My Life in Japan

Triple Movie Review: Japanese Theaters Edition

2010-07-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

While I was in Japan, which is where I am for the next three and a half weeks, I saw a few movies in the theaters. A Japanese movie ticket is around 1800 yen, which is expensive compared to American theaters, but this weekend I got a discounted ticket for 1000 yen, and I actually felt like I was saving money. So what we are going to do here is talk about three movies that I saw, discuss how they are related to one another and what they can teach us about eachother and about movies as a whole. I will review them in the order that I saw them.

Here is the first movie I saw. It is called Green Zone. The movie is about Matt Damon knowing how bad the Iraq war is and deciding to do something about it. He gets caught in a struggle between the CIA and the special forces, who just want to kill this guy, the jack of clubs in the most wanted deck of cards of former Baath party members. The CIA thinks maybe they can get him to flip. Once this is set up, Matt Damon runs around for a half hour and the camera people have to try to keep him in the frame. Now, Paul Greengrass directed this movie, and he also directed the two Bourne Identity sequels, which also had Matt Damon playing himself, running around. Those movies were based on books, I think, and so was Green Zone, but Green Zone was based on a book called "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" which I think is just about journalists chilling at the secure international compound in Baghdad while the rest of the country is irradiated and burnt up and destroyed all around them. I want to read that book, maybe, but the plot from this movie is pretty original, I think. Spoiler alert, the good-intentioned Baghdad native who gives Matt Damon the random tip that the jack of clubs is hanging out nearby also runs for the last half hour of the movie, behind the cameraman, and caps the Baathist general in the head, before delivering this line, in arabic: "This is our country. You do not decide what happens here". It's tacky and brilliant, and then I realized that my eyes were so over stimulated and that suddently the storyboards went from shaking and fast cuts, back to darkness and the stability of tripods. So Green Zone was an exercise in keeping your eyes focused on a specific point. while people run around and shoot bullets at eachother. The timing of this movie is pathetic. It's as if the entire cast and crew took the 2005 premise that Bush lied us into a war of choice and pretended this was controversial or new or interesting, when it is really just depressing that Matt Damon as a lonely, free-spirited soldier, doesn't have enough resources to punch Donald Rumsfeld in the face, which would have been a worthy finale.

The Walker is not a very colorful movie, but it is also about looking at a moving picture for two hours. You may know it by it's American, and extremely inferior title, "The Book of Eli", which I luckily was not aware of, since "Za Wookaa" is vague and gets the general premise across pretty fast, while "The Book of Eli" simply reveals the entire plot. It's a dystopian, post-apocalyptic barren earth, and Denzel Washington has to walk West, because he just has to. On his way he meets Mila Kunis, who belongs in every movie, and Gary Oldman as the bad guy, which also belongs in every movie. We start out with Denzel at the very center of the Denzel Washington Hat, Glasses, Facial Hair Trifecta and gradually move outwards. Now my own personal theory is that Denzel Washington saw Children of Men, and said to himself, "Wow, I wish I was in that movie, but what could I do for it that would make it better? It had everything...washed out totally gray scenery, futuristic devastation, digitally reconstructed action scenes that are meant to look like single takes..." And then it dawned on him, probably around the time that someone e-mailed him the same Venn diagram I just linked to. "Ah, yes! I can give Children of Men an ending, because it really didn't have one, right? They just kind of sat on that boat and that was it". Well, this is what some people think made Children of Men so cool, was the fact that they wound up rootless, floating, with an uncertain future. But Denzel, who is also credited as the producer, had this exact same situation happen, followed by a cut where I told myself "movie could just end right now and it would be Children of Men". But Spoiler Alert, it goes a little further, just far enough to get hatless, sans-glasses, clean shaven Denzel Washington onto the screen for a few moments. And that was what made this movie special and interesting; One man's cosmetic journey outward from the Venn diagram that once captured every facet of his appearance. The Walker also was emotionally moving, at one part, exactly half way through the film, where I actually cared about the characters, which Green Zone and Predators did not have. The Walker spends all of its emotional energy in this one beautiful shot, which was probably the only way to do so.

you are going to have to fogive me but after a half hour of searching around I have not been able to find the Japanese poster for the movie Predators. It looks just like this one but with Japanese writing. Okay so here we are, our third movie about look at a screen and focusing your eyeballs to discern an image. What do I mean? The first 45 minutes of Predators take place in a beautiful jungle. It's soft green and very wonderful and easy to look at. The characters all walk around and get to know eachother and try to figure out what is going on. But then around half way through the movie someone says "uh oh we need Laurence Fishburne to be in this movie now" so he finds them and brings them back to his very dark, ugly space ship, and we go from lush exteriors to lightless, cramped interiors. Just as your eyes are about to readjust to this new less enjoyable setting, Topher Grace starts to light an unnecessary number of bright blue white road flares directly in front of the camera, so that total darkness goes to blinding light in one second, and make the entire audience squint and recoil. Really it was awful. He lit up like five flares for no reason! after that is a calming sword fight in a night time grass place, but then the characters go back to the predators' little nighttime village of gore and trophies, where fires are constantly burning and it is less easy to look at. The original Predator, with Arnold Sschwarzenegger, took place exclusively in the jungle and it didn't get dark until much later. One interesting part was that the previews are misleading, maybe intentionally. This never happens in the movie! There are only three predators, not a bunch. In the original Alien, there was one alien, and in Aliens, the sequel, there were hundreds, right!? Well in the original Predator there was 1, and in this official sequel, there are about 4, not more like this picture implies. At the end if a slight twist, a little bigger than Green Zone's twist but nowhere near as big as The Walker's, which had the biggest twist ever that everyone should have seen coming. There is a predator versus predator fight and Adrien Brody does his best Arnold impression and decapitates the biggest one, and then says "Let's get off this f***king planet". What happens after this moment is not so much a twist as a hilarious homage to the series, and a stunning revelation that action movies are, in fact, comedies, since everything works out at the end, according to the classical Greek definition of comedy. The good guys always win what meaningless victories they can eke out, and the movie knows this, and it knows that we as the audience will never be able to.
All of these movies get three stars (***) for being full of violence, hard to look at, and comedies.

What I have been up to

2010-07-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Been a while, blog,
So I better let you know what's up. Well I took a blog break because my sister and girlfriend came to hang out, and I got distracted. Oh, we did so much stuff. Here, look at the pictures of things that we did.

Liz and I went to Kochi castle, which might be one of the only castles in Japan that has the original castle building and the original gate. We got a private English tour by a forestry ranger government employee / tourguide volunteer named Yoshi, which was wonderful. He took this picture, and it will go down as the best picture ever taken in history.

close up of me and Kochi-Jo with me giving the traditional "thumbs up" gesture, indicating that I approve of Kochi-Jo.

We played pachinko, for the first time, a Japanese pasttime of gambling and gang-influenced profitability. I wasted 1000 yen on 250 little silver balls which disappeared very quickly. My hearing was forever damaged. But I learned a little something. Which is to never play pachinko ever again.

We took a ropeway car to the top of a mountain near my house and walked up a bunch of steps to get to this beautiful wooden structure. It is the front of a shrine, or a Buddhist temple, I can never tell. I think it's a shrine and the Buddhist part was off to the left. This was cool and there were weird big masks underneath the top part.

We walked to the top of an mountain, up 800 steps to take this photo at the shrine of the god of boats. They had a mirror so we snapped ourselves in it, then walked back down and counted the steps.

We even walked across kazura-bashi, which is a vine bridge in a desolate valley like an hour away from my house. Maybe you can see in this photo how those thin wooden planks are connected by vines and there is nothing between them, so you could easily drop a flip flip through into the river below if you are not careful. They key is to not look down but how else would you know where to put your feet? Just hold onto the side of the vine railing. They rebuild it every three years. This was the scariest part of my time here.

but we made it!

Sammy and I went to two baseball games in Osaka. We saw the Orix Buffaloes beat the Yokohama Bay Stars twice, 7-1 and 7-2. I ate this giant hot dog, which had ketchup, mustard, salsa, and mayo. It was really good.

We went to Nara to see the biggest buddha sculpture in the world, which is made out of metal,and this is me in front of one of his wooden demon protectors, i think. The building is also the largest wooden structure in the world, but it used to be much bigger, before it burned down and they rebuilt it.

My sister and I pretended to be little demon protector statues and do their poses in our matchins shirts at the top of that mountain with the ropeway. By now I hope you have realized that these photos are out of order. I didn't take any of these, I relied on Liz and Sammy to be the Souzas and Liebowitzes.

we all ate as much tasty food as possible, including sushi. Tuna, Eel, and Bacon with Mayo sushi are all represented in this photograph. Enjoy looking at it and wishing you were eating them with green tea, soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger.
Folks, those are all the pics I feel like searching out and posting right now. If you feel like it, there is a chance that my first installment of my new blog new games journalism is up. But you should really only click over to that if you are interested in reading about my experiences as I play videogames and try to learn about life from it. This might not be the last post of My Life in Japan if I get any special requests to talk about stuff you want me to talk about. Also if you want something from Japan when I get back home in three and a half weeks you gotta tell me and try to be as specific as possible.
Great!

Hi

2010-06-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

Eventually I am going to make another post. I just don't feel like it right now. It will be the last post of my year in Japan. Sorry to keep you waiting. Great!

have you had your mind blown by a blog recently?

2010-05-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

oh my blog,
that was my 100th post. that makes this my one hundred first. this is the dawn of a new era for blogging. i hope you are prepared for the last post about my trip to hiroshima. the last 15 pictures are uploading. let's really do this.

so hiroshima has 2 world heritage sites. the atomic bomb dome, and the miyajima shrine. it is magical and scenic, this shrine. take one of those streetcars for like an hour and change all the way to the last stop in the south. basically the whole thing is a huge tourist trap and an excellent excuse to build and incredibly long local streetcar line.

this is the boat i got on. in about 10 minutes it took me to miyajima island, which is redundant because jima means island.

here is one of the other boats. as you can see, full of tourists. i saw the most foreign people this day.

oh you can see the red gate in the water, and a jetskier on the left. supposedly at low tide you can walk out to it, but that was not the case when i was there. this is from the boat!

one thing about miyajima is there are tons of raggedy domesticated wild deer walking around, who are not supposed to be fed but are regardless.

this woman was posing for a deer photo and i took my own. oh guh right now one of my teachers is on the phone with my official boss who i met once at the board of education about getting me a plane ticket home on july 28th. it is a huge hassle for everyone, and it is the transcendent return of my feeling that they have never done this before, even though its been going on for generations.

ok this thing. i am not sure i know how to talk about this thing. it is like a fluffy pancake, maybe with an egg, rolled up on a stick, and covered with sauces and mayo and other japanese things. i did not eat one here, i had one in another spot later in the day. i am still not sure that i have totally recovered.

three oysters for 500 yen. this place had the longest line, because the woman was the oldest, and because every other place sold 2 oysters for 400 yen.

check out the world heritage quality on that gate in the water.

oh wow another gate, but this one is mad out of rocks, and there are two lions also.

there was a little spot where guys in triangle hats let you use a triangle hat and take you in a long canoe style boat through the gate, as a special blessing or something of undoubtedly great luck, for like 1500 yen, a bargain, if you are insane.

and there they go through the gate. this photo is zoomed in quite a bit.

see? and they kept going. this is not the best view of the gate.

if you want the best view, you will have to wait on this line and pay 300 yen to enter the actual shrine and face the gate from the central point on the beach. see what i said about tourist trap action? i was not kidding around. i did not wait on this line because it was hot and i did not want to spend that 300 yen when i could have bought a grape drink with real little cubes of grapes and aloe in it.

also this building was there!

here is the view of the gate from behind the shrine.

and here is another shot in a similar spot.

did i tell you there were a ton of people there? it was packed. also the nicest day ever.

and the last gate photo, i think. you can make this one your computer desktop wallpaper image, i give you permission. but only this one.

oh here are the people in the shrine itself lining up to wait their turn for the most picturesque photo of the special red gate.

okay so it was packed, and mostly everyone was buying little snacks and souvenirs. this island is famous for its maple leaf shaped red bean filled cake things, called momiji manjuu or mimoji manju, or something. but the thing is that most of the little souvenir shops had their own independent robotic assembly lines of manjuu going at full speed!

this is another little automated assembly line, behind glass in a souvenir shop. still kind of upset about how souvenir is spelled.

behind one shop was a beautiful garden with a little koi pond. i really liked this situation.

you can also buy little gates, and they have a little gate size to fit every little gate size preference.

this little side street is where most of the people and shops were.

and there was a police station too. have you seen these guys? please call the japanese police. the guy on the bottom right has been on the run for a while. he killed some people in tokushima i think i heard. the japanese police only very recently started a program of giving rewards for tips that lead to the arrests of these bad guys, and since then they have only gotten one tip and paid out one reward to a few people after they caught that younger guy who killed an english girl.

then i wanted to buy some oysterys from this lady, because oysters from this island are also famous.

they were THIS big and pretty good! steamed in the shell with some soy sauce squirted in afterwards.

on display was the biggest wooden rice paddle i had ever seen. thing was totally huge. so big you could not ever hope to use it. i threw 5 yen in a wooden box in front and prayed to the giant paddle thing.

then i had a bowl of rice and pork cutlet and went back to the boat, which was through this station. those fish flags are because it was around the childrens' day holiday.

and then i wound up back at the peace park. here are two really creepy statue memorials of kids and a guy with a bird, by the river.

close up of the dome building. it is being supported internally so that it stays in its post bombing state for eternity.

warning: there are some serious dome pictures coming up. pure dome photography is taking place right now.

okay there are a few more later so hold on.

just kidding. here is one more because i know you haven't had enough yet.

back at in front of the museum, peace park proper. on the right you can see the little eternal flame burning on top of that weird platform thing.

and to my surprise they had put out giant paper cranes on this part of the grass!

for a fee you could design you own candle holder with your own personal messages about peace and have it placed on this official flower festival white candle holder thing. i think they lit them all up at night.

and then i got this pic of the statue of the mother with her children in front of the flower mountain with a bowl fire on top. actually this statue is insane and ridiculous for a tone of reasons. for one thing it is called "statue of mother and child in the storm" which might be a result of a bad translation because she clearly has a baby and a kid grabbing onto her, but there are no plurals in japanese. that and her arms are gigantic and her hands are bigger than her head.

and then the flower festival was in full swing. there were people as far as the eye could see all the way down the peace boulevard. a festival in japan is when all the little items vendors are spaced out perfectly so business interference is at a minimum.

one of those vendors is the traditional grab a little goldfish with a cheap paper net that breaks instantly game.

i just like this photo with the clock. i have no idea what those signs say or what those people are selling.

haha but i do know what is going on here. it's super mario, and kids are running around and jumping inside. maybe you can see. i think i just realized i am in japan for the first time.

then i went and had my last okonomiyaki meal. oh it was really good. it is so complicated to make, there were about 4 guys making it for a whole restaurant and i have no idea how they keep track. you can see the process taking place here. oh but in this place i looked around and didn't see any mayo tubes and nobody was using mayo so i was like "hm this place is obviously too good for mayo" so i went without.

final product, with scallions, after a few bites.

here is a weird elevated brick park area where young people were gathering at night.

and the dome, at night. i warned you! yes there is a reason why you are not supposed to go to the dome at night: it is incredibly spooky! well that is it. those are all of the photos i have from hiroshima. i still have to charge up my camera battery again. i hope you liked it. i am taking 3 days off work and having a 5 day weekend with liz starting tomorrow. she gets here tonight! so soon. i can't wait, i am losing it entirely.
great!

post is underway

2010-05-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

blog, hello
you are about to read the best post ever, i am so jealous of you right now. last time we blogged together, i told you about my experiences in the modern city of hiroshima, japan. i had a somber day of walking around and looking at monuments to the atomic bomb victims and that sort of stuff. so then i wanted to go to the modern (contemporary) art museum, up on a hill, surrounded by forest. it was hot out and a long walk but very worth it.

do you recognize this art? it was video art by a south african dude. lots of sketches and erasure and drawing. if i cared i would look up his name, but i dont right now. nevermind, william kentridge. it was fun and weird. honestly the dutch short film sequence at the beginning was better than everything else.

yeah so basically some dark rooms with weird movies of his playing on all four walls.

then i went to the permanent collection. man this stuff was a downer. i mean even after the museum, it was rough. the shape on the left is a picture of the wooden dummy that torn clothes are displayed on in the bomb museum. make art about it!

and then this guy, who is dead, like most of the artists in the contemporary art museum, did this as a self portrait and i was like noooo whyyyy and so i took this cool pic of it. and then the museum lady who sits in the gallery with a little blanket walked over and said "want me to take your picture with it?" so i let her but it came out crummy because i was tired and sweaty from the walk up to the museum so i deleted it. but still, look at this and try not to be like noooo whyyyy.

this thing was blinking and making sounds.

i like this one a lot! one of my favorites also.

and then some weird sculptures outside, including fat bird sculpture.

this lumpy gate is the main symbol of the museum. it was all right!

old dude feeding stray cats. this has become a major problem is most parts of japan since then the cats get out of control and ravage the countryside. a famous shogi (japanese chess) player recently got hit with major fines for feeding stray cats for years.

oh, then i went back to the main part of hiroshima. i wanted a bacon cheeseburger at this one semi american looking place, but it was overcooked and really unsatisfying.

so then i saw a guy on a MOS burger scooter, and he was doing delivery for MOS burger. i said to him where is the nearest MOS burger and he pointed down the street and was like "maybe 500 meters" so i found it! and i had better burgers there afterwards and got really full. on the way i saw this place. but i did not go inside.
okay i am going to end this post right here and now. it is no longer the penultimate post. well maybe it is, we will see. i have to eat lunch. and teach one more class today, i believe.
great!

blog status update

2010-05-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

um, blog
uploading photographs...cool pics of hiroshima city...46 photos for the penultimate post...i hope you are ready...please be patient...hang in there with me...driving to the airport tonight to pick up my favorite girl...cannot wait...time moving very slowly here...just got a little hungry...this post should make it up some time today...just had a small discussion about travel arrangements back home...late july...
great!

will you know

2010-05-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

blog of blogs,
final or perhaps penultimate hiroshima post coming up...tomorrow afternoon...stay tuned...same blog channel, same blog universe...this post will truly change the blogging landscape for generations to come...unstoppable ripples throughout the blogiverse...

here we go

2010-05-16T18:59:00.000-07:00

okay blog
here are some more cool pics of my trip to hiroshima from last weekend. a few weeks ago. a while ago.

welcome back to hiroshima. it is a regular city.

well it is regular and normal in almost every aspect except for what happened around 65 years ago a block away from this spot.

here we are in the peace park, one of the main islands of hirioshima that has the whole north section as a big monument garden. this one is to the girl who died folding the paper cranes. people were lined up to ring a bell inside and pray.

yeah those big glass cases are able to withstand the elements, and they hold thousands of tiny paper cranes that school kids from around japan made. heiwa means peace. there are so many, see!?

if you look down this way you see the long elevated museum building and the curved cenotaph, and a fountain.

lots of crazy weird statues.

this is not a sculpture. this is a plant. and it is ALIVE. and i think it was irradiated by the bomb and so now its gigantic and monstrous. not totally clear on this though. but still, i asked and people told me this was a living plant.

side view of the cenotaph. a cenotaph is a monument to the dead whose remains are elsewhere. this is a very non-western design. usually cenotaphs are big rectangular vertical slabs.

here is the inscription. they had it in russian and german and other languages too. this flavor of peace propaganda is everywhere.

awesome picture of some people's remains inside that little box, some flowers, a long reflecting pool at the dome in the background.

this thing was outside the museum to the victims. its own little building.

and here is a little description of what is going on here.
i just got really hungry. lunch is not for an hour and then some.

this was inside that museum. i thought it was interesting that the elevation of the blast was edited. i think it used to say 580. make sure they get that one right. also, devastation.

names and photos of the victims on a digital display. if you know someone who lived in the area and died recently you can go to the library and submit their name, because maybe what they died of was bomb influenced. now this is the only time i was really moved. you think that only japanese people died in these attacks. not so. lots of chinese and koreans were in town, as prisoners or workers, or whathaveyou. but there were also american prisoners of war. and you can look up victims on another digital display, and so i put in my initials L and R and found 2 american air force people who died in the blast who were my age. pretty sad that the only way i could be emotionally moved was by realizing that people like me suffered as well.

chillers, chilling.

here is what really went down. the island to the right i where the peace park is. you can see how the dome used to be a real building.

this i thought was really great. every year the mayor of hiroshima writes a letter to the ambassador of each and every country that has nukes or tests a nuke, with very strong wording like "the people or hiroshima are disgusted" or "we demand you stop this at once" or "this is a total outrage to the people of hiroshima who love peace". copies of all the letters are displayed here. we are in the actual main museum now.

dome piece is on the left, and if you can see it there is a red line and a white card indicating where the hypocenter was.

and here is the before model. notice how the dome was a real building. it was a government industrial promotion building, designed by a czech architect.

ok, so the hiroshima bomb was dropped on the 6th of august, 1945. nagasaki was bombed on the 9th. but the japanese did not surrender until the 14th. what most people dont know and i didn't know until recently was that the bombs did not end the war. the usa firebombed tokyo AFTER both atomic bombings, and this is what forced the japanese to surrender. the museum seriously drops the ball with this one, opting for the narrative that the bombs ended the war without saying what happened in the week after.

the museum was very crowded and i could hardly read anything or look at anything. it was flower festival day and that is why. big replica of the dome inside the museum.

here is the really interesting bit. check out the top part about south africa admitting it had tested nukes but got rid of them, and the bottom part saying israel has nukes and everyone knows it but since israel hasn't joined the nonproliferation treaty, and has a policy of opaqueness on its arsenal, they can't put it in the boxes. when this was question #1 on my international relations 101 test, the answers were different in the midterm than they were for the final, because the year i took it was the year north korea tested its nukes. this is out of date, because north korea is not in the boxes.

here is a nice little globe with nuclear warheads indicating the size of each country's arsenal.

very peculiar and another negative point about this museum was the white paper left on north korea, indicating it had a warhead indicator there previously, but it has since been removed. why?

also i guess america's arsenal used to be much bigger.

another inaccurate map. israel is not shaded in, because nobody can point to exactly when and where their tests took place, and south africa is also not shaded. the vela incident is widely recognized as a joint south-african israeli nuclear test.

flowers getting ready for the flower festival.

crowded cramped section of the museum where there are plastic bricks all around. saw a bunch of japanese people tapping on them listening to see what they were made of.

aaahhh horrible dramatization exhibit of the immediate firestorm. flesh is melting into clothes and skin is peeling off oh noooo

yikes

they cannot have enough maps.

the picture you were waiting for. it's a replica of little boy, the uranium bomb that destroyed hiroshima. they were going t call it "thin man" instead, but it was redesigned and got less thin.

this was incredibly rough. they had lots of pictures and accompanying stories written and drawn by survivors of the bomb of just general havoc and desolation during the aftermath.

some charred and melted stuff including buddha statue.

tiny paper cranes actually folded by that girl who folded all those cranes.

long view of the peace park from inside the museum.

like i said, it was very crowded.

big flaming flower mountain.

there was even a parade with dancers.

these people hopped on some jetskis and cruised down the river.

dome and bridge.

this is the actual hypocenter, a block away from the peace park. this is the only thing here, a modest marble slab with an inscription. it is next to a parking garage. notice it still says 580 meters and has not been edited to match the picture from before.
i think this is a good place to end this post. the next place i went was the modern art museum, which is a totally different vibe. probably not going to put it up today. hope you enjoyed this somber, nuclear post.
great!

get ready

2010-05-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

what up blog,
i have a sore throat. drinking a lot of tea. uploading hiroshima day 2 photographs. the atomic bomb museum is in this set. i took a lot of pics that day, so i might have to split it up into two posts. almost one week until liz gets here. very unexcited about afternoon classes at the mountain school today. more later.
great!

