMs were about to close.

With this cash advance, I got home and threw my bike in my car (since my local bike shop was closed at this point in the evening) and, using my cell phone to navigate, discovered how to get from my driveway to the AEON Supercenter in about 12 minutes. Bike repaired there, I headed back home and took off for Tony's Birthday Party in the ken apts.

Shortly after detouring through Booze (scotch for the birthday boy, vodka for me) , I ran into Diane and Sarah Busche--and the latter deserves a special shout-out since it was also HER birthday. They were on their way to celebrate in style with cake and champagne. And for the first time in my life, I wished I could be in two places at once for the sole purpose of getting drunk twiceover.

Tony managed to cram quite a fine number of people into his tinyish ken apt.-- I counted roughly 20 revelers at one point--spirits were high due to spirits of another variety. The highlight of these was Tony's sangria-inspired punch, which was a nice festive touch.

Now a strange many people have been asking about this, but no, nobody got that seriously shitfaced. So take that as either a good or bad thing. Tony wished us goodnight around 2 or 3 (and sort of fell asleep/passed out on the couch) and the last few people left within the hour. Unlike other nights, no bus stops were harmed on my way home--and that's a-okay with me.

My cell phone was shot (probably from all that rice field navigating) so I stuck it on the charger and set my old backup alarm clock.

I had the best sleep ever that night.

SATURDAY

Saturday for me began at 5:45 pm, when my "just in case I sleep all day and into the night" alarm went off. Remember this, because it's an important detail that comes into play later on.

I was really psyched about the Diwali party at Poonam's . . . but having no concept of time, I ended up dragging in roughly 2 hours late, after a swing by AEON where I went on a beverage buying binge. The wonderful thing about gaijin parties is that it's not as big a deal. There's always going to be someone who shows up after you.

And that someone was wearing a nifty, faux fur-trimmed jacket. (Bless you, Lizzie!)

Anyway, I've heard that last year's Diwali party was a bit more of a to-do, but I think everyone had a good time this year, too: the food was yummy and the company was (as usual) perfect. It was very cool to see people in traditional Indian garb. We also got to see Nirav's bike in the flesh, er, metal. It's pretty sweet.

We passed around Poonam's laptop and watched YouTube (Can anyone escape it's evil click-n-view-click-n-view siren call?) This culminated in Nirav having to watch/listen to the same compilation of Little Britain's "Computer Says No" sketches three times. Finally, we capped off the night with Sarah and Poonam concocting various snack-y, finger-lickin' good desserts from chocolate, butter, popcorn, and sugar. After that, we decended into Sonic the Hedgehog and watching Baywatch-spoof videos of Poonam, Sarah, Jon Brooks, and Diane bouncing, shimmying, lunging, and generally hamming it up on the beach in Miyazaki.

"Computer says 'nooooo'." *Cough*
Note how Poonam is winsome even when she's
trying to look disgusting and misanthropic.

SUNDAY

I had been roped into going to the Saga University Attached Elementary School Sports Day, and no amount of guilt-inducing texting "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't email you earlier. I woke up at 18:00 today. It's sooo early tomorrow, isn't it?" was going to get me off the hook. At most, I earned a 30-minute reprieve. So even though I was up until 3ish again, I was starting Sunday at 7:45 in the morning.

Few people actually know that Sports Days were invented by the Japanese in the 1950s as a way to punish foreigners by creating a social obligation ("It would just mean soooo much to him if you came!") that requires one to wake up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday (thus offing any Saturday night revelry) when one doesn't even necessarily play any sports. Which is exactly the problem. If there is a sport I do, I would much rather play it than watch. But here I felt so like some kid's parent. I wonder if Mom felt like this at my track meets in high school?

The "sports" that Japanese kids do on these days amaze me. I would look up and suddenly see kids throwing around a 3-meter-wide ball. Or they would be in happis performing traditional fishermen dances. It was very cool... I didn't get to take part in the crazy ball-throwing basket thing, which was too bad, because that looked kind of fun. Instead, I was invited to take part in what I describe (for lack of a better or more sensitive word) as The Gayest Dance Ever. Having also driven to this event, I hadn't had a drink or two like most of the adults and my silly gaijin dignity was not letting me flutter my hands, hop and spin, or point my toes in a hyperactive pop-and-lock routine to some sparkly high-pitched music, no matter how perky. Why does everything in Japan have to be so cute??

Me, being a bad sport on Sports Day.

Lee-Ann, who also knew the kid I was there for, came by later on to watch. Kudos to her, because she'd already put in her Sports Day dues last year at this same school. As we were heading home, she mentioned that her birthday is Wednesday (oy! Another!) and that she was getting together with some people to chill out in Tosu.

The last few weeks I've been in a perpetual state of light hung-overness. Except I'm not drinking. I just feel kind of lethargic and crappy and headachey anyway. I'm pinning it on dehydration, because I've been drinking more coffee at work and much less in the way of water, juice or sports drinks-- mostly because it's not the hot summertime anymore, so the need for them is less obvious. So I actually haven't felt like drinking much lately (which is a nice change from August, when I was starting to worry myself from going out nearly every other night). Anyway, perhaps that's one reason I'm driving everywhere. Also, I've been wanting to explore the ken and I'm enjoying a full gas tank thanks to pay day. So I was debating taking a train to Tosu or not, but when the weather report said "rain" that decided it. So I drove out to Tosu.

It's about 45/50 minutes from Morodomi..not too bad. Especially since that's driving under 40 mph -- I can't believe how slow the speed limits are here! I routinely drove to Little Rock doing 85, which translates to 136 kph. The sad thing is that nobody really drives much slower on the highways. Maybe the expressway is different, but even on "small" roads in America, you can drive faster than 60 kph.

"Life" is a cozy little reggae-themed bar out on route 17, past the Harley Davidson emporium. The party was very low-key. Nice music, good talking. I was about 2 hours late. I got to meet a few ALTs who I'd missed before, as well as some former ALTs still hanging around. A quiet night, but still a late one. Happy birthday, Lee-Ann!

Don't let Theresia fool you: last night was pretty mellow.
The one on the right is my water.

And that brings us back around to

MONDAY MORNING

Which I spent grovelling to Kyoto-sensei. Last night, my cell phone was nearly dead again, so I whipped out the old backup alarm clock. And in my half-asleep state, assumed that the 5:45 on it was just a super-early morning from a couple of weeks ago. So after a couple of quick ticks to bring it up to "6:59" I passed out.

And woke up at 8:41...nearly an hour after I was supposed to be at work.

Remember Friday, when I'd set the alarm clock to keep me from sleeping through the Diwali party? Yeah, I didn't either. So I checked my alarm, and sure enough, it was set for 6:59 pm. D'oh. In times like this (after you've wished that you could just go back to sleep and start over) you wonder whether it's better to call in before you've had a shave and a shower or after so that at least you can get to school quickly once you've called in. Not that I bothered to check the Handbook as I was frantically looking for my keys, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't get into the finer points of damage control.

Having called in with my story (which probably sounded so fake) and gotten dressed, I rushed to school (luckily, I didn't miss class, so my students weren't the wiser) and commenced apologizing. Whilst googling for ways to grovel in Japanese, I came upon a couple of blogs where JETs were having even worse times than I was. And that made me feel better. (Hurray for schadenfreude!) Note to self: get kyoto-sensei something nice later on this month.

So that was my weekend. If you've gotten this far, I hope that your week got off to a better start. It looks like it's going to be about like this for the next three weeks, so I'm enjoying the ride, but another 3-day weekend sure would be nice.
---

UPDATE: More Birthday Fun!

So another "Happy Birthday" goes to Dustin, who celebrated last night (I think).

What is it with so many Saga JETs being:

a) from Action Heights or New Jersey or
b) Having birthdays in late October?

Was someone in Tokyo having some fun when they sorted applications?

On Slippers:

2006-10-18T17:23:00.000+09:00

I think the combination of these two things is kind of funny:

A) The Japanese don't wear outdoor shoes in schools, like we do.
This kind of makes sense-- it's probably a lot easier to clean the school that way.

But here's the weird part:

B) They freak out when I walk around in my socks in the schools.
"OMG! Where are your slippers?!"

I just don't get it.
I mean, isn't the floor pretty clean, thanks to the "no outdoor shoes inside" rule?

If I happen to slip out of my birkies while sitting at my desk and then pad over to the coffee stand in my socks, what's so strange about that?

Also, why do I have to change into slippers when I come into my schools ... but when I go to the yakuba next door, I can just walk in. Who makes these decisions?

While we're on that topic, who mandates the kind of slippers the poor JHS kids have to wear? They're indescribably bad-looking. The good side of this, I suppose is that on bad days, you can look out at a sea of puce-colored rubber booties-gone-bad and feel really good about yourself.

My wicked confession of course is that on some mornings, when I'm really stressed and get to my car, only to realize that I've forgotten yet another thing in my house (laptop, keys, sweatrag, you name it) ... I usually thumb my nose at the "no shoes" rule. The neighbors can think what they want. At times like that, I really don't care.

Unlike many people, I don't really like shoes and don't understand the need to own lots of them. So I especially resented having to relinquish a big chunk of packing space to them. Before Japan, I never owned more than 3 pairs of shoes at one time. Now, things are different.

(L-R, from top: New birkies for work, indoor athletic shoes, outdoor general shoes, indoor formal shoes, grungy outdoor sandals, outdoor running shoes, outdoor hiking boots, outdoor formal shoes.)

Otsukaresamaaaa....

2006-10-11T23:16:00.000+09:00

What a day. I am tired. Had to start work this morning an hour earlier because of a meeting (already at 8.30 a.m.! – I am always a bit grumpy when it`s too early sigh….) and finished 5 hours later than usually (about 9 p.m.).
But it has been a good day. I showed at the community center a German movie by Wim Wenders: Wings of Desire (Himmel ueber Berlin). I only can recommend this movie to everybody.
The movie takes place in Berlin, during the 80ies. Actually, since more than 1 year, I have not been homesick at all but by watching this movie I really got. I spend the last 5 years before moving to Japan in Berlin. Those 5 years have been maybe a time that had the most impact in my life and that brought a lot of changes.
There is a scene in the movie when Homer, an 80 years old writer, is searching for memories of his youth by walking along the Potsdamer Platz. I guess, most of you have heard about this place or some of you have been there. It is in the middle of Berlin. Before the 2nd world war, it was a very vibrant place, very well known. Totally destroyed during the war, the Berlin Wall was built on it, cutting right trough it, separating one half on the place in East Berlin, the other in West Berlin. It was a no man`s land. Today it is again a vibrant place, but now with lots of skyscrapers, hotels, the Sony Center (btw. the Sony Centers roof symbolizes Mount Fuji!) etc. I could see how the place, how the whole city was changing during the last years. Occupied houses vanished, popular underground clubs had suddenly gone….
But that`s life. Everything changes. Coming back to Berlin in 2 years, a lot will have changed. The city, friends that used to live their won`t anymore I guess.
Will I ever go back to Berlin? Will I continue my life there? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I really do love Berlin. But, as far as I know myself until now, I never go back in life. I am always moving onwards. What will happen in 2 years? I don’t know. And this fact makes me actually happy….
Anyway, before I go finally to sleep: if you get a chance one time, watch Wings of Desire. The movie is a declaration to life and to love, a piece of art for sure… oyasumi…..

