Monoanimal

change of address, yall.

2009-08-12T21:50:00.003+09:00

For the next 3 months or so, we will be cycling around Japan and have moved most blogging activity to cycling.monoanimal.com. I know, I know. Why get another blog if you already have one that you don't use? Who knows! But check it out anyway if you get a chance. It will mostly be a log of our daily rides with intermittent ramblings about weird food. Yay!

poster in the train station.

2009-07-22T13:26:00.001+09:00

Kuching Day 3, Sunday:

2009-07-03T17:59:00.005+09:00

Again I woke up in an ice box, but this time I knew how to turn of the AC and return to sleep. The next time I awoke, I found a watch, read the time, and had the slow realization that we had about 30 minutes to pack everything up (we were being forced to change rooms cause I took to long making reservations and the family room was only available for our first two nights), get ready and meet Lo. I pulled myself out of bed, flicked on the lights, noted yet again that Jude was already up and out, and rebuffed the groans of Betsy and Christophe with a warning about all that needed to be done.

Somehow we managed to pack up everything, shower and get outside only 5 or so minutes after we were supposed to meet Lo. But by now Lo was onto us, and it was another 5 minutes before he showed up. This morning we were off to the Sunday market – a big open air market that had everything from produce to pets to plants to fish to bracelets and clothes - basically everything you can think of in a maze of stalls. Personal favorites of mine are the guys who make these pancakes filled with a cinnamon, sugar and peanut mix, the vibrant colors of the peppers and the pet shop people. Christophe and I discussed the distinct difference between this market and other markets we've seen in that here the live animals were for sale as pets, versus a number of other markets out there where the live animals are sold for slaughter. I wonder if it has to do with the economic situation of Kuching, or if it comes from an aspect of Malay/Chinese culture.

After the market we went to the civic center where one of Lo’s photographer buddies was taking pictures of a Malay wedding. We had known in advance that we were heading to this wedding so we were prepared with slightly nicer clothes and shawls for our shoulders. We showed up before the bride and groom and hung around with Lo, his photography friend, and about 5 other guys with nice cameras waiting for the car to pull up. As we stood there waiting, the security guard of the civic center came over to us and encouraged us to go into the room where the reception was being held, but we declined - preferring to stay close to Lo (our excuse for why we were there). Christophe whipped out his own camera and joined the photography gang, better legitimizing his presence.

The bride and groom’s car arrived flanked by motorcyclists (I guess the groom is in a motorcycle club) and before we knew it Lo had us following them down the center isle of the reception. The reception was huge, maybe 200 people all sitting around round tables. After standing awkwardly at the front of the room, Betsy, Jude and I decided to head to the back of the room since we didn't have cameras to hide behind. There we made small talk with members of the wedding party, awkwardly answering the question of who we knew in the wedding (ummm… see that guy in the Hawaiian shirt taking pictures, his name is Lo. We know him). All of the sudden one of the woman who we had been talking to appeared and told us she had found us a table. We were ushered to the table, sat down, and given the gift fans all the guests had received. I found this totally amazing. These people didn't know us, they didn't even really know Lo, but here they were adding us to the wedding reception like we were family who forgot to RSVP. But what blew our minds even more, is that we weren’t the only ones. Not too far from our table we saw another couple who were clearly tourists. Considering she was in jeans snapping pictures of everything and he was sporting a very uncomfortable look on his face, we concluded they were probably just visiting the civic center when they got kidnapped into this wedding! We slipped out with Lo just before the food was served, despite the protests of our tablemates (“but you haven’t eaten yet!”).

Once we all had regrouped outside the wedding – where we chatted with other members of the wedding who busily encouraged us to return to the reception and enjoy the food – we went to the roof of the civic center to get a view of the town. From there we could see the old clubhouse where I once split my chin open and my brother once split his thigh open (my mother jokes they opened the new hospital in Kuching for Jimmy and I), my brother’s old school and other places of my childhood. Then Lo pointed directly below us.

“They come to the weddings only for the food,” Lo told us. “As soon as they finish eating they leave. Look, la”. Below us we could see a stream of people leaving the reception hall heading for the parking lot. But then again it was a Malay wedding, so no booze or dancing. Not much to do after the food.

From the civic center we headed back toward our hostel, stopping at a coffee shop a short walk away. There, sitting around a big round table in plastic chairs, sipping on coffee or tea and snacking on eggs and nuts, were my uncles. The same guys we had been out drinking with the night before, the same guys who had been at Laksa Lim’s every Sunday, were now here doing the same thing. So we plopped down with them, ordered some tea and noodles, and did it too – relaxed and relived the night before.

Fabien, a wonderful man who is always smiling and always has a red nose whether or not drunk, came up and handed me a magazine.

“Your father asked me to mail this to him, but that’s a lot of trouble. So I just figured I would wait until one of you guys showed up.”
“But Fabien, we usually only show up once every 5 to 10 years, its pure chance that I’m here, we weren’t planning on it at all.”
“Well you're here aren’t you?” and he handed me the HASH magazine to deliver to my father.

Flipping through it I found pictures of last year when we had visited with Christophe’s and my family. And at the back there was a photo of my brother and I, 20 years ago, doing down downs of orange juice at the kid's hash. I marveled at the situation. Here I had very randomly decided to surprise two girlfriends by meeting up with them while they happened to be passing through Kuching. The chances that I would be there were slim – the girls almost didn't go to Kuching, we almost didn't have the vacation days or cash to get down there. And yet, one of my uncle's had been expecting us and so had hung onto a magazine full of pictures of both our families and a photo of my brother and I from 20 years ago. And despite how unlikely it was for all of these things to coincide, I was there wasn’t I?

Several teas, three bowls of kolo mee and some peanuts later we decided we wanted to go to the beach for a bit, so we changed at the hostel and piled back into the car to head for Damai Beach. We showed up at the nicer resort first, parked directly in front of a no parking sign, Lo told the staff we were researching hotels in the area, and we wandered around for 15 minutes. Then we went over to the Holiday Inn resort, where we simply walked in and set up on lounge chair (“no worries, la”). The Holiday Inn resort caused massive flash backs for me of playing in the “kid's area” where I believe there was an original Nintendo we used to stay glued to when we’d had too much sun, and of the pool bar where I would order Shirley temples, my favorite drink in those days. Funny the stuff that comes back to you.

A while later, crisped nicely from the sun, we found ourselves sitting on drift wood over looking a section of sea that had pulled out at least a kilometer. We were in a small Muslim fishing village, where Lo told us he loved to come and photograph the sunset. I could see why. From the beach the sky looked huge and the sun reflected beautifully on the muddy waterless beach. Out in the distance, a fisherman parked his boat and began the slow trek back toward us, knee deep in the mud. As the sun turned from yellow to orange, a cat came out to toy with the mud skippers. And just as the sun turned to a deep reddish purple, the call to prayer began to echo through the cove. There, sitting on driftwood watching the sun fill the sky with color and listening to the rhythmic song of the call to prayer, I felt totally at peace. It was the perfect end to a beautiful day.

Of course it wasn't the end. No night in Kuching was complete without meeting up with friends for dinner, tonight the HASH boys again, and drinking a few beers. We did so happily and, at the end of the night, once again crawled into beds ready to sleep.

Kuching Day 2, Saturday:

2009-06-30T09:54:00.005+09:00

I awoke in the morning freezing, which made me a little confused about where I was. My brain was telling me Kuching, but my body said we were back in cold Hokkaido. As my thoughts focused through my cold and beer fogged mind, I realized the AC had been going all night and our all cement room with no windows had turned into a refrigerator. I also realized I had no idea how one turned the AC on or off, so I stole the covers back from christophe and fell back asleep.
The second time I woke up, again freezing and missing the covers, I decided to reach out for a clock. This woke me up properly, as I realized we were meeting Lo for laksa in a scant 20 minutes. I jumped from the bed, turned on the lights to protests from Betsy and Christophe, noted that Jude had already gotten up and was no longer in the room, and announced our time limit.

Laksa is what you eat when you visit Kuching. It's a very spicy soup with a water and coconut milk base, filled with thin noodles, prawns, fish cake, bean sprouts, and whatever else the vendor you go to decides to put in it. There are many kinds of laksa all over Malaysia, Singapore and I believe Indonesia. Each area does their version a little bit differently, and naturally proclaims their version to be the best. You eat it in the morning as a breakfast, the spiciness both preparing you to sweat all day in the heat, and clearing away your hangover from the night before.

Laksa, like most foods in Kuching, can be found in “coffee shops”. These are large open rooms, resembling really big garages, filled with round plastic tables and chairs. At the entrance and along the perimeter there are various hawkers who sell different foods. There is one who does fried rice, one who does laksa, one who does kolo mee. In the larger establishments (actually called food courts) there can be as many as 20 different stands, with one for drinks, and two or three for every kind of food. In smaller places there are maybe only two or three, and the “room” sells the drinks (I have inferred this is why they are referred to them as coffee shops). Different hawkers are open at different times and on different days of the week, so depending on when you go you will have a chance at something totally different. I have distinct memories of the coffee shop my family went to when I was young; the blue tile floors, the plastic chairs, the tables I would be stood on to sing a song. I never ate laksa with them then. Rather, the food I remember was the candy I would buy from the cashier's station. My parents and their friends, men and women who were in many ways my aunts and uncles, would gather there in the morning - it must have been on Sundays - and my brother and I would play with all of the other children in the room. Back then they went to see Laksa Lim, who made laksa for everyone in the morning. Today Laksa Lim drives a taxi cab, the children have all grown up and are scattered across the world, but my uncles still meet at a coffee shop on Sunday mornings.

Lo showed up at the hostel while we were still running around trying to get ready, but soon we were in the car on the way to a laksa place he told us he often goes to in the morning before work.

“Why eat breakfast at home when it is cheaper and easier here” he proclaimed. I saw his point. At less the a dollar a bowl it was a tough bargain to beat, not that I ever got a chance to pay for a bowl - Lo had it all paid for before we could even find our wallets.
From breakfast we drove to the Cat Museum. Kuching means “Cat City” in some native language, so the city is littered with cat statues - and, naturally, there is a Cat Museum. The Museum looks like what would happen if you just started buying every single poster, statue, figurine, anything that you saw that looked like a cat, said cat, or even rhymed with cat and then put it all in one room together. Posters from Alice in Wonderland (Cheshire cat) to the Cat Burgler hung together with inspirational kitten posters reading things like “hang in there” and over looked statues of hello kitty. The museum was free, but you had to pay about $2 to take pictures - although I don't even know where you would begin with the photos.

After leaving the Cat Museum, Lo just started driving us around. He always tried to take us different routes to things so we could see as much as possible, but this also meant I was never really able to get my bearings. Along our drive we passed a mosque that Betsy exclaimed to be beautiful. So the car turned into the parking lot and we headed toward the mosque. Betsy and I both protested that we could not go in as we were in sleeveless dresses, but Lo insisted we would just “walk around the outside”.

The outside, it seemed, was the open air section of the mosque (about 70% of the building), and the guards seemed to have no problem with us as long as we didn't go into the enclosed part. Should we want to, they told us, they had robes we could put on over our dresses. But we said it was no problem, and simply enjoyed the beautiful architecture of the outside area and peeped the inside through the open doors.

Next Lo drove us by the new city library (which seemed terribly far outside the city, but I didn't point that out), where he noticed there was a wedding going on. Naturally he beckoned us inside to see, again ignoring our bare shoulders, again no one really seeming to mind. However the naked shoulders finally stopped us when he attempted to take us into the book section of the library where we were informed you had to be covered up. Considering the amount of AC in the room, I wouldn't have minded a shawl, but I also wasn't dying to check out the inside of the library so we told the security guard it was no problem and wondered around other parts of the building. About 5 minutes later, the security guard came up behind us, apologized and said never mind the rules, we could go inside the library. He looked genuinely upset at the fact that he had had to turn us away, and we assured him it was really no problem and we really didn't need to go in. This was probably the first time Jude, or maybe it was Betsy, turned to me and commented on how amazingly inviting everyone in Kuching was. I just nodded; we hadn’t even been there 24 hours yet.