my trip to hiroshima part one: day one

2010-05-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

hello blog, and welcome to my trip to hiroshima part one: day one
i took a train to hiroshima, by myself, well actually three trains, during "golden week" which is a period of successive national holidays: constitution day, green day, and children's day. from my house hiroshima is about 3 hours away, maybe a little less, and it costs around 7500 yen or a little more than $75 US to get there. let's get started.

here is a bridge i crossed by train. i live on an island, so i had to go over some water to get to the mainland of japan, or honshuu, the biggest of the 4 main islands, where hiroshima is.

i took a train two stops west, then another train for a while north, to okayama, where i got on this thing. this is the infamous "bullet train" although here it is called the special new express train, or something. it is like being on an airplane, really, and it moves so fast. kind of expensive though, even for an unreserved seat.

soon i got to hiroshima and up to my little hotel room where i threw my sweatshirt on the bed. the room was cute and cheap! only 6000 yen per day, i think, so like way less than $100. i think two people could have even fit nicely in this little room.

i got to the hotel from the trainstation by way of one of these - streetcars. they are like trolleys, or above ground subways, or just trains. they move along tracks in the road and stop at stoplights and crosswalks. they are cheap too but confusing. i think i understood what i was doing at the very end of the trip. oh by the way these photos are in order of when i took them, and i only deleted a few. so stay with me.

check this out. it is a covered shopping arcade that started by my hotel and, if you follow it all the way to the end about ten blocks, ends at the atomic bomb dome and the peace park, where the museums and monuments are. in this photo there is a mcdonalds (red and yellow arches) across the street from a shinto shrine (rope and hanging white paper). i just thought it was an interesting situation.

here is the shrine from the front. it is really just a little wooden box you can throw money in. maybe some stuff happens up those steps, i am not sure. it looked closed.

this store is called octopus army.

crazy balloon artist entertainer man with black balloon hat and red balloon cat. pink balloon on the way. small crowd was around him.

if you go to hiroshima, maybe you will see this guy, who was tan and red from standing out in the sun all day. it got warmer the week i was there, hot even, for the first time all year. but this guy was SCREAMING, chanting OHMMM as loud as he could, i guess looking for buddhist donations. later there would be other people doing this. some had hats, some were ladies, one beat a drum, and some were quiet.

i walked around a lot and decided i wasn't ready for the a-bomb stuff, so i walked north, where i found the hiroshima museum of art. it was small, really small, two main buildings, special exhibit and permanent collection. the permanent collection was in that circular building. i think i walked straight in without buying a ticket. lots of semi-modern, late 1800s early 1900s european and european stlye (by japanese people) art. i think they were having an exhibit on dutch paintings over time? it was pretty boring but i liked it.

i walked further north and found hiroshima castle, which was destroyed in 45 but rebuilt. sorry i do not remember that light post being in this photo.

this is one of the two entrance gates. there was a big moat all around the castle.

from within the compound, with a stone map. i walked up to the castle but did not want to pay to go in and up, because it was hot, and i wasn't very interested.

took this picture and turned around. it wasn't as impressive or as huge as osaka castle was. that thing was massive. this was more modest.

snapped this picture of a cool car on my way out of the castle. now i notice the guy was posing. his girlfriend laughed when i took it. very cool car.

so i was looking at the map and i was like ok if i am here the peace dome should be right there...and there it was. spooky.

but this monument, i think to children, was in front of it. it was kind of nice, if you pressed a button a voice talked about it in english! there are little doves at the top.

and the god of peace, i guess, at the bottom, being peaceful.

and then like a bajillion paper cranes attached to this thing, because there was one girl named sadako sasaki who was 2 when she lived a mile away from where the bomb dropped, and 9 years later she got leukemia. her friend was like if you fold 1,000 paper cranes your wish will come true and she was like 'okay i want to not die' but it didn't work out because she died a year later. her mom said it was an atomic bomb disease so i guess it was. this is why paper cranes mean peace now, i think. there are a ton of them here, from people from different schools, and even more later at the sadako sasaki memorial itself, which is crazy.

and here is the dome. which used to be a government bureau of industry, or something, before the bomb blew up a block away from it and killed everyone inside. eventually the city of hiroshima passed a law that this building will be maintained as a symbol of the devastation of the bomb and a reminder and a symbol of peace for eternity, in perpetuity, forever. the corner of it came out to where that foundation is. i was not emotionally prepared for any more bomb related stuff, so i turned around and headed back to the hotel.

i think this is a cool picture, do you? parking lot, naked lady sculpture, a bunch of discarded juice boxes and soda cans, coke machine and a benz. stuff like this all around the city, and all around japan in general.

i took this picture at like 6 PM. these people are waiting in line for okonomiyaki, a pancake shaped japanese food that hiroshima is famous for, because they do it differently than how the rest of japan does.

and another very long line. i was like what gives, i dont want to wait on that line. so i ate somewhere else and wandered around later at night until i found a smaller place.

there used to be a big kirin beer factory in hiroshima near the train station, i read. kirin means giraffe, but the logo is a dragon. go figure! big sign was kind of neat.

this is a photo of the front of a pet shop from across the street. it took a couple of tries but i think this one turned out pretty well. i don't think they sell monkeys or apes, so that's false advertising, just for cuteness.

this little rodin's thinker was across the street from my hotel on the corner. i bet he was thinking about eating crab at that restaurant.

and here is the outisde of my hotel, HOTEL ACTIVE! really the best name ever. i would go back there again, seriously, because they had free western buffet style breakfasts every morning, and it was just a nice place.

so later i found the okonomiyaki place that wasn't crowded. just a few guys eating a drinking, so i became a curiosity to them for the night. the owner's 5 year old son kept poking me in the back, and i would be like speak english, and he's say "no way!" but about the food. right. so anywhere else in japan, you will get a bowl filled with batter liquid, cabbage, and seafood and pork ingredients, and you are expected to pour that onto a griddle, let it cook, flip it, and then cover it with sauce and mayo and eat it. not so in hiroshima. instead of all mixed up together, hiroshima okonomiyaki is a delicate layered situation. first a little circle of batter is cooked up, upon which a ton of cabbage is stacked. then seafood, pork, while some noodles are cooked elsewhere, and an egg is mushed up and fried. the whole thing gets flipped two or three times, and then you put sauce and mayo on it. it was great! i am telling you.

here is the finished product, sprinkled with sesame seeds and seaweed flakes. it was delicious. i was 1/4th the way done before the chef handed me the mayo spray bottle, which was extra great. in hiroshima it's the style to eat this thing with the little metal spatula, so i tried that and resorted to chopsticks when it became impossible.

ahahaa and here i am about to eat. this picture was taken by a 40 year old computer programmer with no girlfriend. on the right is the chef and under my head is this weirdo guy who was sitting next to me. also the chef's wife is there. you can see the little metal spatula, even. wow, the chef is holding a big cabbage head. awesome.

so then i walked around more, and took this picture of hiroshima at night. it is like any major japanese city, really. not as intense and big as osaka, though. they have it all. pachinko, slot machines, sketchy hotels by the hour, video arcades, thousands of tiny little bars on high floors of buildings with weird names, convenience stores, everything.

here are to japanese girls i met at a bar throwing the victory sign, which everyone does automatically. the one on the right even showed up the second night i went to that bar, because she goes out with one of the guys who works there. i was an interesting spectacle to them, which was okay.
and that is it for my first day in hiroshima. i hope you liked it. there are two more days coming up, so stay tuned.
i bought a dollar's worth of shrimp, which is like 15 little shrimp, so i am going to make shrimpy broccoli pasta for dinner tonight.
liz and sammy are coming over soon, and then right after that i get to go home, which i am looking excited for. alright. have a good one.
great!

attention blog readers

2010-05-10T20:14:00.001-07:00

testing, testing
blog updates will resume shortly...upcoming hiroshima blog part one to be uploaded some time today...stay posted...

in which i spend some time at work

2010-04-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

oh, hello blog
i just helped teach three classes today. this is the start of a very long weekend for me. 7 days long in fact. see it's "golden week" here in japan, which is basically spring break as i see it. thursday is showa day, which commemorates the last emperor's reign and is a time for people to think about the span of time and the turbulent changes that took place during that era. monday is constitution memorial day, which is the anniversary of when the 45 constitution was written, or adopted, or something. tuesday is greenery day, or green day, which i guess could be thought of as earth day. then thursday is childrens day, which is a good idea i guess and i always wanted that day when i was a kid. friday im getting off because a school is moving their lessons around and so i have a 7 day weekend. with this in mind i made a reservation at a hotel called hotel active! in hiroshima city from sunday to wednesday. i will take the train there and check in and then spend a few days wandering around, seeing nuclear bomb monuments and going to museums and stuff. there is a peace park and a shrine in the middle of the water by an island i want to go to. also they have okonomiyaki in layers, and not all mixed up, like the rest of japan has, so i want to try that and everything else they want. im not really excited because im going alone but i do get to get out of here for once, and the hotel is like $60 a night and has western style breakfasts included, so its not a bad deal. i will take lots of pictures so don't worry about that.
so i guess you want to know like what i have been up to. well my cousin sam leiter came to kotohira to see a kabuki play, because he's a kabuki scholar. kotohira is a 45 minute ride through the mountains for me, so i went up there to meet him and look at some shrines. it was really neat, and i didn't know about this little town, so i have to go back now. the photos are uploading right now.
okay let's do this.

here you can see japanese kids sorting the little tabs of aluminum cans. in japan, since they are incredibly "eco" about everything but paper and plastic bags, they recycle these little guys separately. also, the plastic colored caps of plastic bottles go in their own bin. just a little less work they need to do at the plant. keep burning your garbage though! but really who am i to judge!?

here are sam and i in kotohira. the sun just came out so im squinting. that is my new favorite hoodie. sam is my grandfather's cousin's husband. he's really smart. please buy his book if you want to know about kabuki.

cool devil masks were on display.

and they even had the tengu ask, or scary long nose guy. hes the mascot for the conveyor belt sushi place i like in the mall. i love him.

do you need cool swords? this guy has them for you. i think you need a special swords permit to buy one though. i didn't see how much they were, but you can assume they are EXPENSIVE!

a view up the steps that lead to the temple. supposedly there were like 800 steps. those two columns on sides of the steps are actually a big gate that tells you about the temple.

nice view looking down the steps.

then we got to the top of some steps and this long path just kept going. really want to go back here soon, when liz comes over in less than a month!

me and the big temple. i think this might have been the second to biggest one. not sure if we went all the way to the top. but it was a nice building. i did money throwing and hand claps and we went back down the steps.

statue of a horse. there was a real horse and a wooden horse too, at different points. sam told me people would bring horse paintings to this temple. i really thought i got that guy out of the picture, but now he is going to be in it, forever, ruining my life.

another shot from near the top, on the way down.

statue of a priest guy! composition. amateur photography. framing. ansel adams can suck an egg.

now at the playhouse, we have kabuki mascot character. how does the person inside see out? is s/he normal height or a child? what is going on?

and lastly the playhouse itself. it's the oldest kabuki house in japan, and it's awesome. just ask sam!

brian said he wanted to see a picture of my house in japan so here it is. red car, and lots of grassy weeds growing all around.
and that is about it for now. i will let you know about hiroshima, and soon my gilfriend and sister are going to come visit.
great!

shikoku karate tournament

2010-04-18T21:42:00.001-07:00

oh blog,
i am sitting in the office, as usual. two days ago i went with my karate teacher and a few of my fellow students to the all-shikoku karate open tournament. all 4 prefectures of shikoku island met in kochi and had fights. some people lost, and a few won. there were a lot of nosebleeds and a lot of crying kids. one older delivery guy who i practice with, and one 3rd grade girl entered the tournament, so we went to cheer them on. i had to get up really early, 5:55 am, in order to get dressed, eat breakfast, and be at sensei's house to catch a ride at 6:30. i took a lot of pictures too. there are videos too, and eventually i will post them all on youtube. but until then all you have is my photo by photo commentary, which has t be good enough. let's start. my comment about each picture is going to be underneath it.

this is sensei's 5 year old son. he has an older daughter too, but i spent most of the day playing with and entertaining this kid. try playing with a 5 year old once ina while. he's wearing my glasses.

on the left is the delivery man doing some shadowboxing with the girl who comes to pratice. he is trying to get ready for his fight.

here is the little girl who entered the tournament on the left, doing shadowboxing with sensei. this was at the beginning of the day, before any of the real action.

more warming up. maybe sometimes you have to kick a mat. everyone was warming up at this point. dozens of little kids moving around.

also punches are acceptable when you are using those little black mats.

here she is practicing with the big blue mat with her dad, while sensei watches. you can punch and kick on this one, it is mostly for going nuts. i like this picutre.

okay, now some little kids started to actually fight. judges would say who won, and if you got kicked in the head twice, it was an automatic loss. this picture shows how big the gym was. the judge is on the left. they wore bowties and no shoes.

now these kids are just pushing on eachother. the guy in the corner has a whistle and he holds up a flag at the end of a round to indicate who won.

here are all thr trophies you were fighting for, and the big scoreboard. parents were always watching and yelling at their kids, giving them specific commands. knees! kicks! front! turn!

also there were kata competitions. kata are these fight dances that have special steps and orders that you have to memorize. one kid would step in and do his or hers, and then another would come in and maybe do the same one or another. then the judges would be like "the first kid was better". some of these are really hard to memorize. i can only do one after i see it once or twice.

but yeah, back to little girls kicking eachother as hard as they could. it was cute for a while until i realized it was parents just yelling at their kids to beat up other kids.

if time runs out, the guy sitting on the floor throws a little red beanbag into the ring. that means cut it out.

knee is effective in this picture. the girl looking in the video camera had some good moves earlier, i remember.

i just like the composition of this one.

and you can see that kid's face in this one. he's like "i better win so my parents love me".

finally it was time for our girl to fight!

as you can see, she won. she actually won her first two matches, which was crazy, but then got kicked in the head twice pretty fast, and lost the third. the did get a big trophy though, so that was cool.

when i got this picture, i screamed out loud, it is that good. did you know it is really hard to photograph karate with a digital camera? i still dont know how i got this shot. all photographs are downhill from here.

adults did fighting too. here is the guy from our dojo getting ready. he saw his opponent before the fight and got all nervous.

his opponent had much more experience and did a spin kick. judges really liked the spin kicks. he has a higher belt and was a bigger guy. didnt help that our guy got kicked in the groin early on. bad move. he did not win his first fight, which was disappointing.

the guy on the right, the black belt, had good style.

someone in this photo is thinking "i want to go home"

more judges for the later, higher ranked bouts. when the judges changed off, they had to salute eachother and each direction of the ring. it was wild.

again, spin kick. looks like that block is pretty much ineffective.

then the finals got started on the main mat. there were 5 mats in all, one in the middle and one in each corner. these guys did not mess around, but they looked like the got tired as the rounds progressed.

you basically had to be a black or brown belt to get this far. pain is a big part of this, i think. you are trying to hurt your opponent so he backs off an lets you hit him more. if you lose your momentum and dont connect enough attacks, you will lose for sure. we started to call the bouts before they ended, being like "this one is a tie" or "red" or "white wins". sometimes it was difficult to tell but mostly it was obvious who won.

then a bunch of kids got together and did a little demonstration. all color belts, all heights represented. as you can see, we went up to the seats to watch the finals.

i think this is the last last fight. it was crazy. basically, there is a three minute round. if a majority of the judges cant decide who won, there is another three minute round. then another, if its still a tie. if at the end of three, and they are still tied, they have to measure their weight. if there is a 10 KG weight difference, the lighter guy wins automatically, because he must have had more energy to stay in the fight and tie if he's smaller, or something. i did not really understand that part. if there is not a 10 KG difference, they have to keep fighting.

and that is what happened in the last bout. but it was so close. after the first round, out of 5 judges, two said white won, the rest said it was a tie. after the second, only one said white won. i think white should have won. then all judges agreed it was a tie. and then, after the weight and the last fight, three judges said red won! so it was like a comback, or an upset.
and those are all the pictures i felt like posting. hope you enjoyed it.
great!

bored

2010-04-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

alright blog,
this being the first week of the new school year, of course i don't have to go to class to teach anything, cause it is all handing out of books and orientation. i have to go to the mountain school in the afternoon, and the amount of work i have to do there varies depending on whether or not the teaching assistant, who comes every other week, will be there. if she is there, she is gonna write the lesson plan and i just have to speak when it is indicated that i should speak, and if she is not, i have to think up some games or lessons or something to entertain two groups of little kids with for 45 minutes each. i have a pretty wide range of ideas to choose from. some of my more reliable games are duck duck goose, which of course has to be called cat cat dog here, as well as simon says, known as Russell says, exquisite corpse, which has to be called "interesting body", telephone, etc. we will see.
this past weekend i took a rainy, lonely drive to the south of the island to see a city called kochi. it looked like a pretty big city. the ride was an hour and a half, and both ways consumed a quarter tank of gas. very windy mountain roads for the most part. i think i will go back with liz when she gets here. i took some pictures. nothing too interesting, i hope.

this picture i took when i was driving. this is what the road looks like. you are right on the edge of a mountain and people live way up high. most of the drive was alongside a nice river. abandoned gas stations and little ramen shops all along the way. a few tunnels.

here is where i had lunch. the mountains are big and up close. that parking lot was very difficult to navigate, as it was full of the slowest cars, and probably 20% smaller, more narrow, than your average american parking lot. there was a UNIQLO behind me where i bought 2 pairs of work pants and a green blue plaid shirt. funny that this is where i stopped because this mcdonalds UNIQLO combination is also an hour in the eastward direction, towards tokushima city. oh well.

but i kept driving past that shopping center just to see what was up in kochi. i thought this bush was nice because it was flowering. that guy on the banners is ryoma sakamoto who helped overthrow the feudal shogunate in japan in the late 1800s and was born in kochi and was an alltogether great guy. now his image has been relegated to banners for pachinko parlors and boxes of snacks.

kochi has trolleys, which i thought was neat.

then i found this statue of an angel lady on top of a building near a shopping arcade. it was really quite large and cool. gotta find it again when i go back.

this is the outside of a bar that i stopped next to at a red light. it is covered in weird flyers and stuff. i guess it looks pretty cool. gotta go inside next time.

oof, there was a big boy too. i have never even seen a big boy in america, so seeing one in japan was a little surprising.
okay this next photo is not from my trip to kochi. it is of the pizza i ordered two nights ago.

so this is the best that pizza gets in japan. i could not decide on which flavor to get so i got the 4 combo. this whole thing cost 1580 yen. from bottom left, clockwise, we have a standard salami pizza that has to have corn on it. little onions too, with parsley. the next section is big pieces of cured bacon and cold potato salad, whcih was quite good and i would consider getting again. then is margarita, i think, which just had big tomatos and some pesto with a different cheese. it was just ok. the last one is the necessary japanese pizza inclusion: yakisoba pizza. basically it was just some yakisoba on bread, with maybe beef pieces, fried noodles, cabbage, yakisoba sauce and lots of mayo on top. also pretty good. it's hard for me to talk about or think about food right now, because even though curry rice is for lunch today, i feel a little food deprived. maybe i will get a big udon set meal for dinner, instead of trying to follow along with cooking with dog who just had me make ketchup spaghetti last night. i think that is about it. i have badminton tonight. what should i do this weekend?
great!

i took a walk yesterday

2010-04-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

dear blog,
i took a walk yesterday by myself up this mountain near my house. i had never been up there. you can see lots of graves. nobody is buried in japan, because it is the size of california but has half a population of the USA and 90% of the land here is mountains. so when you die you get a little stone monument set up, and it's ok. i saw a few of those. saw some cheery blossoms too, which only bloom for a short time. i think i am just going to post these pictures in order one after another because i don't have much to say. tomorrow i gotta wear a suit for opening of school ceremony and office worker's picture. here we go.

wash your hands in this thing before praying.

hey i can see my house from here! it is in the center of this photograph.

empty grave spot. guess s/he isn't dead yet.

next one says to take enough care when its pouring rain, because this is where the water comes down the mountain.

this next one has a lonely politician speaking through car-mounted loudspeakers about how he is going to fix japan when you elect him, and thank you for the support, and thank you.

oh, this last one is of the posters for the election. should you smile? what colors do you want to use? what design elements? name going horizontally or vertically? many choices.

the guy who is set up next to my house, who i posted a photo of yesterday is on the bottom row, second from the right. compare that shot to the one i got of him. and then be like, good move.
great!

sorry the order of events is all messed up but hey what are you gonna do

2010-04-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

so blog,
there are more pictures here i wanted to show you.
i guess it should be structured like the last post. let's see how it goes.

so you want a smaller ornamental samurai helmet? its still going to set you back tens of thousands of yen. and these are really dinky compared to the 2 serious ones from before. but hey, it's your traditional samurai helmet display, so do what you're gonna do.

now, here is the actual scene from my door. notice that everyone is wearing the headbands, not just our friend mr. tatsugawa. i hope he wins. he probably will.

and we have here a wider shot of the entire scene. i had a little get together the night before and some friends slept over. people at the political rally were leaning on my friend's car in the morning, and he had to ask them to move, which was great. you see that little white pickup truck? every japanese person has one. i think you get one when you are born or turn 20, or 40, as a rite of passage. i think this photo is from another day. you can see the candidate on the right, with the unfortunate worst contraption ever created, the speaker-car. wow i hate that thing.

okay, back to the end of the school year party. this is where the first dinner/party was. nice long table, almost enough food, beer and sake. sit on the floor. this is past the point in the party when everyone gets up from their randomly assigned seats and starts talking to and pouring drinks for the people they like. you never pour for yourself, its mad rude.
okay, time to go to the second party. take a bus, hope you can find a ride home with someone. want to sing karaoke?

try to sing along. there is some stock footage that always has to do with the song and matches up perfectly.

i do not understand what is being sung here.

do you like his shot of some of the old ladies in the office? the one on the left is done working here. she was nice and little. maybe those flowers are real.

and here is the last one i am going to post today. you can tell who is wasted in this picture. from right to left: principal? wasted. badminton player/math teacher? wasted. school nurse? not wasted. homeroom teacher who left? wasted, i think. she was singing like she was, anyway. you see those big empty bottles. let loose twice a year and make it count.
so i will keep sitting here. that killed about 45 minutes, another hour until i get to go home and sit around more. maybe if it's nice out i will walk to the top of this mountain near my house i found yesterday.
great!

bored

2010-04-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

hi blog,
i am at work. for the last weeks, there has been no class, but i have to come to work anyway, for "compliance". this means i sit here all day and either read, write, or surf the web. i can't take off because i have to save my remaining 10 paid vacation days for when my girlfriend and sister visit in a few months. so i am bored. hence, this post.
i am uploading some pictures, so i should type about what's up. it is a new school year here. 6 teachers left, including both of the english teachers i taught with. there are two new english teachers now, one nice woman who i recognized from another school and one cool guy who sounds like borat when he tries to speak english. im only going to have to teach 2 or 3 classes a day when i am here, so it is not going to be a big deal. i just have to get used to their new teaching styles.
there were a few parties. end of school year party, new school year party. pretty good time overall. so you want to see some photos or what?

maybe you want some big ornamental samurai helmets. i don't know, they are probably for a ceremony or a festival. it's gonna cost you one hundred thousand yen. i will let you do that math on your own. the yen is down recently, since the japanese government doubled this big reserve of emergency money for banks. hopefully it will calm back down by the time i get home.
alright. here is the next one. this is a photo of the trailer next to my house. mr. tatsugawa, a politician up for reelection, is hanging out there for the time being. i guess you have to run your reelection campaign out of a separate building.

local elections are coming up. every sunday for the past 3 weeks a bunch of fools show up at 9 am and cheer and make speeches and yell and scream, directly next to my house, until 11 am. it is the worst thing possible. nevermind that the way you promote your campaign is by driving a little car around town with a set of megaphones on it, through which you THANK everyone and THANK them so much as loud as you possibly can. it is awful. but hey, whatever.
this was the scene outside my front door last sunday. the guy with the headband, sash and suit is the guy himself. he shook my hand after i got in my car that morning. good luck, guy.