Oktoberfest

2006-10-10T11:10:00.000+09:00

Ok. This week my turn.
Sarah asked me and I, never have written a block, took the opportunity right away because it`s a short week too ; )…..
Sarah asked me to write about the German Oktoberfest. That is actually the last thing I want to do I thought! Even though I have to admit I have never been to the Munich Oktoberfest, I have to say: I hate it. Just seeing pictures of it on TV or in papers. And reading about it. It must be one of the worst things Germany has to offer. Imagine: bunches, I mean, ten thousands of drunken Bavarian men (ok and women) in lederhosen (or dirndls), 1000s of drunken men from others parts of Germany, 1000s of drunken men from all over the world. In between German waitresses in dirndls and in each hand 6 pitchers of 1 liter beer. Nothing against being drunk. Nothing against being really drunk and having fun. But the mixture of conservative Bavaria, lederhosen, dirndl and people with nothing in their heads but beer and sausage…………
I remember reading this article about people who work at the Oktoberfest for the Red Cross. The nurses and doctors were talking about people getting injuries being hit by flying pitchers, being bitten by drunken dudes, being involved in fights, dying almost of alcohol poisoning. About 1200 people had to get treatment by the Red Cross. And in between Bavarian politicians in lederhosen and their wives wearing dirndl….
Ok. Enough negative energy spread for today.
But sometimes, being a CIR, being supposed to spread German Culture in / around Tosu, Saga is not always that easy. Quite often being addressed with: Ahhh…. Germany: Oktoberfest (I obviously hate), German beer (sorry, I only drink cocktails, shouchuu and sake), sausage (upps, I am not a vegetarian but sausage is like the last favourite of my foods) makes it hard. I try to tell people what I think is notable: education that is almost for free, a capital that is so diverse, open, where people could be a part of history the last years, social welfare state, reunification, FKK (LOL). And I try to talk about problems like racism, gap between East and West Germany etc…... But sausage-, beer- and Neuschwanenstein loving Japanese are of course not that much interested in those problems.
So, has actually somebody been to the Munich Oktoberfest? Maybe my German fellow CIR Florian or my UK mates? Wonder what you have to say………

In search of...

2006-10-06T23:41:00.000+09:00

My boss took the day off from work today, so, although my "supervisor" was there, it was a relatively slow day. I basically spent the day making Halloween masks for my Halloween "Event" next Saturday, using time wisely on the int0rnet, and talking to my office mates. Actually, for those of you who read the Saga City newsletter (don't throw away the October 1 edition! I'm on the last page before the back cover!!) the longest conversation I had today had to do with the next installment, which I wrote about the Japanese sense of seasons, and the limited-to-Autumn beers that come out here. While we were on the topic of beer, it came up how Japanese people think Asahi, Sapporo, Kirin, and Suntory are types of beer, and I got inspired to go in search of beer other than the big four.

Well, I didn't feel like bicycling to Jusco, so I thought I would take the short trip down to Booze on Chuo-dori here in Saga. No luck, since it was closed (does anyone know what time its open? I've only seen it open once and I think that was a Tuesday night). Instead I went home and decided to go return the copy of "Go" that I was talking about a few days ago (this time I came away with Syriana, which I had tried to download a while back but couldn't find one with subtitles for the Arabic/Farsi scenes). On the way home from Tsutaya, I took the long way back to near City Hall, and found passed a liquor store. It seemed larger than your average sakaya, and so after passing it once I turned around and went in. The only beers not made by the big four? Budweiser and Guiness. A thousand-odd yen poorer and four cans of Guiness richer I went home, made dinner, and feasted. I don't know, though, something about frozen friend rice and yesterday's mushroom curry reheated just didn't do the trick for me. Maybe I'll hit up the conbini for some ice cream later. Here's to 1) my next attempt at mushroom curry coming out better and 2) beer.

Why did I stay in on such a wonderful Friday night? Glad you asked. As of 10:25, I am officially 750cc's more bad-ass than I was at the beginning of the week. Oh yeah.

Waiting, Waiting

2006-10-05T22:52:00.000+09:00

So it seems that my post from yesterday set off a bunch of discussion among all of you, and I guess that's a good thing. I want to mention that I'm not always opposed to the idea of teaching people English (for free even) but I don't like being lied to or being treated like an ends to achieving English ability. But enough about yesterday's post.

Right now I'm eagerly awaiting delivery on my motorcycle. A few weeks ago, I decided that it was about time that I wasted all of my paycheck/savings on something ridiculous, and by the time its all done, I will be 30man poorer and 1 motorcycle richer. I do need to figure out a way to light a fire under these guys asses (to borrow a phrase from my high school football coach) because I definitely want it before the end of this upcoming long weekend. Hopefully I won't die on it. Anyone have any suggestions for where I should go on my first motorcycle trip? I'm thinking about keeping it within Saga-ken, at least for the first weekend I have it.

Phantom of the Opera?

2006-10-04T11:14:00.000+09:00

Today’s entry stems from a conversation I had with Jeff last night at Pisolino’s in Hyogo-machi (I’m still full from that meal, by the way).

Around the end of August, my boss asked me if I would meet with some woman and her daughter who were interested in America and whatnot, and I, not having anything else to do, went ahead and agreed. It turns out that the daughter was a middle-school student who one day just decided she couldn’t deal socially and was never going to school again. I don’t understand why such things are accepted in Japanese society, but I’m not a psychiatrist so I’ll keep my comments about the sad state of parenting to myself. Anyway, the mom had decided that since the daughter wasn’t going to school, she should meet as many different people and experience as many interesting things as possible, which to me sounded pretty great.

It was actually about a month or so before she finally came out with it and asked me to teach her daughter English. Actually, what she said was that since her daughter has this condition, its hard for her to do one-on-one lessons, and that they would appreciate if I did a few one-on-one’s with her until she got used to it so she could go to Nova or something. Feeling awful for the daughter I said I’d think about it if it’s a few short times, and its only the daughter, and she does eventually go to Eikaiwa classes. That night I got an email from the mom that said (in rough translation) “Tonight I was taking a walk with my daughter near Kencho and saw a group of ALT’s. I wanted to talk to them but was embarrassed that I couldn’t speak English. It was then that I felt that I really needed to learn English. Nirav, would you please teach me English, too?” Well, that is the single most piss-poor reason for "needing" to learn English that I've ever heard, so no, I’m not going to teach you English so that you can harass ALT’s on the street. Nor am I interested in giving free private lessons.

Since I turned her down I didn’t get any further contact until yesterday, when I was leaving my office to go to a meeting, and she was waiting outside the building. It wasn’t so much “contact” as her staring at me while I said “konnichiwa.” After a few tense moments of being stared at, I decided it was time for my meeting. Suffice it to say that I was weirded out.

So why, you ask, is this post entitled “Phantom of the Opera?” This woman, for some unknown reason, wears a surgical mask everywhere she goes. Hence the name. You may see (and be harassed by) her on the street. Turns out that Jeff did.

PS I really love it when random Japanese people harass you and tell you about the other people that they've harassed. Last week I was harassed by somene who told me all about how he had harassed Caleb and Matt on their way to Karatsu for some surfing. Great, dude.

oops

2006-10-03T00:19:00.000+09:00

Today actually started off really well. I was about to go to sleep last night, which was actually early this morning, only to find that Japanese college football was on TV. Not expecting much of a game, I figured I’d watch for a few minutes, turn it off, and go to sleep. That’s when things started going downhill. Two and a half hours later it was basically 3:30 AM and I had work in the morning. I woke up, ate, shaved, and made it to work in record time… but was still late. The best part was that I missed my turn to give a speech during the morning meeting (by 45 seconds) and the lady who had to do it in my place wasn’t really happy about it. But, in the end, it was definitely worth it. Ok maybe it wasn’t, but its Monday so give me a break.

The other problem with only sleeping a few hours at night is that I get really tired by the time I get home. I realized that today when I passed out on my floor around 6 and woke up again at 9. Ok, ok, I need to make up my speech tomorrow so I’m going to sleep.

Fun with Gaijins

2006-10-01T14:45:00.000+09:00

Well, here goes. I’m not really sure if self-introductions are appropriate for blogging but I’ve been doing them at work everyday since I got here, so I’m going to do one anyway. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Nirav, the new Saga City CIR. Or at least I was new two months ago. I guess I’m the two-month old Saga City CIR.

I don’t really want to do too much blogging about work, but I do want to mention that Friday was probably the most enjoyable day I’ve had on the job since getting here. Well, not so much the being on the job part, but actually what I was doing from 5PM onwards. Two weeks ago, I was somewhat annoyed when my supervisor asked me if I’d be willing to show up at a sleep-away camp sort of thing going on at the town hall in Hyogo-machi for elementary school kids. I think I’ve spent all of the Friday nights that I’ve been here at some stage of drunkenness, and I was planning on spending that one doing the same. That said, I think it was somewhat less of a request than one of those “you will do as we say” sort of things, and the Chinese girl in my office had to go too (not being a JET I don’t think the city has the obligation to treat her as nicely as it does me) so I figured I might as well.

Basically they said they wanted me to go, talk a little bit about America, and play with the kids. I got there, and half the kids were out shopping for the ingredients for dinner. The rest of the kids at first listened to what I said and we started playing “Red Light, Green Light.” About fifteen minutes later that devolved into a game of tag, which probably would be better described as “Tag the Gaijin.” This was followed by “Tickle the Gaijin as he handles sharp kitchen instruments,” “throw pillows at the Gaijin,” “Take the Gaijin to the Haunted House, Grab His Arm Pretending to be Scared, and Use that as an Excuse to Pull Out his Arm Hairs,” and various other entertainments. Yeah, they picked on me because I'm the big silly caged-panda Gaijin, but I'd rather spend time with kids like that than any of the weirdo adults I meet at work. And there are a whole crapload of them.

In the end I was there until 11, after which I got home, showered, and went to the izakaya under the train tracks. To be honest, probably the most fun I’ve had since I got here.

Last night I rented “Go,” a movie about Japanese-born Koreans. I’d put it pretty highly on my list of recommended Japanese movies. Definitely better than 98% of the crappy new Japanese action movies that have been coming out in the last few years.

herushii

2006-09-28T12:10:00.000+09:00

Looking round the staffroom today and one teacher in particular looks like a bulldog chewing on a bee. Wonder what his problem is. Maybe he hasn't had his hourly fag break yet.

I've decided to plump for the ヘルシ　bento at school today. It will actually be my first bento here and all for the very resonable price of 360yen. I hope it doesn't have any natto, random slime or mangey fish in it. Actually, if it's the healthy option, it'll probably have all of those things. Bugger

stuff

2006-09-27T15:25:00.000+09:00

Things that have made me happy today:

1. Discovering a new onigiri filling which I actually like. A 7-11 one as it happens with some beefy-saucy-goodness hidden away in a moist ball of rice - oishii!

2. My next door neighbour apologising for not giving me a ride to school the other day (literally next apartment and literally same school). It has stopped me moaning to anyone who'll listen about the injustices of a hierarchial society. Looking back, he probably wasnt going straight there or stright home.

3. My pink sparkly indoor shoes. They make me happy in my heart everytime I look down.

4. Smiling at the lovely maths teacher who speaks no English but with whom, somehow, I feel I could communicate.

5. Texting Marianne all day.

Things that have made me sad today:

1. The squat toilets. Pissed on aforementioned pink sparkly shoes AGAIN despite taking up a precision position!

2. Someone has drunk all the Pocari Sweat out the fridge at school so I was forced to hunt for something else to quench my thirst. Found some indesriminate yellowy-brown liquid in a labeless bottle. Couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was but after a quick sniff decided against drinking it. Wonder what the kanji for urine is?

3. The maths teacher is married.

Diztech

2006-09-25T11:11:00.000+09:00

Happy days again back in Saga. The hot maths teacher just smiled at me. My day is complete.

One thing that lends itself to my endless amusement in Japan is music, to be precise, the lyrically-lurid hip-hop music they blare over the speakers in various shops around town. Being of a softly-spoken and delicate nature and I can only say I was shocked to hear such explicitness, especially in front of children and their coffin-dodging grandparents. Surely that must go against some corporate image thing?? Especially when the bored staff are starting to sing along. They must know!!?

Similarly, I went to my first Japanese hip-hop dance class recently. Try exercising without a smile on your face as a dozen Japanese women in the saggy-arsed sweat pants (one of who has a t-shirt saying "I scored last night") break a sweat over "Put it in your mouth (the-not-edited-for-radio version)" and "my neck, my back" without a hint of lyrical comprehension. In a club, maybe, but here??

On another note, you have not lived until you have done an aerobic dance class to Disney techno music - hereon referred to as diztech. First, the melody comes, then the bass, you're feeling that pumping sound, then the vocals WTF?? "A whole new world??". 40 minutes were spent cruising through the 'hits' of such films as Aladdin, Beauty & the Beast and The Little Mermaid. Has anyone else expereienced diztech? Was I just unfortunate or is it on the up??