After visiting the new golden parliament building and the palace of the governor of Sarawak, Lo dropped us back at our hostel. We ran across the street for a quick meal of kolo mee (one of my favorite dishes of crinkled egg noodles tossed with a garlicky oil and consommé blend topped with some veggies and sweet pork - so simple and so good). We got dressed in shorts, tees and tall socks, packed changes of clothes, and got out only about 5 minutes after Lo showed up for us. We were off to the HASH.

The HASH is a running group that was founded in the 1960s in Kuala Lumpur by a group of British expats who played Rugby on Sundays, but needed something to do on Saturdays. Two guys, the hare and the co-hare, head out into the jungle and lay down a path of squares of white paper. Everyone else heads out an hour or two later and follows the trail, in theory attempting to catch up with the hare and catch him. But the path can be tricky, sometimes heading in two directions with one being a dead end, sometimes ending and not starting back up for 50 meters. And so the people run constantly, stopping and searching, calling out to one another when they find the train (On On) or lose the trail (Checking). In Kuching there are 5 HASH groups: the City Hash on Saturdays, the Men’s Hash on Tuesdays, The Women’s Hash on Wednesdays, The Hazards (a very hard core group) on Thursdays and the kids hash once a month on a Sunday. Oh and there’s also a bike hash that does the same craziness on bikes once a month. When we visit we always go to the city hash, as it is for everyone and not too difficult (there is usually a long and a short option).

Since there hadn’t been much rain recently this run was not nearly as muddy as most, but I still came out of it pretty dirty from sliding down a hill (or should I say cliff) on my butt and tripping on my fair share of branches. Betsy, Christophe and I did the medium run (this time there were three), which had a stop in the middle for watermelon and water (key). The run went through the jungle, out into a pepper field, back into the jungle, through another farmer's field, back into the jungle and finally spit us out on the far side of the village we started from. Just a quick note, when I say “field” I mean a space where things are grown purposefully - but don't think you can picture a manicured farm. These fields are literally surrounded by rain forest, and totally overgrown minus the trees. There are little huts set up by them where the farmer can come and rest when he is needed by them, but if it wasn't for these huts you might think pepper plants just naturally grow in rows.

After the run, we showered with buckets of water, changed into our cleaner clothes, and joined the group to do our obligatory “down downs”. In other words, we went and chugged beers for being new to the run. Once about 15 people had been made to down down (newbies, someone for running the short run, the owner of the hash computer for the fact that the battery died, etc) we all piled into cars and headed to the “On On” - or post running eating and drinking party.

I won't go into too much detail, but there was lots of good food, beer constantly flowing, many more down downs, several songs sung and even karaoke in a big outdoor space. The songs were naturally quite vulgar (me no likey british sailors, yankee pay 5 dollars more) but so much fun with everyone belting them out together. They are all set to the tunes of old Rugby drinking songs, so perfect for group belting. In honor of father’s day all of the single guys had to do down downs, so Christophe was on the hot seat. They sang a special song for all these guys that went like this:

If I were a bachelor,

If I were to marry,
I would marry a Mechanic’s daughter,
More then any lassie…
She would screw, and I would screw,
And we would screw together,
Wake up in the middle of the night screwing one another.

Each person doing a down down had a different kind of daughter, and Christophe actually got two. First he had “Jim Ball’s daughter”, cause “she’d squish balls” and after that came “Obama’s daughter” to which Betsy and I heartily sang out “she would change” only to be drowned out by everyone else singing “she would bomb”. It was a nice little reminder that for all the change we hope to see, it sure hasn't changed yet.

So the night went on from there and we somehow were gotten back home and crawled happily into our beds.

A Gorgeous Trip to Kuching

2009-06-26T11:44:00.005+09:00

Well we just got back from an amazing week of running around Kuching. But as we made no posts about it the whole time we were there, I figure I will slowly type up each day over the course of the next week. That way I dont have to type it all at once, and you dont have to read it all at once! Everybody wins (^ v ^ !!)

Day 1, Friday: We arrived in Kuching after having spent the night in Singapore Airport. This was not the worse night sleep I have ever had, but it wasn't the best either. Still, we awoke only somewhat stiff from the chairs we laid down on and spent the morning at the Singapore Museum- a very impressive museum. The price was a bit steep ($13), but by flashing my Japanese Teacher’s ID card and saying it was a student card, I got a student ticket at a much more reasonable $5. We saw a really cool exhibit about Singaporean food, as well as the special exhibit on Verner Panton, the designer from the 60s/70s who made the first single mold plastic chairs among other things. Around 1pm we were back at the airport, and from the Budget terminal made our way to Kuching on the 3pm Tiger Airways flight.
Lo picked us up at the airport in Kuching and drove us to the hostel we were staying at. We got checked in, grabbed a quick shower, then got picked back up by Lo to go back to the airport to meet Betsy and Jude, who did not know we were in Kuching. On the way to the airport Lo mentioned that he wanted to stop off at a bar he had been at last week to pick up something he left there. We dutifully followed Lo into the empty bar, filled with laser lights and blasting music. Before we knew what had happened Lo had ordered a bucket full of Heinekens as a “quick drink” before heading to the airport. It was then that we knew we were back in Kuching.
Amazingly we beat the girls to the airport and Lo headed inside to get them while Christophe and I hid outside. Hiding at an airport is a little weird these days and we got a few suspicious stares as we peered at the entrance from behind pillars, but no one arrested us as terrorists, so it was fine. Finally the girls emerged, trailing behind Lo on their way to the car. We fell in step behind them and Christophe began loudly clearing his throat. As it became clear that they were not responding to this, I let out a high pitched “sumimasen!” (Japanese for excuse me) and both the girls stopped in their tracks. Slowly they rotated around and stared at us. It took 3-5 seconds for our presence to sink in, upon which time Judy let out a little scream and Betsy began repeating, “shut up, no way” over and over again.
From the airport we went straight to dinner at this fabulous outdoor place where there are a bunch of different venders. We dined on some red snapper that Lo had gotten from fishermen that morning and dropped off to be cooked by one of the stands. It was divine. We also had tempura seafood with a chili sauce, some stewed veggies, and something else that I can picture, but cant name. Needless to say, it was all delicious, and went wonderfully with all the beer we were drinking.
After dinner we headed over to a coffee shop where Lo’s photography club meets on Friday nights to drink. We pulled up chairs at the big round table, and continued consuming beers- all the while chatting with the photography guys. Eventually Jude even got them to start pulling out cameras for her to admire and envy.
Finally around 2am Lo dropped us back off at the hostel and we stumbled to our room. There Jude and I promptly crawled into bed, while Christophe and Betsy headed to the top floor bar for a few more brews. At the bar they met a bunch of Australian High School kids who they told Christophe’s name is “Freedom”- the name by which they kids would refer to him for the rest of the time they were there.

feeling better and still amazed by Japan

2009-06-10T16:06:00.009+09:00

A lot has changed since my last post, although the appearance of my house would beg to differ. While nothing has yet gone inside a box, I have indeed bought boxes. I am also halfway through the process of securing a shipping company and the time table for sending those boxes home. But perhaps the most significant change is an email sitting stared in my inbox, which states that I am now the proud owner of two e-tickets leaving Tokyo on November 2 at 4:30pm, arriving in Washington DC at 2:39pm the same day. Now that my ability to travel through space and time has been guaranteed, I feel calm.

It’s amazing, buying that plane ticket instantly relaxed muscles that had been tense since April 1st. And having that ticket seems to have set everything else in motion. I have found someone to take care of Inu-chan for the three months we are riding, and am able to tell them exactly when we would love them to bring him down to Tokyo. I have gotten in contact with the shippers, which I really didn't need to get a ticket to do, but somehow it was the catalyst for that action. Christophe started his application process for changing over to a visitors visa for our last three months of riding. We talked to the gas man, internet people, phone people and landlady all about the fact that we are leaving. Oh, and I reserved a spot for Inu-chan in the cabin of the plane we will be taking home. So while my house looks much the same (nothing is actually “in” those new boxes) my mind is in a whole new place. I think it was really one of those, “I don't know where to begin” moments that I was having, but now I have begun and things are rolling.

On a totally different note, Japan continues to produce things that shock, amuse and please me. Today we will discuss two of them.

Item number 1: Gatcha-pon tiny Obama Figurine.

Before I begin this, you should know, Japan loves the idea of Obama, and is obsessed with the catch phrase “Yes, we can”. I don't know if this happens in America, I don't live there, but here in Japan “Yes, we can” has become a universal catch phrase that may be applied to anything. I am in no way exaggerating nor joking when I tell you I have seen “Yes we can” on tissue boxes, house sale ads, cell phone ads, hardcore conservative political ads and pencil cases. Today, though, was my favorite.

Another thing you may not know about is Japan’s obsession with tiny figurines on strings that can be attached to cell phones, ipods, keys, DSs, etc. They come from "gatcha-pon" machines- you put in 100-300 yen depending, turn the dial, and out comes a little figurine. We have these in America, they are amazing in Japan. So today we were looking at the machine and noticed one made up of tiny uni-sex humans of different colors with various symbols on their heads and phrases on their chests. And there was a brown one in a black suit with the phrase “Yes We Can”- it was Obama. So we tried.

First we won the purple guy shedding a tear with a graph on the back of his head that shows a line heading down. His chest reads (roughly translated): “approval rate decline”. We will investigate this meaning more in the future.

Next we got the yellow guy who has a sign tacked to the back of his head. His chest reads (our translation): “Always depending on others” . While the sign on the back of his head reads (and we're really not sure about this one): “like an answer” (I don't get it...)

With my last 100 yen I crossed my fingers, turned the knob, and out came the white one, With hearts for eyes, her chest reads: “doting parent” and on her back is a pink heart that says: “Our kid is number one!”

Defeated I turned away, but Christophe was not ready to give up. He pulled out his wallet and found 100 yen. In the coin went, the knob turned, and who was there: OBAMA!! His chest reads: “Change” written in katakana, so it would be pronounced “che-nji” in Japanese. On his back, in English letters it says “Yes, we can!” And he's 130% taller then the other ones, so take that other tiny Japanese characters.

** if anyone reading this post really wants one of the non-obama's let me know and I will send it your way. Obama is going on the ipod.

Item number 2: Green Tea Flavored Diet Coke

Haven’t tried it yet and not really in the mood for coke right now, so I will write a proper post about this after trying it. Just though you should know.

Panic Attack

2009-05-27T06:56:00.000+09:00

This morning I woke up at 4am. I didn't hear something, nothing happened to me, I just woke up and my body told me I was to have no more sleep. I was unsurprised by this, it had been a restless night, although I feel I can hardly call it a night considering I went to bed at midnight, more like a longish nap. But at 4 am I woke up and attempting to fall back asleep did no good. The muscles in my shoulders were all on pins and needles- there was no comfortable position and I couldn't seem to stretch enough to release the strange, almost tickling, feeling. Adding to this bizarre feeling, my heart seemed to have traded in regular solid beats for a general fluttering. It was like in steam of beating, my heart was lightly strumming. So after 20 minutes of attempting to get back to asleep I accepted that I was awake and got up. Once awake I made salads for Christophe and I to take in our Bento, got ready to do the dishes, realized we were out of dish soap, and set off on a jog to the convenience store (which is indeed open at 4:30am and does sell dish soap).

During this jog I reflected on my day yesterday trying to figure out what had led to my only sleeping 4 hours last night. The more I went through my day, the more I realized that over the course of the day yesterday, I had one long panic attack. That panic attack was soft and under the surface of my entire day and only came to full bloom when I fell asleep, let down my guard and slipped into a complete panic attack.

Yesterday morning I started the day by calling home and chatting with my parents and christophe’s parents. They were all together for Memorial Day Monday for a wonderful sounding dinner. Talking with family at moments like that makes me the most homesick. As they tell me about the food they made, the drinks they are drinking and as I listen to the usual chatter in the background I can perfectly picture the scene- and I always feel my heart strings tug as I wish I was standing at that counter too, sipping on champagne or helping mommy prep the chicken. I miss my kitchen counter, as that is the space where everyone I love will at some point come to, rest their glass, reach out for some hors d’oeuvre or another, and talk about their day. It is the physical space that represents home to me.