the next is just a cool shot from an after party we went to a bar called "secret". the tv on the right is for karaoke.

the next one has the old vice principal on the left, who got wasted. he played badminton a few times, and i think he lives at a buddhist temple.

how about this?

that picture is of the table from the second party. these are all from the teachers leaving party. i don't have any from the new teachers party. what you can see here is a little snack set up. pocky, shrimp chips, little packets of peanuts and other snacks, an ash tray, and the wireless karaoke song selector. this was a good selection because they had 2 lil' wayne songs, 1 of which i sang, alone.
alright, let's seal this post up because i have more pictures uploading.
great!

oh i wanted to make another post

2010-03-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

sorry blog,
today, since it is the last day of the semester, there is also a big party for all the office people. it costs 70$, which includes the cash gift that is being given to the 6 teachers who are departing. both english teachers, the vice principal, the scheduler/math teacher, the music teacher, and an assistant english teacher who helps out with the special kids are all leaving. i will try to remember to charge and bring my camera to this event so it may be documented. last time this type of thing happened, i went to the after-party and the after-after-party which was a bit too much. i am getting a ride from the lunch lady so i am free to impress my coworkers and superiors with my ability to drink alcoholic drinks.
it is very rainy and extremely foggy today. it has been the same for the past 2 days and is supposed to be like this tomorrow too. supposedly these wild dust storms from the chinese dessert are blowing over here, which is very scary to me, because it makes me realize how close i am to china. anyway, the democrats passed healthcare reform, and obama signed it into law today, and joe biden said it was a big fucking deal and he was not kidding. this lifted my spirits, especially after 9 months of me reading each and every news headline and development with the process, losing and regaining faith in the political establishment. the bill passed on the day i finished watching the last episode of the sopranos, which, if you've seen it, you know is wonderful and amazing in its own way. so my life changed a little bit, and even more today, when i heard that my teachers are all leaving. it will be exciting for new things to happen for a change. mostly all of this makes me realize how i will be home soon.
well, i need to sit here, doing nothing, trying to entertain myself, for another hour exactly, to fulfill my contractually obligated hours, and keep making that yen.
great!

sorry but i have to make a real post now

2010-03-23T22:04:00.000-07:00

oh blog,
i got a little carried away there. i am sorry. this will be a real post. i promise. now you must really know what it is like for me to live here and deal with everything. i am writing some post cards, so if you want one and i don't know that you want one, let me know that you want one and i will send one to you! i have a bunch left. today was the last day of the school year. a bunch of teachers are leaving, so we had a little ceremony for them, and it was sad for everyone. BOTH of the english teachers i work with are leaving, so i am going to have to get to know 2 new teachers. that is going to be exciting and fun, a good change of pace also. let's start this post off with the celebratory bento lunch i was given today, which was honestly the best bento i have had here so far:

i realize now i should have taken the plastic off before photographing, but i got too excited. this bento has a little bit of everything. let's go clockwise starting with the rice. it had little mushrooms in it for flavor. next is a tasty piece of fish, two pieces of chewy squid, some shredded carrots and an unidentified vegetable. there was also tomato in that part, which i was ok with. next is where the action really happens. big piece of tempura shrimp with some tartar saucce on it, a hamburger patty with seperate burger sauce and little spaghetti noodles underneath. also there was a creamy potato croquette and a piece of fried chicken. plenty of cabbage and lettuce, also. next was the most interesting part. it had a broccoli piece, some strips of raw, thinly sliced bacon, a sweet mochi cake and some more greens. last were the necessary pickled vegetables to eat in between bites, and then a big surprise - half a strawberry. this was great. i would eat it again.
okay, next picture.

this is the 8th and 9th grade english teacher on graduation day. her class was graduating and going to high school, so she wore a traditional kimono. i liked this shit because it has the traditional kimono clothing but the modern cellular telephone, so it shows the stark contrast of japanese culture. she is going to the middle school in the next town starting in a few weeks.
and lastly, the defining point of this entire post, the thing that made me want to blog! here it is. this will be interesting to you because it features some creations that exist only in japan.

so i went to the lawson plus across the river last night, because i finished the sopranos two days ago and i didn't know what to do. i decided to just buy things i wanted and needed. here is what i came up with. let's start in the back, and go from left to right. first are some wasabi flavored potato chips, featuring the little potato guy mascot, who wears a pork pie hat and always looks surprised to be an animate potato-human hybrid. then there is a box of ritz crackers, which would be familiar to you until i tell you that it contains 3 rolls of crackers, instead of two, and they are arranged horizontally, not vertically. while you consider that, it should not be too difficult to understand red bull. these cans are small, maybe 2/3 the height of an american can but slightly thicker. they are 200 yen a piece. after that we have a can of original coffee which i drank this morning with my breakfast of a banana and a toasted whole wheat bagel with creme cheese. for these ceremonies, you mostly have to stand still and bow a few times, so it can get pretty boring and i used the coffee to keep me conscious. okay, now we have something i only bought because i saw it on TV, and that is a can of vodka. i think it might be carbonated? i haven't tried it yet. i will let you know. when i went to get the can of vodka, i accidentally saw the next one, which is a chocolate cocktail, so i had to buy that too. maybe it is a chocolate flavored alcoholic drink? i am kind of excited about this one. next is THE FRUITS MiLK, which as you probably already understand, is fruit-flavored milk. it has a pineapple, a round fruit, and some bananas pictured. i don't think this can be bad. next is FIBE-MINI which is a sweet little orange-colored drink that is about 110 yen a piece and says it has fiber in it. another american teacher i met in tokyo turned me onto these and they are the perfect accompaniment to any food item. after i bought these 2, i found a case of 10 for 880 yen at the supermarket, so i had to buy that too. now we have 4 pieces of baby cheese rectangular solids to go with the ritz crackers, a can of light flake tuna, and some butter from hokkaido. the guy at lawson thought it made sense to give me chopsticks with this purshace, i guess because i'm supposed to eat the tuna right out of the can? no way, that's for a tuna salad sandwich. this is the same guy who always asks if i have point card who i have to say no to every time. it's probably habit as a product of his strenuous lawson cashier training.
okay well that is it! i hope you liked my weird items i bought at a japanese convenience store. what else do you want to see me do? i dont do much because i have no friends and im trying to save some money. only a few more months until i get back to america. see you then!
great!

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

someone bows to an unoccupied podium before and after giving a speech.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T04:01:00.000-08:00

GIANT SALAMANDER!

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T03:41:00.003-08:00

you are cold in your own house and you have gotten used to it.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T03:41:00.001-08:00

you are cold in your own house and you have gotten used to it.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T03:25:00.001-08:00

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

basically the only two websites you want to visit that are blocked by the city's firewall are whiteninjacomics.com where i get the best t-shirts and gmail.com where i communicate with the rest of the world.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN JAPAN WHEN...

2010-03-10T03:07:00.000-08:00

The breath of the students condenses into a gray steam as they practice singing one of the three songs they must sing as graduation in the coldest gym.

a simple post to pass the time

2010-02-27T04:59:00.000-08:00

hi blog!
i went to the mall today. the new facebook is really bad at uploading photos, and this is enough to make me frustrated. so i am going to talk about it while the website decides if it wants to upload my photos, or if it wants me to go to photobucket. okay. so the mall is 40 minutes away along a windy road that goes through some mountains and bumpy tunnels. my plan was to go to mcdonalds because my body and mind need chemically induced nostalgia from time to time. okay! the photos are up. lets get some more on there. here we go.
i walked around a bit before i was hungry enough to eat. clothes are either normal and super expensive or very flimsy and cheap, and they are all way too small for me. i think everything i bought is a size too small, so i will have to stretch everything out. here is the mcdonalds meal i got. the new york burger's time had passed, to my surprise, and now the hawaiian burger was available. the hawaiian burger is a big burger with bbq sauce, mayo, lettuce, cheese, bacon, and a huge fried egg thing. look!

was there a tomato too? very likely. it tasted ok, not as special as the texas burger from a few weeks ago, but i was satisfied. then i walked around the mall some more and got an idea of what i wanted to buy. there were 3 levels and the building is very long. it reminds me so much of the palisades mall at home. i went in one electronics store because i was wondering how much a decent video camera costs. answer: too much. but i did stumble upon this wonderful experience, which i somehow missed the first time i went into this electronics store. are you interested in buying a gundam model kit? the pieces snap together and there is no glue necessary. maybe you will have to draw little lines with a black pen or paint some pieces with a special marker but you will have fun making a model of a robot at 1/100 of the robot scale. the only problem is first you have to choose one.

not an easy thing to do. i think i stood here for a good 15 minutes just looking at different boxes and realizing that i don't even know any of these robots, half of them are from the newer tv shows that i have never seen. some were cool looking. maybe i will buy a few before i come home as a gift to myself. okay what next? oh yeah. so the japanese, as you probably already know, don't speak english. but they like to pretend they do, while giving off this vibe of "it's complete b.s. and we don't take it seriously at all, so thanks for trying, but we got this". want some evidence? here are two, the best two, stores in the mall with ridiculous, stupid names. the first might not get to you like it does some people.

so it's called Spicy Marmalade. no big deal right? it sells lady clothes. can marmalade even be spicy? what is marmalade? isnt it like jam? it has to be sweet then. so this is really just confusing nonsense. okay. i get it. nothing to get alarmed about, move along. you think everything is going to be okay, until you get up to the third floor and you see this utter monster staring back at you.

WHAT IN THE. okay. take a breath. i know, it's difficult. imagine if you had to live here and teach these people how to speak english. try to imagine that for a second. i know right? okay. so. this store, like it or not, and there is no way you can like it at all, is called Starvations. it sells childrens clothing, more like toddler clothing, in only bright neon and pastel colors. it is one of the worst things that has ever existed. i cannot imagine the process that led some unfortunate person to pick this name. did they have a dictionary? i hope not. were they picking random words out of a hat? did it sound cool? was a mistake made? did they think it meant something else? nobody will ever know. okay. calm down. there are more photos to see. like this one.

a nice stage performance with songs and dancing, featuring a giant vegetable costume, for kids. this was nice. there were so many little kids in this mall. there is an entire childrens arcade on the top floor, with blacklight ball pits. i think a lot of the young parents take their young kids here for entertainment, and the mall provides. this vegetable performance was good because it gave me a chance to get maybe the best photo i have ever taken, from inside an elevator as i was about to go downstairs and leave the mall. check this out.

at first only the baby was in the photo, looking down at the show from the same angle that i got the last shot at. but then mom walked into the frame and i dont know, i think she might have made it a better shot? more composition and elements. nobody will ever know. so around this time i bought the one too-small shirt that i had my eye on and exited the mall. i decided to drive a little further north towards takamatsu city, because i had never been beyond the mall/airport area. i saw a sign for a tunnel straight ahead after a while so i turned around, but there was a videogame store i like to go to called Geo (pronounced gay-oh) connected to a grand opening clothing store called jumble or something. i liked their style, a lot of the clothes seemed used or handmade or just weird and cool, so i got some pants and shirts there. i think i found the best, most perfect shirt i have ever found. you will know about it eventually, but not now. my plan was to drive back and stop at the mall again for dinner. now, don't be fooled into going to the hamburger restaurant.

actually, maybe you should check it out. it's not really hamburger per se, since hamburger as we understand it includes bread and is like a sandwich. this is more accurately called hambaagoo, because it is just the meat, in a skillet, with other things around it, and rice on the side. japanese people love this. here you can see all of the plastic display dishes, and the crazy (racist?) mascot who is holding a big skewered beef patty in a pike. i don't know about him. well, i already ate a hamburger today, a real one, and i didn't want to go to the italian buffet with the chocolate fountain, because who does that? so i waited for a half hour to get into this wonderful establishment.

this is called kaiten sushi. it is a restaurant where sushis come by on little plates that are on a little track that circulates throughout the place. you just pick up a plate and if it is a good place like this, every plate is a little more than a dollar. you can get all kinds of eel, tuna, and different types of fish! and there is tea in a little cup, and a spigot of hot water. here you see some little plastic tops to keep the fish fresh as it circulates. i had to wait a half hour to be seated! but it was so worth it. okay, i am going to spoil the mystery for you right now. don't be devastated, this is about the industry.

so they have a little machine to form the rice into perfectly shaped sushi carriers. this is okay, we have to not be upset about this. yes, you used to make this shape with 2 fingers and the palm of your hand. but that era has passed. this is post-fordist sushi construction. why is this ok? because it allows for this to be possible, and eaten.

this is fresh bacon and mayonnaise sushi. i think the bacon has been cured, because it looks mad raw. this tastes like pure butter, and it is the most devilish, amazing concoction i have ever experienced. if you didnt notice, the hawaiian burger had 2 bacon pieces sticking out of the bottom, so today was a very good day for my bacon intake. that's it! i hope you had fun learning about and looking at my day.
great!

just normal things

2010-02-21T20:55:00.001-08:00

blog of blogs,
i just got back from what i like to call "the mountain school", iuchi elementary school. i call it that because to get there, i have to drive for ten minutes up a winding, incredibly thin road alongside a river. at multiple points in this road, only one car my pass through, so the oncoming traffic must stop and wait to go. but today, when i got to the mountain school, the door was locked and nobody was there. some of my students were playing in the playground at the kindergarten across the street, so i asked them what was up. they said that the 6th graders, the oldest kids at the elementary school, had a graduation party or some such event yesterday, and that as a result, there was no school today. i go to the mountain school on mondays in the afternoons. it is a normal sized school, but there are only 30 or so students total, so 1st and 2nd grades are together, as are 3rd and 4th, 5th and 6th. usually i teach one of the lower classes and then the older class by the textbook. i was going to have to make up a lesson, because that is how i do it, which probably would've involved me saying "run, stop, jump" and just telling kids what to do in english while their teacher, a nice old woman, literally slept in the corner. every other week, a native japanese teacher who has some english ability because she works for a private english teaching company comes to this school, makes the lesson plans for me, and we teach together, but today i was supposed to be alone. the thing is, nobody told me about this or invited me to this party yesterday, at all, so when i called my home school, this middle school where i am now, people were surprised and said they would give the mountain school a call. "you're an adult, aren't you?" was said to me, which i answered with "aren't i?" it is really too bad. but at least now i dont have to teach anything, and i can sit here for the next two hours and read about whatever i want to on the internet. this experience is a metaphor for the mountain school as a whole: sleepwalking, lazy, not thrilled to have me.
on a positive note, lunch today was hamburger patties with shiitake mushrooms, and i got two and a massive serving of rice because i am a foreigner. i have badminton tonight which should be fun. i skipped karate all last week because i was playing metal gear solid 4: guns of the patriots on the ps3, so i have to get back into karate this week. or not! when i took the drive up to the mountain school, i noticed that it had become much warmer and nicer outside. this is wonderful, because i hate the cold, especially since my house and buildings in general here do not have central heating. okay wait this paragraph is supposed to be more upbeat. the fact that its getting warmer means that i am closer to coming home. eventually i want to go back to osaka or maybe kyoto when my japanese tutor from college gets there, but i see it as just a wate of money for a weekend. which reminds me i have to pay my rent at the bank before i go home. i decided i am going to start growing my beard back on my birtday, may 21st. that way i will be fully bearded by the time late july rolls around. february is almost over, i keep telling myself that.
also, i just learned about this:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20100221a3.html
which should give you an idea of exactly what kind of country i live in.
great!

so much candy and so many snacks

2010-02-14T18:43:00.000-08:00

hi blog
thought i would make a boring post. i went to the city with my friend aaron two days ago. ate sushi, went to a few bars, ran into some other english teachers. wound up sleeping at a girl's friend's house who let us use her place instead of a creepy internet cafe. sleeping overnight in an internet cafe is still an experience i have not had, but i am not sure if it is one that i really want. i am back at work right now on monday, and february is almost over, which means that soon it will get warm again, which makes me happy. i have been playing videogames and watching the sopranos in my free time. i hope i got paid last week, i will probably get a statement sometime soon. after work today i have to go to the bank and do a major food shopping. hopefully i will be able to fit in metal gear solid 4: guns of the patriots, and the sopranos, and dinner in before badminton. mgs4 is just like watching the sopranos. you have to devote an hour minimum, and if someone looks at you funny you have to kill them and put their body in a dumpster. work has been pretty boring. i only have to teach a few classes each day, and only at one school do i have to think up my own lesson plans for elementary school students. i need to get more creative with those but it really just seems like a chore of having to be a strange clown for 45 minutes. i am very happy not to be spending another year here like everyone else i know. today it was rainy and now is very cloudy and foggy. i can barely see the mountains across the river. tried a ramen place down the road near the videogame shop the other day, it was quite tasty. my throat has been bothering me in the mornings ever since i had a small cold a week and a half ago. gargling with salt water has only been helping slightly, i feel like it should get better once some warmer, less dry air comes into the area. lunch today looks gross. hope everyone has fun watching the winter olympics.
great!

overt attept at an upbeat post

2010-02-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

what's really good, blog?
oh you know i'm just eating some curry i made. usual curry action. onion, garlic, carrot, peas, meat, potatos, rice, etc. you know the deal. this bowl of curry is basically as perfect as a bowl of curry can get. i think i may be getting a cold, so i am popping vitamin c pills and trying to stay hydrated. since there is a karate tournament or something next month, sensei added an extra practice on saturdays were the adults and elementary school kids practice together and you can wear regular workout clothes and sean paul or soulja boy tell 'em is playing. my left leg kind of hurts because i forgot how to kick with it properly. oh, i cleaned up the house today, which was much needed, since i had not done so in like 2 months. tomorrow i am going to perform my regimented chore of doing laundry, and then shopping for food during the 30 minutes that the clothes take to dry at the laundromat. been trying to download some new music, which reminds me that now is a pretty good time to listen to some of it. today was pretty risky meal-wise. i woke up at found no frozen curry here, because i purposely didn't buy any so that i would have to leave my house on the weekend. that was a bad idea! i couldn't go out because i stayed in to listen to liz's sarah lawrence radio show which was wonderful. i ate two slices of pizza toast, and then i felt like driving up the hill across the river to get some curry udon. i guess i didn't realize that this would be my second curry style dish of the day but i dont think of it like that, i think noodles vs. rice. anyway after that i had some takoyaki from the guy around the corner and that was pretty good, but karate practice wsa at 7 which is a weird time, so i couldn't eat before. thus, curry right now. mostly i have been spending my time in front of the computer or the tv playing videogames, so i developed a little eye twitch action last week that is almost gone by now. this means i need to find other better things to do. i guess that is my main challenge for next week. i honestly cannot think of much more to type. i am extremely tired. sleeping until noon is absolutely in order tomorrow.
great!

it's been a week

2010-01-31T04:42:00.000-08:00

hi blog! burning a mix of all covers right now.
i have not been keeping up with you. the truth is not much has been going on here. weeks have been passing by one by one. i have been watching the sopranos, keeping busy with a playstation 3 i bought and modern warfare 2 that a friend lent me. i took an hour drive each way to mcdonalds today to try the big america texas burger, which was amazing and worth every minute of the trip. i am going to try to replicate it in the kitchen one day this week, after i get back into the curry game. something in my mind told me that the big america texas burger was monstrous and should not exist, but it was very satisfying and ideal. i could feel the years falling off my life with each bite (originally typed as "bight") and now i can feel certain arteries slightly more hardened than they were before. but it was all in good fun.
january is just about over, or it will be in a few hours, which means i am beyond the half way point of my contractually year long stay in japan as an english teacher. i am thrilled about this, and i was even more exited to circle the option and sign the document that stated that i will not be recontracting for another year. everyone else here, in this part of shikoku, the foreign english teachers who i have come to know, are all sticking around, and i cannot imagine how.
lots of the time i feel more and more like japan is a country with absolutely no future. their population is hitting a horizontal asymptote, and since they don't allow massive foreign immigration, their population, and that means their workforce, will begin to shrink gradually every year. and they should be learning chinese, not english, becuase they already know half of the chinese characters from their use as kanji in japanese, and china is so much closer and more inevitable, rather than face the extreme shame of having poorly pronounced, poorly thought out english to embarrass themselves with. but i am being a little bit harsh. really i am just excited to come home soon! i have a life outside the educational system to start.
recently watched 3 movies: moon, antichrist and the hurt locker. i want to write a 3 part movie review like i did before but i dont think this blog is the right place for it, so expect to find a link to my livejournal or something one day soon. it looks like 11 pm has snuck up on me yet again, and i have to go to bed now so i can get up at 7 for work tomorrow.
great!

it is cold outside

2010-01-18T17:03:00.000-08:00

dearest blog,
i am taking my second JET program japanese advanced-level japanese test. you need to get at least a 70% on all but 1 of the 6 tests that they give you and you get a certificate of completion. i got a 68% on the last one, so if i miss this one by another single question, it's pointless to keep trying, but i might anyway. i did not study these past weeks really at all because i was busy hanging out with liz, and these lessons are very poorly designed and make hardly any sense at all.
back at work now on a regular schedule. last night was badminton, and i won a single game after losing three, which always feels better than winning one and then losing three. today i have english conversation group with half a dozen little old japanese ladies who like to chatter in japanese to eachother most of the time, so i have to think of something interesting or concrete to talk about or do. tomorrow i have karate class after maybe a month of not going. various things got in the way. liz was here, then my friend robbie invited me to his birthday party, then it snowed (and when it snows, nobody goes to karate as an informal rule, because the driving is dangerous and nobody wants to be there as the only person), then i had the end of semester part with my coworkers which was fun, then i got sick last friday which was miserable. it was a 24 hour stomach bug, which i learned is actually an infection of the small instestine. i am just about 100% back to full normal strength again, after lots of water and a banana-based diet. my guts still need to remember what it means to work properly again.
it's been cold, and i have been lonely since liz left, so i bought a playstation 3 to entertain me after work. it is not as big an investment as i thought it would be. i guess this just means i have to buy an hd tv so i can actually watch blu-ray movies when i get home. i have 3 games right now, a fighting game, a shooting game, and another action game is in the mail. i used to play lots of videogames, so getting back into it takes some getting used to.
well i just learned that i have to go help teach an english class in five minutes. it should be my only one today. i am a third of the way through this test, i should be able to finish it and mail it in after work, a day earlier than the postmark due date. forgot today was recycling day.
great!

there is more you should know PART 2

2010-01-11T17:23:00.000-08:00

let's start off where we left off.

the osaka aquarium has this as their first tank, and it is really one of the best moments you are going to experience there. you realize "hey, i am at an aquarium".

maybe a stingray will swim by. anything can happen at the aquarium.

if you are really lucky, a middle-aged man will coax the japanese giant salamander out of its little hiding hole, and you will get to see how immense and weird this creature is. these really exist.

this is called the arapaima, a giant prehistoric fish found in brazil. it is one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world, thanks wikipedia. i saw an episode of river monsters devoted to these guys. basically, they are all tail, as you can see in this next picture.

they flip boats over because they are so strong. the head is all flat bone. i was very excited to see these fish.

there were some dolphins swimming around too. i took video of these and other spots, but i haven't uploaded them to youtube yet, because i have to convert them and i am too lazy for that right now. one day, you will get a link to these dolphins swimming around. until then, enjoy this photo of a japanese man capturing the moment.

these are two whale sharks. they are fish, not whales, and they aren't aggressive, they are nice. they can get much bigger though i think. the little fish swim around and clean them up. got some video of these two. basically they seem fake, too big to be real.

the osaka aquarium is famous for its whale sharks. they are kept in the second biggest tank of water in the world. it is very tall and large.

this is a poor picture of a manta ray. its called manta because of those mouth parts in front, also it is very big.

this is the mola mola, or ocean sunfish. it is one of the ugliest things in the entire aquarium. imagine being that thing. oh, thanks wikipedia. the heaviest known bony fish. nice.