Only in Japan

"Boom period architecture" in Fukuoka

2006-09-25T10:27:00.000+09:00

As it turns out, you don't have to go to Tokyo or Kyoto to see architectural wonders in Japan. Fukuoka is even cooler than we thought. Check out this NY Times architecture review of the buildings of Fukuoka, a praise of not only the posh hotels and coctail spots but also the numerous yatai (ramen stands) that dot the streets of Tenjin. Before I read the article, I thought of Canal City as a gaudy-80s-ish tackified conglomeration of neon but I'm impressed to find out that the inspiration for mall is the canyon and valley-filled terrain of the American West.

The article recommends a particular yatai in Hakata, but I've got a better one: Hiroshi's yatai in Tenjin is the place to go. Hiroshi usually has punk or funk music blaring from behind the grill, and he'll tell you all about his punk band, the Jesus Planet Lovers. Tiger Woods has been there and wrote "all do my best" next to his autograph on the green flags. It's located near the corner of Oyafuku-dori.

OMG they have Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan!!!

2006-09-23T18:57:00.000+09:00

OK, I know it's prolly someone else's day to blog, but I had to ask if anyone's ever had this happen to them, and if so what they did.

(VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: I would like to point out here that although I do not belong to any religion myself, I am not against any religion. I do, however, dislike people trying to force their religion on me, no matter what that religion is.)

I was nuking my rice for dinner about half an hour ago, minding my own business, when the doorbell went. Off I go to answer it, wondering whether it's the postie with a package from one of my friends, or one of my adult eikawa guys asking if I wanted to go out...and this guy starts talking in Japanese and hands me a leaflet. I can't read Japanese very well, but I could read enough to realise what they were here for. Which brought me to the dilemma of what do I do here? Back home you can just say "Nup, not interested, sod off!" but in Japan saying no is anathema. Especially when you are a) a gaijin, b) therefore stick out like a sore thumb, and c) have been brought over by the Japanese government to introduce grassroots internationalisation, which means being on your best behaviour at all times and not telling people to f--- off. I would also like to add that while the old "I no speaka Japanese" thing will work eventually, they will first wheel out their Engrish reinforcements who will talk at you in...well, Engrish. Which could have been fun to watch, but I wanted my dinner, so I used the old "don't call me, I'll call you" tactic. Memorise the following:

Kore wo yonde kara renraku shimasu = I'll get in touch once I've read this.

Gesture to the leaflet if necessary. You may need to say this a couple of times, but they will eventually produce contact details. They will quite probably also ask for your number too. You could probably just keep repeating the above sentence, but you can also say this:

Mukou no bunka de hajimete atta hito ni denwa bangou wo ageru no wa...*pull omgsosorry face*...chotto...
=In my culture, giving your number to someone to someone you've just met...well, it's not really done...

I guess it depends on the people, but in my case they felt bad about being culturally insensitive and backed right off! Go me!

I just thought it was funny that they have 'em in Japan too!!!! What else is going to pop up here?

I feel baseball whenever I teach my thing

2006-09-22T16:32:00.000+09:00

Japanglish blunders of the week...

This is an email from a friend in Fukuoka:
"I am ill conditioned recently. Do you do it everyday? Please teach your thing."

My 9th graders' word of the week is "whenever". For classwork, they had to write four sentences using the word (i.e. I feel happy whenever I play tennis). Most of the students feel happy or sad whenever they see her or him, or play sports. But this sentence let me know what is really on the minds of junior high boys:
"I feel baseball whenever I saw her."

This is from my sister, who is an ALT at a jr. high in Kobe:
"I like leg. I love thigh, but I like leg. Leg is great. Leg fight my earth. I will want leg. Thank you"

I know there are tons more out there, so please share.

Haruki Murakami is back

2006-09-20T15:40:00.000+09:00

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is the new collection of short stories from the Japanese magical realist. Short stories, Murakami has admitted, are "a kind of experimental laboratory for me as a novelist." Anyone who has read Murakami's novels will notice that some of the stories in Blind Willow are beginnings or snippets that were later developed into novels. Read the review on Salon, NY Times, the Guardian. The Kobe-reared author is featured in this month's Times books section. Click here for interviews and reviews of past works.

A few years ago, following the release of Murakami's most popular novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Salon writer Laura Miller got a fascinating interview out of the notoriously reticent author. Murakami is forthcoming about his love for (Western) pop culture, inspiration for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and the consequences of being an individualist in Japan. Check it.

Here are some of Murakami's own words on...

The lack of a palpable 'Japanese identity' in his writing:
"In a way we were lost, the Japanese. We have been working so hard since just after the war. We were getting rich. We reached a certain stage, but after reaching it, we asked ourselves: Where are we going? What are we doing? It's a sense of loss."

His empathy for the people of Tokyo:
"So, I myself hate those company people–salarymen, businesspeople. Some of them got up at 5:30 in the morning to commute to the center of Tokyo. It takes more than two hours by train, all of it packed like this [hunches]. You can't even read a book. But they are doing that for 30 or 40 years. That's incredible to me. They come home at 10 p.m. and their kids are sleeping. The only day they see their children is Sunday. It's horrible. But they don't complain. So I asked them why not and they said it's no use. It's what all the people are doing, so there's no reason to complain."

The process of writing scary and soul-baring stuff:
"When you want a tiger's cub, you have to enter the tiger's den."

After the storm, typhoon Shanshan

2006-09-19T10:34:00.000+09:00

This past Sunday, while the rest of the world watched baseball, or Idlewild, or the reaction to the Pope`s blasphemous comments about Islam, a nasty typhoon took its toll on Kyushu. From what I hear at school, typhoon Shanshan (is there a better name for a tropical storm?) hit hardest in Saga City. According to the Hindu News, the typhoon touched down Nagasaki prefecture and swept north towards the Sea of Japan, carrying 144 kph winds and causing nine deaths. See a satellite picture of Shanshan here.

I was not here over the weekend, but the evidence from the storm was evident in the chaotic mess of bikes and the unusually cool weather. Hope everyone is OK.

Favorite new Japanese words of the day: momo (peach) & Shanshan.

My first Japanese cold (aka I hate myself and want to die)

2006-09-15T21:45:00.000+09:00

Picked a good weekend for it though, apparently there's a typhoon coming this weekend, so I prolly wouldn't have got out much anyway. I'll probably spend the weekend getting over my evil cold and working on my much-neglected lyrics website, so if the next blogger has been decided already, feel free to step in whenever you want.

Did the dreaded almost-solo class today. Was really worried about it after taking two sannensei classes in a row (in each class there were a couple of boys who would *not* stop talking, and at not too low a volume either, but the ichinenseis were fine. All the same, I'm glad Ogawa Sensei was there, even though all she ended up needing to do was the odd explanation and helping me go round and help people with the writing exercise Kawasaki Sensei had set for the last 10 minutes. She had some marking that needed doing later, so at least then I didn't feel so bad about making her supervise my class during her free period.

That's about all there is to report now, so baibai from me and I hope you enjoyed my humble contribution to the blog! :D

PS: When I put on my shoes after teaching at the kindy yesterday, there was a roach in one. It was yucky. :(

Hahahaha...no.

2006-09-14T22:38:00.000+09:00

I spoke too soon about the not sticking me in front of a class on my own thing. Way too soon. Kawasaki Sensei comes up to me today and is all, I won't be here tomorrow. "Oh", thinks me, "she must mean she's cancelling the ichinensei class. That's good, 4 classes *is* pretty hard going"... Um, wrong. Very, very wrong. What she means is that she wants me to do it ON MY OWN!!!! Hahahaha...no. I'm sorry, but I have yet to teach a full week yet, and I have yet to teach that class AT ALL. Plus, I have been a 13-year-old student myself, and I remember all to clearly what went through me and my classmates' heads when our normal teacher was out of the room. One of the other two JTEs has a meeting, so she can only do the first bit, and the other one has 4 other classes. I felt bad about making them fill in on top of their other work, but there is no way in hell I am taking a class on my own in my first full week. We decided on a compromise - they don't have to team teach, one of them will just sit at the back of the room and do their preparation or whatever and step in if need be.

Had my second adult eikaiwa class tonight. Those classes are a scream. I worried about what to do for them, but it turns out I don't need to prepare anything at all - they all know each other and there's always a steady stream of conversation, and I just help everyone say it in English. Last week we actually got on the topic of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Apparently the class has been going for 10 years, with 3 or 4 different ALTs teaching it. Most people just come occasionally, but there's some regulars - Mabro, the leader, who does some kind of council planning job, Arishima San, who runs a hospital with her husband, which is where we have the classes (and is great to know if ever you get sick or need to know any medical stuff), Hiromi, who's a stylist (will do my hair for free, hopefully she can work with my frizzy mop. The only people who could back home cost $80 a pop), and most recently, a mother and daughter duo. The mother actually spent 3 months in NZ 1o years ago (which is why she just joined now, along with the fact that I know Japanese so if anyone really gets stuck I can explain) and the daughter has university entrance exams this year. And they are all COOL AS people. There's never been a dull moment in the two classes I've done with them so far.

During the day I went to Ariake West Primary and also one of the kindies. Jingle and Jangle were a hit in both. The animal karuta cards also went down well.

Day 3 of no aircon, and tonight when I walked to Arishima Hospital for the classes I almost needed to put a jumper on. It's finally starting to cool down!!!

2006-09-13T17:49:00.000+09:00

Worked with the special needs kids today. I was a bit worried about that class. Not because I thought they might be trouble – I’d seen them around and they seemed nice kids – but I worried that I’d be way off the mark with my class and they’d end up bored or frustrated or both. Plus since there’s only two of them, a lot of the “old reliable” games just wouldn’t work. But it actually went pretty well. Aya, the younger of the two is an ichinensei and from what I can tell is a little kid in a 13-year-old’s body. She always seems quite cheeerful and is very affectionate, I have seen her hugging some of the other teachers when she talks to them, and this morning when I got in she put her arm around me and started leading me to the staffroom, saying “Go put your stuff down!” My pred also says her skull is not properly developed and so when you’re playing games or something, you need to be careful she doesn’t fall and hit her head. Chiharu, the older girl, is a sannensei, and basically the same thing – little kid in an older girl’s body. She’s more advanced than Aya, but can be a bit funny about talking to new people – when I asked a question she often craned her head around and sort of mumbled it to the special needs teacher instead. Apparently depending on her mood she can be very stubborn and completely ignore you sometimes, which worried me when I read it, but the special needs teacher is always there and would know what to do if ever I got stuck. She seemed OK today apart from the talking thing, and she seemed to get into this Maori dancing we were doing. They haven’t actually picked up any English, even Chiharu, and even with my pred who had professional teaching qualifications, so he hit on the idea of doing a lot of cultural activities with them. So today was the self-intro, like the other classes, but in Japanese with some simple words in English as well, and since there was just the two of them, I could hand them the stuff I was showing them. I also asked them questions about their daily life and explained what things we did differently in NZ. Then at the end I brought out my Maori music CD and showed them how to do the haka (ad-libbing in parts because I only know the bit they do at rugby games and the CD has this whole tangent at the beginning that I don’t know the moves for.) Chiharu really enjoyed it, and Aya didn’t want to have a go, but she seemed to enjoy watching me and Chiharu. On the whole, it seemed to go well.

The only other class I had today was Year 2-1. Again, I was the assistant and am beginning to get the hang of this assistant thing, which atm mostly involves reading stuff in English and helping out the kids when they don’t understand. I noticed that a lot of them had trouble with questions involving interpretation (perhaps because of the way they’re taught – there’s an awful lot of rote memorisation, and I remember my mum, who’s a teacher aide, saying something very similar about the effect it has.) Anyway, they had to answer questions about a story we were telling them, and stuff like “What did the man and his wife give the old lady?” were a piece of cake for most of them, but the one asking “What did the old lady say ‘That’s very good’ about?” flummoxed them. Was quite happy that I managed to help a lot of them work it out without actually telling them the answer.

Light workload today – 2 classes as opposed to the other days when I have 4 – so in my downtime I prepared for my ninensei class at Ariake West by updating the animal flash cards and karuta cards left behind for me, which were starting to show their age and weren’t all that interesting IMO (crudely drawn black and white pictures, which were getting a bit scraggy round the edges to boot.) I practically live on the internet, so I cruised Google Images and found photos of 8 different animals and made A4 flash cards, then shrunk them down so they all fit on one A4 page and made karuta cards. A quick flip through the colour printer, laminator and guillotine, et voila! Prettyful animal cards to be used for any number of classes for years to come. :D I plan on doing the same with the fruits, foods, body parts and so on as I come to them. I may even find photos for the colours. Am also planning on taking these two soft toys I have, a little cat and dog. If the amount of squeeing my two Silver Fern Beanie Babies have produced is anything to go by (even Junior High kids have been known to reach up onto the teacher’s desk and try to touch them during class) Jingle and Jangle should be a hit. I think I may actually, possible, maybe not be too bad at this shit after all!