So as Christophe left for work I was feeling a touch homesick and decided to actually start researching shipping things back to America. This will be no small feet- my research has left me with the belief that the best deal we are going to get is about $1000 for shipping all our stuff unless we decide to leave the kotatsu behind (which I don't really want to do, but am not considering). For some reason doing all that research was leaving me even more antsy then I had been before. I didn't make it out for my morning jog, in fact I barely noticed about an hour and a half go by. So I jumped in and out of the shower, threw on some clothes, and hopped on my bike to go to a girlfriend’s house for a cooking lunch date we had.

Down at Masako’s house I had a great time making some Korean food with her and another Japanese friend, who doesn't speak English so I got to flex my Japanese muscles a good bit. We enjoyed our lunch on the back porch, chatting and relaxing in the sun. I felt totally content and at peace at that point. Then at two I hopped back on my bike and raced over to the city gym to watch my school’s basketball teams (girls and boys) in a tournament there. A bunch of students were in the stands and they quickly called me over to sit and chat with them. The games were fun, our teams both destroyed their opponents, and I got a chance to chat with a lot of students I don't see as much anymore because they are 3rd years. Towards the end of the second game, with our team winning 132 to 22 and the students in the stands all chatting different lines I suddenly felt the same tug at my heart that I had felt in the morning. Except this time I was being flooded with thoughts of my leaving, my goodbye speech, and the fact that I very well may never see any of these kids again. I found myself fighting back tears as I clapped along to the chants.

By the time the second game had ended it was already 5:30, so I headed straight over to Saiko’s house, another girlfriend, where we were going to have a “Korean Dinner Party”. At the “cooking lunch” that morning we had made a Korean pork dish that had been ridding around in my bag since (for lunch we had sashimi rice bowls and shiroko for dessert), so I was able to go straight to the potluck. Before I could even put my bag down Sakiko was handing me a glass of some crazy flower liquor and soon we were prepping the food and chatting. Naomi (another Japanese girlfriend), Christophe and Evan (saki’s husband) all showed up within the hour and the dinner party began (very delicious I might add). Saki’s dad owns a booze and rice shop and he donated a little 1/4 keg to our party- a nice addition. A little later two more friends showed up and we ended up staying at Evan and Saki’s until about 11:30. Then we biked home full of good cheer and good food.

Yet when I went to bed I had an uneasy feeling and as you know, at 4am I was up with a fluttering heart and spasming shoulder muscles. But as I unpack my day yesterday, I can start to see why. In the morning I got homesick, ready to leave Japan. But then as I started to look into it, I was overcome by what an expensive and complicated process it is going to be to actually pack up my life and move back to America. Then I had a great day with friends, my school and more friends. I biked around town on a beautiful spring day and was totally at peace with my life here. So why, my subconscious began to ask, why on earth am I leaving this comfortable life to go to one I have no ideas about? What am I thinking?

Of course there are a thousand reasons why now is the time to go, something I very much know. But the point still remains, that I am leaving a comfortable and at this point easy life, to completely start over in a new place- something that both excites and terrifies me. So here I am: homesick, overwhelmed, happy, sad, excited and scared. And the worst part, for all the girl friends I have in Japan, the two girls I could actually to relate with about this stuff are currently trekking around Asia. All the girls who are left here are my Japanese girlfriends, who are great friends but who cant possibly relate to me on the issues of living in Japan for three years and facing the end of my time here.

So I spent my morning doing dishes, laundry, jogging, and making lunch- all while listening to Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, which I swear was written for my mental strife right now. I was hoping writing this would help calm my nerves, but actually unpacking all my emotions seems to have brought back my heart flutter. But it has also reminded me of something, there is one other person in this house who has been listening to an awful lot of Sky Blue Sky recently and who might be good to talk to about all this baggage I’m carrying around.

To bad he doesn't even wake up for an earthquake…

Sumo 2009

2009-05-13T22:39:00.005+09:00

As those who popped over to the cycling blog know, the week/weekend before last tophe and I were happily enjoying a 4 day ride down to Hakodate, followed by 2 days in Hakodate, followed by an easy 2 hour train ride home. Deciding that doing that route only by bicycle and train was not enough, this past weekend we drove it.

Actually we drove down so that I could participate in the Fukushima Women’s Sumo competition. Assuming I was a good person last year, I posted about doing this last year too. Last year there was around 17 foreign gals who joined in the fight, and we all had a blast. This year there was only four of us, but it was just as fun. And there was still lots of foreign support in the audience.

We went down by car with two other good friends, Blaz and Brent. Originally the plan had been to get up early Saturday morning and rocket down to the southern most tip of Hokkaido for some cherry blossom tree action (ie grilling and drinking beers under the trees). But this year a group of birds called uso bird-o (translates as liar birds) apparently ate all the cherry blossom buds at the park we were aiming for, so we rethought the plan.

** A quick side note: I first learned of the uso birds and their cherry blossom eating ways while we were in Hakodate enjoying beer under some trees there. Chatting with a very drunk Japanese man in Japanese, I learned from him that a bunch of liar birds ate all the flowers at one of the other parks in Hakodate. “Liar?” I asked him, “are you lying”. “Yes,” he said “they lie.”. “Oh so they didn't eat the flowers, just they are lying about it”. “No, the cherry blossoms were eaten, liar”. – keep in mind this conversation was all in drunk Japanese, so it went on for some time before I figured out that I was not being lied to, the birds were called liar birds, and the flowers were in fact eaten (picture who’s on first drunk and in Japanese). **

So we took our time heading down South, bringing along a picnic of salsa, veggie wraps, pita bread, hummus and chocolate chip cookies. Along the way we stopped in Aputa for guru-maki sausages, in Yakumo for ice creams, in Mori for picnicking, and ate in the car too!! It was a day of food. Finally making it to Fukushima, we parked the car, met up with some friends, and walked to a restaurant for dinner ** ^ v ^ !!**

So we walk into the restaurant, this cool little fisherman’s izakaya (Japanese tapas and beer restaurant) and I am digging on the various decorations. As people are figuring out the tables and such I notice the poster for this year’s sumo competition. There is a big picture of a girl sumo-ing in the middle of the poster. “hmmm…” I think, “is that… no… is that…?”. I tug on Christophe’s sleeve and point at the poster. “Oh my god, Meghan is on the poster!” he exclaimed. “It is, it is me! Im on the poster! Im the sumo poster girl!!” This was what ran through my head for the rest of the night- I even autographed one poster I passed later in the evening. Of course no one ever asked me if they could use my photo on this poster that was all over Fukushima and Hakodate- but luckily for them I have no idea how to get upset in a legal way in Japan and I really don't care anyway.

I fought in three sumo matches on Sunday. My first match was during the practice round- and I fought against a girl who we later found out is the Judo Junior Champion of Japan. She won. My first real match was against a little Japanese girl who more or less stepped back as I stepped forward until she was no longer in the ring and I had won. My third match was a pretty decent struggle where she almost won, then I almost won, then she flipped me over and out of the ring- although I did keep a hold of her belt making her tumble right down next to me. Sadly, that loss took me out of the running. But still its so much fun to watch and cheer, oh and ah, and generally yell and scream during the matches. At the end this nice old man gave me a bunch of dried fish which I passed around to the other winners- cause I really don't need that much dried fish. But the dried scallops were really yummy, excellent with beer. The dried fish skin I went ahead and “passed” and the dried salmon was pretty good so I took a bunch of it into school on Monday to share with teachers.

The ride home was a lot quicker with only one food stop- a great chicken place about halfway home. We got back, played a bit of Zelda, and decided not to go anywhere for a while.

Oh and at the end of the competition I asked a dude for a poster or two since “IT’S ME!!”. He said he would mail me some so I gave him my address. They came this morning in the mail. Get this, he rolled three posters, wrapped a little piece of paper around the middle with my address, and mailed them. That’s all, no poster tube. And you know what- they came through perfect, totally unharmed. Can’t even imagine what they would look like if I tried to pull that in America.

to hakodate and back: The Plan

2009-04-22T21:14:00.003+09:00

It’s crazy to think that Golden Week, that (usually) glorious set of consecutive holidays that happens but once a year in the Japanese calendar, is almost upon us. Last year, Meghan and I ferried over to Tohoku and toured the area on our then newly purchased bicycles. This year we will be doing some touring, though much closer to home – and with a significantly larger amount of gear. At this point we are about 80% ready, gear-wise, for our “Goodbye Japan” bicycle tour of Japan beginning in early August. In order to get a head start, we ordered all of our equipment while it was still too cold to tour (yes, we’re the tender kind of cycle tourists that don’t go out if it looks like it’ll be less than 50 Fahrenheit). In order to try out all of our new fancy equipment, we decided to take a trip in a southwardly (see potentially warmer) direction. The last time we were in Hakodate, we barely saw any of the city – spending most of our time in the onsen hotel we were staying at or in the car. This trip will most likely prove to be the exact opposite. Instead of a weekend, we are giving ourselves a week. Instead of a car, bikes. Instead of an onsen hotel, our (hopefully) trusty Big Agnes Gore Pass 3.

We’ll leave Muroran the morning of April 30th and hopefully get as far as Yakumo (about 110km or 70miles west) but if we aren’t up to a tough first day, we may stop earlier. Either way, the plan so far is Yakumo – home of Harvester chicken. Their claim to fame is that they were once the “testing facility” (not sure what that really means) for Kentucky Fried Chicken recipes until either their contract ended or things fell apart. Apparently the farm fell into a state of disrepair or stayed private for a while until they decided to reopen with new facilities including a wonderfully open dining room and a camp site. And their chicken is nowhere near what KFC claims chicken to be. It’s actually food. And tasty, at that.

From Yakumo, we’ll make our way straight to Hakodate (a 70km or 50mile ride) and hopefully spend the night in a “rider house”. Not sure about the US but Japan has “rider houses” that are essentially hostels aimed at motorcycle and bicycle tourists. They provide basic, cheap, short term stays with warm showers and, sometimes, a dinner involved. We’re pretty excited about making the most of rider houses throughout this trip and on our ”big” trip in August as they will most likely be the best places to meet other people doing precisely what we will be doing. Camping is fun, and Meghan and I have no problems just enjoying each other’s company but sometimes you want to just chat up some other tourists, ask about some good restaurants in the area and maybe get some tasty, secret info about things that shouldn’t be missed.

We’ll most likely spend a full day in Hakodate enjoying the historical buildings, checking out the morning market and heading to the famous star-shaped lake Goryokaku Park. There’s plenty to see in Hakodate but that kind of information can be found with a simple google search so I won’t bore you with it here.

From Hakodate we are going to head toward Cape Esan – the very natural and hotspringy peninsula to the east of Hakodate. I’m a bit worried about this part of the trip as there are a good number of tunnels along the one road that lines the coast, Golden Week is when the notoriously bad drivers come out of the woodwork, and anybody who has seen tunnels in the more rural parts of Japan can tell you that they are anything but wide. We’ll have lots of reflecties, flashing lights and helmets but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t worry about things like that. Danger aside, I think it’s going to be a really beautiful ride. At the tip of the cape we will hopefully get a chance to hit the tidal onsen - a hotspring that is only accessible during (high tide? low tide?) one of the tides. From there, we will continue around the cape and make it to Shikabe – a town with a (as it was described to me) like Yellowstone natural geyser. From there, we will continue to Lake Onuma and set up camp. Whether or not we can do the whole cape in one day is still in question. I’m not sure exactly how far it all is as Google Maps is terribly unhelpful sometimes but I’m hoping we can do it in a day – taking a second look, it might be about 90 or 110 km. Either way, we’ll see how it goes and should we get a bit tired, there are plenty of campsites along the way (which will most likely still be “closed”) where we can plop down the tent and cook up some dinner.

Once we’ve arrived at Onuma, and assuming we have enough energy, I’m hoping to hike Mt. Komagatake – a mountain that I’ve seen practically every work day that wasn’t too foggy. Crossing the bridge to work in the morning, Komagatake is often clearly visible from across Funkan Bay. I’ve often thought about how the people in Mori, the closest town to Mt. Komagatake, see our end of the bay on their ways to work. Depending on whether that hike kills us or not (we’re not big hikers), we’ll either pack up camp and head out or camp one more night at Lake Onuma and head out early the next morning.

The rest of the trip will most likely be a bit of repetitious backtracking along the road we came in on. Luckily the road is mostly smooth, straight and nested between mountains and the bay so there shouldn’t be any big hiccups and the scenery should be nice. We’ll also be able to try all the restaurants that we saw but didn’t stop at on the way down.