yeah, you would probably just hang out in the corner all day too. these also get much bigger.

there were lots of jellyfish in different little tanks, but this picture came out the best.

outside the aquarium, i told liz to look stoic, but my hair kind of ruins it.

this pachinko place was closed, probably because of their catchphrase. It is strong in time, and it is gently to time tough at time. maybe this helps you understand why teaching english here is basically a lost cause.

this is just all kinds of wonderful. someone painted david's napoleon on a horse, but added a pocketbook, i guess because the store sells pocketbooks. i did this painting as a 5 layer stencil once. we walked around tokushima city on new year's night, when nobody at all was around, looking for this, and we found it.

we also found the only blue moon on new year's day to occur since japan started using the gregorian calender in like the mid 19th century, and it was really bright. it looks like a light fixture, but it is the moon.

then on the way to the airport, i got liz to take a picture of this boat which is actually a restaurant.

and then we were both very sad that liz had to go home. it's already been a week since she left but it feels like years. this concludes my photoblogging of our trip together. when you take 3 weeks off, japanese people expect you to visit every major urban area and every major shrine temple and place of historical significance, but we took it slow and mostly just slept til noon, played videogames, watched youtube, and ate food. it was wonderful. she is one of the main reasons why i don't want to stick around here next year.
great!

there is more you should know

2010-01-11T16:39:00.000-08:00

hello blog,
i still have to post the rest of the pictures from when liz came over. i figure this is a good time to do so, because it is the first tuesday of the third semester of school, and there are just tests today, and i don't have to do anything at all today. here we go!

when we last left our blog, we were on top of osaka castle. here is another view. you can see the courtyard where we ate takoyaki and drank milk tea afterwards.

we took these pictures on the way out. liz is excited to see a very old cannon.

and here we are standing on the main platform. my skills at taking a picture of two people with one hand have improved, i think.

but sometimes, you just need to ask two japanese people to take a picture for you, so you can see the castle in the background.

that night we walked around town, and we saw glico man. i love him, even though he is just an advertisement for the company that makes pocky. we went to a cozy little yakitori place, and then we went to a tapas place, and it was a lot of fun.

also, this happened.

do you think she wants to eat tapas?

she looks more like she wants to go inside in this picture.

okay liz, fine. we will eat tapas.

then we saw this cool bike. it was awesome.

this is from inside a shopping arcade, long outdoor malls where rich people go all of the time.

i do not remember the occasion for this photo but it's pretty nice.

me chilling with some creepy mannequins.

this picture is from the middle of the longest shopping arcade in japan, in northeast osaka. we walked the entire thing, and it didn't seem that long. \

this picture is from a weird section of osaka that a guy led us to when we told him we wanted to eat shabu shabu. that big thing on the left is a fugu, pufferfish. you might think its poisonous but thats just the liver, every shop serves it here. supposedly that needle thing is a symbol of post ww-2 osaka building.

this was on a pachinko place. every day, even out where i live, pachinko places are full of people. they are the loudest possibly places in the world. it is said that if you are not japanese and you try to go inside, you will instantly get a headache. This space overflows with the dream, hope, stimulation, and the excitement. Dramatic development waits for you. Please be released from everyday life and enjoy yourself free. May the fortune goddess smile at you!

this is the statue of liberty, in americamura, or america town, which was near our hotel in osaka. this is not the original statue of liberty, which is in america, in new jersey. it just looks like that.

remember that ferris wheel on top of that 8 story shopping center building? well once we found it again, we went on it. liz is afraid of heigts, so she shows anxiety in this picture. i love this picture.

here is the view of osaka from the ferris wheel. i do not think it is a very beautiful city, it is not uniform and goes on forever and has no sense of cohesion. but liz likes it.

see? she is holding in her fear of heights and suppressing it with her admiration of the osaka skyline for this picture.

yes, we are very high up.
i am going to post this one right now because it already has a lot of pictures. i have to stay at work afterschool to help grade english tests. no english conversation group today at night, that's next week, which is also the once per month recycling day. i just drank a cup of coffee so this next post should be no sweat at all. okay, see you on the other side.
great!

finally, some pictures for you

2010-01-05T16:13:00.001-08:00

dear blog,
i think the best place to start photoblogging my 3 weeks with liz is at the beginning. i got facebook to accept more than 5 photos at a time, so this is going to be more interesting. let's go!

i am really sorry about this one. the day we went to the momofuku ando instant ramen museum, i forgot my camera. they probably have a website where you can see the wall of all of the different nissin brands of ramen displayed over history on a timeline. it's great and it was veru fun and interesting, and it made me appreciate instant noodles much more. these two things here are our 300 yen custom made instant ramen souveniers, which are packaged in little inflated bags that we carried around everywhere. as you see, we got to design the cups, and liz's has nice colors on it, while mine just has a big red skull. you got to pick your soup flavor and 4 little dried topping ingredients. we ate these towards the end of the 3 weeks, and they were delicious.

this is me at the bowling alley across the street from our hotel. i got a strike!

this is liz bowling. she got a strike too! just not in this picture.

this is liz looking...pensive? apprehensive? calm? in the far background, you can see osaka castle. it is going to get bigger as we get closer.

yeah, more longing, passionate in this one. she really wants to see the castle, go inside the museum and learn about history.

me wearing a cool shirt that liz got me for christmas, and the castle is a small shape on top of the hill in the light. it's hard to see. i look like i don't care about history.

that is much better. this is osaka castle. don't worry, this isn't hundreds of years old or anything, it was destroyed by war and fire a few times and rebuilt.

me again. i care slightly more about history in this one. it was a really nice day.

liz at the top of osaka castle! we went to the top. it was scary, but you could see the entire city.

both of us, at the top. the lighting is not great on this one, but you get the idea.

a little battle diorama in the museum? just be glad you didn't live in the osaka area in the sixteenth century, because you probably got your head cut off by a warlord.

i love this one. liz and some japanese little kids who only wear harsh pastels. they were not afraid of heights at all. photos weren't allowed in half of the museum, but you aren't missing much. i bet the wikipedia article on osaka castle is much more interesting and easy to understand.

and here is the view from he west side of the castle. osaka looks ugly to me, not very uniform and kind of all over the place. you can see the hep 5 building's ferris wheel in the middle, it's on top of an 8 story shopping center and we went on it! okay, enough photos for this post. let me get some more up and i will keep posting them.
all i have to do today is play ping pong with the girl's club. my forehand needs a lot of help. class doesn't officially begin until friday. this is one positive aspect of being a teacher - the school year is only part of the regular year. there was a former student who ran in a marathon this morning right by the school, so we stood outside in the cold and cheered. it was cool to see all the police escorts. going to do laundry and use the coin dryers at the laundromat today, which i didn't use until liz got here, when i realized that they get your clothes very dry. it's going to be great!

guess what! i will tell you things!

2010-01-04T05:17:00.000-08:00

oh blog,
it has been so long. too long in fact. i dropped liz off at takamatsu airport a few hours ago, which makes me alone for the first time in three weeks. now i am going to type a short list of everything i can fondly remember doing over this long vacation. pictures are going to come later, and there are a few.
we slept til noon, went to the instant ramen museum, went on a ferris wheel on top of an 8 story building, went to osaka castle museum, went to my karate dojo's year end party and the after-party, watched dewey cox, wet hot american summer, an examined life, the king of kong, the sorpranos and the wire, watched lots of japanese tv including nanikore aka "what is this rare thing?", very young childrens' first experience shopping alone, and don't laugh or you will get hit on the butt as you pretend to work in a funny hotel game show. we ate takoyaki, ramen, tonkatsu, udon, gyoza, sushi, shabu shabu, nabe, curry, okonomiyaki, mcdonalds, subway, kfc, starbucks, pizza, squid, and snails, went to the osaka aquarium where they have 2 whale sharks and the second biggest tank of water in the entire world, walked around a lot, went to tokushima city on new years day when nobody was there, played a lot of new super mario brothers for the ds, played chess, badminton, ping pong (at gyoza stadium), drew pictures, and liz gave me an awesome haircut.
but now i have work tomorrow, which is why i have to go to bed like right now. i feel okay because this means that this year i am spending in japan is about half over. it is 2010 now, two thousand ten, a new decade, and i might be an adult or something. that is kind of exciting. more teaching english tomorrow. i have to study japanese at a triple pace because the test is due on the 20th and i have barely opened the book. i already miss my girlfriend, it was so much fun to have her here but it is going to be even better when i am back in america.
great!

2009-12-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

blog,
on the last day i have to work before my 3 week vacation with my girlfriend, who gets here tomorrow, i not only have to teach three classes back to back to back in the morning, but in the afternoon there is an "evacuation drill" that takes up two hours. also my right tail light is out. i guess putting a rubber band around my wrist is going to help me remember to take care of that. however i did get paid today, and it was garbage day. you probably want to hear more about japan and japanese things? listen, i have to stamp some english notebooks with today's date. all of the english teachers agree that there is something very wrong with english education in japan. it is going to take them a while to come around and make it better. basically i think you need to use a language for something daily, and mostly "everyday life" becomes the required use of a langauge, but when you are learning it just so you can use it in class and pass a test, you really dont need to understand it at all.
great!

keeping you updated

2009-12-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

hello blog,
the e-prime experiment is over. some people don't like it, and it takes a little too much effort for right now.
today i went christmas caroling with all of the other foreign english teachers in my city area. we went to nine schools and sang about four classic christmas songs at each. i had to wake up really early but it was better than a boring day at work. we went deep into the basically uninhabited foggy river valley, and then back into my part of town. i am so glad that i dont live an hour plus away from a food market. i had a very big, delicious lunch of pork and rice and beef udon, which was only around $8 and so satisfying. it was a good day, mostly because of the social interaction and because we made so many japanese middle school students happy.
tomorrow i am going to clean the entire house, bottom to top, do laundry, take care of some minor errands, and get ready for liz to get here on tuesday. anything i dont finish tomorrow can be finished on sunday. i am waiting to take a ton of wet laundry to the laundromat so i can sit there and finish reading paradise lost while my things dry. i ordered a super mario vidogame for my DS which i hope gets here tomorrow. i know now that i should have used amazon japan which everyone says is much faster, and you can even pay at a convenience store, which sounds too convenient.
so monday is the last day i have to go to work this year. chatting with everyone here just makes me more sure i want to leave in july. i dont know what i want to try to do when i get back to america but living alone is just too lonely! ah i cannot forget to pay my rent this month. i have a few weeks still. i worry too too much about money and it should not be a problem at all. i am just much more thrifty than everyone i know.
happy new year, everyone
great!

e-prime no matter how you judge me

2009-12-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

dearest blog of blogs!
another week in japan has come to an end. i had a good time at karate today, sensei said to only use 30% of our power for sparring because of the tournament that i cannot go to on sunday becase of work. on wednesday, sensei broke 2 pieces of wood and a baseball bat with his legs. this looked amazing, and i have photos. they will be posted, all in good time.
i asked a few of my wonderful professors for their insights wrt President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers to fight Al Qaeda in afghanistan. the responses i have gotten so far appear very thought-provoking and valuable. i will put some time into crafting my own official opinion. i wish Obama the best of luck but i go back and forth.
what can i say about japan that i have not already said? tomorrow will become saturday, and i feel thankful for a day off to clean up and do some minor chores. if my posts sound less than enthused or satisfied, then you must understand that i miss my home country and have been experiencing the zizekian notion of how my homeland and culture is experienced as totally contingent and arbitrary. it can feel stressful and upsetting sometimes, but like my dad says, this experience has no replacement and i appreciate the chance i was given every day. self control seems like the most difficult concept i have encountered, maybe even harder than being true to oneself. socially i feel totally deprived here, but that will all become okay once liz gets here and i get three weeks, the same amount of time i used to got to know her with initially, to spend with her again and relax. today i had my last day of the year at tsuji elementary school, the one near my house, where i teach with a japanese teaching assistant who writes all of the lesson plans. it can feel like a difficult environment to teach in, but utlimately i feel thankful for her presence, as i rely on it. i heard that the job market in america has suffered less than usual this past month? that bodes well for my chances upon returning to the USA, hopefully it doesnt hurt the strong yen.
i will to buy myself a christmas/hannukah (confused because of secular japan) present tomorrow in the form of a small video game. this week and a half will go by very quickly. i will now go read paradise lost, the end of which i slowly appraoach, and then retire for the night. in case i forgot to tell you, i received my blue belt, second level, in karate on wednesday. it looks cool, and i feel good about it.
great!

this post has 4 karate pictures and one landscape. also i try out e-prime for the first time on this blog!

2009-12-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

welcome back, blog.
(note: here you can read about e-prime, something i heard about which i have decided to try as an experiment. this post has been composed, to the best of my knowledge, entirely in e-prime, and i will continue to try to do all of my writing in this language.)
december has finally come. does this mean winter has started? it feels cold outside, but it still feels more like autumn. i took a picture of a mountain after i went food shopping the other day. i spent more money during that food shopping than i have in any other since i got here. here you can see the picture. the leaves change, and japanese people sincerely love to talk about how much they appreciate looking at the changing colors.

the rest of these pictures i took before a karate lesson about a week or so ago. my left foot has almost reached its normal status again. i might not even have to favor the other one in karate tonight. i did get kickced in the nose last week, which did not feel like fun at all. i learned that the nose piece demands constant protection. every time before my karate lesson starts, the lesson for the little kids ends, and if i get there early enough i can watch them spar. i got some action shots here which you may enjoy.

sometimes they really go crazy and i like to watch such small kids use so much enegry. yamamoto sensei stands with his arms folded, giving criticism and encouragement.

those white things on their arms and legs, the supporters (sah-poh-taas), help absorb the impact of feirce blows. even with those on, a good fight can still hurt. and no, i had no head protector when i got hit in the nose. we don't use those. it would have been very nice to have had one then, i imagine.

here you can see the rest of the kids lined up, waiting their turn. those green shirts with yellow writing look great; they say seikoukai (the type of karate) on the back in yellow and "full contakuto karate" in white on the front, which i find funny.

and here you can see a closer shot of some kids hanging out. the japanese peace sign, or victory sign, has become ubiquitous. the boy on the right, sensei's son, seems young but will become strong one day.
and that would exhaust everything i have to show you today. yesterday i bought 2 bus tickets to and from osaka for christmas week, and even though i felt nervous about carrying on a conversation in japanese, i still got a compliment on my language ability, which felt great. today for lunch we ate a big piece of brown bread, watery vegatable soup, milk, an orange, and what the japanese call "american dog", which you would recognize as a "corn dog". i received two because i come from a foreign country, and the baseball coach laughed at this. i will probably eat gyoza and edamame for dinner. liz gets here in under two weeks, and it will feel so nice to not work and relax for a while.
great!

thought i would get a post up here for you

2009-11-29T16:26:00.000-08:00

blog,
what is up? i am just having a great time, stamping english notebooks, getting cups of coffee served to me. my foot is almost back to 100%, i can just about normally climb and descent a flight of stairs. this is three weeks after i hurt it, which makes me think i must have broke or bruised a foot bone. a bunch of other kids are out with the flu again this week. last week it was second graders but now it is mostly first graders. i have two second grade classes to teach (middle school) and then i go to the elementary school in the mountains where i will have two classes to teach. the sumo tournament on kyushuu ended yesterday, hakuho beat asashoryu and got the emperor's cup, setting a new record of wins in a year with 86, beating asashoryus old record of 84. excited for badminton tonight, going to dress properly and get some smash hits in there. oh, i just got a little meat cracker handed to me?i hope it goes well with black coffee.
ran this through the japanese test kitchen last night. it went ok. i really dont feel like blogging about it though.
more i feel like complaining. next friday i have to go christmas carolling. im expected to know when and where i have to go, but nobody told me (anything) and i havent gotten any emails about it, just word of mouth through robbie another english teacher at karate. things like this make me want to be unemployed for years, or at least get away from the office and classroom environment.
i bought a lot of vegetables and meat this weekend: bacon, ham, burgers with cheese already inside them, chicken, jumbo shrimp for tempura, blocks of beef for curry, green peppers, spinach, asparagus.
i have taken some random pictures here and there, so they will be posted in good time. i need to start carrying my camera with me everywhere i go. only two weeks until liz gets here. i should finish up the japanese test, it is incredibly hard but i only have like 35 questions to go. it is due the tenth.

so i hope that within the next 7 months, the dollar gets even more destroyed then it currently is, taco bell comes out with some new wonderful product, maybe unemployment shrinks to under ten percent, and hopefully the economy grows by an possible amount. and all of my friends get places of their own.
so i am also expected to have a "notice" in japanese, about christmas carolling. i JUST got the fowarded email from my friend adam, who was nice enough to include the "someone forward this to russell bc i dont have his contact information" part of the email. i say to them, it says they are going to come here at 11:30. this is not good enough. of course i am expected to have this because they had it last year, i guess when the told my predecessor things. i still get called his name by just about everyone every day. so i guess i can pay that foward by having whoever comes next year, hopefully a girl, get called by my name.
great!

a basic post

2009-11-23T21:51:00.001-08:00

about to end my fourth month here, i sometimes still get called Eric, the name of my predecessor at this job, by my students. once this happens, it isn't long before the teachers get confused and call me Eric too. i really don't make an effort to remember anyone's name, becuase there are too many students and faculty, plus i am terrible with names in the first place. but this makes it extra disheartening when i get asked again if i am going to stay on for another year and i say no, because i miss my girlfriend, and because i am homesick. "are you enjoying japanese life?" i guess so, but probably not enough. maybe there is a job in america waiting for me where i will be called some version of my birth name, where i will spend less than 75% of the time sitting at my desk entertaining myself (but hopefully not much less than that). there is also most likely a very interesting piece that has already been written by a dozen people i have never heard of called "english education in japan is a poorly worded, agrammatical joke that makes no sense" which i could rewrite in my sleep, but i wouldn't ever bother to. mayuko did get a 100 on her english exam though, so that made me feel okay. today is tuesday, and i do not have english conversation group (four women chatting in japanese, me talking about my life in english), so i get to relax and finish watching the season finale of curb. being so well paid to do so little here must be doing something bad to my sense of self-worth, to my overall value as a person, but i won't be able to tell until after i'm done here. i do get to watch sumo tournaments, which last 15 days and are awesome. also, i am thinking that i probably broke or bruised one or more bones in my left foot, because wednesday will be two weeks since i hurt it at karate, and it still is not near 100%. i can almost walk, and not quite climb or descend the stairs properly. it is just messed up. hopefully it will be fine again in 3 weeks when liz gets here.
the sense of disappointment that i got from saying i would only stay 1 year is the same as the guilt i was made to feel when i told a woman at my conversation group that liz and i are going to osaka and maybe kobe. nowhere else? that's it? why not kyoto? because, that's why.

i have to keep you updated

2009-11-19T18:13:00.001-08:00

dear blog,
i feel like i have been slacking. honestly there is not much to say. i live a fairly boring existence here. my life outside of school consists mainly of preparing food and eating, doing laundry, and cleaning my house. i bought a couple prebreaded shrimp to fry up into tempura. a piece of fried chicken i bought at a convenience store after work yesterday basically gave me a heavy allergic reaction; i should have known something was up when pure liquid grease came out after 2 bites.
i just made a reservation online for 5 nights at a nice looking hotel in osaka so i can have somewhere to sleep when i go there with liz in december. i am very existed to do all kinds of walking around and shopping and looking at things and not having to listen to broken english.
a look at the influenza board reveals that 17 students, mostly second graders who were away on a school trip, have the flu. so everyone has to wear flu masks, which is ok because they warm up your face nicely.
monday is the emperor's birthday so i get a day off. i am going to try karate tonight, since it has been a week since my foot damage. i will remember not to do any serious kicks with that foot. it is almost better, and i can tell it should be fine again soon.
great!

60th post

2009-11-13T19:29:00.000-08:00

hi blog,
it rained a lot last night.
what do you do when a japanese elementary school student starts crying? you have a few options. some would say that your best bet is to just ignore him or her. elementary school in japan is a tough place and you might want to let these kids adjust on their own. maybe you want to run over, interrupt the lesson, and provide some comfort. when there is another teacher in the room, this usually becomes their job. if you play any kind of game with winners and losers in a 4th grade or younger class, it's basically a surefire bet that someone isn't going to be able to take the heat and is going to weep. but life is tough, and you can't always win, especially at bingo! so i try to not let it get to me, but it does anyway.
i hurt my foot at karate practice yesterday. robbie, another american english teacher, sustained the same wound last week when he got his kick blocked by sensei's knee. so when i went to kick robbie, he "payed it forward", and now i am limping around. I am taking tylenol and keeping some ice on my foot, but i am basically a handicapped person for the next few days. it is good that i dont have to work until monday. i think it will be back to functioning walking capability by then. so don't worry about me. the only problem is that i had this long list of things to do this weekend. let me share some of it with you:
- clean house
- set up kotatsu
- gather recycling
- study japanese
- buy tissues
- put new cds in car
- read paradise lost
the only one of these i can still easily do is study japanese, which is not fun. i can't read paradise lost because i accidentally left it at the elementary school around the block, which wouldnt be a problem if i could walk, and if i knew whether or not the school was open today. i ran out of tissues when i had a cold last week, and a tissue is a very important thing to have in japan. i will probably be able to get some of these things done tomorrrow, which is sunday.
obama is supposed to give a speech from tokyo about american asian relations today. if you catch it, let me know what you thought. i am watching it right now.
great!

there might be ten pictures in this post

2009-11-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

hi blog,
i have two hours to kill here at work, so i am going to tell you thinks and show you pictures. maybe you want to see and hear about the festival that was at the school around the block from my house on saturday. why they had this festival i do not know, from what i can tell it was a generic all-purpose neighborhood festival. it had everything you could expect or want.
you better know they had the brass band from the school down the street to kick things off.

also the kindergartners got to join the parade with their own little shrine thing made out of paper. this was the best shot i could get of them.

there were grandmas making yakisoba, which is delicious.

and lots of little stands selling snacks like yakitori, takoyaki, shaved ice, etc. and even toys too. as you can see here, since there is no right to bear arms in japan, merchants are allowed to sell realistic toy guns to small children, and everything is okay.

here is more evidence of the sale of real-looking toy guns. i had a lot of fun explaining to everyone that these can't be sold in america, because some people do have real guns, and if the cops see you with a realistic fake one they will probably kill you by accident. also, two of these boys have hot dogs.

do you know about mochi? mochi is a very thick, sticky goop or paste made from pounding rice for a very long time. when japanese people look at the moon, they see a rabbit pounding mochi instead of a man. there were guys making mochi at this festival. with each smash of the hammer rice particles and water would go flying everywhere, and after every three smacks a fourth guy would zip his hand in there with water and manipulate the mochi, each time narrowly avoiding the hammers.

the kindergartners, with their amazing hats, seem to enjoy watching this.

and then, unbelievably, in what must be the creation of a lifelong memory, the kindergartners were given a chance to pound the mochi, three at a time. it was wonderful to watch.

here are some happy elementary school girls.

i ate a hotdog, two sticks of akitori, and then this bowl of udon. i was very full.

i have more pictures but i thought these were the best and they are all i am uploading for now.
i have badminton tonight. i get paid this week. i should probably clean the house soon. liz is coming to japan in mid december and staying until january. i think we are going to go to osaka and just hang out and travel, we will see. it will be good to get off this somewhat boring island.
great!