Rain again this afternoon, but Day 2 of no aircon and it is still cool! Ding dong, the heat is dead!!!!! :D :D :D

Autumn at last!!!!

2006-09-12T20:55:00.000+09:00

Record this date in the books: On this day, September 12, for the first time since I came here, I TURNED OFF MY AIRCON. It has FINALLY started to turn cool. It was cool on Sunday too, for Sports Day, but I thought it was just a fluke. Today they left the fans off in the staffroom and it was still cool - in fact one of my JTEs complained about being cold!!!

My body's still screwed-up to buggery though. See, up to now I've never lived anywhere except the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are opposite. So my body is like, is this March or something? What happened to Christmas?!?!? O_o

Today was basically my first day of "real" teaching - apart from half of one class with Ono Sensei last week, it's been all self intros up to now. Today I was with the ichinensei again, and I was mostly just sort of helping out - like reading out stuff and going around making sure they all got what was going on. Had to fight off hysterical laughter at one point because the passage they were doing reminded me of this book I read when I was a teenager, where the whole class cracks up because the name of the fictional family in their language textbook sounds sex-related. I won't go into details 'cause it's kinda culturally offensive, but it was hilarious and the passage just reminded me of it. Had to quickly think of something else to keep from rofling. Two boys also learned some extra English today. They'd accidentally chosen pink stickers from my sticker pot and came up afterwards and said "Kaette ii?" So I taught them how to say "Can I change it?" in English, and made them say it before I let them swap.

Went to the last of my primary schools today, Ariake East. Like Ono Sensei, they didn't want the self intro to be the whole period, but what we did for the rest of it involved a lot of songs and games, so I think the kids enjoyed it and took it in OK. The teacher's English isn't that crash-hot though - quite heavily accented and sometimes says the wrong stuff. I'm not going to get on his case about everything he gets wrong, as that'd be counter-productive (and the kids probably aren't going to be affected by a once-off comment said wrong anyway) but I will need to have a quiet word to him about how to say "Please put your books over there" properly, as if all the lessons have games that need a space cleared then that's probably something that'll get said a lot, and it's stuff that's repeated all the time that the kids learn. That said, he's a nice guy and GREAT with the kids - he really went all out and sort of clowned around a bit. Afterwards these 3 kids hung around me for the first part of the way back to the chuugakkou asking me stuff, until it started raining.

I still haven't played half the CDs I bought in Fukuoka Book Off a few weeks ago - I bought 41 for about 10,000. Ripped a few more tonight and the one I'm playing is quite good. It's the first album by Every Little Thing, this pop group that got started 10ish years ago and appear to still be going strong now. I love that there's still pop music in Japan, rather than being nearly 100% R&B and hip hop like it is in NZ. I don't like either genre, and I HATE, HATE, HATE TRANSLATING RAP!!!! With pretty much all the other genres the song tells a story, so if something's ambiguous you can usually work it out by the context. But Japanese rap is all this random crap thrown together and it is a royal pain in the butt, made worse by the fact that there's like twice as many lyrics as regular songs. Even my friend hates it, and she was the translator for Digimon when it was around. And on that note, I am going to see if I can make a dent in the God-awful waiting list that has accumulated since I left NZ. Oyasumi!!

Sports Days, Enkais, and NOT SUCKING AT MY JOB!!!!

2006-09-11T21:05:00.000+09:00

So I have done my first week of teaching. And to my absolute delight, I DIDN’T TANK!!!!!!!!! I didn’t “forget my lines” (if you know what I mean), I didn’t have gaping gaps of empty time at the end, I didn’t put any students to sleep, and I didn’t piss off any of my JTEs!!!!! Go me!!!!

To be fair, though, a lot of it comes down to the JTEs. They’re awesome. Especially at my base school, Ariake Junior High. One of them in particular speaks near-flawless English, and the other two are pretty awesome as well. One of them even has the beginnings of an American accent. They are all great about keeping the class under control for me (two out of the three pretty much gave me centre stage for the self-intro class and just kept the class in line and explained any stuff they didn’t understand) and the ratio of Japanese to English spoken seems pretty good, and is adjusted depending on the grade level. As with probably most ALTs, how much I do depends on the JTE. Two of the Junior High JTEs, like I said, left the actual content of my first lesson up to me and just kept an eye out for any problems, whereas the third only wanted 15 minutes taken up by my self-intro and then the rest was normal class stuff with me helping out – which was a good break from lesson planning, and also gave me a chance to see what they do in a normal class. At the other end of the scale, in Ariake South Primary (the 3 primary schools are called Ariake South, Ariake East and Ariake West – not all that imaginative, but easy to remember!) I was basically doing all the talking and the teacher just kept the kids in line. In that case, I needed to use a bit of discretion about when to use Japanese. I don’t like to use it in class, I prefer to let the JTE handle that side of things, but the kids were quite young, so they needed a little help. One thing I DON’T want is to have what I’m saying go over their heads. I have been in that situation myself a few times (*cough* Vodafone Shop *cough* Tiki Tiki Internet helpdesk) and it is extremely discouraging. The whole point of this grassroots internationalisation stuff is to DISPEL the whole “gaijin = scary” thing, not make it worse!!

Speaking of primary school kids, DAMN they are cool!!! As Justin was saying, the junior high kids are quite jaded, especially the older ones, but the primary school kids are something else entirely. You direct a question at the class in general and they all yell out the answer. They’re so hyper that it makes me hyper too!! That said, the junior high kids are pretty good kids too. Case in point: the bike crash. Riding a bike in Auckland is a great way to commit suicide, so the last time I had been on one before coming here was when I was 10. So the teachers at the junior high let me practice on the field before I rode out to the primary schools. Picture, if you will, me wobbling around the field on my bike, and a bunch of kids milling around after Saturday sports games. Then picture me forgetting where the brakes are and nearly crashing in front of about 20 kids. And these kids? Were all, “Ganbatte!!!” Seriously. In New Zealand, if an intermediate school teacher nearly fell off her bike in front of her students, they would laugh hysterically and not let her forget it. Ariake Junior High = THE BOMB.

I’ve also been doing a lot of marking. Ogawa Sensei, one of my JTEs who sits next to me, has me help her out sometimes. The best bit was marking these holiday diaries they had to do. It was a lot more fun to read than the boring drills they usually do (the only bit I don’t like about the way they’re taught) and gave me an idea of what they’re into, as well as how much effort they put in. This one kid made a heap of mistakes, but you could see how much of an effort he’d made to try out different words and sentence structures. He’d obviously put a lot of thought into it, rather than sticking to a couple of words and structures he knew or found in the textbook. A lot of the others seemed to do that, either out of fear of making mistakes, or holidayitis, or both.

Sports Day yesterday. The amount of preparation that goes into one of these babies is amazing, and a far cry from the sports days at my old high school where the majority of senior students (myself included, I have to admit) only turned up for the opportunity to lounge around reading magazines during school time. Not being a great sports fan myself, I thought it was a little excessive at the time, but when the day came, and it all got put together, you could see what all everyone’s hard work was for and it was awesome. One of my JTEs who was very involved in planning it, asked me if I wanted to do anything. Well, I as I have mentioned, I’m no athlete. But hell, who cares if the ALT comes last? With that in mind I decided to shock everyone by doing the marathon. The school video will show me bounding out the school gates all bright eyed and bushy tailed and la la la, I am a crazy gaijin doing the school marathon, and then staggering back in at the end, puffing like a steam train and saying “Is it over yet? Is it over yet?” in Saga Ben. Fun breeze! The best gaijin comic relief, though, came later. They decided to do a teachers’ relay, which involved pushing a hoop round the track with a stick. And here we have the ALT, dropping it every few seconds and laughing hysterically. Lalalalala. Not much else to mention except the kids were amazing. The marathon was the first thing on the agenda, and I was ready to drop dead by the end of it, but here they all were doing relays and sprints! O_o

Afterwards was The Enkai. And…wow. As a pre-enkai thing we went to an onsen. We left it a bit late, though, so we only got to spend 10 minutes there and only like two minutes in the outdoor pool (boo hiss. That pool was awesome!!!) But the enkai more than made up for it. For starters, there was karaoke. I LOVE KARAOKE. The principal sang an enka (traditional Japanese style ballad) and he was pretty good too! Then me and Ogawa Sensei did a duet of Top Of The World by The Carpenters. And THEN…oh God. They actually had a Teachers’ Sports Day!!!!!! There was this thing where they had to move azuki beans from one bowl to another with a spoon (based on a similar game at the sports day), and a Mexican Wave contest, and a relay where everyone put a Tomato Pretz in their mouth and the teams had to pass a rubber band down the line using only the Pretz. All this was accompanied by much cheering and booing and it was an absolute scream. I mean, these serious teachers acting like kids!!! Can you imagine this happening at a NZ work party??? NZers = deprived.

Well, that’s it from me now. More tomorrow, if I’m not still buggered from karaokeing til 1am last night…

2006-09-08T14:43:00.000+09:00

I would call today an absolute success. Today I taught three classes in a row using my new Powerpoint introduction. I also had a new activity, which ran very smoothly. I won't be at this school for another two weeks due to my rotation schedule, so I am not scheduled to meet the ichi-nensei until then. To fix that I was asked to do a short introduction (just the Powerpoint and a Q & A session) in the gym for both of the ichi-nensei classes. It was only ten minutes, but it was good for them to meet me along with the rest of the school.

Dodgeball and Autographs

2006-09-07T21:48:00.000+09:00

Once again elementary school has restored my faith in the Japanese school system. Today was quite possibly the best day of teaching I've had so far. I already worked out a good introduction lesson at Nishi Kawanobori, so I came in the Higashi Kawanobori today totally prepared. The day started with a short assembly in the gym, where I gave a short introduction in English and Japanese. One of the best things about elementary school is that they want me to use both English and Japanese in the classroom. That makes my work so much easier. After my little intro, all of the students sang the school song for me. It was pretty complicated, considering the singers were all little kids. I visited four classes today. All went incredibly well. I can tell the teachers are all really happy with my performace so far. Higashi Kawanobori is also the school with the teacher that lived in Australia. I really like talking to her, and hope to do so more often than just two days each month. I think she would make a great friend. During one of the periods between classes, a group of sixth grade boys came to the staff room looking for me. Students always come into the staff room looking for teachers, but that was the first time anyone has come looking for me. They came to ask if I would play dodgeball with them during recess. Of course I agreed. At first I was a little concerned that I wouldn't be good, but I forgot that I was playing against sixth graders. When the time came for recess, it was a group of girls that came to get me for the game. As it turned out, they play boys versus girls. The girls asked me to be on their team because the boys were too strong. It was very cute. Most of the girls tried to hide in the corner of the field, but there were two girls that were absolute monsters. It was crazy to see how intense they were. I really liked being asked to play with the kids. One definite highlight was at the end of one class when all of the kids came up to me with their notebooks, asking me for a signiture. A real rockstar experience to say the least. All of these little hands pushing notebooks at me, begging me to "jumbo sign." I'm a little sad that I won't see this group again for another two weeks. I really liked them all a lot. Then again, next week I get to move on to my other rotation of schools. Two more elementary schools to meet people at, plus one new junior high.

2006-09-06T14:41:00.000+09:00

Literally just finished my first junior high introduction lesson. My initial impression...I want to go back to the elementary schools. I forgot how bratty junior high kids were. I guess it's a worldwide thing. I feel drained, but luckily I get to go back to elementary tomorrow. I'm sure the elementary school visits are going to help me unwind from the stress of junior high. Who thought hyper little kids would help me unwind! What a strange planet I've landed upon, for this surely can't be Earth.

First taste of teaching

2006-09-05T19:32:00.000+09:00

Today I finally got my first chance to teach a class. I've been at my junior high two full days, but because of school-wide tests, I haven't really done much outside of the staff room. I did grade a few short essays, and recorded the listening portion of a few tests, but I haven't had much interaction with the students in class.