And that’s it, if all goes according to plan, we should arrive back in Muroran on the 5th or 6th – most likely the 6th. I’ll have work on the 7th and 8th but early Saturday morning, we will re-trace our cycle treads via Subaru tire tracks as we head down to the Women Only Sumo competition that happens once a year in Fukushima – no more than 10 or 20kms from Hakodate! Meghan competed last year (I’m sure some of you saw the photos) and she will hopefully be competing this year (as long as she gets the registration form in on time. ahem.) We’ll hopefully be able let you know how the trip is going from the road and we’ll see how close we stay to the plan.

And eating food again - IS GREAT.

the master cleanse. days 11 , 12 and 13. ease out.

2009-04-19T21:32:00.005+09:00

Day 11
Thoughts from Note
In the morning, we each made liter containers of delicious, pulpy orange juice and went off to our respective works. I had prepared myself for a really tough day of being extraordinarily hungry but, the hunger never came. The orange juice, apart from being amazingly delicious, kept me quite full. A little after 1pm, I went and bought myself a V8-similar beverage and nursed it for a couple hours - making sure not to jolt my stomach into revolt. All went well. For dinner we had some simply yet (again) remarkably delicious vegetable consomme soups. Everything is delicious after 10 days of lemon and cayenne. All in all, the first day of ease out was a cinch.
Thoughts from Meghan
As Christophe said, OJ is delicious. I greatly enjoyed drinking it, and munching on the pulp- you'll chew anything when you've had nothing to chew for 10 days. I actually had a really busy day of play rehearsals, so I didnt drink all that much of my OJ until I got home around 3:45. Then I cut it with some water and drank it up. Followed it with a little apple juice and water which was amazing. I think the most exciting part of the day though was realizing at 7pm that it was time to "make dinner" something we hadnt done in a while. While I boiled water and mixed it with a boullion cube, Tophe cleared the table and set it for our dinner. As silly and simple as a bowl of bullion is, it felt so nice to "sit down to dinner" for the first time in 10 days. I think that is one of the things I missed most.

Day 12
Thoughts from Note
We started day twelve with a breakfast of okayuu, a sort of heavily watered down rice porridge normally made for those with intestinal problems. We added a bit of maple syrup and it was, yes again, remarkably delicious. For lunch, Meghan made a simple vegetable soup with carrots, onions and shiitake mushrooms that we ate cautiously. All went well again. While shopping for veggies, we picked up a baguette from the bakery. While finishing up the soup, we decided to try out our first carbs (a little earlier than planned). No prob. For dinner we had some fabulous raw food wraps (pitas, hummus, peppers, cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, broccoli sprouts, fried tofu and black beans). Probably ate too many of those. The only effect that solid foods had on me was the feeling of weight. After having essentially nothing in your stomach for about a week, the addition of any sort of solid food really feels a bit funny. Oh, and due to visitors and peer pressure, Meghan and I cracked into a nice, crisp New Zealand Marlborough that we had purchased the week prior.
Thoughts from Meghan
To expound on the phrase "visitors"- tophe and I had 15 people sleeping at our house Saturday night. Each year a group of English Teachers from all over Hokkaido get together and put together a musical to be preformed at three different locations in Hokkaido. This year I was asked to host the musical at Kaisei, and so arranged for them to use our big ol' stage. It was a bit stressful trying to manage a crew of foreigners in my school, but the musical went well and they held a workshop with my students in the morning, so all was happy. After the show the whole crew went out to an after party which tophe and I skipped due to our fairly strict dietary restrictions. But joined by one of our lovely Hokkaido friends we stayed in and had delicious veggie wraps and some well deserved wine. Actually while the bread and soup sat pretty heavy in my tum earlier in the day, the wine was no problem at all in the eve. I think the tum is back to normal.

Day 13
Thoughts from Note
I write to you now sipping on my second Chimay and enjoying every sip. We had okayuu for breakfast again this morning. I again added some maple syrup but thought I would also through a bit of butter in there to round out the flavor. I've been worried about reintroducing dairy into my diet - mainly because I hear that if you dive into the milks, cheeses and eggs too soon, you can expect serious stomach pains. All was good. And tasty. Lunch was very basic - some fruit and a salad consisting of hearts of palm, cheery tomatoes and button mushrooms (known simply as mashyuruum), and black olives. Dinner was again raw food wraps (so, so good) with the added Chimays. For the record, I've had no serious bathroom issues as some claim can happen if you rush the ease out process. No constipation here.

The ease-out has been nothing but glorious and fairly easy. It's been such a joy to get back to different flavors and textures. I'll write more later but the Chimay is is impeding my thoughts. All's good on the ease-out front.
Thoughts from Meghan
The Chimays are lovely, I have been greatly enjoying every sip. Unlike my amazing pooing boy, I have not yet passed out any of the food I have taken in since eating again. But honestly this comes as no great surprise, as you have surely learned by now, Im not a big poo-er.
Getting back to food has been lovely and I am excited about cooking all this week. Ive got a new plan to write meal plans for the week on Sundays so that I can plan out the menu to take advantage of leftovers. For example this week will be Nabe (a Japanese style soup) on Monday (using up the left over shitake and carrots from the weekend), Scallop salad on Tuesday (using up what will be left over green onions from Monday) and vegetarian chili' on Thursday (using up whatever veggies are left). Still planning to keep away from meat this week, but I dont think we can stay away from fish. Wednesday, in case your curious, will either be sushi or soup curry, we havent decided which we miss more yet. Along with the healthier and better planned eating I plan to keep up the exercise. The pool wont open until May, so I am going to try to go for at least 30 minute jogs each day, along with my Wii Fit time, for the rest of this month.

the master cleanse. DAY 10!!!

2009-04-17T08:50:00.003+09:00

Thoughts from Note
And that’s it. The end. Finished. We’ll, kinda. We still have the ease-out to do but damn am I happy not have to have that lemony-spicy yet maple syrupy taste in my mouth any more.

The last couple days have actually been the hardest for me. A sharp pain has been developing in the left side of my abdomen. I first thought it was just a stomach ache brought on by the cleanse but the sharpness and persistence of it is making me think otherwise. If it’s still there after we’ve finished the ease-out and returned to a normal diet, I may head to doctor just to be safe.

All in all, I have to say that the fast was pretty easy – boring – but pretty easy and I feel good about having actually completed it. My weight shifted a bit (I weighed myself this morning and the final number is 138 – I was a little over 145 when I started) but more importantly, I feel much healthier overall. I haven’t drunk coffee in 10 days and I don’t get the dragging sleepiness that I used to. Makes me think I shouldn’t drink coffee as it most likely brings on a fair bit of the sleepiness. It’s too bad that I simply love the taste of coffee. I guess intermittent sleepiness is, interestingly enough, the tax for loving coffee.

I’m happy to be done. I’m very happy I did it. And I’m happy to be able to eat real food again very soon. We’ll continue these (mostly) regular posts until at least the end of the ease-out and we’ll try our best to keep up more regularly afterwards. Actually, there will be plenty to write about considering our big trip is coming up so expect a little more regularity from us.

Trip news! I picked up my OCR3 from K-style bicycle shop today. I had fears of running front panniers on a carbon fork so I had them swap out my stock carbon fork for a relatively inexpensive cromoly fork that I’ll use exclusively for touring and hauling – something I can beat up a bit.

Our 23lbs. worth or REI purchased swag will arrive on Monday!!1! (And my Cannondale cycling shorts won’t be far behind.) Very exciting. Meghan and I are also planning our first trip to break in all the new gear and work out the kinks of packing it all up. We’ll most likely be taking our time cycling from Muroran to Hakodate over Golden Week. We haven’t spent much time in Hakodate (only once before where we didn’t actually see much of the city since we we’re there only for an onsen hotel) so this time we will be taking it slow. The cherry blossoms should be out by then, we’ll hit a couple onsen (one very famous TIDAL onsen), eat some delicious food (Lucky Pierot burgers and Harvester chicken!) and hopefully do a bit of hiking up Komagatake. We’ll be sure to post pictures and thoughts, maybe even while on the trip!

But for now, good by master cleanse and let the ease-out begin.

thoughts from Meghan
Day 10 felt like any other day of the fast. I didn't even really think all that much about the fact that it was the last day. Well that’s not totally true. While I was doing the salt water rinse this morning I just kept telling myself, this is it, the last time I will have to do this. It ran through my system as usual, interrupting my daily hour of Wii Fit. I am going to try to keep up this ritual of an hour of Wii Fit each morning after the fast as well. I usually do a little bit of Aerobic, followed by a combination of yoga and strengthening. I strap weights onto my wrists or ankles to up the power of the exercises also. I have noticed that my back has stopped giving me issues since I started doing this, I think because of the yoga. Plus they always say stronger stomach muscles are good for your back. So for the sake of not waking up in pain every morning alone, I am going to try to stick with it.

Today we had a four hour rehearsal in a very cold auditorium (it costs like $70 an hour to heat the room, so its never heated for rehearsals) and I was not the happiest of campers. My students were pulling some mind blowingly idiotic moves, and my patience was at an all time low (period, no food for 10 days, very cold)- so I did a lot of yelling. Sometimes this can be a good thing though, because by the end of the day people were searching for ways to please me and things were moving a lot smoother. Today we have two short one hour runs, so I am hoping they go well. I can’t believe this show will go up in just over a week, but I do in the end have a lot of faith in my students to make it look good.

In the afternoon I went to my Ikebana class, where I am still preparing for the show on Sunday. I did another version of the piece, using the same flowers but a different arrangement (I am using yellow and white freesia and Eucalyptus). I told christophe to pick me up in an hour, but when he called to say he was there I had just finished. So I told him to hang tight for 10 minutes while my teacher critiqued it. Five minutes later I called him to tell him to go home and come back in an hour, because the critic had resulted in her pulling all but two Eucalyptus branches out. My second version she liked, and I did one more quick version before Christophe showed up. I am really really nervous about Sunday, but I have like four hours to put my piece together, so she can rip it apart three times before I will run out of time!

As for the fast, I barely drank a sip of anything while I was doing play rehearsal, so when I got home I downed my whole first liter. Then I made a fresh 500ml to take to Ikebana, but again didn't drink much of anything while I was there. When I got home I drank it up pretty quickly. We did some straightening up around the house, then settled into some TV shows to relax and drink Senna Tea (Christophe had peppermint). Went to bed and passed right out, almost forgetting that I would get OJ in the morning.

the master cleanse. days 8 and 9.

2009-04-15T20:22:00.003+09:00

Thoughts from Note
Day 8: Day eight was particularly tough. Both Meghan and I had some serious hunger issues. I attribute mine entirely to the fact that, with classes having started again, I had to give several self introductions to several different classes. During the question time of my self intro, someone always asks about my favorite food or favorite Japanese food and that always devolves into a huge messy discussion about all sorts of different food related topics. This is not good for someone subsisting solely on 1.5 liters of lemonade a day. My stomach was loud and angry. Pretty embarrassing. Other than that, the back pains persisted. Did a salt water wash and it went as usual. We've been skipping the senna tea lately. It gives me serious stomach pains but definitely works.

Day 9: Today was easier than day eight. I didn't have many hunger issues (didn't have any self intros). I attribute this to the fact that I was able to vary my work diet a bit. I bought myself a variety pack of herbal teas and had a couple of those during the day instead of choking down more cayenne-lemon awful. I'm really tired of it. Lemons in general. I mean, it's not really gross, just very, very boring after 9 days.

The back pains persisted. I'm drinking plenty of water so I don't think it's dehydration. It could be somehow linked to the fast but I kinda doubt it. Then again, the timing is uncanny. We'll see if it continues past the fast. Maybe I'll go for a massage this weekend.

The ease-out meals are planned and ready to go. I think we may be easing out a little faster than suggested but I'm not too worried. The important part is simply to listen to your body and not push yourself. BUT PIZZA AND BEER IS CALLING (shhhhh. only a few more days. you can do it.)

Tomorrow is the final day of the cleanse. Christ-in-space it feels good to write that. In all, it hasn't been even remotely as difficult as I thought it would be. Just boring. But still a challenge. And I can still fail that challenge (although it's doubtful at this point). I think the real challenge will be the ease-out but we'll keep posting through it so if it's hell, you'll know.