a post about what i am up to

2009-11-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

dear blog,
hello. did you know that it is getting very cold in japan? well, it is. and this is enhanced by the facts that my house has no central heating and no insulation of any kind! so i asked my predecessor how to work the big gas heaters that are sitting in the closet. he said something about getting the blue tanks outside filled at the gas station, and then using a pump to get them into the little metal tanks in the heaters. also he said they smell when turned on, but mrs kiuchi who speaks okay english said she got used to the smell of gas heaters and now likes it. i found a kotatsu in the closet yesterday too, it is a big table with a blanket over it and a heat lamp underneath that you plug in and sit with your legs under it so it heats you up and winter is bearable. i have a half day today because i worked on sunday, so i am going to check out the gas heater situation. maybe i need to get a new pump at the hardware store. maybe i need to go to the gas station to fill up the gas tanks. also, i have karate tonight, which is good because this saturday there is a karate meeting and then we are going out for nabe, which is a big japanese soup pot with many different ingredients.
my girlfriend is coming to visit me for a few weeks in decemeber, so i have to ask the principal for those days off. maybe we will go to a hot spring. maybe we will sleep in the main room with the regular heater because the gas ones are weird. i dont know any of this yet. i do know that i am excited to eat a lot of gyoza and have some company.
i have some cool pics to show you. the first one is from the day all of us foreign teachers went to northern tokushima highschool for halloween lessons. some people dressed up, and the students were cool, but i only took one good picture, and it is of the river as i went over it in a train.

this next cool picture was taken after i heard loud yelling and carrying on outside my door one day over the weekend. i went outside and saw this, so i ran back inside and grabbed my camera to document it.

basically what you see here is a shinto procession where they carry a golden house shaped shrine box, in this case "the biggest one in tokushima" (said a guy to me) from one shrine to another. it transports a little god and they have a competition where they ram these things into eachother, or something. it was crazy. the streets were lined with little paper things as you can see here, in a picture i took as they went by.

here is what an auditorium full of japanese middle school students wearing facemasks look like, incase you were wondering what was really up in japan all of the time.

notice the extremely cool looking uniforms for the boys. these pics are from the sunday i had to work, when we went to the next town over to see a kyogen play, which is a farcical comedy type performance usually given between more serious noh plays. i didn't understand much as it went on, but it was somewhat entertaining. here is a picture from some of the action during the second act.

there you go. tomorrow there is another team teaching demonstration in the next town over, so i have to come back here to get a ride to it after teaching at the elementary school in the morning. i can't figure out what lunch is today. it says a piece of bread and milk, and also mayonnaise, ham and egg.
great!

keeping you updated one post at a time

2009-10-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

what's up blog,
i am just sitting at my desk in the office today. it is midterm test day, so all i have to do today is read some english prompts out loud for the listening part of the test. thought i would make a most since i have checked every website that i know about and read all of the interesting news that i could find today. joe lieberman is a real jerk, isn't he?
yesterday i went to an english middle school teacher's conference in komatsushima, a little bit south of tokushima city. there was a mock class demonstration that i watched. i had a lot of problems with the way they did things and i could have taken the demonstration as a good lesson of what NOT to do in my english classes. for example, they played background music while the students were chanting phrases, which i thought was miserable. also he assisant language teacher (foreign teacher, my job) basically just stood there the entire time. however, after the lesson, i turned to my teaching partner and said that the only thing i liked was that the girl doing my job was wearing jeans, and that i should be able to wear jeans, which made my teacher laugh a lot.
after the $8 standard bento lunch, the linguistics professor who gave the talk after mayuko's prefectural speech contest gave a two hour and change talk about different aspects of language and what we need to do to be effective language teachers. he said we have to go beyond the purely grammatical and syntactical, into the social and discourse and strategic uses of language. stuff like giving information in a logical order, putting paragraphs together, saying the right thing at appropriate times, and body language were all covered. there were lots of activities and games for the foreign teachers to do with the japanese teachers. for example, the best ice-breaking game was for a teacher to communicate their phone number with a key that read 1 - Lake, 2 - Rake, 3 - Lice, 4 - Rice etc etc since japanese people have an incredibly tough time with the difference between these noises, which is caused by the fact that the english alphabet and its noises is never formally taught. english education starts in middle school (next year it officially will begin in 5th and 6th grade) with no formal phonetic training. one teacher asked a question about phonetics and how we should teach it, since it isnt on the program at all, and the professor said to start young. another teacher asked how all of the lovely theory applies to testing, and the professor said it really didn't, so teaching it would be difficult. it was a fulfilling day where i got to meet some other english teachers.
i have been going to badminton on mondays and karate on wednesdays on fridays, which is good. i have karate tonight! also i have been slowly doing the JET program's advanced level japanese lessons, which can be frustrating but good. due december 10th is a standardized test of 50 questions, the first of 6 such tests that are given throughout the year. if i get them all in on time and get at least 70% of the answers right, i get a certificate that says i passed the course or something.
friday i have to get up early to catch a 6:30 train to the city, where there is another foreign teacher conference, this time for hallowe'en where we all have to give hallowe'en themes lessons. i have no costume and no idea for a costume, so i will probably just wear a tracksuit and pretend to be cool.
i have to work this sunday, because there are classes in the morning and we are going to a cultural presentation, something kabuki related, in the afternoon. for this everyone gets monday off, but i have to go to the mountain school monday afternoon, so i still have to do that, and to replace that work i am getting wednesday afternoon off. tuesday is National Culture Day so that is a holiday and everyone gets off. next thursday is another class demonstration in another city, so i need to go there in the afternoon. it is a busy, confusing 2 weeks. but then october is very done with and november will have some of it gone already. can you tell i want to come home yet?
tonight i think i have to go buy some more recycling bags, i forgot to buy the one for cans so they have just been piling up in the sink. also the karate tournament application is due today, and that costs $25. the train ride to the city is about $30, and that may or may not be reimbursed. i broke a $100 on lunch yesterday, so i think i can get the recycling bags, some bananas, the karate thing, and the train ride all without having to take out some more money. but this sounds risky and difficult, plus the lunch on friday is another $8 standard bento. so i will probably have to get some cash later or tomorrow. oh well.
japanese people rarely drink water. its always green tea, coffee, soup or sugar drinks.
today lunch is sugar covered bread with a little omlette and vegetable soup. one of the less impressive lunches i have seen. curry and fried are more appreciated.
that is everything i can think of for today.
great!

a few pictures before i go home

2009-10-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

blog,
i have two pictures for you. the first one if of the giant spider that lives by the takoyaki shop in a big roadsign. it is very big, i am not kidding. if you hold your thumb and index finger apart at their maximum distance i would say that this spider is about that big. you do not want to find this thing in any part of your house. this is a female, because the females are the big ones. they keep triple layer webs, one main layer and two less intricate layers behind and in front.

this next picture is much nicer. it is just of the yoshino river. i took it when i was walking across the bridge to buy some snacks at the convenience store. it was a very nice day.

what else do you want me to take pictures of? i am trying to upload some videos on youtube but it is not working at all right now because i think i have to convert these AVIs to MPEG4s.
great!

let's see if i can make a post without firefox crashing more than three times

2009-10-20T15:59:00.001-07:00

so blog,
it has been a few days since my last post. i thought i would keep you up to date this morning.
everyone, and by everyone i mean roughly more than half of the teachers and students i work with, is wearing white cottony facemasks that simply can't do much fo anything against any kind of airborne infection. as paranoid hypochondriacs, they seem to have mastered the art of the self-induced placebo effect. since japan is a country where people rarely touch and instead opt for the bow, in terms of swine flu, which they call "new type influenza", they really have nothing to worry about. but all of this worrying keeps them healthy anyway. i can't take anyone wearing the mask seriously, so i wont be donning one myself.
let's see. i didn't win a single game last monday at badminton, and only four women came to my english discussion group last night. this is okay though, because 3 days will mark the third full month that i have been here, which is exactly a quarter of a year. this means i almost half way done with half of my job here. i decided a while ago that i don't want to recontract for another year, because thinking about american food makes me delirious even now, and i miss too many other people and things.
today he first graders have a speaking test, and it is my job to grade half of them on pronunciation, volume, fluency, and accuracy. it is going to be a rough situation since most of them prefer to talk to a point an inch in front of their face while looking at their own feet. but english is crazy and sounds mostly like nonsense, and they dont have any choice at all in learning it because it is on every high school and college entrance exam.
it has been getting quite cold since autumn started. my house has, in addition to no central heating of any kind, no insulation of any kind, so i have to heat my bedroom with a space heater a few hours before i go to bed, and i can't leave it on all night because i don't want to burn down the house, so it is always very cold by morning.
if my left leg feels at tight and achey as it does right now, i will be skipping karate tonight to let it heal up more. i think it is still bruised from last wednesday's karate where all that leg did was kick people and get kicked.
in better news, today there is yaki soba for lunch.
i took a few pictures the other day, i will try to get them up by this afternoon.

i just finished a bag of dried squid

2009-10-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

oh my blog,
right now, there are people on tv totally eating big cooked centipedes.
great!

always drink water

2009-10-13T20:44:00.001-07:00

oh blog,
i taught two classes today and even posed for the school yearbook. i don't have anything left to do today but sit and look busy for a few hours, so i thought i would make a blog post.
i took some pictures the other day at a festival at the rest stop across the river. the rest stop is called "oasis" and has a little room with nothing but twelve different vending machines, and a big market, and a stage for people to dance on where everyone can watch. they do these dances so the tour buses always bring people to sit and relax.
some middle schoolers did a drum show, which was neat.

here is the view of the river from behind the rest stop. there are some boats and people are getting on for a ride.

one of my first grade students was there with his family. i got to take this picture with him, which was followed by him hitting me in groin.

oh, i went zorbing on monday, which was appropriate because monday was national "health and sports day". zorbing, so you dont have to look it up, is when they strap you in to a giant plastic sphere-within-a-sphere and roll you down a hill. there are two options as to how you want your zorb; you can either take it dry, with a harness, or take it "wet", which means the ball gets water in it and you get soaked, without a harness. i took the harness route, which is okay, but i will have to wait until it gets warm again to zorb wet.
here is a picture of what it looks like when someone is going down the hill.

you just spin around and around and bounce until you hit the padding at the bottom of the hill. here is the view from the top.

one ride is only 700 yen, or little more than $7. it was fun and cool but the bouncing was a little hard on my neck, and right before it ends i felt like i was spinning way too fast.
i am thinking about going to okinawa for christmas.
i think i am going to have some instant yakisoba with microwave chicken pieces for dinner tonight. next week there is an academic conference which will i believe be mostly in japanese, and the week after on halloween i have to go to the city for a foreign teacher conference. but those things will be over very soon.
great!

post to a blog

2009-10-11T00:09:00.000-07:00

hello blog,
i just went to a small festival at the rest stop across the river. watched nice dancing, ate some sacks. i even had a yogurt peach tea.
this spider is just about everywhere. now you know what it looks like. there are at least ten of these on my house right now. hopefully the cold will kill them soon, because they are scary.
tomorrow is national health and sports day, so i get school off but there is still badminton club, which i am looking forward to.
i got to hold a cute two month old baby.
great!

recent events

2009-10-09T01:28:00.001-07:00

blog readers,
today, at the office of an elementary school i was offered four cups of coffee, where i accepted and drank three of them.
i am having some computer trouble. right now i am operating in safe mode, which is very convenient, except i cannot do anything that requires sound. so skyping becomes impossible, which is a problem since skyping helps me feel closer to people i am very far away from. i am waiting for an english speaking (i know, right?) acer representative in tokyo to call me back and help me troubleshoot the problem. i have a vague idea what could be wrong, and i really just want to send the computer in and have them fix it, which will probably cost money, since it doesn't sound like i am covered even by the foreign travel warranty.
in other, better news, there was no 5th or 6th grade class today because those students went to a sports day at another school, and when the teachers got back, there were 2 large sized hokka hokka (takeout restaurant nearby) bentos for me.
great!

actually

2009-10-05T20:19:00.000-07:00

blog,
sadly, i was just informed that in the event of a "super typhoon" which will cancel school for all of the students, "teachers must work", and i would still be expected come in here. great!

stuff and things

2009-10-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

oh blog,
here are some of those pictures i told you about.
but first! i got invited to badminton for adults by the lady who sits next to me in the office at the elementary school near my house who is also in my english conversation group. her english is pretty good, in fact. so last night i went to badminton with my gym clothes and new gym sneakers, which i had never worn. we practiced for a half hour and then got split into teams where we played a bunch of other teams. the vice principal is so good that he can play doubles alone and win all of the time. i was paired with a nice woman, and we lost our first 3 matches, including the third against the vice principal. but then we somehow won the last 2, 15 to 14 and 15 to 13 respectively! it was a lot of fun and i think i am going to go back every week. it is good not to be interacting with only schoolchildren.
and now, you may look at some digital photographs.

this is a scuplture of a dancing man on a bridge over the river in tokushima city. doesn't it look nice? that's because it is.

here is a water tower or some other type of feature that has, surprise, illustrations of some dancers on it.

i call this one "would you like something to drink?" there are nine vending machines lined up in a row, because you are probably thirsty already.

and here is a picture from the morning before i went back to tokushima city for the prefectural speech contest. it's like 6:45 AM and there are two old ladies talking about things. what are they talking about? you can see the rice fields, which are everywhere.
so those are the pictures i have to show you.
there is a "super typhoon" called Melor, Typhoon #18, headed directly for japan, directly for this island. it is supposed to be here tomorrow and it is supposed to be horrible. if you don't believe me, you need to look at this:

and probably read this too. if i am lucky (or unlucky?) i will get a call at around 6 AM tomorrow telling me that school is cancelled and that my services (stamping english workbooks with the date, repeating sentences, being cheerful and have people call me "young" all day long) are not needed.
lunch today is milk, rice with some little vegetables in it, a miso type soup with carrots, tofu, some other stuff i dont understand, and a piece of what looks like salmon with maybe some egg cooked over it, sprinkled with bread crumbs in a tin foil dish. today's lunch does not look like it is going to get higher than a 7 on my lunch scale of 1 to 10, 10 being delicious.
that's it for today. keep tuning in for more blog updates.

The Results

2009-10-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

blog,
we did not win the speech contest. we are not going to tokyo. we did get "a very good result" which means a big certificate and a big box with a big trophy in it, which mayuko deserved, and now we do not have to practice anymore. this is kind of ok because the tokyo contest is 3 days long. we went out to eat with mayuko's family at what i feel like is the japanese equivalent of denny's without actually being denny's, because they have denny's here, it just wasn't called that and had japanese food. we all had variations on a little piece of hamburger meat which they call "hambaagoo" - mayuko and her dad got the one filled with cheese. i really don't want to get into the content of the speeches, but mayuko had the best pronounciation out of just about everyone!
how do you celebrate having the best banana of your entire life? i think i just had this banana. it was the perfect ripeness, perfect number of honey spots, best firmness, no rotty parts at all.
but to balance out this good thing, a bad thing has happened. do you know the rubber inside slippers i have been bringing around from school to school; well the right one has apparently shrunken substantially in my car. a yahoo! answers search provides the idea that rubber shrinks when COOLED, which would mean that it got very cold last night in my car and that wearing it on my warm foot should help it to EXAPND again, but it is very tight and uncomfortable right now.
i got invited to play badminton at school here tonight at 8 with some teachers from various schools. i do not have my own racket, and i dont think i have played badminton in several years, but it can't be too difficult to hit a little "shuttlecock" over the net with one of those things.
anyway, i am going to the elementary school up in the mountains in the afternoon today, and i heard that rachel, the company provided teaching assistant/lesson planner is also going to be there, so i probably won't have to do much work myself, which is ok. although i was told to make a powerpoint (i have the word "ski" written next to this) and "bring cards of acitvities" of which i have none. let's hope rachel has good ideas.
gotta help teach a class or two before lunch. at this point teaching means slowly and clearly reading something and then having it repeated back to me upwards of five times in a row, with the hope that the kids either memorize it or get an idea for how it sounds.
there are a few photos on my camera that didn't get uploaded for some reason. they happen to be the best ones that i took. look for them some time in the near future, between now and when i come back to america.

more pictures

2009-09-28T21:14:00.000-07:00

hi blog,
here are some more pictures that i took of tokushima city last weekend.

this is what the city looks like when you get out of the train station. there are palm trees, and on the right is sogo department store, which is extremely large. i think the foreign food store might be in there, but when i looked for it i could not find it. i am determined to find it again. it is called Jupiter.

here are some kids waiting to cross the street on bikes. notice the blue and yellow raised walkway in the distance; some streets are too busy to cross on foot, so the only way to get to the other side is via these things. also, there is a mountain.

there are images of dancers everywhere in tokushima, since the awa odori is the only thing everyone can agree is awesome all of the time. these are sculptures of a woman and a boy dancing on mail boxes.

there are some dragonball figurines in the front window of this store.

all decent restaurants know to display plastic renditions of their most popular dishes in the winsow. i had the "mixed fry set" for lunch, which is in the middle on the right. it was delicious.

this is a sculpture in a park. they are not dancing. if anyone knows what is going on here, i would love to know.

a boat goes by on the river.

this is a cool looking eatery front.

keep walking and you will see the cable car airway to the top of the mountain. i took the ride, $10 for both ways. here is what i saw.

getting up there...

pretty high now. the mountain casts a shadow.

just check out the view from the top of mount tsurugi.

not bad.

look at the bridge in the distance.

how about the other side of the mountain? no city.

i would not advise driving on this bridge.

there is a pagoda on the top of the mountain.

there is also a little shrine.

you want to walk down/up the mountain? be my guest.

what's that on the small white building at the center of the photograph?

is that...?

could it be...?

nothing to worry about, he is in a good mood.

and then i had dinner at a kaiten sushi, where you pick your 100-300 yen plate off a little track and get endless green tea. they even had an english menu, which was impressive. i have to go back here, since it is my favorite thing to eat, ever.
that's it!
i helped edit some of the older kids' english sentences today. they have a written exam coming up and its very important that they follow the rules and not get anything wrong. they must write 15 word minimum answers. everyone was pretty nice to me today. it looks like it is going to rain a lot very soon. i am going to make curry for dinner tonight. did you like the pictures? did i miss anything? email me for questions and comments. thanks.

picture posts before lunch

2009-09-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

hi blog,
i got a request for some pictures of peoples' houses. here are some houses that i saw on the way to the city from the train.

old school traditional, with an ugly wall.

i kind of hope that this is one house and not two, but who knows. notice the slanty roof.

another slanty roof, this time with car and drying laundry. little balcony, modern, austere. somewhat nice, i would imagine.

if you live in tokushima city, maybe this is your house. i really like this one.
okay, there are most picture posts coming up. i have to go to lunch soon, though. today's lunch is a greasy little salad, a bowl of rice, and a big piece of hamburger meat. with milk, of course. after you drink the milk, you have to tear open the container in a special way, along the seam, and unfold the bottom perfectly, and rinse it all out. its very difficult to do properly but i am learning.

a post in which i tell you things

2009-09-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

hey blog,
i went to tokushima city yesterday, bought some clothes and took some pictures. i will get them uploaded and posted, with commentary, some time tomorrow.
i still walk over to the left side of the car when i am about to take a drive. this is a very difficult part of the brain to reprogram.
japanese drivers do not ever turn on their lights when it is raining, so i almost feel bad getting mad at them, like i am in the wrong somehow.
i just saw myself on public access tv at the middle school sports day from a few weeks ago.
get ready for another update soon.
here is a preview: i bought blueberry juice today.

we have attained blog-nirvana, tumblr-status achieved

2009-09-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

ideas to incorporate the unincorporated territories:
Las Vegas Dice
Montana Buffaloes
Idaho Potatoes

two posts in one day, and one is a picture post? you must be in blog-heaven

2009-09-24T21:51:00.001-07:00

blog shangri-la, welcome to the blog-afterlife,
this should make everyone laugh. it's mayuko and i, after the won the regional english speech contest. you see she is holding her certificate of "excellent performance", and her large sized trophy. i look goofy, because i am a goofball. there is a better picture here, on my desk, where i am sitting up straight, my hands are on my lap where they are supposed to be, and mayuko is flashing a peace sign with her trophy holding hand. it is much nicer photo, but it is not in digital form, so you will have to use your imagination, as always.

here is a picture of a giant spider i saw on one of my walks behind my house up around the mountain. these things are everywhere, and they are scary looking. this one was quite large, with a total legspan coming out to a 2.5 inch diameter. there are a lot of different colorful, exotic spiders around here. scary.

next are two pictures of the small stream that goes around the mountain near my house, it eventually empties out into the yoshino river. there was a guy fishing around here, but i didn't snap a cool pic of him.

this is the view from a small bridge that crosses over the river.

let me know what else you want me to take pictures of. i don't have any plans this weekend at all, so maybe you want me to go to the city and take pictures of something? that would give me an excuse to go to the city and do something. let me know, i can be reached day and night at solipsismwow at gmail dot com. i don't have any more class to teach today, just more speech practice with mayuko. bye

its time to blog

2009-09-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

gentle reader,
tomorrow will be the date that marks my time in japan becoming a full two months. it has gone by somewhat fast.
a giant, probably 7 inch long dragonfly hit me right on the head today as i sat in this office at this desk, and then hovered directly in front of me, between my face and this computer's monitor, for about 4 seconds, before buzzing around and flying away. i was terrified.
today's lunch was rice with pickles, miso soup and a piece of fish covered in gray mustard. since i am a foreigner, i got two pieces of fish. i thought it tasted better than some of the other school lunches i have been given, but when i asked the students if it was delicious, they did not agree. when lunch is eaten, music is always played through the speakers for the students to enjoy. it's either fast, emotional j-pop at the middle school or instrumental, light versions of "isn't she lovely" and "close to you" at the elementary schools. I had today and yesterday off at the elementary schools, but i have to come in to the middle school to train mayuko for the prefectural speech contest in tokushima city next sunday, where i hope she wins so we can go to tokyo.
i have karate class tonight, and hopefully yamamoto sensei will have a new set of chin guard supporters for me, as the washing machine totally destryoed one of the velcro bands on my original set. we didn't have karate class this wednesday because of the holiday, so i hope i am not going to get sore or anything.
oh, awesome. they are turning on the air conditioning in the office. it has been so hot all day, thankfully they have decided that now is the time, at 1:30.
i like it here. i like the reliability of the food quality, the nauseatingly formal kindness and overt niceness that everyone treats one another with, i have even gotten used to the habit of excessive bowing, at all times, for all reasons. it's important that i feel like an anomaly all of the time, which i have felt like less and less. the students are very warm and, in their own words, when you ask them how they are, "happy", for the most part. i like knowing that when the sun fills up my room, because i have no curtains, it is doing do before it greets anybody that i know. i like watchin the sumo wrestling tournament on tv from 3 until 5, where the yokuzuna (grandmaster) always wins without fail, because if he lost it would be an outrage and if he doesn't win its a shame, so the spectators would throw their seat cushions onto the ring, but this can't happen. i like the feel of the money, the 1 and 5 dollar coins, the exactness of the change. i even like the extremely, some would say dangerously narrow streets.
but i miss america, more than almost anything, and i want to go home very badly and start a real life there.