That changed today with my first day at Nishi Kawanobori Sho. I knew yesterday that I would be teaching ichi-nensei, ni-nensei, san-nensei, and yon-nensei today. My JTE and other teachers at my junior high were saying things like they were worried for me. I don't know if this is a lack of faith on their part, or a fear that little Japanese kids would destroy the new foreigner. Either way, things couldn't have turned out better.

I was suprised to learn that I would be teaching the ichi-nensei during the first class. I had my introduction ready, as well as animal flashcards for after the introduction. The kids were all extremely cute and suprisingly attentive. By the time I was done with my intro I already felt totally at ease with the kids. We played listening and speaking games with the animal names. I was suprised how well all of these cute little 6 year olds were doing. The class went great, and word spread around the school fast that Justin Sensei's class was really fun. The rest of the day kids kept stopping by to say hello, or just to check me out.

My other three classes went just as well as the first. After my first full day of teaching, I'm starting to get the feeling that I can not only handle this job, but I can do it well. I watch enough Japanese children's television to know what works and what doesn't. I never thought I'd get the chance to use that knowledge, but here I am, performing live five days a week!

No point complaining.

2006-09-04T17:53:00.000+09:00

So I'm supposed to post something here every day this week. I had a slow start to the day, then a mad rush towards the end. I was going to write something about that, but then I got home and checked out the news.

Croc Hunter Steve Irwin was killed today by a stingray. Strange but true. All of a sudden being asked to teach four classes in a row doesn't sound like such a bad thing.

Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray during a diving expedition. He was 44.

Irwin was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when he was stung, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.

He collapsed at Batt Reef, near Low Isle and the resort town of Port Douglas, Queensland state police said in a statement. Port Douglas is about 1,260 miles north of Brisbane, the state capital.
A rescue helicopter rushed to the scene but Irwin had died, the statement said.

Queensland ambulance service spokesman Bob Hamil confirmed that a diver had been killed by a stingray off Lowe Isles Reef and said cause of death appeared to be a "stingray strike to the chest."

Irwin was famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchword "Crikey!" in his television program "Crocodile Hunter," which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has aired around the world on the Discovery channel.

He rode his image into a feature film, and developed the Australia Zoo as a tourist attraction.
Irwin had received some negative publicity in recent years. In January 2004, he stunned onlookers at the Australia Zoo reptile park by carrying his month-old son into a crocodile pen during a wildlife show. He tucked the infant under one arm while tossing the 13-foot reptile a piece of meat with the other.

Authorities declined to charge Irwin for violating safety regulations.
Later that year, he was accused of getting too close to penguins, a seal and humpback whales in Antarctica while making a documentary. Irwin denied any wrongdoing, and an Australian Environment Department investigation recommended no action be taken.

Irwin was also seen as a vocal critic of wildlife hunts in Australia. The federal government recently dropped plans to allow crocodile safaris for wealthy tourists in the Northern Territory following his vehement objections.

Irwin told the Australian television program "A Current Affair" that "killing one of our beautiful animals in the name of trophy hunting will have a very negative impact on tourism, which scares the living daylights out of me."

He is survived by his American wife Terri, from Eugene, Ore., and their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who used a photograph of his family at Australia Zoo for his official Christmas card last year, hailed Irwin for his work in promoting Australia through projects such as "G'Day LA," an Australian tourism and trade promotion week in Los Angeles in January.

"The minister knew him, was fond of him and was very, very appreciative of all the work he'd done to promote Australia overseas," Downer's spokesman Tony Parkinson said.

Stingrays have flat bodies and tails with serrated spines, which contain venom and can cause cuts and puncture wounds. The creatures are not aggressive and injury usually occurs when a swimmer or diver accidentally steps on one.

Finding Spirituality In Small Town Japan

2006-09-03T17:03:00.000+09:00

So three years ago I took a trip with some other exchange students to Kyoto. We spent three non-stop days running from one historical site to another. Maybe it was being with a large group, or maybe it was being surrounded by hundreds of tourists, both Japanese and foreign, but I couldn't really feel anything spiritual at the various temples.

Of course the beauty of Kyoto still had it's effect on me, but spiritually...zip. Now I've never been a religious man, or one who took spirituality seriously, but oh how I wanted to feel something. It was like I knew that THAT was my one moment to really feel a connection to something.

Three years later and now I'm walking around Takeo desparately seeking some form of amusement. For a month now I've been surrounded by mountains, but never sought them out. I resumed my role as "sweatly white guy walking around Takeo," and headed toward Mifuneyama. Soon I found myself at the gate to Mifuneyama Rakuen. Nobody was in sight except for the elderly woman desperately waiting for customers at the little gift shop. I asked her (in my broken Japanese) if it was ok to enter, because for all I knew the place was closed. Ten minutes and 400 yen later I made my way through the gate.

So here I was, alone on a strange little mountain. Occasionally I would wander off the path until I encountered a spider web or group of lizards beckoning me to turn back. Though I remember seeing Mifuneyama Rakuen in one of those Saga tourist books I received in the summer, I had no clue what to expect. Just when I thought I was coming to the end of the tour I found myself in a small cave surrounded by tiny Buddhist statues. At last I was feeling something. Not some religious awakening or anything, but a connection with my surroundings. All at once I was fully aware of all of the animals chirping and buzzing around me. It hit me that here I was, standing alone on a mountain in Japan, in a tiny cave with little Buddhist statues, experiencing something I never could have imagined.

Often I get bored in my little town of Takeo. I always want to seek out other people to spend time with. This was one instance where I was happy to be alone. I could fully take in the experience without having to be taken out of the moment by conversation. When I go back to Mifuneyama Rakuen, I hope to do it with friends. But for this, my first trip, I'm proud that I did it on my own.

Jon Toogood sang about it once...

2006-08-25T11:30:00.000+09:00

Sleeping for three days is a good way to become re-acquainted with your surroundings. However, now I am more aware of them, I am still curious as to their intentions towards me.

Myself and the Swiss man looked over at the breasts that were blocking the aisle. The breasts was not a separate entity in themselves, however they did stand out to the point where they made their way forcefully onto the extended tray table in front of them and rather loudly displaced the array of in-flight sawdust shavings out into the aisle, blocking the drinks cart, temporarily severing my traveling companion from his next red wine.

This breasts belonged to the same person who had mothered the rather chubby child I saw lifting up his shirt and pressing his bulk against the movable railings of an airport walkway, thus shaking and vibrating his girth which so far had opened the eyes of every single Malaysian person in the airport to the extents to which children can be over-fed. Most people were amazed at the layering which had been placed onto the bones of this young lad. They were stroking his belly like it was a gelatinous slab of luck blubber.

Myself and the man from Switzerland, his teeth still brown from smoking too much, play chess for the next nine hours due to the impossibility of sleep, while the international childcare centre that is flight MH 0103 from Kuala Lumpur to Auckland slowly winds its way down over the pirate straights of Malacca, soars above the vastness of the Australian outback and eventually comes to a stop, all 50 small, poxy, evil, crying children included, at gate 12 of Auckland international airport.

A brief exchange with a customs representative convinces me of the usefulness of sword play in dealing with those who are insolent up until the point where I realize that she is just a roughly mannered native girl with a bad case of the oral herpes. Welcome back to New Zealand, here is your passport, thrown at you back across the desk with a grimace and a grunt.

The air is clean. Alright, the air is very, very clean. The exact opposite of the summer season miasma that lurks around Saga like farts hanging around an old dog sleeping in the sun.

I’m very quiet as I stop myself before I feel the urge to say “When I was in Japan…” which seems to have attained a disturbingly prominent position in my current lexicon. This self censoring leads to a two hour long conversation with Kate who thankfully knows how I’ve wound up feeling, which is odd. Not unpleasant, not depressed or overly down, but just, odd. Dislocated, out of place.

Evolution.

Big pink and red men lurk around in bars. I remember that I’m really not that physically large after all, which is good, because no one is noticing me either. Relax with a smoke and a movie.

Home?

Again?

Makes you wonder..

2006-08-22T19:00:00.000+09:00

Why is killer in quotations if they did "kill" someone?

Arizona man stung to death by "killer" bees
Mon Aug 21, 2:32 PM ET

A swarm of "killer" bees attacked a man and his father as they repaired a roof in a small town in southeast Arizona, killing one man and hospitalizing the other, police said on Monday.
Cochise County Sheriff's Department said the Africanized honey bees stung Charlie Pasley, 39, more than 300 times as he carried out repairs to a home in Huachuca City, 160 miles (250 km) southeast of Phoenix on Sunday. He died at the scene.
Spokeswoman Carol Capas said the swarm also attacked Pasley's father, Chuck, 62, who was reported to be in a stable condition in hospital late on Sunday.
The insects, commonly known as "killer" bees for their highly aggressive behavior, are descended from a ferocious strain that was first introduced to the Americas from Africa in the 1950s in the hope that they would produce more honey.
The bees absconded from research hives in Brazil, slowly spreading through South and Central America. They first crossed into Texas from Mexico in 1990, since when they have attacked and killed dozens of people.
Researchers say the bees developed their highly defensive behavior and furious work rate to deal with voracious predators and short growing seasons in drought-prone areas of Africa.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060821/us_nm/life_usa_bees_dc&printer=1

Why I outta....

2006-08-18T20:11:00.000+09:00

Damn I really dislike people sometimes. On a normal day, if there are clouds out you can see people with umbrella in hand ready for the first drop to hit. Yet on days when everyone knows there's a typhoon coming people don't bring umbrellas to the store and steal my sh~tuff. I saw the guy running to his car with my favorite umbrella and trying to get away as fast as he could. I was so tempted to bang on the window and yell bad things at him and take my umbrella back and beat him with it. I probably would have given him a heart attack if I'd said anything.

I didn't do anything but fume and wish him very ill will. I hope whatever he bought at YouMe Town makes him have explosive diarrhea. Is that too much to ask?It's the 4th umbrella I've had stolen. I shouldn't get hung up on things like that but when people look at me and their like,
'ahhh, bikkuri!!!' then stare at me suspiciously I want to do things like steal their precious little umbrellas to get back at all those that have done me wrong, but I don't. I write out my frustration. GAH! Okay I'm done. 10... 9... 8....

Summer

2006-08-16T15:13:00.000+09:00

Summer is nice. Granted I'm not so big into sweating into and through multiple undershirts, sweating instantaneously as I step outside, and being eaten alive by carnivorious mosquitos. Just this weekend I've been bitten over 60 times in the oddest of places. Sukebe mosquitos. But I like summer a lot.

Things I like about summer:

I get tan. A friend once told me brown fat looks better than regular and I tend to agree.
Ain't nothing better than swimming outside when it's hooot.
In summer, ice cream is widely accepted as a remedy to the heat and not a indulgent obsession.
I like the sound of secadas at night.
I like the thunder and lighting storms.
I don't have to go to work sometimes.
Festivals and fireworks. Old ladies in spandex partying in the street- if that's not a party I don't know what is.
BBQs!
Sleeping in and watching Walker Texas Ranger while eating cookies in the morning. I'm living it up big style.

When I was a kid I remember being taken all over the state because my brothers had soccer tournaments in Seattle or elsewhere. I also remember getting car sick everytime because of the altitude changes and throwing up in plastic ziploc bags because we, "wouldn't get anywhere if we stopped for you to throw-up."

We'd hang-out with my cousins at my grandma's house and swim in the pool. Then we'd play atari or mini-arcade versions of Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, that was the coolest! Anyone remember those? Water fights, my aunt's sun tea, my uncle's bbq and enough tortillas to feed a small country- good times. When we were home we'd have water fights, play in the mud or watch TV. Simpler times that I sometime wish I could go back and visit once in a while. How'd you guys spend your summer?

In the lapse of other coverage...