See y'all at the end of day 10.

Thoughts from Meghan
Day 8 was hungry. Well the day wasn't hungry, but I was. I had a pretty full load of classes, and by the time I got home I was dying to eat something. I had to be in school first thing, so I didn't get to do a salt water cleanse in the morning. And I was so tired from the day at school and hungry that I decided to skip it in the afternoon too. For the first time ever I ended up making myself a full second liter to drink in the afternoon. I’m not sure what got me so hungry. Could be a result of talking so much about what we are going to eat when its over. I’ve been thinking a lot about food, so that probably got my stomach thinking about it too. All I know is that I was hungry, even with that liter, and it was the first time I have really felt that way.

In the evening Kate, the new GEOs (local English Language Conversation school) came over for some herbal tea. It was the first time we have really hung out with her, so it was mostly a getting to know you style of conversation. A nice break from tophe and my nightly ritual of beating a temple in Zelda, watching 2 TV shows and going to bed. But by the time she left (about midnight) we were both pretty tired and just passed out.

Day 9 was alright. My period started this morning, which also might have accounted for my stomach rumblings last night. I have to admit I am of two minds about having my period while fasting. Part of me feels like it makes for a more complete cleanse, and maybe I should keep fasting until both are done, while another part of me worries about not taking in any protein during menstruation (as I lose so much). I’ve decided to just stick to the original plan and end on day 10, but I am also watching myself closely to see how it affects me. All things told however, today was fine.

This morning when I woke up it was raining. I decided that considering I hadn’t eaten in 9 day, my period had just started and it was raining, I was totally justified in taking a taxi to school. So I called one, it was the right choice. School was super busy again. My 2nd year students will be performing their English Play at the end of the month, so I meet with them 2 to 3 hours a day, every day, to rehearse. This is extra exhausting because the play (which they wrote!!) is composed of three stories and a narration group. This means that rehearsals are simultaneously taking place in four rooms scattered about the school- so I have to run back and forth between them to see how things are developing. It’s going well, but I look forward to the end of this crazy schedule.

This evening we had tea ceremony, which is more then a little sad when you get cold water instead of warm frothy green tea. But its always nice to relax and meditate on life while there. Just got home a little bit ago and I am thinking about taking a warm bath. I’ve been getting cold a lot easier (probably because there is no food in me) and tonight is no exception. The days have been warming up here, but the nights are still pretty cold.

Tomorrow is day 10- I can’t believe I’ve been able to maintain this for so long!
meghan

the master cleanse. days 6 and 7.

2009-04-13T21:04:00.004+09:00

Thoughts from Note
Day 6: Very standard and laid back Sunday. Did the salt water wash. Did some Wii Fit. Felt good. Nothing much to report except that I was clearly too tired to write about it.

Day 7: Today, I had a very good amount of energy. It probably helps that it was a beautiful day. I find myself eating (I mean drinking) less and less each day. I started by taking in 2 liters each day but quickly found it too much. I cut it down to 1.5 liters of the drink each day and I sometimes find myself struggling to finish the last bit.

Classes started again today. I was worried that with very little time between classes and increased activity/standing for 50 minutes at a time, that I would get both hungry and cranky. Not so. I found myself with a great amount of energy and never really got hungry. My back pains were more intense than usual at the end of the day. I don't know if this is brought on by my increase in standing or the end of being hunched over my desk for 8 hours at a time. Either way, it's still very pinpointed and kinda sucks.

The only other thing to mention is that I've noticed that the senna tea is linked to the intense stomach aches that wake me up at 5 o'clock each (about) morning. If I drink the tea the night before, I pretty much always am rudely awoken. Quick trip to the bathroom fixes that though. Oh, for the record, I skipped the salt water rinse today. I use the bathroom whether or not I do the rinse so I feel like every other day is all the torture I should put my stomach through. She's a gentle flower and the salt water rinse is simply too violent a procedure. And I don't like all that salt inside me.

Day 7 is over. We're in the homestretch and I'm getting pretty excited for it to be over. I miss food. I miss flavors. I'm done with lemons. We started planning our ease-out 'cause were so excited to be almost finished. We also may or may not have spent about a hundred bucks at the wine and beer store to stock up on celebratory beverages. Day 8 here we come!

Thoughts from Meghan
Day 6 was Sunday, and a lazy Sunday at that. We hung around the house, went for a walk, did some cleaning up, played some Zelda and watched some TV. It felt nice to just totally chill out and not do anything with our day. Did the cleanse (at different times) and drank a big glass of Senna tea at night. I had been making a pot of it to split with Christophe- using one bag. But while this got him to the toilet it had minimal effect on me. So last night I made a strong glass just for me, and this morning it had its desired effect.

Day 7 was the first day of classes at my school. I didn’t have to be in until 12pm, so I woke, did the salt water rinse, and then did a solid hour of Wii Fit. We have a pair of strap on weights that I attach to my wrists or ankles to up the level of the exercises. After I did a bit of gardening then biked into work. This evening we decided to go to an onsen and splurge on the deluxe family- a private bath with privet mini sauna ($18 for the hour). It felt nice to soak in the hot tube and hang out in the Sauna, but it definitely made me light headed faster then usual, as I had expected it would. Then we went to the wine shop and bought some really nice wines and beers to slowly enjoy over the next couple weeks.

Thought I would take a minute to talk about three interesting things happening to my head during this cleanse- namely to my face, hair and nose.

First my face. I mentioned before that people talk about the cleanse clearing their skin, but my face has broken out in hives. You cant see them from looking at me, but run a finger down my face and neck and you will feel tons of little bumps. I’m pretty bummed about this, and every time I touch my face I get a little sad. I’ve always had very smooth skin on my face, so I really hope it settles back down when I am back to normal food. The bumps work their way down my neck and around my ears, so Christophe has dubbed them hives. I’ve look around online but seen no mention of a reaction like this. Either my body is freaking out via my face, or it is in fact detoxing and the bumpies are because things are getting pushed out of my pores (I keep telling myself it's the latter).

My hair. I have notices that my head is producing significantly less oil then it was, meaning my hair is not getting oily. I recently cut my hair shorter, and shorter hair tends to get oily and gross a lot faster. But I noticed for example this morning, that after going all weekend without washing it, it felt dry and clean when I woke up (I washed it anyway out of principle). I wonder if the cut in fats and oils from my diet is causing a cut in oils coming out of me.

My nose, or more to the point my allergies. As you know my Spring allergies picked up about 5 days before we started the cleanse- very bad timing. And at first they were really messing with me. But over the last two days they seem to have mostly gone away. My nose is not running nearly like it was and I feel a lot less congested. My throat is still a little off, but I am hoping this will pass too. I don't think that the time of my allergy season is over, I feel like that was too short, so maybe a result of the cleanse? All I know is I no longer wake up feeling like I downed a bottle of night quil the night before.

Okay, that’s all to report for now. We are happily entering the home stretch. It isn’t difficult to not eat, but I am starting to get very excited about cooking and eating delicious things again. Frankly, Im just starting to get bored with lemonade every day! I’ve already started planning out ease-out menu, and look forward to putting together some delicious, easily digestible meals.
-meghan

the master cleanse. day 5.

2009-04-12T09:06:00.005+09:00

Thoughts from Note
Sorry about the late post. Pretty tired last night. Anyway, yesterday was, again, pretty uneventful. I spent most of the day at home organizing the items for our massive moving sale. Again, I had some energy in the morning but after that, it came in waves. I feel a bit groggy this morning but then again, it is the morning.

My mouth still feels a bit like hell. I've started adding more herbal teas in the mix to try and make my taste buds happy - some dandelion tea, some chamomile tea. Anything to calm them down. Physically, I feel really good. I feel lighter and more flexible (WiiFit?) and generally much better. Meghan and I both skipped the salt water cleanse yesterday since it was a lazy Saturday but we'll most likely do one today. I don't know though, the senna tea seems to work wonders for me. Not sure if the salt water rinse is really necessary. I just get worried that if my body doesn't expel all that salt water (which it often doesn't), all I'm doing is adding a stupid amount of salt to my diet, possibly dehydrating me and adding more stress to an already stressed out digestive system. But I know nothing about biology so I'll stop there.

So Day 5, good going. Half way there. Not craving food, but getting excited about eating again. Getting tired of the lemon drink. See you tonight.

Thoughts from Meghan
Sorry we forgot to post last night, but its first thing this morning and still yesterday in America, so Im sure this is fine. Day 5 was similar to all the other days. I skipped the salt water cleanse in the morning because I had to get to school a little earlier for the commencement ceremony. I still didnt have to go in at the same time as the other teachers, which was nice, skipping the morning meeting and rehearsal with the 2nd and 3rd year students (note: Japanese High School is only three years- 6 in elementary school, 3 in Jr. High School) where the apparently told everyone that I will be leaving in August. Too bad I didnt know they were going to make that announcement, because I would have liked to be there, but such is life. I had a few students attack me when I came into school, but after I told them I missed my family and they should come visit me in America they understood and began scheming about going to America.

The ceremony went off fine- lots of Japanese speeches- then Christophe picked me up and we went to buy some gardening things (im going to put pansies in the front). After that we came home, hung out a bit, went for a walk, watched the latest 30 rock, played a bunch of Zelda and went to bed. Not an overly eventful day, but hey it's Saturday.

I've started thinking a lot about how many of our social interactions are centered around food. Not entirely on purpose, Chirstophe and I have more or less cut ourselves off from the people we normally hang out with. Aside from work and classes (ballet, Ikebana, privet english lessons) I dont see anyone but Christophe. And that's mostly because I have lost the ability to say "let's do lunch" or "do you want to come over for dinner". I have been invited out to one party, which I turned down because I think going to Ippei (our fabulous pork on a stick restaurant) would be torture if not allowed food. And I also said no to an invitation to Karaoke, because I will admit that is one of those few activities out there that for me are really truly only fun when a bit drunk. So by rejecting all gatherings related to eating or drinking, I am in some ways rejecting most all gatherings. When I mentioned this to Christophe the other day, he said he thought it was mostly because in Japan all get-togethers involve food. But I feel like it is true in America too. When was the last time you "got together" with someone just to talk. Its always, lets go for coffee, or lunch, or tea, or dinner, or drinks. We seem to bond with people best when sharing a time of nourishment, I wonder why that is.

Right now I am reading The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin, which is considered by some to be the first book to raise gastronomy to an art form, a subject worthy of study and respect. This might seem like a cruel book to read when fasting, but luckily it was written in 1825, and so most of the descriptions fall on the meatier side (suckling pig, shooting wild turkeys...) and at this point my stomach rejects all thoughts of meat, it is no longer at all appealing to me (pancakes on the other hand... I could definitely eat some pancakes right now).I tell you this because I would like to include a quote from the book that pertains to my above comment:

"Read the historians, from Herodotus down to our own day, and you will see that there has never been a great event, not even excepting conspiracies, which was not conceived, worked out, and organized over a meal."

I think it would be a very interesting study to look at that in terms of the great meetings of the modern day. What food did they serve at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, or the Yalta Conference in 1945, or more recently at the G20 meeting? What do those food choices represent?

Anyway, about the fast, yesterday was fine, skipped the salt water but did double the senna tea. Woke up this morning feeling better then I have recently, and happy to be moving into the second half of the fast.
-meghan

the master cleanse. day 4.

2009-04-10T23:13:00.004+09:00

Thoughts from Note
Pretty tired so I'm not gonna write much. Today went well. Had a fair amount of energy throughout the day. Not so much now but it's 11pm so it's acceptable. Did the salt rinse today after skipping yesterday. It's getting scarily easy to put down 32oz of salt water in a couple minutes. Back pains were gone today. I made sure to drink a lot more water. My stomach hasn't really gotten much better. It's ok during the day but in the evenings it just doesn't feel settled. My tongue and mouth are in kind of a state of disarray. When all you consume is lemons and cayenne pepper, too very strong tastes, your tongue gets a bit worn out and that's where I'm at now. No real cravings today but I'll be happy when I can put a different flavor in my mouth.