reaffirmation of original blog topic

2009-09-19T23:58:00.000-07:00

hello blog,
did i forget that this is a blog about my life in japan? i might have. to be honest, i am still very engaged with politics and happenings back in american. but i am in japan, so i should tell you about it.
i just got back from the sports day (field day) festival at tsuji elementary school, the one near my house. it's just like american field day, except there is an opening ceremony with lots of bowing, there is a big formal stretching introduction that everyone participates in, the winners of each event raise their hands and shout "BANZAI!" twice after they win, and they have this one event where everyone gathers around a basket on a very tall stake and tries to throw colored balls in all at once. i think the red team won today. i got to participate in two events, the adult football kicking relay, and the teamwork race.
in 2 hours there is a party for all the teachers and the parents of the students who participated. everyone only pours drinks for other people, it is just totally wrong to ever pour for yourself. if you get into a serius drinking conversation, you even pass the same little sake cup back and forth.
last night i rewatched inglorious basterds with other american JETs. it was just as fun the second time. we talked about having a pizza party on either monday or tuesday, because monday through wednesday we all have off for national holidays. the only problem is, all of the main pizzas on the menu of the delivery place feature corn as a main topping. maybe you want a pizza with little piles of potato salad on it? i am kind of curious about the shrimp, squid, scallop, green pepper, onion, mushroom pizza. there are a few other pizzas with drizzled mayo instead of sauce. if you want a large (12 slice) "royal pizza" (salami, premeire cheese, [gruyere, ementhal] cured bacon, sundried tomato, fresh tomato, onion, parmesan cheese) it's going to cost you 4,305 yen, or about $45.
speaking of young money, cash money, i only have a 10,000 yen note in my wallet right now. tonight's party will probably cost 3,000, but i might get treated. im afraid that the bank is going to be closed for these next three national holidays. this is kind of ok because i just went food shopping and have a lot of good snacks, but its kind of not ok because i am getting low on gas and i want to ask about my tire pressure.
been watching some sumo wrestling when its on tv, as it is one of the few programs that is not directly about food. the guys really are fat, like extremely round and gigantic. for example, this next guy is 186 cm and 164 kg, do the math. it would be exciting if a match lasted longer than 15 seconds. one guy is so fat and gigantic that there is probably no point in ever trying to fight against him. at the end they all walk around in a line with the fancy patterned skirts, and i swear one guy had a skirt with a golden, embroidered hello kitty next to a dragon. there are a few guys that i think are russian. you have to throw a handfull of salt into the ring before you start for good luck, but i dont know how they avoid tripping and slipping on the piles of salt that are there by the end. this is the only sport i can think of where open handed face slaps, straight up thumb jabs to the tracha, and grabbing the opponent's diaper are not only allowed, but encouraged.
that's about it for japan. i'm trying to imagine the scene in paterson's office these days, his hilarious voice being all like "obama thinks that just because he's the first black president, he can tell me, the first black governer of new york, what to do!?" and all of his advisors being like "actually, yes, because he can, and you're through, and maybe if you do what he says he will ake you the deputy secretary of the special olympics or basketball czar or ambassador to suriname or SOMETHING"
ok i have to take a shower before this party. have a good one.

last post

2009-09-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

blog,
i could have made my point in that last post much more eloquently, but i was pressed for time, because i had to go win a speech contest. the point is, that these three events are examples of how in america today, the issue central to the health care debate, to the hatred of the president, to every social matter around is race, and that this issue of race only now not only plays out on the screen, virtually, but in a manner, featuring players, who are themselves virtual. what i was trying to say is that these examples have something in common with the rodney king situation from years ago, because they were broadcast and people who didnt even know rodney king suddenly cared. but these examples are the opposite of rodney king, and in this way are not legitimate 'events' like rodney king was, because of even the possibility that they could have been staged. whereas there was no possible way that rodney king could have been staged, for any reason, and as a result the broadcast of the event caused widespread panic and fear and actual political upheaval in the form of violent riots. since the obama/wilson, williams/whatever, and kanye/taylor situations could have been fabricated, this shows how even the real issue of race relations in america not only is forced to be played out on a virtual stage, but that it is moreover forced to be carried out by virtual, stand-in, artificial dummies.
the clouds are going away, the band is playing a march at my elementary school, i get the entire next week off. i brought a bag of multicolored mets hats to teach about colors, and hats. i drove to the city the other day just to see what the ride was like. i ate at mcdonalds, breaking my 'no mcdonalds in japan' promise that i made to myself, the entire time with mr. james' goofy grinning face staring up at me from an ad on the table. i got to the city and walked around a uniqlo clothing store for ten minutes before turning around and coming back home.

new post

2009-09-15T21:53:00.001-07:00

hi blog,
i am back with great news. mayuko, my english speech contest trainee, just won her regional speech contest, which means we get to go to the prefectural speech context in tokushima city next wednesday! this is exciting, because if she wins the prefectural contest, the national contest is held in tokyo, and nobody from this area has ever made it this far, so she has a shot. there were 13 other contestants, and 2 get to go to tokushima city. mayuko's pronounciation was as close to perfect as possible for a native japanese speaker. the content of her speech, an interesting essay on the origin of names and appreciation of your own name, helped as well. i was sure she was going to win from the moment she finished her speech, and even though a lot of the other speeches were quite good, the students' pronounciation was no where near mayuko's. so i am very happy, and all of that hard work, endless repetition, and english practice paid off!
in other news, have you heard about all of these "outburts" in the news recently? first was joe wilson's shameful "you lie" scream at president obama during obama's nationally televised address to congress on health care, and then serena williams exploded at a line judge over a terrible call and dropped out of a big tennis tournament, basically giving the victory to her opponent. now we have kanye west, who's job it is to be a "jackass" (president obama's words) stealing the mic from MTV VMA winner taylor swift, and hastily suggesting "ima let you finish, but beyonce had one of the best videos of all time". it does kind of not make sense that you can lose best female video and then win best video of the year, like beyonce did, but kanye was the definition of rude for ruining swift's moment. which brings me to my thesis, and the point of why i am mentioning all of this trashy, pop culture nonsense.
it's pretty clear to me that all three events were staged, and that all three were carried out along pretty distinct lines of racial hatred. first, joe wilson was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the health insurance industry, and egged on by his supporters at the awful, low brow town hall meetings, to let obama know how he felt about the legislation. it doesnt matter that wilson was wrong, because his goal was to get a rise out of obama, which he luckily didnt. there was a camera fixed on wilson the moment he had his "spontaneous outburst", catching his mouth wide open and his finger up, which is suspicious because the photographer was not from south carolina, and nobody knew who wilson was before this. so in a sense, this "outburst" wasn't the planned feature, the idea was to rattle obama and get him to perform his own outburst. joe wilson is a long time notorious racist, and of course thats enough reason for him to talk back to a black president.
things went more smoothly in the case of serena williams, who got a fault called on her by a tiny asian line judge for no reason, giving her opponent the point. the judge either wasnt paying attention or was paid off, and i dont know any other way to explain how the judge heard "im going to kill you" when serena only said "i'm going to shove this **** tennis ball up your ***." like that would kill you. i find myself wondering why serena didnt think that the racket would be a more efficient thing to shove, but that's beside the point. serena should have won the tournament, but decided to quit, citing that she couldn't play with blind/corrupt judges on the court. its harder to make the case of staging for this one, but the announcer had it right when he said "you just can't call that".
lastly, kanye's faux personality has always been about stupid outbursts, egocentric nonsense, and then the followup apologia. gawker has an ok article about the possibility of the most recent one being staged, which is almost worth reading. i cant imagine kanye being granted access to the stage, being given swift's microphone by her without hesitation, and that they already had a camera fixed on beyonce for her reaction without kanye being paid by some producer to make an ass of himself at someone's expense, so people would care and notice that MTV still exists, and so people would watch the jay leno premiere the next night, where kanye just happened to be already scheduled to perform and also go to have a nice dr. phil style sit down with leno, lamenting his own actions.
so we have:
white man is openly paid to interrupts black, doesn't get a response
asian girl is either paid to or blindly makes terrible call on black tennis player, gets a large, intimidated response, which is exaggerated, which causes tennis player to quit
and black man interrupts white girl during her award acceptance speech, claims she should not have won, shrugs and returns the mic to a stunned white girl
it's a trilogy, folks. it always happens like this. what's very sad is that the pop culture moments everyone cares about are not even legitimate happenings anymore, they have to be staged phoney events that take on the guise of reality, even though they wouldn't be any more pertinent to our daily lives if they were legitimate, spontaneous happenings.
but still, if mayuko hadn't won today's speech contest, i would have grabbed the mic and said "ima let you finish, but mayuko had the best speech of all time"...

90 yen to the dollar

2009-09-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

blog,
the current exchange rate is 90 yen to the dollar.
i just got back from karate. there were only three of us there, so i got to go a lot of good fighting. tomorrow is the culture festival, and thursday is sports day, so my weekend gets moved to monday and tuesda. i tried to make curry again today, to redeem myself in my own eyes, and i think i used a little too much water, and the cut of annonymous beef that i bought was tripey and bad, but it came out ok and actually tasted like curry.
well, today is 9/11, a sad reminder that the neoconservatives tried to take over the country via mass murder and treason, and basically succeede, which gave us a black president. will rivers pitt basically summed it up in this article, which was depressing but true.
and of course, all of that is background for obama trying to give every american health insurance, so that america could be more like, you know, every other civilized, modern democracy on the planet. but then! THIS is just a background for this utter disgrace which is probably the lowest point in well, our modern civil democracy. i guess its good, in a way, to have insane, horrible moments like these, so that it can be extremely easy to know who is unabashadly ignorant. rahm israel emmanuel said it best, "no president has been treated like this, ever". it is sad that such an issue that i was following so closely had to be summed up in this moment, but i dont think there is any way to possibly overstate its importance, or its dead-on representation of a large strain of ideas in american politics. joe wilson is a racist. he worked in strom thurmond's office for years. strom thurmond fillibustered the civil rights act. joe wilson makes it much easier for me to say that if you oppose obama's healthcare plan, you are a racist. but what's so wrong with being a racist? isn't it your right to hate and feel threated by black people, by a strong biracial leader? it is, but such an attitude goes against the modern interpretation of the basis of our republic. so it's anti-american, in the literal sense.
but this blog is about japan, where everyone has health insurance, the medical establishment is strictly regulated, people visit the doctor like 5 times more often than in the us, costs are much less and people are much healthier, and they live far longer. but, on the other hand, japan is a country with one ethnic group (the japanese) and only like a year ago were the indiginous ainu in the northern island of hokkaido formally recognized as, well, indiginous ainu. i haven't experienced any direct racism as one of a few extremely white people on this small island, but people are very surprised that i like japanese food, that i can draw japanese style pictures, that i know about japanese movies and culture. i think that japanese culture survives and has become so strong and vibrant in part because of strong racism, of a willingness to stereotype not only foriengers but also themselves. so it isnt inherently a bad thing, unless it goes against the point of your country, like it does in america. but in japan, it's the accepted basis of social affairs, and im ok with that.

pictures, observations

2009-09-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

when i learned i was coming to japan, i was excited about the change in air quality. i thought, the government doesn't pay to seed deadly toxins in the air in the form of chemtrails in japan like they do in the united states, industry is less rampant where i am going to be in the countryside, etc. but the noticable difference is that, since japanese sewage and irrigation is mostly out in the open, next to elevated roads and sidewalks, i get a much more vibrant, varied sampling of the different odors that the world has to offer here. one that you don't get very often in the states is just pure sulfur, which is comforting. japan smells like the way the world is supposed to smell, i think.
also, i have not seen any road kill since i have been here. i have seen government subsidized signs on the highway that show cartoons of of raccoon dogs (tanuki) and other animals with the advisory notice "watch out for animals!", something i couldn't imagine in the states. it isn't like there aren't any animals here, there are.
here is a photograph of the side of the mountain elementary school i went to yesterday. there are only like 31 kids in the entire school, and the grades are so small and disproportionate that the 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and 5th and 6th classes are together. this is good because i only have to go in the afternoon, but would you want to be one of only 2 second graders in your school? the photo is meant to illustrate the fact that this is the mountain school. i drive throug a tunnel and up a thin windy road for a few minutes before i get to it.

its all about that mountain in the far background. this next one is on the other side of the school, kids doing warmup excersizes. again, the school is right up against a mountain, and in this one you can see the high elevation housing that people have around here.

again, big dirt field that serves as a playground. and here we have little statue on the right. i dont know who or what it is but since it doesnt look like its wearing a bib or a ribbon, its probably not a deity.
i should try to get some pictures of those monkeys soon. they are very big.
i think im supposed to go to a class or go outside and watch kids sing or play sports or something soon? its not very clear. im wearing my $40 track pants and my $10 russell athletic shirt. but i wore the thick socks instead of the thin, short ones, so im paying for that. learn by experience, learn the hard way. trial and error. so far, i have totally been on the "just one year please" side of the equation. i don't miss america, i just miss medium sized cheeseburgers, hot dogs and pizza. mostly this is based on the regret i have for not ordering the 18-wheeler burger at the roadhouse during my last real meal in america.
but really, internationalization?

Update

2009-09-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

sup blog,
so i have been hanging out in japan. i taught my first couple elementary school classes last week. today i have to go to the third and last of my elementary schools; this one is up in the mountains and has a very small number of students, so i only have to go in the afternoons. second through fifth graders are lively and extroverted, very excited to see me and happy and loud and everything. but something happens when you enter sixth grade that i can understand. it probably has to do with the realization that school is basically evil nonsense and you dont belong there. well sixth graders are stone cold, serious, quiet, and just awkward.
i took a couple of pictures at the school near my house.

here is a view of the central playground from the inside of the school. as you can see there is a koi pond, and three empty flag poles. every school has one of these big empty dirt fields. i like the mountain in the background. the school, the classrooms and the office and everything, are behind me in this photo.

this next one is a picture of the crickets that are kept in a plastic box in the office at the same school. in the middle of the day these dozens of crickets will just be chirping away, making a loud racket. its kind of hard to believe, which is why i took the photo. you can almost clearly see one big cricket positioned on a slice of eggplant.
i think that's it. i finished the last of my pork chops yesterday, and now i only have the cheap ramen to eat. i remembered i have a lot of good stuff in the freezer to eat.
i get paid in a week. there is a 5 day weekend coming up, the week of the 20th i have monday to wednesday off. i think i'm supposed to take the thursday and friday off and turn it into a big taveling trip. whatever i do is going to be expensive, and i'm just thinking of hotels. unless i go to a city and sleep in an internet cafe, which people actually do all of the time.

Rumble

2009-09-03T06:31:00.001-07:00

i just felt an earthquake! the house shook a little. i felt it inside my body. it's possible that this was part of a 4.8 that hit the hokkaido area.

Teaching

2009-09-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

i just taught three elementary school classes in a row. it's going to be a challenge to keep the first and second graders engaged, but the older kids are great. i dont know if i will have to do any more today, probably just one more? my powerpoint presentation about myself, the showing of maps, american money, post cards, a stab at the game of telephone and an additional introduction of rock, paper, scissors in english took up barely the entire class period. so i need fun things to do with these kids. i can see how this is going to be exhausting, especially with some of the more extroverted, outspoken older kids.
i heard obama is supposed to give a speech on health care in like a week. good for him. if the smartest person in the entire world can't effectively get a plan to cover all americans through two congressional super majorities, then there is really no hope for any of us at all.
my feet hurt from karate, which is ok.

Yer

2009-08-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

sorry, blog.
it's been a few days, i know. i forgot to take my camera with me on my travels these last couple of days, so i dont have pictures of the karate party, or of the family of monkeys that i saw when i took a walk up the mountain road. you can use your imagination. just imagine lots of meat and vegetables on a 2 grid pattern grills over hot coals, lots of kids and people sitting and talking about gender issues and drinking beer and pouring eachother glasses. and then imagine rustling treetops, populated by large grayish brown monkeys with red faces that lept down and ran across the road in front of me and crossed the river.
you should be glad you don't get to see the curry porkchops i made last night, because i didn't use enough water at all in the curry mix, so it came out all dry and sticky. i have two porkchops left over, and basically half of last night's meal too. i got some more cash and i filled up my inherited red toyota with gas.
today i gave my formal self introduction to the main middle school where i work. real classes dont actually start here for like two or three more weeks, so i will be going to elementary schools, 3 per week, until then. there is some meeting i have to go to tomorrow on the other side of town that nobody told me about.
i got to grade some workbooks today, which means skim the pages to make sure the work is there, write an encouraging comment with my name and the date and then maybe apply a "hello kitty" stamp.
as of now i can only see myself doing this for the contractual one year that i signed up for. i heard that the nyc public school system has a lot of openings.
if you haven't heard, the democrats were swept into power here in what can only be called a landslide victory. in two weeks they will organize a government, and hopefully start to change things around here.
in japan, it is a customary ritual for students and teachers to clean the entire school together for about an hour each day. it is a good idea and a lot of fun.
i hope there are some baseball games on tv tonight.

Short Lists

2009-08-28T02:18:00.001-07:00

things i like about japan so far:

-the food. i knew it was good, but it's still great. i am going to make my own tonkatsu soon. also i am going to buy my lunch next week when i run out of ham because i feel like i have been missing out. all snacks at any hour at a choice of convenience stores. there are no sushi places around here, its mostly general japanese restaurants and udon, with the occasional soba or ramen place. i have to try the pizza shop down the road too. what's really good is this cafe restaurant called paparagi, its got a nice atmosphere and very tasty food, which includes spaghetti. i still have to try the waffles.

-baseball on tv. japan is great because there is usually a baseball game on television. there is the major league (i'm watching the joshin tigers play the oyimuri giants right now. i like the tigers, because they have a cooler name and are the underdogs), and the minor, more corporate league, each of which plays like 5 games a day. during the AM any american team with a japanese player can have their game broadcast live. and then there is also high school baseball, which is on all of the time, and is a much bigger deal than the minor leagues. you'll know you're watching hs baseball when you hear the metallic *clink* as a ball gets hit.
-karate class. it's a lot like fencing. you move the same way, and you hold your body in the same way. as a result you get the same kind of briuses in the same places. i have karate class twice a week and its a lot of fun. being tired and pained and limpy and bruised up is a good sign that i am alive. plus i get to punch and kick people as recreation.

-massive political upheaval. here is a link to the most recent article from al jazeera where you will find the driest commentary possible. it turns out the ruling party is set to lose big on sunday, a party which has ruled almost uninterrupted for the last 50 years. this is cool because it is a case of political change being meaningful only because it is different on the surface. sure the democrats have a manifesto with lots of crazy policies people are excited about, but for the most part, it is the change in name and in faces that is going to cause the real change, if anything changes at all. democracy has never been organic in japan, i can RT the nytimes article that reminded everyone that it was first handed down by the emperor via the samurai, and later by the americans. its interesting how much people are willing to talk about politics; they really don't like aso and his liberal democrats. i don't blame them, and it's fun to experience this.

-the yen. 93.875 yen to the dollar right now, which means that for every 10,000 yen i bring home, an amount i treat like $100 here, i will actually bring home $106.52. 100,000 yen, an amount that i think of as $1,000, will actually be $1,065. it's easy to see how this adds up, since my salary is around 3,600,000 yen. and what's great is that i don't think the dollar is going to get any stronger agains the yen any time soon. if it gets to be under 90 yen to the dollar, i will stand to make an incredible amount of money more than i thought i was going to make. but it won't stay like that forever...

-the weather. i heard it's kind of hot in new york right now? well its very nice in ikawa. mild even. i only have to use the air conditioner a little bit at a time. and nights are great. it is supposed to rain tomorrow, which could put a damper on the karate party though.

things about japan that i like less than the previous things:

-asian style toilets. i never knew how much of a luxury it was to have western toilets at the princeton review office in westchester. this is something i am just going to have to gradually get used to. if you dont know what a japanese style toilet looks like, try google image search, and then be thankful.

-living alone. humans are social animals, right? i guess i need to get out more, and try to chill with the other jets in the next town. i miss a lot of people, which makes me not want to do this for more than a year. which leads to the next thing...

-not knowing what i am going to do next. i know its a little early for this kind of worry, but i really dont want to go back to school, and today i am not down to stay here for three years. eliminating those two leaves me with no options whatsoever, so i need to think of something. maybe i should teach high school english in america and let my soul get destroyed, quickly and painlessly.

-my cell phone. it's bulky, white, confusing, and i can't get the pictures off it because my computer doesn't have a cd drive (need a cd drive to install the usb software - ridiculous). i wanted a small, black phone, since everything else i have is small and black (small black ipod, nintendo ds, laptop, wallet, camera) but i picked the free model, because i am super stingy. japanese cell phones have separate email addresses for text messages, a system so complicated that it warranted the most crazy cell phone feature ever: to trade profiles (name, number, arbitrary string of letters and numbers that is my text/email address which i cant figure out how to change) you have to put your sell phone's infrared beacon up against your friend's and decide who is receiving and who is sending, and then switch and repeat the process. it's overtly sexual, and so silly.

Triple Movie Review

2009-08-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

blog,
i saw some movies recently, and i want you to know what i thought of them. this post is going to have spoilers, so if you care about being surprised by the ending of a movie, don't read it until you have seen the films. if you don't care, then that's good, because it is just plot after all.

to start, i want to introduce the three movies together, in a specific order that i will review them in. this is also the order that i watched them. the first is called "district 9". it was produced by peter jackson, who gave a lot of money to a person named neill blomkamp, who is from new zealand, so he could make whatever movie he wanted, because the halo movie got scrapped. actually, it wasn't very much money relative to the other 2 movies i will be reviewing. the second is called "ponyo on a cliff by the sea" which i will refer to as simply "ponyo". it was written and directed by hayao miyazaki, who is a japanese illustrator filmmaker who has won many awards for his work over the years. the third movie i watched is called "inglourious basterds" which was written and directed by quentin tarantino, who had been working on the movie for almost ten years. now, these three movies all share common themes and ideas, as well as plot devices and other aspects which i will get into. they also represent a progression in thought that i found quite interesting. let's start with district 9.

district 9 is a very basic, very entertaining, almost documentary style film about the hypothetical situation in which diseased aliens landed in johannesburg, south africa in the 1980s and were put up in refugee camps by a fictional UN-type organization. in this way, it explores the relationship between a group of humans, south africans, who supposedly got along fine prior to the 80s, and aliens, referred to pejoratively as "prawns" because they resemble undersea creatures. the difference between these two groups is clearly given, one is earthbound and the other is simply not. the south africans resent the fact that their tax dollars are going to provide for the terrible conditions in the alien camp, which is called district 9. all of the political overtones are actually surface features of the analysis i am going to offer. the movie quickly gives us a main character names wikis who winds up accidentally ingesting an alien "fluid" which alters his DNA, making him gradually more and more alien (starting with his left arm, ending with his left eyeball, etc.), giving him he ability to use the powerful alien weapons. strangely, this fluid also has the power to bring the alien mothership back to life and take the aliens off the planet, so it has this strange dual role as a kind of life-force/transition-element. how or why it got to the surface of earth in the first place is an irrelevant mystery. what is important is that the difference between aliens and humans is almost transcended by wikis, who helps his alien friend retrieve the fluid in an action packed firefight, motivated by the idea that he can be returned to huan form by the ships technology and reuinted with hsi wife. he himself winds up missing in district 9, presumably turned full-alien or killed. the prawns are moved to the new, harsher district 10 to wait for the mothership to return to bring them back to their planet. so what we have here is a somewhat formulaic, predictable science fiction thriller which plays off the idea of humans and non-humans and the inevitable conflict that arises when cohabitation begins. the resolution hints at the idea that we are both really very similar, and that it is our arbitrary place of origin that makes us so different and creates this conflict. but the real conflict is that the humans want the ability to use alien weapons, which are very profitable, so they need wikis to contribute to their understanding of alien dna. also, the human soldier characters are incredibly aggressive and admit to just enjoying rampantly killing pranws. basically, the prior situation of perfect south african harmony is breached by these inhuman prawns, and the only way to return to harmony is to "traverse the fantasy" and ingest the solution itself, which turns the human wikis into a prawn himself. i appreciate all of the action, and the fact that wikis adlibbed all of his lines, and the human-non human distinction is very helpful in understanding the next two movies. the point is that harmony is has to be reattained by switching sides, becoming alien yourself, exposing the aspect of humanity that is already alien to itself. it is the inner split between people and prawns that creates the need for all of the action and drama, and the possibility of the resolution. keep this in mind.