2006-08-14T10:30:00.000+09:00

So, This weekend I was in Tokyo for the 2006 Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival, (there were also festivals in Estonia and Germany on the same day, Saturday) which was awesome, in case you're wondering (the typhoon kindly stopped just as we started walking). Wondering if I was in any pictures, I looked it up online today and found, to my bewilderment, that there wasn't a whole lot of media coverage, despite the hundreds of people taking photos and official "pride 2006 press" guys running around.
Anyway, there were 3,000-4,000 people present in the parade and lots of costumes and such, but most of us were in normal, rainbowed-up duds, a little casual if you will. We marched/walked/danced from Yoyogi Park to Shibuya and back, about 2 hrs in total. There were hundreds and hundreds of supporters lining the streets and the overpasses, waving flags, cheering and applauding the parade. Much better than in Estonia, where some people threw eggs and some people got beat up.
One weird thing, they didn't block the street off, so we're walking down one way and there's cars coming the opposite direction, with staff people running along the side doing an excellent job of keeping us from getting run over. We also had to stop at every light and wait to cross (!)
I met a bunch of neat people and learned that yeah, the community really is as small and fledgling as it seems, but it sure ain't gonna stay that way. ganabatte people!

I'm right in front of her! We're in the Jungle theme float, my friend and I switched after the music van for the Diamond Cutter float got lost and never showed up.

Photo Finish

2006-08-11T15:26:00.000+09:00

So I was heading back from lunch at Baronne — a nice little Italian restaurant here in Karatsu, home of the second best pizza in Saga-ken (after my own, of course) — cruising along on my granny bike (now with both tires fully inflated!) when I decided to do something rather stupid: coast along with my feet stuck out in front of me.

Somehow in doing this, I managed to catch the toe of my left shoe in the front wheel of the bike, which quickly brought the proceedings to a rather rapid halt. I had a good couple seconds to contemplate how much this was gonna suck when I hit pavement, and sure enough it did: I swiftly proceeded to make a leisurely fall to the side, made all the more graceless on account of my foot still being stuck behind me in the bike. I've got a lovely bruise along the length of my left shin and managed to sprain both my wrists (I'm hoping it's just a sprain; the left is worse off than the right, which is mostly fine by now), which — despite liberal applications of ice packs and strange dermal adhesive pads that make my whole hand feel burning hot, instead of just my wrist — are still hurtin' this morning.

The upshot of this is that extensive typing is kind of out for the moment if I can help it, so instead I'm going to finish off my week with a sampling of photos that I've taken during my adventures here in Japan thus far.

Train, Onizuka Town, Karatsu. March 2006.

Onoura Falls, Outside Hiroshima City. October 2005.

Culture Day, Onizuka Junior High School, Karatsu. October 2005.

Stone Buddhas, Imari Pottery Mountain. December 2005.

Gulls, Shimabara-to-Kumamoto Ferry. December 2005.

Freezing Fountain, Sapporo, Hokkaido. February 2006.

Abandoned Loader, Fukushima Island, Nagasaki-ken. June 2006.

Offerings, Karakuni-dake, Kirishima National Park. July 2006.

So concludes my turn at blogging. Thanks to Sarah for the opportunity, and you for reading. If you're interested in more stuff, I do have a blog of my own, which is updated sporadically as the mood strikes me. There are also plenty more photos at my flickr site.

Have a great weekend and to all the new arrivals, welcome to our little corner of Kyushu!

-- Colin out.

A Habitat Story

2006-08-10T14:38:00.000+09:00

Back in elementary school, I went to a small, private Montessori school in Bloomington, Indiana. Fourth through sixth graders all shared one classroom, with about thirty students in all. Moving into a huge public middle school afterwards was a difficult social adjustment, but Montessori was a great learning environment. One of my classmates, two years below me, was a girl named Kelsey. Her father was a professor at Indiana University (as was mine), and her mother was from Africa. Which would've been unremarkable except that this was 1994 and she was from Rwanda.

Estimates range from 800,000 to well over a million killed in the Rwandan Genocide, primarily ethnic Tutsi people at the hands of organized Hutu militias. From Wikipedia's article on the topic:

Ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors and those who refused to kill were often killed themselves. "Either you took part in the massacres or you were massacred yourself," said one Hutu, rationalizing an ambivalent mixture of regret, fear, and shame at being forced to kill Tutsis.

Most of the victims were killed in their villages or in towns, often by their neighbors and fellow villagers. The militia members mostly killed their victims by chopping them up with machetes, although some army units used rifles. In some towns the victims were forcibly crammed into churches and school buildings, where Hutu extremist gangs massacred them.

Being all of eleven at the time, the full scope of this probably only vaguely registered with me at the time, but we were all definitely aware of it to some extent because Kelsey's mother was in the local paper (someone we knew was famous!) for her efforts to reunite with her family back in Rwanda. We had fundraisers at school to help her raise the money to travel to the refugee camps, searching for the scattered remnants of her family. I remember it took several trips, but she eventually was able to reunite with her mother. After some time — the details are blurry with time by now, but I think it must've taken over a year — she was finally able to secure a visa for her mother and her brother, who I believe were the only survivors in her family.

I first volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in high school; my school had a chapter and, on the suggestion of one of my favorite teachers, a sponsor of the club, a few friends of mine and I went out one Saturday to lend a hand on the house of a young woman named Jennifer. I don't remember exactly what I did that first time (I think I worked on the porch, and maybe some of the interior walls), but it was fun enough that when, later that year, the Unitarian Church that I attended at the time (that's another story) sponsored the construction of two houses out on the north side of town, I decided to go join them again. And whose house should I find myself raising the walls on my first Saturday morning there, but my old classmate Kelsey's uncle and the wife he met in the refugee camps of Rwanda some four or five years prior. And let me tell you, that was pretty cool.

Every weekend after, I dragged myself out of bed at 7:00 on a Saturday morning to drive out and take part in construction from start to near-finish: driving nails, putting up siding, drywalling, painting trim, running wiring all over the house with an old retired electrician my grandfather's age, and more. It was amazingly fun, and rewarding — and, as a teenager youth with your usual modicum of adolescent angst, also good for adding a little broader perspective to life. I continued my participation with Habitat on into college, where my constant involvement made it one of the defining aspects of my life at the time; it remains one of the things I miss most from home.

There is a Habitat for Humanity Japan affiliate, although it acts primarily as a coordinating and support service for groups taking Global Village trips to nearby countries in the Pacific. Volunteer organizations like Habitat are hard to find here in Japan; the word, ボランティア, is not native to the language and as I understand it normally carries connotations of group civic responsibility and shared sacrifice, like when my students are told to go out en masse to pick up trash along the roadside for an hour or so at school. That's good and important and all; our New Horizon third year textbooks have a unit on volunteerism, but there as well, the activities described are officially-sponsored (school groups with a partner family in Nepal — why oh why did they change it from Bangladesh this year??? I could've done a great lesson with that..) — not from grassroots.

There are a number of possible explanations for the relative absence of individual civic volunteerism in Japan. There are the obligatory references to Japan's "group culture", and the widespread influence of religious groups (Habitat, which is officially an ecumenical Christian organization, gets most of its volunteers and support from church groups, although everyone is welcome) in American social life, which Japan lacks. There's also the notion that these things are the responsibility of the government authorities, and not the general populace.

But there's also real legal impediments to the growth of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In a 1999 article in the magazine Pacific Affairs entitled "Wither Japan's Environmental Movement? An Assessment of Problems and Prospects at the National Level", Robert J. Mason writes:

Perhaps the largest single obstacle facing NGOs is the difficulty of obtaining tax-exempt status. Indeed, 90 percent of all NGOs in Japan lack such status. To receive tax-exempt status, an NGO must be officially recognized by the government as a "public-interest corporation." Eligibility conditions for such status are not precisely specified by law, but what is generally required are either capital assets of about U.S.$ 2.5 million (¥300 million) or membership numbers beyond the reach of the vast majority of environmental organizations. What constitutes a sufficiently large membership base is decided by the ministry with which the NGO is affiliated. All public-interest corporations must be chartered by a government ministry, which will have a significant say regarding such matters as the group's activities and board membership. In short, the process is time-consuming and the requirements, while not clearly defined, can nonetheless be rigid and restrictive.

By comparison, registering an non-profit in the United States is a matter of filing a couple of forms with the IRS, which looks them over to ensure that the organization matches at least one of the large list of existing categories of charity — a process which usually only takes a couple months at most, and which is not meant to allow government or bureacucratic control of the groups. (In the UK, there's a Charity Comission, which as near as I can tell does pretty much the same thing; Canadians, Aussies, and Kiwis will have to give me a hint as to how your system works here.)

So, why are my students freezing away in dilapidated old buildings while the bureaucrats at the city hall stay warm and cozy? One possible answer is the equally underdeveloped state of Japan's volunteer organizations. A democratic government that truly represents the needs and concerns of its citizenry depends on civil society groups — churches, environmental groups, and other volunteer organizations where people associate together based on shared interests and goals — to transmit the concerns of the people to the authorities outside of the election cycle, as well as to hold them to them when it comes time to vote. So not only am I having an awesome good time when I volunteer with Habitat — I'm doing my part to keep democracy strong at the same time. And they usually have free donuts in the mornings too!

Taiwan and South Korea achieved peaceful transitions to democratic governance in the 1980s after small local religious and environmental organizations banded together to create a national movement capable of articulating a demand for reform and accountability of the government to the populace. The Chinese Communist Party — with good reason — fears just such movement today. And Karatsu — well, I'll be waiting.

Got more time to kill? Check out this site, which offers a longer article on NGOs in Japan and offers more comparisons to how they operate versus those in the U.S. For other articles I've come across relating to the broader topic of civil society, check out my del.icio.us shared bookmarks on the subject.

寒いですね

2006-08-09T15:26:00.000+09:00

If I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that I'm not always sure about the degree to which my presence as an ALT here in Saga really makes a major difference in the lives and learning of my young students. I think that it might be doing something, perhaps in subtler ways than I can easily discern, but even with that thought it's not clear how much of it is directly connected to me, as opposed to any other friendly gaijin plunked down in my spot. I do think, though, that my being here has definitely had an effect on me, which I suppose is at least something.

Smack in the center of the sweltering Saga summer (say that five times fast), it may require a powerful stretch of the imagination, but if you'll recall it was only six or seven months ago that we were all sitting around, shivering in the biting Siberian-tinged air, tethered to the warm envelopment of the kotatsu. That is assuming we were at home; in the half-century old concrete hulks that serve as schools here in Karatsu, there was no respite. Except that, as a teacher, I could get away with wearing a heavy jacket, and retreat between classes to hover over the space heater in the shokuinshitsu to thaw my hands; unless they could think of an excuse to come visit a teacher for a few minutes, my poor sailor-suited students had no such escape.

I think it was probably the unreasonableness of teachers who would yell at students who dared to put on gloves or scarves in the frigid classrooms that was the most maddening aspect of it all, but almost equally galling was the thought that here I was, in one of the richest nations in the world, and they can't even manage to heat their children's schools! Aside from the basic issue of social priorities, the cold also had clear and demonstrable effects on the students' ability to learn and function — namely, they were too busy shivering to be bothered. It did give me an opportunity to teach the words "central heating" and "insulation", but that didn't really do much to solve the problem.

One day I expressed some of this frustration to one of my JTEs; her sympathetic response was "Yes, that's true... but Japan has no oil." At the time I think I was pretty dismissive of this idea: they appear to have enough energy to keep the city hall and the goddamn 7-11's warm, so I think there might be a little more to it than that. I still think that's the case — and tomorrow I'm going to make an effort to explain why I think these priorities might become distorted in the Japanese system —but I have to admit that her comment has stuck with me and, in a way, made me reconsider — or at least reassess — some of my assumptions.

I was born into an era of American supremacy. Although I was alive for its last few years, I have no memory of the Cold War, and my formative young adult years during the 1990s were ones where the American model appeared to be ascendant and essentially unchallenged. By virtue of my birth I have been extremely lucky in the opportunities available to me — the JET program's shared requirement of a college degree means we have all been extremely lucky, relative to the majority of the rest of the world today. In raising me I think my parents made a real effort (one I hope I'm able to emulate, some day) to ensure that I would be aware of and grateful for these gifts, and I've tried to do my part for others less fortunate, to date principally through volunteering with Habitat for Humanity during my four years at college. But surrounded by the social and physical infrastructure of the world superpower — clean water, cheap energy, good schools — it's hard not to take some of it for granted. The Japanese don't have abundant natural energy reserves, or a globe-spanning navy capable of stabilizing shipping lanes, or the world's biggest economy. The United States does, and while it doesn't explain the whole story about why my students are expected to suck it up and deal with freezing, uninsulated, unheated schools, I think it might well have more to do with it than I initially recognized. And if this is coming from the world's second-richest economy (even if we are living in one of its poorest sub-divisions), what about the rest of the world?