Trash thought - it's simply shocking how much of your daily trash comes from food and food wrappings. When you don't eat much, there's simply no trash. I'm realizing that this is probably one of the most important gifts of the master cleanse. By minimizing packaging and composting your leftovers, we can reduce our trash by really significant amounts. Here's to hoping I maintain this awareness when I'm back to drinking Chimay bi-weekly and making delicious tuna melts. Ok. Now I'm getting hungry. Better go to bed.

Thoughts from Meghan
Okay, what happened today. Woke up, did the salt water cleanse, did wii fit and hung around the toilet. Talked to the parents, comforted mom that I will not die while fasting, and looked up shipping prices for packages from the US. Then I biked around to all the local Jr. High Schools to deliver posters for the Musical coming to Muroran. It's a musical put on by ALTs (assistant language teachers) from all over Hokkaido. It happens every year, and this year my school has offered up its stage almost free of charge (they are asking for 1/2 the heating costs). By then I was feeling a bit tired so I headed home and chugged a bit of lemonade. After that I scrubbed down the floor in our bathroom area, drank some more lemonade, took some stuff down to the used shop to sell and came home for good. Tonight I was feeling really tired, but then I curled up with about 500ml of lemonade and drinking it made me feel a lot better.

I think what I learned from today is that I need to be aware of how much I am drinking. I ended up not having any for a big chunk of the day and I think it was the equivalent of skipping lunch. I felt really tired and grumpy this afternoon until I sat down and drank a whole bunch, then I felt much better. Thus far I have been drinking a big glass in the morning, then sipping through the day, then a big glass at night. I think I need to toss in one or two more big glasses around the middle of the day, with sips in between. Having a bigger chunk at once seems to energize me better then just little sips as I go.

It was a fairly busy day, which is good because I think I would start to get hungry if I had nothing to do. I am still amazed by the fact that I haven’t had any major hunger pains or tummy rumbles. I did swing by the grocery store to get more garbage bags and caught a whiff of some amazing smelling tacoyaki, but that was the only serious food craving I had. They seem to be diminishing. The longer I go without food, the less I crave it. Maybe because at this point my stomach couldn't handle real food right away.

Oh one other little thing. Everyone says doing this makes your skin a lot clearer, because toxins are being eaten up by your body. My skin has gone the other way. Not like Im breaking out all over my face, but instead of a smooth face, its all bumpy. Im hoping its a has to get worse before it gets better kind of a thing.

Alright, gonna climb into bed now. We have opening ceremony at school tomorrow, so Ill have to be up fairly early.
-meghan

the master cleanse. day 3.

2009-04-09T20:31:00.002+09:00

Thoughts from Note
Today I woke up with a surprising amount of energy and very chipper. I didn't drink a senna tea last night because I did the salt water cleanse at about 9pm and thought it would be a bit redundant. I did, however, take a travel mug of senna tea to work and it did its thing by mid-day. While I had a good amount of energy this morning, by noon it was totally gone and I had seriously heavy eyelids. The rest of the day, I was pretty beat. But this might have been because I did practically nothing at work today. We're in between school years and classes won't kick back in until Monday.

So far, the first three days (supposedly the most difficult days of the cleanse) have been remarkably easy. No real hunger pains or strong urges to eat. I have occasionally felt a little off from time to time - lightheaded or whatever - but never anything that would stop me from living life, driving a car, operating heavy machinery (the method which we use to teach English involves a wrecking ball and a power saw in case you're curious). The occasional soreness and pin-point back pains have persisted but they don't bother me too much.

The only downer of the past day or two has been my stomach since the last salt water rinse. Despite having done its thing, my stomach has been off. All day today, it's been a bit achy so I decided not to do the rinse tonight and hope it gets better by morning. I will be drinking some senna tea tonight so if something inside me is causing the discomfort, it will most likely be gone by tomorrow morning. Here's to hoping. Might just be the constant diet of lemonade though.

Other than that, not much to report. I feel pretty good and am ready for day 4.

Thoughts from Meghan
This morning was hard. I woke up feeling like I had drunk half a bottle of Nyquil the night before. I was crazy groggy, bumping into walls and knocking things over, all the while yelling at Christophe for not having allergies- I have since apologized for the tantrum I threw this morning, after coherent thought returned to me. The mornings are always tough for me during allergy time, as phlem and such has time to build up during the night. I am doing alright by day, a constant slightly sore through, an off and on runny nose and plugged up ears. As long as I don't revert over to plugged up nose- which instantly leads to sinus infection if you are me- I will be fine. Not sure if the fasting is helping, hurting, or have zero effect. The only real effect I can cite is that I cannot take any kind of decongestant or allergy medicine. This is because even with a stomach filled with 5 loaves of bread and a three turkeys I get loopy off those meds- with zero food inside me I might jump off the roof with cat strapped to my back in the belief I will be saved by him landing on his feet.

After tophe left I did the salt water cleanse, which cleared up my head a bit, and then… WENT TO BALLET!!! This is very exciting because I haven’t been to ballet in a year. When I started the full time day job at Kaisei High School I had to give up a lot of my daytime activites, like ballet. One might in fact argue that the desicive factor in my deciding to go part time for the last four months was my desire to return to my ballet classes. It was fun and wonderful and happy and great. I love ballet. Being in a ballet class brings me great happiness, like when I first fell in love with ballet. Sadly my high school years of ballet soured me to it, as they were marked by intense competition with everyone I was dancing with, and a feeling that if I wasn't ready to commit my life to dancing I was just wasting time and money. But now that I take classes as an adult I feel no pressure to be perfect, just to have fun and enjoy dancing. Although I still have that competitive world lurking in my head- and often find myself rating myself against the other students in the class (today I was 2nd or maybe 3rd in technique, but last or next to last in flexibility) and I can always tell right off others who have danced since they were younger and were always very good by the air of superiority over the others they hold (today it was a youngish woman in a blue leotard, who was in fact better then the rest of us, but for the first half of the class was waaay to snooty about it). I know this ballet rant has nothing to do with fasting, but I love ballet and I am really happy to be taking classes again.

Back to fasting. Ballet class was broken into three sections (I swear this will pertain to fasting); the first 45 minutes were filled with yoga style streaching, the next 30 minutes were bar work (strengthening) and the last 15 minutes were floor work (aerobic). I was fine for the stretching, got some rumbles during the bar work, and felt a touch woozy with this floor work. This might have been because I haven’t eaten for three days, or it might be because I haven’t been to a ballet class in a year.

Then I biked to school (slowly) for an English department meeting (classes will start Monday) then biked home. My tummy started to get hungry grumbley when I got home, so I chugged a bit of lemonade, but the feeling of hunger stayed with me until I got to my Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) class. Diving into something like a flower arrangement distracts you from the fact that you are not eating. The Sunday after next I will have one of my pieces in a flower exhibit, so I am very nervous and trying to up my practice time. Now I am back home, the grumble has returned and tiredness from my long day is starting to set in. I think I will finish up my lemonade (today I only made 1.5 liters, still have about .5 left at 8:24pm… I wonder if I always just conserve as the day goes so no matter how much I make there will be .5 left in the eve) and then curl up on the couch with Senna Tea and watch some enterprise with tophe.

Hoping tomorrow morning will be better then today’s!
meghan

the master cleanse. day 2.

2009-04-08T22:08:00.013+09:00

Thoughts from Note
Today was not so bad. Similar to yesterday with the only exception being that I was a little hungrier in the afternoon and actually had my stomach gurgle a couple times. I had opening ceremony for the school year today and I was a bit worried that it would be so long that I would get hungry but, no trouble. Hunger was not had.

This morning however, I was woken up by seriously lame stomach pains at 5am. Quick run to the bathroom and all was well and asleep minutes later.

Other than that, I've been experiencing odd back pains but they don't last very long. I think it's because I'm not drinking enough water.

The salt rinse went down a lot easier this time. Couple tricks: Warm is good. If the salt rinse is warm, I just keep telling myself it's chicken stock or consomme or something and it goes down much easier. Still, 32oz of consomme in 5 minutes would still be a task. The other trick I've found, is to rub a lemon rind on the mouth of the container you are drinking out of between every "gulping session". It helps to cut the salty/lame taste on your lips which reminds you that you are drinking salt water.

I only drank about 45oz. of lemon drink today. Should drink more but we had tea ceremony class. That was tough. Sitting there with only your thoughts is a dangerous thing. I haven't often daydreamed about food these past two days but sitting there silently today, I had a major daydream session. All I could think about were Reuben sandwiches - which is strange because I haven't had a Reuben in about 2 years. Oh, and beer. God I can't wait to drink a beer.

Stop.

Ok. Verdict: Day 2 goes fine. Hoping Day 3 goes just as well. I'm told it's mostly down hill from Day 4. The cleanse continues.

By the way, Meghan bought cat a bow tie. He looks ridiculous.

Thoughts from Meghan
Today was not so bad. This morning I did the salt water rinse with the correct amount of salt and I managed to chug the thing in 5 minutes or so. Christophe figured out a little trick, which is to keep a wedge of lemon handy while you chug. He rubbed it on the lip of the Nalgene, but I did this plus rubbed it on my tongue when I felt like I might lose it. That plus giving myself time to burp got me through. I chugged salt water from 8:10 to 8:15, and was not done with my toilet time until 10:15- they say its only supposed to take an hour to go through you, but my body was expelling all liquids for a solid two hours!

My one weak moment today was at school when everyone started eating lunch. This was a bad decision on my part to stay in the room, because I was kind of starting to go nuts from the scent. Then a teacher who just got back from his honeymoon in Guam set out two huge buckets of caramel corn for everyone. CARAMEL POPCORN!! I managed to look away from all these distractions and focus on my work when the sound of the teacher next to me crunching away on sembei began to dominate my mind. I no longer saw the computer screen, completely forgot about the letter I was writing. All I could hear was the crunch crunch crunch, all I could see was sembei. It was at this point that I thrust headphones in, blasted NPR into my ears, and started writing up some worksheets for the new students.

This evening we had tea ceremony class, but without the tea. It was really sad to do without the warm powdered green tea reward, and I found it hard to focus. I think I am not ready to be alone with my thoughts in the meditative way tea ceremony encourages- my thoughts are still to focused around food. The onigiri image keeps coming back to me, and that of the teacher crunching on sembei. These are the two big ones from today.

Post tea ceremony we have just been home relaxing. I have been reading and am feeling pretty tired. It is a little early for me (just 10pm) but I think I will give in to my desire for sleep. Again I have only drunk about 1.5 liters of the drink- I hope this alright and wont prevent the cleanse from working well. I am unsure as to if the drink is to keep you active (ie give you the calories and vitamins you need) or to actually help cleansing- probably both. So I am hoping drinking less wont mean a less effective cleanse. I might be tired from the lack of food, or I am thinking it might be because of my spring-time allergies, which kicked in about 3 days before we started. I am hoping that not eating will somehow magically cure me of allergies, but this is probably nothing more then a pipedream.

Going to ballet tomorrow morning- my first time back in a year (I had to quit when I started working at the high school, but now that I am part time I can have that part of the day free!). Hopefully I will be able to make it through the class on lemon and maple energy alone. Ill let you know how it goes tomorrow night,
-meghan

the master cleanse. day 1.

2009-04-07T21:47:00.006+09:00

Thoughts from Note
I'm sitting here drinking my senna tea at the end of the end of the first day. I read the first day isn't so bad and I agree. The lemonade drink was a lot better than I was expecting. I actually kinda enjoy the kick of the cayenne pepper. I wasn't actually hungry at all today - except for right now, oddly enough, my stomach's grumbling a bit but maybe it's because of the tea and not from hunger. The senna tea, despite what I've read of it's lack of deliciousness, is actually quite good, in my opinion. It's a nice contrast to the overly sweet lemonade concoction you are drinking all day. It's almost savory.

The salt drink, however, is a different story. Not as bad as I was expecting, but still awful. 32oz of salt water, no matter how much you pretend is chicken stock, just doesn't go down well. Hell, 32oz of ANYTHING has a hard time going down. But I got it down and it, mostly, seemed to do its thing.

I feel fine. A little spacey at times during the day but nothing off. It is, after all, only the end of the first day. I expect far worse from the following 9 (or at least the following three or four).

Meghan and I are tracking ourselves via WiiFit. First time I've used it in a while. But now we have it in English so perhaps being able to understand full what the silly animated balance board is saying will motivate me.