in ponyo, the human/non-human distinction is explored as well. sosuke is a 5 year old boy who lives with his mother while his father is out at sea, and ponyo is a small goldfish mermaid creature kept captive by a sorcerer of the seas. ponyo escapes and befriends sosuke, who tries to protect her from the sorcerer. sosuke cuts his finger, and ponyo licks the blood to heal him, which begins her gradual transformation into a human. so in contrast to district 9, the transcendent transformation across the human/non-human distinction goes from mermaid fish creature to human, and not the other way around. the sorcerer doesnt have enough magical power to hold back ponyo's transformation, and she stumbles into his magical cache (which the sorcerer was going to use to envelop the world in oceans), speeding her transformation from tiny fish-mermaid to wobbly chicken creature to full fledged 5 year old girl. human blood plays the exact same function that the alien "fluid" did in district 9, it is a magical substance that not only holds the key to life and magic, but also has the power to start the transformation from one type of creature into the other. ponyo's emergence as a human causes a great flood and the sea rushes up to sosuke's doorstep, but everybody is OK because the movie is rated G. ponyo has the power to make things increase in size, but she turns back into a wobbly chicken-limbed creature a little bit every time. now, this is a miyazaki movie, and it has almost everything else in common with every other miyazaki movie. like in spirited away and tonari no totoro, the main conflict emerges when sosuke's mother leaves to help the grannies at the old age home, but the flood prevents her return, so he and ponyo must use a little boat, magically rendered to be able to go look for her. the separation of family members and the reunion is one of miyazaki's staples. it was ponyo's transformation which caused the flood which created the very need for the magic, and the search int the first place. there is a sea goddess, ponyo's mother and the sorcerer's mistress, who encourages the sorcerer to stop trying to bring her back under the sea and instead let her become a human. her transformation is blessed by the goddess when she shows enough kindness by giving all of her and sosouke's food to a crying baby they meet in a boat after the flood. check imdb trivia for all of the details, but this proves that ponyo is good hearted enough to actually become fully human, which breaks the "curse" and returns the water to its original level. sosuke admits that he likes ponyo "no matter what she is, fish or human". now, the underwater beauty and variety of life, the balance of sea and land, is the same as the imagined serene civilized peace that the south africans had before the prawns came. so in both, an inhuman outsider arrives which creates a conflict, in this case ponyo wants to stay because she likes sosuke and he likes her, even though they are both 5. sosuke's mother doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that a fish had just become a human, she approves like it happens all the time. of course, the resolution is more definite in this G rated epic than that of district 9, which is left more in the cliffhanger, lost in the balance stage: sosuke's father makes it home after the storm, sosuke finds his mother with the old grannies, and ponyo reverses the curse and turns into a permanent human by kissing sosokue. so all of the same themes are here: human/non human, transformation from one to the other, which creates the very conflict that the characters have to solve with the knowledge and abilities they gain via the transformation. just in ponyo, the transformation is reversed, going the direction opposite that of district 9, which allows a more perfect, child friendly return to harmony to be acheived at the end.

conveniently, there is a naive review of inglourious basterds right after a decent review of ponyo on notcoming.com which you should check out. basterds has to do with a group of 8 jews dropped into nazi-occupied france to kill as many nazis as they can, in order to spread fear and terror and weaken the german morale. the film is unmistakably tarantino, in every way possible. brilliant voice-only cameos by samuel l. jackson and harvey keitel bring it back to the old school, even though tarantino staples like tim roth, michael madsen and company are missing. here, the distinction between non humans and humans is more complicated, since the groups of people we have to deal with are nazis and jews. both are human, technically, but each has a quality that makes it inhuman and able to consider the other group as inhuman, worth exterminating. the germans are the villains, but the film could have just as easily been made in the other perspective, which the notcoming.com review hits on but fails to understand. tarantino is showing us that the human/nonhuman distinction is arbitrary in itself, it is only created based on some meaningless fact. i'm from earth, you are from the andromeda galaxy; i'm from land, you are from the sea; i'm a follower of the jewish tradition and am genetically (but not recognizably...a strange flaw in that all the jews masquerade as german, french and italians without being detected visibily as jews) while you are genetically german and a member of the nazi party, military, etc. the only thing that sustains this distinction in the first place is the delicate, fragile perspective one side is given, by which they may locate and differentiate themselves from the "other". notably in this analysis, there is no outright transformation from jew to nazi or nazi to jew. several switches attempt to take place, but they are always serving the higher cause of ending the war, bloodthirsty killing, disrespect, etc., and everyone who tries to switch sides ends up brutally murdered or disfigured. the idea "once a jew, always a jew" and "once a nazi, always a nazi" is driven home as brad pitt carves swastikas into the foreheads of nazi collaborators, so that they may never take off their uniforms and give up their identity, or as the jews go undercover as nazi commanders, but give themselves away with incorrect cultural signifiers and lousy accents. what is also wrong with the notcoming review is that basterds is not a work of historical fiction, a genre i have always had a distaste for, since i never wanted to be engaged with a plot if i already knew how history was going to play out. this is why i was so happy about the ending of basterds, which shows that it is not based in the reality of world war two, but instead uses the themes and anecdotes of the war to make its own point about the differences between people. of course, it is the arbitrary difference between nazis and jews that creates the need for all of the action in drama, as it was in ponyo and 9. but tarantino is a postmodern filmmaker, so his idea of the beauty created in the conflict between the two sides is best represented in the movie by movies, where the finale takes place in a movie theater, with nazis watching a goebbles epic that glorifies war, and eventually all of this violent energy in the beauty of film literally explodes and ... well i can't give this ending away, it's just too good. but the life-substance, the magical item that spurs the transformation (as human blood and alien fluid was in ponyo and 9, respectively) is, in basterds, simply, food and drink. this is not surprising, given tarantino's longtime love of filming food, filming scenes around food (tasty beverage...big kahuna burger...i don't tip...that's a damn good milkshake...hattori hanzo sushi...etc. etc. etc.) but the way it works in basterds is given a perfect balance which rings true. food only tastes good because you might not have another meal ever again, because of the unfolding conflict between your group of "people like me" and that "other" group of "people who want to destroy us...therefore we must destroy them". there are many closeups of food, many situations where food is the focus of the scene (milk, dessert, wine, champagne). and even better, food fits the role of magical life-substance because it is, after all, the magical substance that actually keeps us alive! but the lesson is that in order to overcome a radical evil like the nazis, the only way to possibly do this is to transcend that kind of evil and internalize it, which is how brad pitt's basterds manage to work - they use nazi techniques of ambush and mutilating corpses, indiscriminate killing...they basically treat the nazis the way that the nazis would be expected to treat jews...but they take the nazi attitude more seriously than the nazis themselves...

so what is the final lesson from this trilogy? district 9 appreciates the beauty of bureaucracy and regulated existence, but it is caught in the fantasy that south africa was fine before the prawns showed up, and can return to peace after they eventually leave. ponyo is caught up in the beauty of the ocean, its creatures, the visual splendor, and the fantasy that a katrina style flood can take place and everyone will be ok (although one can't help but imagine a more mature version of ponyo where a body floats by towards the end... no, this is impossible, because there is no grim reality in ponyo!) basterds is caught up in the beauty of itself, in the beauty of film to be able to replicate the drama and tensions that humans experience when they encounter that which should be considered inhuman. i need to quote slavoj zizek's twitter account in order to say what needs to be said about fantasy in basterds, so this is a RT: "Inglorious (sic) Basterds is the opposite of living out one's fantasy. It condemns us to the truth. The real fantasy is a world sans Auschwitz"

District 9: ****
Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea: ****
Inglourious Basterds: *****

I Better Make This Post Before It Falls Apart

2009-08-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

blog, there are links in this post.
could ted kennedy have died at a worse time? health care reform, his signature, if not life-long issue, is finding itself ground up on the gears of the legislative, daily spin-cycle process. shouldn't i be at least a little concerned that john mccain said, only a few days ago, that things would be a lot easier if teddy wasn't sick and could negotiate? well now he has an excuse to destroy the entire process, because kennedy is not coming back to the table, because brain cancer killed him yesterday. now, the more optimistic wing of the left is trying to push this message that he will be more effective as a ghost memory than as an ailing senator but isn't that optimistically cynical, in a weird way? i mean, the seat is empty, and is going to be for weeks, at least, and the democrats need every vote they can get, since they can't afford to rely on bastards like joe lieberman.
the real depressing thing here is that, if it wasn't for ted kennedy, and ted kennedy alone, barack obama would not be the president of the united states. im not going to link to anything on this one, but it was ted's earlyish endorsement of barack over hillary that basically sealed the deal. more than that, ted personally helped convince barry to run, when barry was just a junior senator. so obama owes him basically everything, and putting kennedy's name on whatever disgrace of a bill that winds up getting passed and signed into law, hopefully before 2010, is the very least he (obama) can do.
more eulogizing, but did anyone else catch that obama called ted kennedy the greatest senator of of our time in his vacation-attire statement, but toned it down for his twitter post, where he said kennedy was 'one of' the greatest senators of our time? obama must have remembered that al franken is a senator in between these two statements.
but seriously, i mean not seriously at all, i only know about the twitter-wapo discrepancy because nikki karam made me (and kate and brian) a twitter account the other day. its much more hyperbolic, ironic, sarcastic (sardonic? snarky?) than the types of posts you are used to reading here, so if you aren't my grandparents or aren't offended by a more outright cynical, some would say abstract expressionist approach to posting, check it out. maybe you are already familiar with the concept of tvsexdeath.
oh, i went to the middle schoolers's baseball game yesterday. they got creamed something like 18 to 2, i left when it was 12 to 2 in the fifth inning, but it was nice to see some baseball that wasn't on tv. i even took photographs!

you must line up and bow before the game. also, three umps, even though at the minor league cyclones game at coney island they had 2. in japan, they "never have just 2".

play ball

this image proves two things, and then one by induction: (1) the distance to the wall is measured in meters, not feet. (2) if you look at the scoreboard, you will notice that the pitch count it arranged strikes, then balls, unlike in america, where it is arranged balls, and then strikes. nobody knows why this is. therefore, (3) i must be in japan.

here is a big train bridge that went right over the valley where the game was being held.

and here is a wide shot for perspetive, notice the giant mountains in the middle ground.
oh, i couln't really watch basterds yesterday, even though the timing would have been ideal before karate, because there was no subtitles file, and half of the movie is in french and german, and if anyone has seen any movie by quentin tarantino (i'm trying to think of an exception...nope) then they know that dialogue is the #1 most important part of the experience. so i downloaded some subtitles, i think, and i am going to try them later today. this gives the district 9/ponyo flavor some time to mellow out. trust me, this movie review will be undergraduate quality stuff.
but my right leg/hip joint is all twisted and pained because of roundhouse kicks, and my left arm has a ton of yellow/brown bruises on it. this entire ordeal reminds me a lot of fencing, where the same leg and and the same arm take most of the damage. there is a karate party by the river, on the other side, this saturday, which i will walk to so that i may drink and bring myself home safely and legally.
i think that's it. the yogurt lady just got here, she brings yogurt and little drinks around in a white basket to keep everyone regular. i brought yogurt with lunch today so i am good. i have been making sandwiches every day to save money, but its getting incredibly boring, and i feel like i am wasting actually being in japan by not eating greasy japanese chicken and beef bento boxes from the shop across the street. i will change this soon.

Hello From Japan

2009-08-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

what's up, blog?
in case you didn't know, this is what's really up. it's going down this sunday, and it's going to be wonderful. it gives me something to care about politically during this period in which the american democrats are finding it impossible, with (super) majorities in both houses of congress and an incredibly popular president, to pass health care reform legislation. so that is frustrating for me, but this makes me happy. it also makes me happy that this story is the headline on the nytimes website's global edition, which is the first time since i have been here that this function of the website has behaved properly.
yesterday i had a day off, and i basically watched movies and did food shopping, which was nice. if you are my dad, you will be able to appreciate this miraculous find i made in the sunshine grocery store, which has the best selection of the stores i have visited so far:

do you recognize that cartoon monkey? yes, these are "little coco's choco krispies". nothing else in that photo matters at all.
i watched district 9 two nights ago and ponyo (on a cliff by the sea, the new miyazaki movie) last night, and the two had so much in common, content-wise, that i am sure i will be able to work inglorious basterds into a three-part movie review, my favorite kind to write. remember how children of men, babel, and pan's labyrinth were all made by mexican directors in cahoots to represent the future, present, and past (respectively) and have similar themes? well i doubt tarantino, miyazaki and neill blomkamp were in similar cahoots, but i am going to analyze their movies as if they were.
so i was watching some episodes of "cooking with (a) dog", the host of the youtube i posted a few posts ago, and i remembered that i know how to make tonkatsu, fried pork chop. i just have to buy all the stuff next time i go out. i thought it was interesting that they fry the cutlet in a pot instead of a pan. i should also try the curry aspect.
so today i am doing some english speech training at noon, which means i get to eat my lunch before then. school starts next week...self introductions and games. karate tonight, i have all my stuff now. later, blog.

This Post, Sadly, Is About The Disaster That Is The New York Times Website

2009-08-23T03:30:00.001-07:00

for the record,
right now, and i am guessing for most of the rest of the day, the pictured story on the US version of the new york times website is about north and south korea meeting to mourn a south korean former prime minister, while the pictured story on the global version of the new york times website is about unwitting entrepreneurs in san francisco. the main headlines are in the same order on both versions.
i am beginning to think that they either have their tabs mislabeled in the office, as a result of some horrible prank, or they are just stupid and don't care about anything. from now on, as a rule - check the global edition when you are interested in reading about america (it's on the globe, right? right?) and check the US edition when you are interested in reading about foreign, and not domestic matters (because america is the entire world, which we should already know).
sigh.

Non New York Times Website Related Post

2009-08-22T20:15:00.000-07:00

so i had a small party at my house last night, and it was fun. in the morning, the toilet was clogged and my computer had no sound. a quick google search for the damaged driver solved the sound problem, and a heavy duty $8 plunger solved the toilet problem, so now i am just chilling, watching the yankees get destroyed by the red sox, which is okay because the yankees scored 20 runs against the sox in their last game.
all i have to do today is feed myself and vacuum. i have to remember tomorrow is garbage day, because i forgot about the last one. that is all for today.

Yes, The New York Times Website Is Important To My Life In Japan, But It Does Not Compare To This

2009-08-21T07:17:00.001-07:00

There Is A Chance This Will Make Sense To Somebody

2009-08-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Lifson,

Thank you for your email and for sharing your opinions about our two home pages. The Global Edition home page is still a relatively new thing and we are constantly trying to figure out the right balance of stories on each of the pages.

That said, our intention with the Global Edition is to try to appeal to two audiences in particular: those who live outside the United States and those who live in the U.S. but whose interests are more internationally focused than our "traditional" reader. While we strive to highlight a greater number of globally-focused stories on the Global home page, we also recognize that the U.S. is an important part of the wider world and expect that our global readers are interested in things that are happening in the U.S.

On the U.S. page, we likewise expect that given that our foreign coverage has long been an important and extensive part of our report, our readers are interested in news and features from outside our borders.

But as I said at the beginning, it is always good to hear from readers on what is working... and what is not.

If you're interested in reading some more background on the two editions, Martin Gottlieb, the global edition editor, answered some of these questions and more back in April in our weekly Talk to the Times feature:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/business/media/06askthetimes.html?pagewanted=all

Thanks again for your comments.

Best,
Ham

Hamilton Boardman | Producer
The New York Times on the Web
620 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018

this response is impressive in only that it must be almost 3 AM in the states.
but still, =/

Loosely Japan Related Criticism of the New York Times Website

2009-08-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

here is what i find impossible to understand. when i go to the GLOBAL edition of the new york times website, the picture story is about climbing yosemite, which last time i checked, which admittedly was never, was in the united states of america. maybe it moved, maybe i have just been misinformed. but when i go to check the U.S. edition, the picture story is about how japanese mediums who believe they can communicate with the dead are dying off, and thier crazy belief system is going with them.
so, to recap:
international news - climbing a mountain that is in the unites states
national news - old japanese psychics who live in volcanoes are dying
can anybody explain this to me? preferably the one person who runs the new york times website? i mean, i can understand if, say, yosemite is considered its own country maybe because its an (inter)national park, and japan is considered one of the 51st states that america acquired after world war 2, but seriously, this is ridiculous and stupid. and pointless, too, epecially when the only other difference between these two "editions" is the random shuffling of headlines from top to bottom.

This Is Not A Food Blog

2009-08-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

no speech practice today, so my only job is to sit here and look busy. i even brought two books to work today, one on english education in japan and another called zizek on lenin. i have been way too into zizek lately, especially since now is a time when a lot of his supporters are questioning his sanity and running away from his thought. in other words, he is too popular for his own good, which is especially dangerous since so few peopel are willing to accept the real implications of what he thinks.
karate tonight, before i go i will pick up a gigantic bottle of sugary 'pocari sweat', which i prefer over 'aquarius'. here is my dinner from last night:

and let me just say that this picture makes me happier than just about anything else in japan. what you see here is called okonomiyaki, which is, since you don't have to look it up, a pancake of eggy dough and squid, scallions, and i think there was shrimp and octopus in this one, topped with ponzu sauce, mayonaise, shredded seaweed, and the critial ingredient, fish flakes which move around on their own when exposed to heat. the drink on the right is a tiny fiber drink that costs a dollar, i got hooked on them on a tip from another jet in tokyo. the okonomiyaki pictured was purchased, frozen, in a supermarket, for around 5 dollars, and heated up in the microwave. this is one of my favorite foods in japan, because the flavor and consistency is impossible to replicate. it may not look like enough food, but with 4 oreos after it was okay.
behind the food is my acer aspire one, which i type on right now. had my first moment of wanting to rip the monitor off the body of the piece yesterday, because my top 3 most visited websites were all refusing to load as a result of a virus i had acquired. i uninstalled the mcaffee suite that came with the computer and installed comodo, spy bot search and destroy, and pc tools spyware doctor, each of which found its own virus to take care of. so now my websites work and i am relieved. the only real problem is that i am running on a mere gig of RAM, and to instally more would involve literally tearing the computer open and voiding my warranty, something i am not comfortable doing alone in japan. so i will learn to deal with a gig.
i just got two little cucumbers from ms miyauchi, the nicest lady in the office. i will sear them with the remains of my last carrot, just one potato and just one onion, and maybe try west meats east world war three with chicken this time. it cant hurt. just needs a lot of salt.
i want to have a party this weekend, and i just officially made it saturday night. let's see what happens.
i just got a cup of coffee in my little mug, the one with a bunch of cartoon cows on it.

A Less Boring Post

2009-08-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

hi blog,
so i went to karate last night, and i got to fight, and it was fun. i was paired up with the grandpa of the group for most of the drills.
i tried west meats east round two last night, using pork instead of beef. it wasn't as good, maybe because i didn't use an fruit juice this time, and i used too much canola oil. but the leftovers for breakfast were great.
today i don't have anything to do after work. i might try to eat a frozen okonomiyaki (japanese pizza-resembling item, look it up) for dinner, which i had to buy just to try it out. im wearing a shirt that my dad sent me in a package, which also had a little pasta soup mix in it. so i might have that too.
the new york times website is still not behaving properly. i tried to go to the la times website, but then i saw that it lists, in order of importance, "california, L.A., entertainment, and world news" the first three of which are totally meaningless. i guess google news is what i will use until those fools fix their website. the washington post makes it its business to print only stories that look totally fabricated and irrelevant, so i can't take anything they put up seriously.
the japanese general elections are in 10 days, which is exciting. i am an employee of the government so it would be a conflict of interest for me to advocate for any candidate, but a lady wearing pink was campaigning on my street yesterdat with her loud speaker-car and entourage, and i gave her an OK sign from inside my car, so that was kind of cool.

Uh Oh

2009-08-19T02:48:00.000-07:00

the new york times website is refusing to load for me. this is kind of a problem.

The Most Boring Post Yet

2009-08-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

what's really good, blog?
im just sitting at the office, blogging while an office meeting which i find almost impossible to understand takes place around me. i know it has something to do with the schedule for sports day, which is four sundays from now. i have a decent shopping list written out, but you never know what you are going to buy until you go shopping. and today i will be breaking the golden rule of food shopping: never go hungry - because i have karate class at 8:10 and i want to go shopping right after work. i am going to try to replicate the "west meets east" potato/meat/onions meal tonight, we will see if the nice little local meat store is open.
as i said, karate tonight. hopefully i will be able to hand over $200 for a ton of equipment, so i can fight. i am looking forward to this.
my dreams have been getting slightly better. i realized i need to make a conscious effort on this, which only makes a little sense.
today all of the students came to school for tests, so there was a box lunch i had already paid for that was provided for me. the ham sandwich, crackers and carrots that i made for myself are going to sit in the fridge here until tomorrow.
yesterday i hung out with some jets in the next town over. we went to a nice cafe restaurant and everyone was very pleased. i got some packages from my parents with specific requested items, so that was nice.
so i have to sit here for another hour and 40 minutes. i have exhausted all work-safe activities. i am going to have to teach, or rather, expose elementary school kids to english in the coming weeks. so far here is my list of informal games that i remember from my childhood that i think might work:
Telephone
Simon Says
Duck Duck Goose
Charades
Pictionary
if you can think of any others, please let me know about them. there are volumes of activities here on my deck, but i am not too thrilled about any of them.
i heard it' really hot in new york. i lucked out then, i left right after those gigantic rain storms, and now i am in japan, with a much more moderate climate and air conditioning at home and at work.

The Last Four Days

2009-08-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

long time no blog,
the first thing i did over the long weekend was travel to a buddhist temple with all of the other JETs and hold and english camp for about 40 japanese young students. the buddhist temple was number 7 out of the 88 on this island of shikoku, so you can look up the name. it is considered a holy rite to travel to all 88 temples, so monks with their triangle hats and white clothes and staffs were always coming and going. the hotel accomidations were quite nice for a buddhist temple. here is the view from outside my window

but you probably want to hear about english camp. well, it was only two and a half days long, but in that time there were many games and activities packed in. there were 6 groups or teams that were competing with one another for points with these games. and also, everyone had a little pamphlet with questions they were supposed to ask and get asked, like whats your name, hobbies, where are you from etc., and the two students who got the most information got prizes. our team, the "crazy takoyaki eating zebras" got 400 points and won the entire thing! what really helped was the entertaining skit we put on at the end, in english. i choreographed the fight scenes, and it was a lot of fun.
the next thing we did was go to tokushima city for awa odori. if you dont know what awa odori is, go to youtube and look it up, there should be thousands of videos of people dancing. it is the second largest dance festival in the world. the point is to go crazy and behave like a fool, and you dont have to stick to any particular dance moves, although the people tend to stick to a general format pretty closely. like a fool, i took most pictures with the camera on my phone instead of my cool pics, and since my computer is a netbook and has no cd drive, i cant install the software to get the photos out of the phone until i buy an external USB cd drive or something. so here are the few photos i took with my actual camera

now this was right in front of the train station as we were leaving the city to go home. if you look closely on the left, you can see the wonderful hats that the formal women get to wear. their dance is very different from the mens'; the women have to keep their hands above their heads at all times, and the women have to wear wooden geta shoes that are extremely uncomfortable-looking, while the men can basically do whatever they want and get really low to the ground. here is another shot as the people went by

now, we did get to participate in this dance. we went by three stages, our group of mostly foreigners, dressed in japanese clothing. this is the only shot i have of myself, now i did take it with my phone and wound up emailing to myself attached to a text email, so i could probably do this with some of the other photos, but i think its going to be expensive. the towel around my head wound up going around my neck, as we were given out polka dotted headbands at the dinner party before the dance

so that is all the proof you should really need. for the last stage, i asked if i could help by holding the gigantic oversized novelty fan with our group's name on it, and i was allowed to, even though i got weird looks from a lot of people. i had a good time and my legs are a little achey from getting so into the moves, but i am glad i didnt drink too much at the dinner or on the dance route like a lot of other people did. if i stay for another year, i get to do this again in 2010.
now, the price we had to pay for being put up in a hotel one night after english camp, so we could dance, was having to sit through a japanese lesson and a puppet show the morning after, where just about everyone was very hung over and not in the mood to participate after staying up all night drinking and dancing. i appreciated the sentiment, but the execution of this day was not supposed to be pleasant. we were doing our jobs just by showing up and sitting still. here is a picture i got of the puppet show. the people in black hoods control the puppets, and the entire thing is very mesmerizing to see in real life.

these two puppets wound up committing ritual mutual suicide at the end of the scene, so, yeah.
now i'm back at the office, and i don't start seriously teaching anything anywhere for two good weeks. there was just no water running here at the school so everyone was frantic and worried, but i think it started to run again.
oh, here is the best news: i got paid! and the amount of money, which would would know if you had been reading along with me, is just about equal to the amount of money that i have seen many people win on quiz shows on TV and in lottery contests. so i have a wallet with a little more money in it now.
i finally bought and ate two sets of takoyaki last night. takoyaki is balls of starchy dough with squid pieces in it, topped with ponzu sauce, mayo and fish flakes, and on one i got scallions too. it takes like heaven, but two sets was probably too much. it was a very filling dinner.
there are a couple of other american kids around here, teachers in different parts of the city, and we were supposed to have a party last night, but we didn't because i thought i wasn't working today, which i am. so we will probably do it next week. i am the only one with a car, and i'm not really trying to make friends, i'm just supposed to use these people for emotional support.
a i forgetting anything? any comments or requests? let me know, i have basically nothing to do today.