The implications of this are challenging. One of — if not the — best things I've done in my life has been my work with Habitat for Humanity. While I recognize that the elimination of substandard, poverty housing across the globe (as Habitat aims to do) is a goal far greater than anything I'll ever be able to achieve, I know that I have personally contributed my sweat and money and effort towards build an affordable home for over fifty families across the United States. However small the scale, that has made an undeniable impact for those families, helping them achieve a baseline of stability and opportunity, and I'm grateful for the chance to have been a part of it. (Building a house is, incidentally, also tons of fun.) But my experience in Japan, and on my trip to Bangladesh this past Golden Week on a Habitat Global Village trip, has shown me the great degree to which poverty can be relative. I don't think it diminishes the real need of poor Americans, but this gap between the U.S. standard of living and that of other countries may mean I have to reassess my assumptions. What constitutes a "simple, decent" home in the United States is drastically different from one in Haluaghat, Bangladesh, and one in Japan.

What's difficult about this is the accompanying notion that the world cannot, in fact, afford for all of its peoples to enjoy the standard of living that I as an upper-middle class American was born into thinking as "fair". And not just unaffordable in terms of monetary economics but also the natural resources that build and fuel that economy. To take an extreme example, China has been developing at full tilt for the last couple decades, the authority and legitimacy of the Communist Party largely dependent on continued economic success, and it still has huge masses of rural poor in its center waiting for their turn. Personal automobile ownership — a symbol of the American Dream if there ever was one — is growing, which is liable to raise demand for energy even further. China's growing hunger for energy reserves has driven up prices worldwide. All this development has had horrific environmental consequences, poisoning China's rivers, stripping its mountainsides, and polluting its air — and ours. An attempt by the whole world to bring their standards of living up to those of America, barring some miraculous discovery of cheap, clean energy, would probably have seriously negative consequences for the future.

America got there first — but can anyone else join us?

Opening Act

2006-08-08T18:23:00.000+09:00

Hello, my name's Colin and I'll be your blogger for the week. This is my second turn at blogging here and, as was the case last time, I'm not really sure what I ought to write about.

I had planned on getting started yesterday, and in fact had a pretty good story all set to share with you folks, but midway through writing the post I learned in talking to some of the people at my BOE that the story (which involved a giant mikan, a waste treatment plant shaped like a boat, the Karatsu City education budget, and the state of modern Japanese civil society... use your imagination) may not, in fact, have been all that true. Which kind of spoiled the effect I was going for. So I played some video games and watched The Fellowship of the Ring instead.

Last time I blogged I at least had the advantage of school being in session, whereas now that it's summer holidays, my days are a fairly uneventful routine of sitting around in the BOE, reading the news, playing shogi matches with my fellow Karatsu ALTs, and going slowly insane. Well, in truth it's not all that bad — always remember, it could be worse! — but it is a reminder of how soul-draining sitting around in an office full of drab bureaucrats can me. Which makes me think maybe I ought to give a bit more thought to my plans to go look for government work in Washington D.C. after I finish here.

There is of course another load of new people arriving tomorrow, which should hopefully stir up a bit of excitement, assuming they manage to stay awake long enough to make it to their welcome party tomorrow evening. I could try and fake some sage advice for the impressionable newcomers, but my (late) arrival here is pretty much a blur by now and I don't expect the new people'll have internet hooked up to read this for another few weeks anyhow. Instead I leave you with a short comic one of my friends from high school recently did, the inspiration for which may be familiar to some of you readers out there. Enjoy!

A Grudge Against Chaos

2006-08-01T10:12:00.000+09:00

Seeing as I am now totally unemployed and I have moved from my apartment I've got quite a bit of spare time on my hands while everyone else is at work.

Last night I took the trailer for the new game 'Warhammer: Mark of Chaos' and replaced the soundtrack with a clip from 'The Grudge' by Tool. I downloaded this clip the other day and its taken me a few days to choose just the right bit of music to lay over the top.

I didn't re-cut the footage in anyway, I just found a good starting point in the clip and timed the track to that. I feel it worked out surprisingly well so I thought I'd put it up here because, well, it's cool if ou're into this sort of thing.

This clip contains moderate to extreme CG battle violence so if you're not into that kind of thing then just keep on browsing along your merry way. If however, you think that a group of Imperial soldiers being attacked by demonic Chaos Knights is better than a new bike for Christmas then click the play button because I have a treat for your eyes and ears.

Optus Tennis

2006-07-31T19:24:00.000+09:00

This morning I was emailed a brilliant Tennis game by a kiwi friend, Josh. This game is really top level stuff, a game for champions, so complex* and groundbreaking...

Instead of hearing me ramble on more and more praise, I think its about time I just give you the link so you check it out for yourself.

Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know your top score. Mine, so far (this game may well have me hooked for longer than solitare), is 77.

Now go get yourself addicted.... Game on...!

* Note: hmm... I may be slightly over exaggerating... the whole concept of the game is actually nothing more than 'keep the ball off the ground'

Homies!

2006-07-27T10:02:00.000+09:00

(((Starting a little off the title subject but...
Apologies to anyone that might of read Clayton's lil blurb about me moving or something...Come on, we are not children or boring old ladies with too much time on our hands, so let's remember half of what we hear from Japanese people is 70 percent 'well you know what I heard' type filtered heresay and 30 percent slightly misunderstood!
I am not transfering anywhere out of Saga, I was rejected flat out. I will disappear when I can but that time has not come yet!)))

VIVA Saga!

And now...

Man there is just something to be said for hanging out with a good friend!
It can really go a long way!

So here’s the story!

I met a super cool lady three years in Kyoto at university.
Pretty normal right?
She was from some boring backwater prefecture down in Kyushu (Saga, ever heard of it?)
Anyway I didn’t really care much about how boring of a place she was from until I got my JET assignment … ("Saga…hmmmm seems like I’ve heard of this place before …but …why???")

So I check the map of Kyoto (number one of my top three choices...2. Kobe 3. Osaka Prefecture)
and sure enough there is a place called Sagano… but there is no Saga in Kyoto…
Then I called up homegirl (who we will call F.S. to protect her identity) in tears wanting to know what there is to do for fun in Saga… she laughed for like 5 minutes and then told me about the party that she went to with a mutual friend in Kobe.
True story.

But I figure it wont be so bad to being in Saga because well she is from here so surely there will be other open-minded, intelligent, mad approachable, super fashionable ladies who won't treat you like a dumb foreigner or a cheap English tool…..
(Oh and she is a hard 8.7 on the sexy scale , 10 being the highest on the meter! Beautiful lady inside and out!!!)

Uhm… all of you out there in TV land if you know where to find any one like this out side of ‘gaijin pots’ please let a brother know!

Forgot to mention,
she loves Kyoto about as much as I do, so yeah, she never comes back to Saga!
And on top of that, a week after I got back to the 'land of the rising sun' (in all reality, maybe 'land of the rising skirts' is more appropriate (somebody tell these ladies to STOP!!!))

she moved to London for a year!

So I was seriously alone in Saga.
But my mails about Saga and her stories about funny adventures in London kept those lines of communication going strong!

And then she came back, kinda…
We had dinner and mad cool conversation in Saga city on Tuesday night.
Seriously great time!

F.S. left for Kyoto yesterday to find another apartment there (she is an only child and always has the nicest pads!) and is flying out to Nepal today to work at an NPO for a month!

Great kid with hella frequent flier miles!
Anyway we big kicked it!
Man homies!

To hell with dogs!
Man is man’s best friend!
Real homies, they are God’s gift to us shy folk!

Taking advantage of open posting

2006-07-26T14:42:00.000+09:00

A couple of risque-images that I've wanted to share with the net. But my own blog is family friendly, so thank goodness for Saga blog. BTW, if the second image confuses you, you must read up on The Church of the Flying spaghetti Monster.

EDIT: Ha ha sorry Adam, it looks like I posted almost literally a minute after you. Thems the breaks. People, scroll down and look at Adam's bug.

A not so small friend...

2006-07-26T14:33:00.000+09:00

Walking outside of the apartment today we found a female Kabuto Mushi lying on her back unable to turn over and walk away.

We picked her up and placed her into a nice damp dark hole in a nearby tree.

Bugs are neat huh?

Like a chicken with its head cut off...

2006-07-26T14:20:00.000+09:00

Apologies to the loyal reader of Saga Jet Blog or even just the occasional reader for not having many posts lately. I've been super busy and have no time to try and solicit people to write. Furthermore, most people are on vacay or leaving so it's a tough time to find writers. Anyway, beginning on Monday, July 31st for a week this forum will be open for anyone who would like to write and has written previously for Saga Jet. Please try and limit yourself to one post a day just in case by some stroke of miracle, more than one person wants to blog per day. That way there aren't loads of posts all at once.

If anyone who hasn't posted, would like to start writing next week or would like to take a week of their own, please feel free to contact me at cardensarah@yahoo.com and I will send you out an invite.

Meanwhile, if I have time this week, I might try to squeeze a post or two in before open blogging starts. Again, my apologies.

Just Another Rainy Thursday!

2006-07-21T11:26:00.001+09:00

I wish it were Sundaywooo ooo o
Cause that's my fun day!
But it's just another rainy Friday... (Saturday, Sunday ...)

I am posting Saturdays today on friday cause I dont have a computer!!!

Man I love Rainy days!
That’s probably not what you were expecting to read here after that opening but, I love rainy days!

A small history…I grew up in Oklahoma, which is basically half semi-desert (central to southwest) and half grassy forest (northeast corner.)I am from Tulsa which is in Northeast Oklahoma and when I was younger it rained a lot, it really did!

Playing in the rain was great!
Basically doing anything grimey is kinda fun when you are young, but that warm rain shower always made such an impression on me!

Now after many nice summer rain storms, shut in with pretty ladies, rain always makes me feel a little fuzzy inside!

Oh and let’s not forget that light seems to shine brighter in the dark.In the movies they always interrogate suspects in a dark room with a bright light…if they were really going for brightness alone they would take em out to some sunny location and shine that light on em….

Maybe I lost track of what I was wanting to say a little with my terrible police drama excerpt but rain makes colors ‘pop’ a little more…Deep greens, thick grays, and purple flowers always seem so much juicier in the rain…it is just me?

OK!So who else is mad excited about the new cats!And by cats I mean people and by people I mean foreigners, and by foreigners I mean ALTs, and by Alts I mean….. sorryI guess the 2nd and 3rd years who may be reading this are like “been there done that…you get used to new cats coming…”But this is my first time and I am stoked! (Do people still say stoked???)

The first Blog from a couple of days ago!

2006-07-21T11:23:00.000+09:00

Hello everyone, its your least favorite gaijin hater!Sorry for that opening but you probably guessed that it's Kashima John!

I am new to this weird world so forgive if me I for my marked lack of carissma!Guess what I am doing right now...You may have guessed right, uh huh LISTENING TO HOUSE MUSIC!

Speaking of house music, Ureshino Kamil had his final party in Ureshino a few nights ago.I must say it was a nice lil get together!I got there mad late because I missed a couple of busses (as Adam and Naomi can tell you!)

But had a great time! There was a pretty good mix of J kids and ALTs. I'd give a detailed head count if not for the fact that I don't know the names of many of the people that came...

It seemed like I had alot more interesting things to say....Well stay tuned for the next installment !(that means I am in a panic to find some pertinent topics to share with you all!)

Kagoshima Chillness

2006-07-13T18:41:00.000+09:00

It's Aine's week, but she did view magnificent creatures and acquiesce to their presence on this hot Thursday evening.

I shot this footage recently when Kamil and I made our sojourn down to Kagoshima last month. I hope it pleases your eyes and ears.

I found the link key-Hurrah!

2006-07-13T18:11:00.000+09:00

Was parousing through the Guardian today and came across a few articles which astoundingly enough managed to keep my recently fickle concentration the length of the page. (yeah, in other words I've nothing to say at this moment in time that wouldn't amount to more of the same moaning about being tired and headfupped. )
Have a read.
and i can't find any of the others.
ah well.