See you tomorrow night. --note

Thoughts from Megumi
Day one of the master cleanse has gone pretty much without incident. Last night we had only salads and consomme for dinner- our last meal of solid foods for the next 11-12 days (10 days of fast and then the slow move back to real food). To “wind down” into the cleanse I put christophe and I on a vegetarian diet for about a week, moving steadily toward no carb inclusions. Maybe because of that, today was really not so bad.

warning- lots of poo talk in the following paragraph
Woke up around 8 (schools are still in spring break so we didn't have to be into work until later) and mixed up my first salt water drink. Your supposed to mix two teaspoons (or tablespoons depending on who you talk to) with warm water, chug it in two minutes, then 30 minutes later poo it out. Well I messed up and used the wrong spoon, only putting a total of 1 teaspoon in. I am also incapable of chugging- it took me about 20 minutes to get the whole liter down and about the last 300 ml came straight back out- I wouldn't even call it throwing up since it was just salt water refusing to go down really. And still no poos, but then again I don't really ever poo, so that's not a big surprise for me. I suppose we are getting into details about Meghan the internet doesn't need to know- but just to put things in perspective I poo a grand total of two to three times a week if I am lucky. Really 3 times a week is a really good week for me. Not sure why, not constipated, just don't feel any need to poo. It’s kind of an issue I think, and its part of why I wanted to do this cleanse in the first place. I feel like a lot of stuff must be getting backed up in me and I figure it’ll be good to really get it all out. So tomorrow I will try again with more salt and hopefully faster drinking.

As for hunger, I wouldn't say I have been hungry at any point today. I have craved food, I crave the feeling of biting into a loaf of bread or an onigiri (rice ball wrapped in seaweed). I find that it is the textures of food that have been enticing me. A moment ago I found myself day dreaming about the texture of couscous. I read somewhere about how the hardest part is breaking your addition to food. And I think that is really accurate for me- I don't feel a pain in my stomach, just a yearning in my mouth. So I think breaking that addiction, not wanting to be eating things all the time, will be good. Then again, I might just develop a long list of the foods I crave most then eat them like crazy after this.

I am thinking I will start to feel pangs of hunger tomorrow morning, after a full 24 hours of no food. Oh and one other thing, I didn't actually end up drinking the full 2 liters of lemonade we get each day. About half way through the 2nd liter I realized it was 9pm and figured I better switch to herbal tea, cause the maple syrup will keep me up (I know, I’m ridiculous, but it really will). I thought it was interesting after reading all these people talk about how you have to savor every drop and ration carefully. Maybe it will be a different story in a few days.

That’s all for now. Ill check back in tomorrow.
-meghan

tomorrow, it begins

2009-04-06T19:47:00.000+09:00

clean and purge and cleanse

2009-04-05T22:16:00.002+09:00

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the downer of a previous post. Better now, not so down. More excited about the next 4 months than dreading. Still, each day I get more and more excited about the prospects of wrapping up our time in Muroran but by doing it justice – eating as much curry ramen and yakitori as I can, surfing when I have the chance, spending time with good people.

Meghan and I decided that starting our final chapter in Muroran required a fresh start. The last week or so has been spent not only cleaning and tidying and organizing but also purging the house and our lives of all those things that we don’t need and won’t bring back. At first I thought it might be difficult to get rid of many of the things we’ve acquired while here. Some have nostalgic value while others were useful, are no longer, but might prove to be useful in the future. Well, it’s not difficult. With everything I get rid of or sell, I find myself feeling lighter and more ready to move on. I feel like I’m getting rid of clutter but at the same time, I’m renewing a sense of value. I have a nasty tendency to hang on to shit jus’ ‘cause. But when I’m thinking about an object in terms of, “Do I want to pay stupid amounts of money to have this shipped back to the states?” or “Will this fit on my bike and still allowing me to do more than .o2mph on uphills?” it puts things in a new perspective for me.

In addition to our house/life purge, Meghan has convinced me (well, she didn’t have to do much convincing as I’d been kinda on the fence since she mentioned it to me) to join her with this crazy Master Cleanse/Lemonade Fast thing. To be honest, doing something like this is highly uncharacteristic of me but I like to keep myself on my toes. SO THERE SELF. Anyway, starting Tuesday, Meghan and I will switch to a diet of nothing but a special lemonade cocktail thing, salt water, and assorted herbal teas. We're allowed 6-10 10oz. glasses of the mixture (lemon juice, water, maple syrup and cayenne pepper) each day and once a day (we’ll see about this one since I can barely stomach the salt water found in an oyster) one’s supposed to glug down 32oz. of salt water which will be followed by the “main attraction” in the bathroom. Not looking forward to that salt water beverage, y’all. It’s gonna be tough. Anyway, they say the first three days are the toughest so if we quit before the fourth day, you can call us loozers (oooh burn).

I’m planning to give daily updates if I think of it (Meghan may also) so you can watch our slow destruction for ten days.

It should be good though. I’m interested to see how I do since I rarely ever deprive myself of anything that I want. Chocolate bar for breakfast? Why not! Five hasbrowns and stick of cream cheese at 2:30 in the morning? Do it! I’ve already been about a week without beer, coffee or meat so I don’t think it’ll be too bad other than the salt water and the EXTREME HUNGER. Anyway, starting Tuesday keep an eye on us and we’ll surely entertain you (a la all-caps-hunger-rants).

Hasta la Pasta, Bets and Jude

2009-04-01T22:25:00.005+09:00

Disclaimer: I'm a horribly sentimental douche.

Yesterday, Meghan and I saw off two of our very best friends. Jude and Betsy hopped on a ferry bound for Akita and will continue their travels for quite a while – Jude ending up in America and Betsy eventually in Nigeria. While it was difficult to see them off, the crazy anxiety that I felt while sitting there in the ferry terminal was not so much caused by the temporary loss of good friends, but more by the presence of the first manifest sign that our time in Japan is coming to an end – and that we are returning to the U.S. with plans that are hazy at best (Grad school? Peace Corps? Professional homelessness?) Well, the anxiety is probably more than that. Judy and Betsy were some of the last remaining (excluding us) of a group of expats here in Muroran that spent a silly amount of time together. Excluding those who are married and will presumably never leave, the last of that group left on the ferry to Akita. But that just gives us the chance to meet new people, right? Although their departure marked the beginning of our final time in Muroran, it’s all still quite far off. Four months off. Four months. Ugh.

The last three to four weeks has seen our house as a kind of planning headquarters for Betsy and Jude’s adventures. There have been constant piles of travel books, requests to print applications and information, talks of planes, ferries, hotels, bank accounts and insurance (or lack thereof). During these preparations, Meghan and I have been making our own plans for our trip – ordering camping supplies, preparing the bikes, talking about routes. So the preparations took on a sort of separate, yet group oriented feel. But then Jude and Betsy left. And Meghan and I are still here. For four more months. Granted, I understand that I’m still in the fallout of a two weeklong goodbye and the jealousy of an adventure begun but I have this nagging pain that keeps telling me that these next four months will be tough. I’ve just got to relax and take it as it comes. And hell, if we get on the packing and selling off unnecessary crap a bit early, that can’t hurt right?

I suppose that looking at the next four months as sort of an extended purgatory is not really the best way of going about staying sane. There is still plenty in Hokkaido that I haven’t seen and we still have a good number of friends here. There are still (many) places in Asia that I haven’t visited and we have four months to as much of that as we can. We’ll see. Maybe four months will go by faster than I realize.

Oh, and Jude will be keeping a blog of her travels so be sure to check it out here if you wanna follow an English gal with an affinity for beer as she travels South East Asia and the United States. Betsy, on the other hand, doesn’t know how to internet so she’s as good as gone.

In other news, Meghan and I have a purchased practically all of our gear for the upcoming trip. I’ll give a more detailed list at a later date when I give the trip its first, dedicated and official post. In short, we decided to go with a Big Agnes tent (Gore Pass 3 - not a super-light but that’s not so much of an issue on bikes. Ooh and it has a fancy place to store bikes), a nice stove (MSR Superfly) and cookset (GSI Bugaboo), and some fairly standard sleeping bags and pads. With a tiny amount of luck, most of it will be able to fit in our Ortliebs. The only things left to buy are mostly cycling clothes (Meghan’s got padded pants but I’m still hunting for the right pair of shorts) and the solar panel (for all our horribly unnecessary but totally necessary rechargeable gadgets). Oh, and we’ve ordered our front racks and fenders but haven’t been by to pick them up yet. My new front fork, on the other hand, is a different story. It may be a while coming. Still, I’ll wait as long as I need – don’t think the carbon fork I have now would deal well with two full, front panniers.

Four months. Just four months.

Meghan's Not In Australia Anymore.

2009-02-06T21:26:00.003+09:00

It's been a while, hasn't it? There's been a lot going on (read: we've been doing a lot of watching Angel/Buffy/Enterprise/Bones with occasional bursts of snowboarding). A couple things have gone down since we last spoke: apparently someone named Barack Obama has become president of the US, Meghan turned 25 and both her and I offialized our decisions to return to the mother country - despite the looming specter of joblessness in a sad economy. It's simply time to move on. So July will mark the end of a time. Well not quite July. We're in the early stages of planning a 2 month cycling trip from Hokkaido to Kyuushuu. I'll go into this more later but if any of you out there in the internet have suggestions as to things we should/must see in Japan before we leave, please let us know.

But the bike trip will be another post for another time. Instead, I came to regale you with a tale of admiration, jealousy and impossibility - observing how a friend of mine viewed the American political process and the election of Barack H. Obama.

The conversation started on the topic of national anthems. After a school event recently, I casually mentioned that I thought the Japanese national anthem sounded very dramatic and sad when compared to the bouncy, militaristic, national drinking anthems of most other countries. He returned with something along the lines of, "Well, we've never had a revolution." And I thought to myself, "Huh, I guess that makes sense. No people's revolution. No angry, drunken marches. No "rally-the-people-to-stick-it-to-the-man" marching anthems."

We quietly went back to work.

The next day, Inauguration Day in the US, he greeted me with congratulations and went on about how amazed he was by Mr. Obama's speech on the news that morning; about the power of the words and about the number of people in the audience and the process. (As an aside, it's important to know that Japan has recently been going through it's own changes - mainly in the shape of Prime Ministers every three to sixth months.) He mentioned that he wished Japan could have someone like Obama and that he wished Japanese citizens were more engaged in government but that sadly, it could never happen. Naturally, I jumped into a mini-lecture about "bring the power to the people" and getting citizens to understand that "they can make a change" and "yes, you can" and "every sperm is sacred". I finished my speech, wiped a tear from my eye and waited for his response only to receive a "Yes, but..." and he explained to me something that made three years of Japanese History class far more relevant. It went something along the lines of (excuse my paraphrasing):

Most western countries know why their government is there. They know how it came to be and for what purpose - either through revolution or coup or whatever. Japan has never had a real, revolution (by the people) so many don't know how it came to be and for what purpose other than to keep order. There is no "liberty for all" or "liberte, fraternite, etc." Because of that, the people are not invested in the government and the way it works. They are not involved (this is only bolstered by the fact that the majority of the electoral process is far removed from your average Joe-chan). He went on to explain that although most people he's spoken to admire Obama and the fire he has sparked in American people, he doesn't see how that could ever happen in Japan, not only because of the disinterest in the government's functionality and their lack of mandate, but because they had leaders like Obama at one time and it went very poorly. While a figure like Obama can do amazing things for a citizen's sense of purpose and interest in their government, that figure in a Japanese context brings back vivid images of a government that abused the citizenry to a point that will most likely never be forgiven.

So, Japan seems to find itself in quite a pickle indeed. A jealousy of the American political process yet an understanding that it can't happen in their context until distrust of the government and those who make decisions fades. His solution, although he seems to think it can never happen, is to give each citizen a greater responsibility in electing their officials. Then, should a motivating character ever reach the position of power and should he (or she? nah, never) abuse that power, they would only have themselves to hold accountable as opposed to placing the blame on the "gub'ment".

Perhaps the buffer between the government and the people is by choice. Maybe most citizens like the idea of absolving themselves when it comes to political decisions.

Anyway, I've rambled and made enough generalizations for now. And perhaps I've fallen to much for the "AMERIKUH IZ THU BESTZ - FREEEEEDUUUMM!!" idea. More later. Thoughts?