Tales From The Dreaded Hour

2009-08-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

Blog, we meet again.
i write to you from within the dreaded hour of unstructured time that i am contractually obligated to fulfill, without any concrete work-related tasks to fill it with. i just got back from Iuchi Elementary school, which is through a tunnel to the north and way up at the foot of some of the steepest, greenest mountains of all time. I have to get some pictures of these places so you can have a reference. the classes there are going to be small, with around 9 kids per class, and only 3 classes. i have to prepare some self introductions for different aged kids. all of this starts in while, so i have time.
today i learned that american armadillos almost always give birth to four identical quintuplets. this has nothing to do with japan and is just interesting and astounding. check out the wikipedia article, i cleaned it up a bit.
dinner tonight is one of two instant ramen cups that i bought, probably the curry one, and some watermelon, and a little fiber drink. then i get to start packing for the trip to tokushima city. i am not sure if i will bring this computer or not. i am excited to get out of this environment for a while and meet some new people and start to actually teach and use english. i have to wake up at 6 AM tomorrow to catch a 7:04 train. The train ride one way to the city costs only 1410 yen, fairly cheap considering its about the same the distance from nyc to fishkill.
if you want to watch a short documentary about japanese education, and maybe get in touch with your emotional side, check out "children full of life". all five parts are on youtube, which start here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=armP8TfS9Is . i'd like to know what's going on in new york, america, if you get the chance, drop me a line at solipsismwow @ gmail . com.
have a good week!

frugality in action

2009-08-10T06:12:00.000-07:00

brog,
i am proud of myself for walking into lawson plus (the plus signifies one expensive piece of fruit of each variety, in a plastic wrapper), an all-too-convenient 24-7 convenience store, and only buying the small carton of milk i need to eat my "mild choco" flavor cereal tomorrow morning and the day after. yes, i did go for the lawson brand 139 yen version instead of the other brand 140 yen version, and yes i did pay with exact change. i did spend a good 8 minutes just walking around and looking at the variety of items, snacks, confections, and different products that lawson plus has to offer. i will stock up on foodstuffs when i return from tokushima city on saturday. if i dont post tomorrow, dont expect any blog action on this side of the internet until then.

Thanks Hulu

2009-08-09T05:10:00.000-07:00

For now, Hulu is a U.S. service only. That said, our intention is to make Hulu's growing content lineup available worldwide. This requires clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography and will take time. We're encouraged by how many content providers have already been working along these lines so that their programs can be available over the Internet to a much larger, global audience. The Hulu team is committed to making great programming available across the globe.

Thanks Netflix

2009-08-09T05:07:00.001-07:00

Our systems indicate that the computer you are using is not located within the 50 United States or District of Columbia. Due to studio licensing reasons, movies are available to watch instantly only on computers in those locations.

been a while

2009-08-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

blog,
i have some things to tell you. two days ago i went to my first karate lesson in japan. i have not done karate since i was probably 8 years old, so i was working muscles that have not been used since then. the type of karate is called seikuukai, which is not a type of karate that there is any reference for on the internet. it is full contact, which means i am going to need to spend $200 on leg pads and foot and hand guards and other clothing all so i can get my butt kicked twice a week. it is good to sweat and say OSSU to the teacher and the other students in the dojo as an affirmative statement. there were only five other people in the adult level class, so when i had to sit out the sparring at the end because i have no equipment and didn't want to die, they had to alternate their duels. the teacher was very nice and very happy to have my entrance fee and first month expense money.
yesterday i watched the yankees play the red sox on tv. the game went to i think 15 scoreless innings before arod earned all of his giant bags of money by hitting a walk off home run. now, this scenario could never happen in japanese baseball, because unlike american baseball, which technically never ever has to end and could possibly last forever, japanese baseball will automaticall end in a tie if no team has more runs by hte end of the 12th inning, because the trains stop running early and people need to get home. now you may be asking yourself, how did i watch an american baseball game on japanese tv? easy, the japanese will broadcast any game where a team is playing that has a japanese player. hideki matsui is on the yankees, and right now i am watching the tampa bay rays play the seatlle mariners, who have ichiro suzuki. even though the games do have to end in japan, in america you will never go to a baseball game where the fans bring their own full brass band with which to perform intricate cheers. plus, when japanese baseball is on tv, they never pause for commercials except for the occasional news update, so you get to see everything between the innings, which is nice and strange.
yesterday i went to tokushima city for a walking tour led by multi-year and former JETs. the main event was a birthday party for a 4-th year jet at a japanese style restaurant. this means you put your shoes in a little locker by the door, order a bunch of small, cheap dishes, engage in nomihodai which means all-you-can-drink, and split the bill at the end. naturally some people got very drunk but the food was very good. after that everyone went to a karaoke bar, and i sang a few songs that i made sure only i would know. a second year jet who lives in tokushima city let me and a few other people crash at her place on futons, which was great. i was the only person who thought to bring an umbrella with me, which proved to be the smartest thing i have done since i have been here, since it was pouring rain after the party and still is as i type. i'm sorry that i didn't bring my camera, blog, so there are no pictures, but it was my nintendo DS or the camera, since i didn't bring my bag (re: walking tour), and the train ride from my station to the city is about an hour and 45 minutes. trustme, nothing was interesting enough to deserve a picture, even though everyone was snapping away.
i had a good time, but the only problem is that going to city, nomihodai, breakfast, and coming back is very expensive. i would not be surprised if i spent almost then $100 (100,000 yen) in the last two days. this only became a problem after getting my new emissions inspection certificate for my car cost a surprise $200. i have like 250 in my wallet, 400 in the japanese bank account here, and something like 500 in my american bank account. supposedly i get paid on thursday, a solid 3,000. the big dance festival, back in tokushima city, is next week though. before that is 2 days of english camp, but i think most is going to be paid for at that. i am going to try to make the 250 last until thursday.
so dinner tonight is probably going to be instant noodles and fruit, because i ate a big brunch obento (prepared box meal). i shouldnt be very busy at work tomorrow, as i only have to train my student for the english speech contest. on tuesday i visit the last of my 3 elementary schools, this one is the furthest away, up a mountain road. have a good one.

blog of the centry

2009-08-06T21:15:00.000-07:00

web log,
i figured out why the softbank hawks have a dog on their uniforms. the softbank mascot is a white dog, so the team must have dual mascots, one for itself and one for its corporate sponsor. i know it should probably just be the softbank white dogs, but i dont know the history. anyway, they lost by a wide margin last night to bobby valentine's chiba lotte marines, which was fun to watch.
i know i was emphatic about how this is not supposed to be a food blog, but it is a life in japan themed blog, and food is a very big part of life. i am going to be careful about the tendency for all posts to tend towards food, since it is by all measures the main basis of life. so last night i prepared my first mostly home cooked meal in japan. up until then it had been frozen stuff like gyoza, or dried stuff like instant noodles, but last night i busted out the frying pan and got down to it. the tacoyaki shop was closed, which was disappointing, since that is probably the best food ever, so on the walk home i stopped at the little butcher shop run by very friendly ladies (who gave me 3 free croquettes last time i was there) and bought 200 grams (do the math) of some nicely marbled, somewhat fatty beef. i asked if they had cooking oil, but they did not, so i was offered a little chunk of cow fat, or lard, instead, which i accepted. then i got home and turned on the heat. i greased the pan with the lard, and threw in one haphazardly chopped onion with one even more haphazardly chopped potato. i received a bag full of these items the day after my welcome bbq. then i added the meat. things got going, but i realized i dont have any salt or pepper or spices of any kind in this new house. i stirred everything up and added a good amount of kikkoman soy sauce for flavor and simmering. now the secret ingredient i discovered was to add a little bit of orange juice for sweetness. kept the heat on high for a while, and wound up with this as a result, which i like to call 'west meets east':

served with a peach and a can of kirin strong 7 (% alcohol) , which is nasty but refreshing. the entire meal was delicious, and i was very full and content.
i just got back from the post office, where i picked up my cash card, so now i can use the atm to access my cash when i get paid n the 13th.
big news - i have internet at my house now!!! it started to work last night. so i can use google chat, all of that good stuff. if you want to chat with me, just keep in mind that whatever time it is on the east coast, the corresponding time in japan is one hour behind, and the opposite meridian. for example: 9 AM NY = 8 PM Japan.
alright. things dont really start, and by things i mean classes, for me until september, so i get to chill out and relax until then for the most part. questions, comments, feedback go to soipsismwow @ gmail . com.

interesting information about japan is in this blog

2009-08-05T23:55:00.001-07:00

blog,
do you know what this is?

of course you don't, because you are probably from america. this symbol represents everything that is wrong, and everything that is right with japan in a single image. i will tell you what it means, and then i will explain. this symbol is found in the form of a sticker on the rear and front of all cars driven by people who are age 70 or older. in america, i often wished for this kind of symbol, as applying it was more less strict than my original wish, that older drivers simply have their licenses taken away (via an 'expiration date', like on milk). but in japan, something like 25% of the population is over 65, and its currently the oldest country in the world, and also the fastest shrinking country. the birthrate is totally negative, since women are more reluctant to settle down and instead have been going after careers. the necessity of this symbol shows how the japanese try to address a major problem with what would otherwise be a totally common-sense solution. and then comes the alternative, the new driver sticker:

the first blog of the rest of my life

2009-08-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

blog,
today i am being confronted full force by the incredible boredom of a day at my desk with nothing to do. i was almost just reduced to reading mcsweeny's, awful. i forgot to take a zyrtec again, so i will be making strange nose-noises all day. if anyone has a great website or tool for passing time, slowly and carefully at the workplace, let me know. if you dont know already, i can be reached at solipsismwow@gmail.com , an address so sleek and awesome that i refuse to think about changing it, ever.
they said the internet at my house will be on tomorrow. i should sacrifice something tonight, like a rotten banana, or a battery overflowing with crumbly battery acid, to the internet gods, because maybe the odor will rise up to heaven and please them. i just heard from my principle that someone - maybe the principle (!) - of nishiikawa elementary school is coming here to pick me up at 1 PM. good, because i was afraid i was going to get interrupted right in the middle of my noon curry-ramen-and-apple-break.
i'm drinking water instead of green tea, because i don't know how to make green tea here, and so i don't get super-buzzed on caffeine without anything to do.
bobby valentine and the chiba lotte marines lost to the softbank hawks (yes, they are named after a corporation and not a place, and this happens a lot) last night, in the 9th inning, and it was very sad, because benny agbayani got walked on a full count as the winning run, and i hadn't seen a japanese pitcher walk anyone until then. the baseball coach said that softbank was his favorite team, so i guess he knew what he was talking about. even tough they are called the hawks, they all had a little white dog head on their arm patches.
i guess today being august 6th is a good day to say something about nuclear warfare, japan-american relations, violence in general, and my current positiong, being that on this day in 1945 'little boy' turned hiroshima into a smoldering radioactive wasteland, and that 61% of americans in the most recent poll still say that this was a legitimate action for the US to undertake. i didnt have any relatives that fought in any of the battles of the second world war. but during the orientation in tokyo, i couldnt help but imagining the alternative scenario where i was welcoming a japanese transplant whos job it was to teach japanese to american elementary school students fr the government, in the hypothetical scenario that things played out differently. all of the talk about binationalism and internationalizion just had me thinking about the manhattan project is the real reason why i'm here, that its oppenheimer and einstein who really got this job for me. which is all well and good, until i see that all of the formality and niceness is maybe just a product of deep, underlying national guilt and resentment.
well. now i have to go to the bank to fix the order of my name, which is a bit of an issue here, since japanese people usually put the family name first, and we usually dont, as americans, but the application for my alien registration was backwards, so i need to go. and i need to bring my bank book, and my little personla name stamp thing called and 'inkan' which i am told represents my identity, and only reads to my as an archaic, feudal style means of honorary bizarresness.
check back same blog place, same blog time, for more blog action

my first second post in a single day

2009-08-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

what's really good, blog?
my ipod almost just died, i cursed steve jobbs' new liver and it came back to life. who says ancient pagan rituals don't work?
so i am back at the office after showing the cable-tv/internet/phone serve man my telephone. how was i supposed to know that i have to hit the pound button before making a call? how was i supposed to know that the telephone in my house cant make or receive calls to or from cell phones? now they say i will have internet on friday. i will believe this when i see it.
looks like i just received a bag full of onions and potatoes from last night's party. now i just need to get some lean game from the nice butcher lady down the street and i am set for a stir fry. it took some attempts and some frustration, but i figured out how to work the gas/electric burners. and we just had a nice little conversation about vegetables. i have been bringing my lunch from home, which is good because it is cheaper, and everyone is always very surprised and happy about this. but i have to take care to make sure this does not become a food blog.
a few details about the house, since they have been requested:
-the house is made out of wood. it is a wooden house.
-the toilet has 2 flush settings, 'large' and 'small'. you can guess what these correspond to, but the small setting has basically no use. the toilet is connected to a tiny little sink that runs whenever you flush, but i heard you dont want to brush your teeth with this water, its just for hand washing. the toilet and the mini sink are in their own room, separated from. the proper sink and shower by the kitchen.
-the tv and air conditioner are in a tatami room, which means it has a nice japanese style floor that you sit on. there is a little floor-chair that goes up against the wall which can be quite comfortable. i might want to rearrange this room a bit, but that will happen later.
-the shower is a pretty wide little room that you stand in, and the water temperature is set so you just have to turn the water on and wait 4 seconds. this is convenient for ppl like me who like the water to be at a very specific temperature (not too hot, not too cold).
-there are 2 tatami rooms upstairs, one is the bedroom and the other has no use other than for drying clothes in, as there is no dryer (but there is a washing machine). there are a ton of extra futons in all of the closets, so i might wind up sleeping in the air conditioned room if it gets incredibly hot, which it already is. there is a fan in the upstairs bedroom, with a remote control, but it looks like it just sprays dust everywhere.
-i shave every day. the little electric shaver i bought is extremely useful and convenient.
-there was a lot of stuff that i packed for no reason. i am generally awful at packing i have realized. for example, waist size 30 khakis that i can never wear? why did i bring those? where did i get them? could i have ever tried them on? single blue and orange flip flop, is your counterpart still in new york? are you lonely, do you feel separation anxiety?
any other questions about anything? just ask me, i have so much free time. so much in fact, that passing time at work is going to be difficult. my predecessor said he one time went to the wikipedia entry on *the universe* and just worked his way down. hm: "The Universe comprises everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them." good to know.
my work hours are officially 8 am to 3:50 pm , and there is not very much for me to do these days besides help the one english speech contest contestant with her work. i am a public servant, and my paycheck comes from the wallets of japanese taxpayers. next week is english camp in the capital of the prefecture, and the awa-odori festival, which is the second-largest dance festival in the world (after carnival, which doesn't really count, because its lame and silly).
so, blog, why don't you chew on this with your brain until my next post?
"It is uncertain whether the size of the Universe is finite or infinite." wuh-oh! this is why science will always lose and philosophy will always win, i think.

dreamblog

2009-08-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

blogosphere,
is this the right place to post about how vivid and strange my dreams have been recently? because they are, increasingly so. i'm not sure i enjoy it. i liked not dreaming at all, and just waking up to a world i recognized, instead of having to deal with complicated thought processes based on nothing.
i'm wearing a suit and tie because i went to my first elementary school today. it looks like i will have to make the lesson plans myself, to some extent. things dont get started on the daily for about another month, though. there was a lot of me sitting in he office practically aline, sipping hot green tea and just being treated like a wonderful oddity. everyone except the principle seemed very surprised that i could write kanji characters.
looks like i found a place to stay in tokushima city on saturday, which is great. now i dont have to worry about coming back home without any sleep. have i mentioned that i am ery excited for the 13th, which is when i will be receiving my first post-tax monthly stipend of 300,000 yen (do the math)? i have stocked up on instant ramen and soba, so i shouldnt need to buy any food for a while. i made my first quasi-home cooked meal the other day, a pack of frozen gyoza and half a bag of frozen edamame with 2 potato and beef crouqettes that the nice lady at the local butcher gave me. did i mention this already? things are going to get kind of redundant around this blog, but i cant help it.
last night was my welcome barbeque party. there was lots of community grilling of beef, chicken, and pork related items along with vegetables, potatoes and rice balls over open pits. and also lots of drunken celebratory "kanpai"s, which is japanese for cheers. it was funny to see all of the very kind, reserved coworkers of mine unwind and get very sloppy. my teacher who gave me a ride (designated driver) was playing michael jackson songs in her car, so i had "thriller" stuck in my head the entire night, which was nice. speaking of music and cars and soundtracks, the only cd the eric my predecessor left for me in the 6 cd changer of the red toyota i inhereted is Jay-Zs "the blueprint", which i have nearly memorized. the car has a tape deck ipod adapter, so i get to listen to memorable, important jams (dfa79), but the ride to my school is so short (about 3 minutes away) that i usually dont bother to use my own ipod. on longer drives though, its great.
does anyone else think what bill clinton did in north korea just now is totally insane? how great would it have been to be in charge of photoshopping those pictures of him and the dear supreme leader kim jong il? i dont have anyone to talk t about current news and politics (in english) so i have resorted to yelling at the tv. newscasters in japan bow at the camera before and after news broadcasts, just another aspect of the excessive formality abundant here in japan, so i have gotten into the habit of bowing back at the tv.
last night i was so tired at the party that i couldn't stay up to see the extra innings of the bay stars vs. the yakult swallows (who have the rare privilege of having a team name that is also a full sentence) baseball game. someone on the bay stars tied it up in the 9th with a solo home run, but it looks like the swallows won.
ok, since this is NOT a food blog, i will not blog my lunch right now, i am just going to eat it.

blog of the day

2009-08-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

okay, i heard from the main source that my internet will be ready in the house in what at first sounded like a quick week...and then turned into a late, slow week. i guess i should stop obsessively checking every ten minutes if it's on or not.
looks like saturday there is a tour of tokushima city happening, its about a 1.5 hour train ride away. hopefully someone will let e crash on their empty futon.
today's track and field meeting has been delayed one or two hours because of yesterday's rain. i didn't bring a lunch so i hope there is some place with tasty snacks nearby. seeing as how this is japan, that shouldn't be too unlikely.
you want me to post a picture of last week's soccer match? fine, this is the best one i managed to take

tomorrow i go to the elementary school closest to my house to introduce myself, in english and then in japanese. yeserday i got led around by the nicest woman from the government office to be introduced to various people who live in my nieghborhood. there are a lot of very little food shops within walking distance from my house, something i should keep in mind next time before i'm about to go to the supermarket.
there was horseracing on channel 2 last night instead of baseball, which was disheartening. i just paid 3,000 yen for my own barbeque/welcome party. this is no big deal, since i'm supposed to receive something like 300,000 yen on he 13th.
okay, blog, some parting words. send me some CDs. my address is below. also some nice colored t-shirts in my size. japan is very much at once and classes haven't even started yet.
today's blogging completed

blog action

2009-08-02T16:52:00.001-07:00

dearest blog,
being in another land is supposed to make you more creative, but really it just makes you realize how absurd and ridiculous your original culture was in the first place.
uploading photos is long and hard because the facebook java applet doesnt work, so i have to go 5 at a time. but here we go, the view from my desk at the office.

yes those are mountains
this is the view from my house, through the window of the air conditioned room. yes that is my car, and yes, those are are mountains.

what else? i did laundry the other day, very exciting.
there is a track and field meeting tomorrow, and then my welcome party, at which i am encouraged to get very drunk. then the next two days involve me going to elementary schools to make grandious self introductions, the only kind in japan.
yesterday i went to the book store looking for 1Q84, Haruki Murakami's new novel, which hasnt been translated into english yet. but that bastard, he released it as two seperate volumes, what a money making scheme! so i didnt buy it.
i just played some ping pong with the girls ping pong club, and i need to practice. its almost lunch time and i am getting hungry, i made a sandwich and brought some carrots and an apple.
the other day we went to see the boys soccer team play in tokushima city. in japan, they shake hands with the other team BEFORE the game starts. and they also bow to the crowds and each other. the team lost, but it was good to get away and see this place a little.
sunday was very boring, as i had no internet in my house, and since i am totally alone, being that i have no friends here. so it was just me, the tv, the yoimuri giants and the joshin tigers were playing baseball. the tigers won, whcih was good because they were the hoe team. and we all know, its root, root root for the home team, if they don't win its a shame.
i cannot think of anything else to blog about! send me some cds. thanks

do you like my blogging style?

2009-07-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

blog,
im very sorry that my last post got cut short. long, arduous story short, i got it all - cell phone, driving ability, etc. i just have to go to the supermarket later t get some real food.
if you dont know already, i'm in ikawa ward, miyoshi city, tokushima prefecture, on the island of shikoku in japan. this town runs along the yoshino river through a mountainous valley, and it's very beuatiful. today i am going with some other teachers to watch the junior high school's soccer team play a tournament game in another city. i don't have internet at home yet, but its in the process of being set up. this is why i have only be able to blog from the office. don't worry, i have photographs on the way, it just takes a while to get them uploaded and posted through facebook.
i like living in japan more and more every day. the small, routine things are my focus right now - i did laundry for the first time today, and monday is garbage day.
for my free time at home, mostly i have been watching baseball in my air conditioned tatami room, which is wonderful. at night there are japanese games, and during the AM they patch in american games, but with japanese announcers. japanese baseball is more zany and exciting, i wouldnt say sloppy, but there are ore blooper-type hits into the shallow outfield and more interesting plays. the differences are interesting too - in japan, the pitch count is strikes and then balls, but they use the american count for the american games. i still haven't seen a japanese baseball tie yet - thats when a game is called a tie in the 12th inning because the trains stop running early and people need to get home.
if the soccer team wins tomorrow, there is another game tomorrow. today was the first time i drove my inherited little red car in japan - on the left side of the road i might add! i will get used to it. they really want me to stay for three years, but i can only take it one day at a time.
this is a good time for my to post my cell phone number: 08063823556
here is my address:

Tsuji 300-1
Tokushima-Ken, Miyoshi-Shi, Ikawa-Cho
Japan 779-4801

the car has a 6 cd changer but my new netbook has no cd drive, so please send me lots of mixes.
thanks! email me with any questions or anything you want to talk about...i am going to have a lot of downtime...

first post as a registered alien

2009-07-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

dear blogosphere,
it's me, russell. today i had my first major run-in with japanese bureaucracy. there is nothing especially more bureaucratic about japanese bureaucracy, other than the fact that it is navigated with formal japanese. i think bureaucracy is a feature of the world, which means that technically, it only exists as long as we agree that the world does. that will be the most abstract this post gets.
last night i walked across the bridge to a lawson plus, the plus indicating that not only is it a 24 hour convenience store with all manner of rice balls and other confections, but that it has fruit and vegetables as well. there was a single carrot, wrapped in plastic, for about 2 dollars, but i passed. maybe next time, little carrot.
as a registered alien, i am free to do some driving, so i dont need to get picked up to go to work anymore. this is wonderful. this means after work i can drive down the road past my junior high base school, and towards the two supermarkets
now i need to continue my jurney, car insurance and cell phone