Portrait

2006-07-13T18:08:00.000+09:00

This was a going away present i got from a little seven year old I teach. I think the headband is hilarious. She's made me a bit paranoid about the size of my hands though. What's that all about young 'un!

Whore's knickers

2006-07-12T22:06:00.000+09:00

And so it continues this topsy-turvey journey of finishing up.
It got suffocating tonight.
Maybe it was the fullmoon outside that taunted me, but something was willing me to leave. It's too much this expectant mood, this need for you to be the pinnicle of entertainment and round-eyed foreignerness for one last time, that you'll buoy the party and throw a shovel-load of soil onto their barren lives. They don't know why you needed to escape the send-off party. It's all they want to do, to pack up and leave and there you are doing it, right before their straight-jacketed eyes. Where were the exclamations of delighted surprise at the delicacies served and exorbant interest in their pidgen english efforts you hear them wonder? In the laundry with a sweat-drenched t-shirt, reeking of "one last game"; caught up in the folded futon you've been so neglectful of; between the closed novel pages you don't have time to finger; written between the lines of the "to do" list.
And you wonder how you'll even get through this gluttanous feast on your energies, energies that are for the moment, seemingly unrenewable.
maybe it's a good thing, because at this rate your memories of the place will be tainted with tiring duties, so that you'll run to the plane, in a temporary release.
Be gone you gorging pariahs-I want a day, a day of my life for me, the person living it.
Up and down like a whore's pants.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Ha ha ha ha

2006-07-12T14:25:00.000+09:00

(and no we`re not laughing)

I just finished a marathon english interview test session with my first years, two hundred and bloody eighty something "are you hot?", "do you play tennis?" "Is this my pen?" and Lord knows that after the first hundred you start to lose sight of the great ideal that is to send out a band of students capable of reponding to a name-telling request. So, far too many fake smiles and lip-prompts later, a revelationary thought crossed my mind. Images of giant pliers were eclipsing through my head. I think I developed a momentary fettish for dentistry.
Nothing less that taking a saw and ripping those fugitive teeth out would have satisfied me.
I had thought and I was confident in this assumption, that teeth were intented to grow in one`s mouth. Alas no! Japan, the great nation, set apart from everywhere else, which stiffles so much expression, signals a defiant no to orthodonical constraits. Why have teeth in your mouth when they can hang from your nose, and never was it more trendy than to have an extra canine suspended from your ear lobe. It`s a permanent woodstock for these teeth, to hang as they like where they like, thrusting a middle finger to the homogeneous shoulder to shoulder stance, bra(ce)less and free, "you go north and I`ll go east and we`ll meet tommy tooth round the back near the throat exit."
Seriously, what a mouthful!

Seeing is believing

2006-07-11T21:19:00.000+09:00

Below is a picture of last Sunday's sunset. It was magnificent. I've never seen anything like it before. It was so romantic, I wanted to ask Sarah A. to marry me, but she sighed and said "Alas! I am already spoken for!". Damn you Nicholas!

Come with us!

2006-07-11T15:42:00.000+09:00

I handed over a cake and he handed my a styrafoam box of tomatoes. The door opened and in a troop of yukata-clad girls waddled.
"Come with us Aine-teacher!"
The tomatoes were a present from the principal, from his own garden. He told me that he was embarrassed because they were more obsese-cherry tomatoes, or verticallychallenged ordinary tomatoes, who were burning with envy, yet embarrassed to admit it or loyal supporters of Portugal. I hope I eat them, because I hate to waste things that are given with such good intentions.
He`s a nice man. He feels much more like a teacher than the stiff, liver-beaten keigo-stiffled other principals you meet on Primary school visits. There were less than flattering handdrawn barely recognisable portraits beneath his coffee table, screaming "I am the artwork of a five year old". There`s a warmth about him, and he remembers where I`m from. My visits seems appreciated, so when I received the invitation to my Sayonara party, I was touched.

I followed my guides.

Pretty yukatas, Irish flags and expectant smiles abound, I looked around the gym at those who had awaited my arrival. I recognised their faces, some had stretched and matured from their 3 nensei days, some three years previous. Some faces you remember. Why is it that some people have such memorable countances?

We played games and told Aine-sensei facts about her own country, and had a small tea ceremony, but this time there was no shouting at the stupid foreigner and i learned that not all tea ceremony teachers are massive Bee with Itches, and pictures were taken to freeze the time forever.

And I inhaled a needy fix of decency and kindness and goodwill, and cast aside the toxic angst that can invade us in times of stress, reminding myself to pass it on, and also making a mental note to bookmark the conclusion that people are good.

D'YA WANNA

2006-07-10T20:23:00.000+09:00

"Like…yaknow..kinda..like…eh….sorta…it`ll be shite…and you don`t have to…like it`s grand if you don`t want to…23rd of July…just with a few of us…like a few pints just…nothing big…ya probably don`t want to but willya come? ”

I saw him down the hall as I stumbled out of the ladies. Today is not a day of coordination. It was a stumble. It was a stumble perfect for day when you suddenly discover you`ve been wearing two tampons all day and wondering why you`ve such an unmerciful headache. I deliberated. It was now or never. I stood my ground, louring in the dark of the doorway for him to enter.
He neared, I waited and then spun round.

(When Mother hen phones on a Sunday night and she leaves me her message, it is with her “there-was-an-accident.-I-had-a-pain-in-my-knee-and-I-went-to-see-Doctor-Burke.
It`s SuperAids-and-the-blessed-Council-found-out-that-you-got-one-too-many-
children`s-allowances-after-your-graduated-so-they`re-taking-the-house-and
-this-morning-after-the-breakfast-your-brother-murdered-Paddy-Honeyman-
with-a-pitchfork….” voice. Every time she gets me. That part of you that lurches in askance, “OH fupping Jesus! they`re gone! Lord, have mercy on them all”…before the “but apart from that, everything here is grand. Father Doyle got food poisoning so we had the priest from Mohill, so there was no sermon , I was back at home with a cup of tea in my hand at five to twelve. Grand day, great drying ” assurance that all is fine.)

I went with this style the-end-is-nigh whisper my Mother is oh-so-good at.

“Sensei?”

Part of my plan was to do it in the most discrete way possible. So, with all the enthusiasm of a 22 year old dog with a watermelon-size tumour growing out of his arse, I invited him to a “drinks thang.” (oh you, you unsuspecting handsome thing you!)

My bludgeoning of his language during my lengthy disquisition of how ordinary and dull this event would be, made him frown, and the frown lasted a good twenty seconds. I thought to panic. Then..with the…"please come", a benevolent smile appeared. This lasted long enough for me to consider would I ever be able to kiss something with such rancidly coloured teeth.
He nodded that he'd be happy to attend.

I plodded off, with the swiftness of a catamaran dying to break into a little skip, smiling lummox-like to myself.

He said he`ll come

DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAA-DA
DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAA-DA
He said he`d come-DAA
He said he`d come-DAA!

Sometimes it`s hard to be a woman...

2006-07-10T11:05:00.000+09:00

Cant figure out how to do a link, so here`s a big ball of an article for you all to enjoy, or not enjoy.

These days their every personal flaw is being exposed. There's only one way to fight back Kathryn HughesMonday July 10, 2006The Guardian

The tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines have greeted the arrival of high-definition television (HDTV) with a kind of whooping glee. In a string of "before and after" photo features, they offer previews of what terrible secrets Teri Hatcher, Keira Knightley and Elizabeth Hurley are about to have exposed to the cruel gaze of the world at large (respectively, hectic flush, acne, crows' feet). The message is clear: in this new economy of super-sightedness, power has passed from the looked-upon to the looker. No amount of covering up with slap is going to save you from a kind of visual rape in which you and your enlarged pores are laid bare before the world's probing, mocking glance.
This savage scopic economy (that's what cultural theorists call it, anyway) has been in the ascendant for some time now. Witness Heat magazine's weekly "circle of shame" feature, where attention is directed to a malfunctioning bit of a celebrity's body that might otherwise have gone unnoticed: fingers that resemble claws, ears that droop like an elephant's, an apparent third nipple ... and all ringed and tagged to make sure that no amount of lipsticky smiles can distract you, the viewer, from your stern task of seeking out the visual truth in a world of smoke and mirrors.
In this new x-ray world there will be few hiding places, and so the options left to those most likely to be caught in the public gaze are severely limited. The old-fashioned approach might simply be to redouble your disguise and hope that the all-seeing eye will skim over you before passing on to more important targets. To this end the beauty columns in the high-end newspapers are suggesting a product called Cover FX, a skin foundation originally developed to deal with burns and vitiligo, now being sold as just the thing to take with you when you go into battle with HDTV. Its dense putty layers will, quite simply, blot you out, reducing you to a kind of blank screen on which a new, more pleasing face may be painted.
The other, more modern approach is to glory in your fakeness, joyfully drawing attention to the fact that you have been assembled with the world's searching gaze in mind. You can see this in the Big Brother house, where none of the female contestants is remotely bothered about having had breast enhancements. Instead, here - as elsewhere - the talk is all about size, shape and provenance. In the press, too, the talk is no longer about has she/hasn't she had cosmetic surgery, but about who has got it right (Anne Robinson) and who has got it wrong (the hapless Teri Hatcher, who is fast becoming a terrible warning about what can happen to a nice woman in the savage age of high definition).
Then again, consider the wives and girlfriends of the England team, who were recently accompanied to Germany by a couple of operatives from the Fake Bake tanning company. No one pretended for a moment that a job lot of pasty girls from the chilly north-west of England owed their gleaming golden tans to anything other than artifice. Indeed, far from being kept secret, like postmodern madwomen in the attic, allowed out after dark only with their spray cans to perform their magic art, the fake bakers were incorporated into the Baden-Baden narrative as surely as Coleen's luggage or, indeed, Posh's sex-toy breasts.
In these circumstances you can begin to see the point of the burka. Every now and then a Muslim feminist will write a piece for the papers suggesting that turning yourself into a small black tent is, in fact, marvellously liberating since it removes you at a stroke from the scopic economy. Until now that logic has always seemed strangely topsy-turvy, but in the age of high definition it may indeed turn out to be the only truly practical choice.
kathryn.hughes@btinternet.com

Saga Jet Blog

Farewell, old friend

Give-up します

A Japanese Job Interview

Kabocha Soup

Pancakes!

INGREDIENTS

Pota-toes are cozy toes

Happiness

Happy Holidays

The Teacher Shuffle

It's about You. It's about Me. It's about YouMe Town.

No Cake on Christmas?! *mind explodes*

Specialized Vocabulary

Why so reserved?

random thoughts...

Rice...

Staying warm...

Info from the pro...

fun with discipline...

. . .

Sunday: "Warm" Sweet Potatoes

DIRECTIONS

Saturday: Brownies In Your Rice Cooker

DIRECTIONS

Friday: Meatloaf

DIRECTIONS

Thursday: Corn Chowder

DIRECTIONS

Wednesday: 2-Ingredient Biscuits

DIRECTIONS

Tuesday: Hot Toddy

DIRECTIONS

Monday: French Onion Soup

DIRECTIONS

A Week of Cooking

Open Blogging, again...

Some days I love my job and some days...

How most people get to Saga

Vicks

Have problem, will kill for change

Puppy loving

lumberjack

On Names, and the importance thereof...

What's in a Name?

Sorry, jumping in here

Staring Contest

Don't want Jesse to feel lonely on the blog...

Weekend Re-cap

On Slippers:

Otsukaresamaaaa....

Oktoberfest

In search of...

Waiting, Waiting

Phantom of the Opera?

oops

Fun with Gaijins

herushii

stuff

Diztech

"Boom period architecture" in Fukuoka

OMG they have Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan!!!

I feel baseball whenever I teach my thing

Haruki Murakami is back

After the storm, typhoon Shanshan

My first Japanese cold (aka I hate myself and want to die)

Hahahaha...no.

Autumn at last!!!!

Sports Days, Enkais, and NOT SUCKING AT MY JOB!!!!

Dodgeball and Autographs

First taste of teaching

No point complaining.

Finding Spirituality In Small Town Japan

Jon Toogood sang about it once...

Makes you wonder..

Why I outta....

Summer

In the lapse of other coverage...

Photo Finish

A Habitat Story

No Cake on Christmas?! mind explodes