So im in Australia

2008-11-28T09:01:00.002+09:00

Hello all,

Its been well to long since I last posted so I thought I would squeeze a quick one out while I wait here for my kids to get out of class. A quick recap. My school sends students each year down to Australia to do a month long "Study and live English" program. The students are each put in individual home stays. They attend an English Language school in Brisbane (where we are) Monday-Friday from 830 am - 330 pm. They have free time to roam and shop until 6 when they are expected to be back at their homestays. On the weekend they are free to spend time with their families of each other, except for two field trips- one to the Koala wildlife refuge and one to an amusment park on the gold coast. This year it was decided that I would be the teacher to accompany the students- big win. So here I am in brisbane with 10 students. I hang out around the school during the day, we have an official meeting at the start of school and end of school, but I make a point of being around for the breaks and such also. Otherwise I am pretty free to roam around. But never too far, as I get the emergency phone calls- which they have been quite a few.

So now that your caught up, a few fun antidotes from my time in brisbane so far.

1. So I make the kids keep diaries in English that I check everyday. The diaries are pretty usual, but its good practice for the kids and a good way for me to know whats going on with them. They can also be pretty funny from time to time. Here is an excerpt from my favorite one so far:

"And, when I went to the toilet, I saw Ann go to bed with Rod.

I wondered if Ann and Rod are a couple.

I asked her. But answer was "No"

I suspect that Ann and Rod are a couple without consulting anyone."

2. The other day I wore my "Lost Dog, reward $2.4 million" shirt with a picture of a poodle on it. For the first time in 2 years of wearing this shirt, someone commented on it. Two people commented on it- saying they had seen the dog, and would go get it if I would just find the money. I was so startled and confused, it took me almost a full minute to understand what was going on. Two years in a land without English, amazing how bad you get at speaking to strangers.

3. Oh, another one on that note. I had a guy come sit next to me on a park bench where I was reading and interupt me from my reading to ask "Do you have a boyfriend". I had no idea what was going on, so I just started at him and said, What? He repeated the question, completely honestly, which caused me to burst out laughing, say yes I do, then go back to my book. He left shortly there after- but really, is this how boys pick up girls these days?

confusing thing being in a world of english speakers, very very confusing.

going to a chip tunes concert tonight set in an exhibit about the history of video games. yes, im a huugggeee dork, but im totally pumped. ill tell ya about it later.

-meghan

SUPA SPEED Thanksgiving in the 'Ran

2008-11-10T21:11:00.001+09:00

Some Music By Yours Truly

2008-11-01T11:26:00.003+09:00

An EP of some random music I've made since coming to Japan. Just released a short EP through TTB Studio via iTunes (released earlier on the Japanese music site King-Beat). It's short and moody but shows the direction I've been going in since I've come to Muroran. The EP focuses on the use of circuit bent instruments and analog synthesis in contrast with acoustic elements.

Click on the cover art for an iTunes link ($3.96 - what a bargain!). Let me know what you think! Your thoughts would be much appreciated and whatnot. But be nice :)

What's Been Up?

2008-10-05T17:52:00.002+09:00

Heyo,

Thought I was being a bit unfair by not letting you all know what we've been up to recently. It's been crazy busy to say the least.

Meghan has been studying like crazy for the GREs that she'll be taking soon. I can't walk around the house without stumbling over massive piles of ridiculous vocabulary that no one will ever use - and that strangely enough almost all have meanings relating to pompousness or arrogance. She's been also dealing with the difficult battle that is choosing grad schools to apply to and choosing to apply to grad school at all.

I've been working with my students to prepare for the yearly English Day. It's always a ridiculous amount of work as everyone loves the idea but equally loves putting things off so we end up trying to put together a full on play, in English, two weeks before the actual day. It's been pretty nuts.

Other than that, I've been up to my ears in projects. Having been introduced to Atsuhiko Nakatsubo (also known in the music world as fishtone), I've been given the chance to produce a little bit of music to be distributed on King Beat Records and iTunes. The music is pretty weird but I guess can be classified as ambient electronica with some random acoustic thrown in the mix. I'm not sure what to call it really. The EP has been finished and mastered but we're still waiting on a release. I'll let you know.

With Atsu, I was given a chance to perform the music from the EP live, along with some other music I've been working on - primarily chiptunes. I mentioned before that I was exploring the world of music on antiquated video game consoles - mainly gameboys. You can head over to note.monoanimal.com for music, photos, links and lotsa stuff. Here are some pics from the show.

Other than this, I've been working on prints and print techniques with Sano Toshio - a local printmaker who has been nice enough to help me out a bit and teach me some of his techniques. I'll be showing some prints in a show at the Muroran Cultural Center at the end of the month. I'll be sure to upload some pics.

Meiji Shrine

2008-08-30T16:01:00.004+09:00

So it is a tradition in Japan that one give big barrels of Sake to a shrine. Its the classic donation to a shrine. The barrel get consecrated then goes out on display, I think your name is on it. Pretty sure they use the sake in the ceremonies, sake is a big part of a variety of Shinto ceremonies.

So outside the Meiji Shrine, dedicated to the Emperor and Empress of the Meiji Period, there is a huge wall of sake caskets. This is only natural. The Shrine is the most visited Shrine in all of Japan, many people give donations. The shrine itself was built entirely with volunteer labor, the forest/park surrounding it made of donated trees (like 10,000 donated trees!).

For those who may not know, the start of the Meiji period is the start of Modern Japanese History. During this time Japan opened its doors wide to Western knowledge, technology and art. Many Japanese went abroad to study, and many Europeans came into Japan to teach. During this time you see many western style buildings going up, often amalgamations of a variety of European styles. Music, art, architecture, school systems, hair styles, western ideas permeated everything. But, by the second half of this period a large debate had broken out in Japan, with many concerned that Japan was moving too rapidly toward the west, losing its Japanese roots. And so from that point on, and arguably for the rest of Japanese history and still today, there was/is a struggle to balance Modern Western influence with Japanese tradition.

I give you this very short and simplified history lesson so that you might best appreciate what was across the path from the wall of donated Sake Casks for the Meiji Shrine. There, in the exact same style, was a wall of donated Wine Casks from the Bourgogne region of France.

Just brilliant. If I was still in school I would be writing a paper about this. Instead, you get a blog post.

JUNEC Day 3

2008-08-19T19:07:00.003+09:00

It's been getting progressively more and more hot and humid each day, although this eve it looks like the humidity tipped the scales over to rain, so hopefully it will be cooler tomorrow. It was raining when we got here on Sunday (a bit of a downer as that was our one day to roam around Tokyo freely) and so was cooler. But as I said, with each day comes a higher level of stick.

So as you know I escaped the 2nd half of the conference yesterday and stuck to that pattern today. I actually didn’t mean to escape this afternoon, but simply mis-understood the bus times and missed my groups bus to a publishing house. Probably for the best since instead of sitting in a conference room listing to a lecture in Japanese for 3 hours I met up with the Indian Traditional Knowledge professors who had spoken earlier (in English with a translator) and roamed around Meiji Shrine with them and their little boy. Very enjoyable afternoon chatting with them about the work they are doing. She is doing her post-doctoral work at the UN University in Yokohama- her focus is sustainable development through a combination of Modern technology and traditional knowledge (medicine/food/agricultural processes…) and he is getting his doctorate in the Anthropology of traditional medicine at Yokohama University. You might imagine, they are very interesting people to talk to. We were also joined by a Japanese woman who works with a sustainable development group and her two little boys- also very interesting to chat with.

We walked around the shrine while the three boys ran around collecting bugs. It's a thing kids do here in Japan, get pet bugs. I guess they are taught about having bugs as pets in school, and it sticks with them. I would say out of a class of 30 high school students, 3-4 of them will tell me their pet is a stag beetle. And they know the names of so many of the beetles here, wild stuff. I don't know, maybe boys collected bugs when I was younger and I just didn't know about it. I hated bugs back then and I hate them now.

It was fun too watching this little 4 year old Indian boy play with these two Japanese boys, chatting away in Japanese like it was his native tongue. It’s amazing how quickly kids pick up a language- he’s been here two years with no lessons and he’s pretty much 4 year old fluent. They told me he goes to a Japanese preschool, so I guess that’s where he picked it up.

Anyway, this eve I have to attend a meeting of the students in group 1 (my group) to help them plan the presentation they will give on the last day. Not sure how much help I will be, so I think I’ll bring along my new Japanese Language Proficiency Test Prep Book. Figured taking the JLPT would encourage me to study, so far I have bought a book.

Oh and I almost forgot the most interesting thing about the shrine. Actually, I have pics of it that I don't have the ability to put up, so I will leave you with this very unfair tantalizing comment and when I get the pics on my computer will do a little post about it.

Hope your all enjoying life!

ps- pic above is of the tori gate at the entrance of the shrine- massive. i stole it off google images, although i do have a similar version on my camera.

JUNEC Day 2

2008-08-18T21:23:00.003+09:00

Today was Day two of the Junior United Nations Ecology Asian Conference 2008, Summer Session (JUNEC 2008 Summa Ses is how we were told to abbreviate it this morning). It has taken me some time to figure out exactly why I am here, but I have come to realize it’s the same reason I get to do all the neat things I do in Japan: I am a white, blond, generally sociable, America girl. I bet I could even drop the blond and sociable aspects and still get to do most of this stuff.

Anyway, let me back up and explain what the hell JUNEC is, as best I can at least. So sometime in May a lady came to my school unannounced, but managed to arrive during the 50% of the time my principle is in and not in meetings in Tokyo/Sapporo/the moon. She told my principle she ran a student conference group called JUNEC that has been putting conferences for Junior High and High School students from Japan (and a couple international ones too, mostly china) for the last 5 years in Tokyo. This year, in honor of the summit, they decided to do an extra run of the conference in July in Toya- where the G8 Summit took place. But no student conference can afford to stay in the resort like hotels of Toya, so they were going to base it out of Muroran and would we like to help/ involve our students.

Naturally, he said yes. And oh, you bring in some foreign students, have you seen our pretty foreign teachers. Look, here comes one now, Meghan, this is Ms. Izawa, she is going to do a conference here in Muroran and our school will be participating.

Oh really, I replied, that’s so very interesting.

Would you like to help prepare our students and involve them in this conference.

I’d love to, it all sounds so very interesting…

And so I did the Toya thing, where I sat through many lectures in Japanese that the Japanese can barely understand about Global Warming and volcano warning systems. But hey, I got overtime hours for it all, read a few good books, got feed for free and even spent a day hiking around Toya (which is very beautiful to hike around).

And now I am in Tokyo, escorting two of my students, for the Tokyo session. So far it has been much of the same, lectures I don't much understand. My principle is here too, but he is splitting his time between us and the yacht competition a few Kaisei (my school) kids are in down in Tokyo Harbor (today they came in 32nd and 4th to last). But unlike when we were in Muroran, where I would just as soon read a book in the back of the lecture room as go for a walk, this time I am in Tokyo. So today after lunch, while the students worked in groups on a live web performance (you can see them and pics from the Toya summit here) that acted as a giant day long getting to know you activity, I went for a walk. Luckily for me we are in a good part of Tokyo for walking, Shibuya. This includes the fairly famous Harajuku- a sea of Japanese Teenie bopper shops that have all the kinds of ruffles, pinks and punk you can possibly imagine. Twas a lovely stroll through shops: had a strawberry and chocolate ice cream crepe and bought one very cute shirt in a very ruffley shop.

I went searching for a shirt for Christophe as a ‘I got to go to Tokyo’ gift, but this proved difficult. I would break down the men’s tee shirts in this area into three groups: incredibly feminine (at points almost unimaginably), fake gangsta, and things bought at the Lewisburg Goodwill for $1 then sold here for $80. That last one, by the way, is not just my personal opinion of the shirts as it turns out. After telling christophe about my assessment of the shirts I saw, he told me that in fact, many people make a living out of going to Goodwills and Salvation Armies in America, buying up cheap tee shirts, then selling them for near $100 in Japanese Boutiques. I am not considering it as a line of work.

One other quick note about my stroll before I go take a bath. At one point I came upon a large… shopping mall. I use that term hesitantly, because this was more of a large funky building filled with tiny boutiques- no chains, no stores larger then an average room, most the size of closets. Anyway, this mall (for lack of a better term) was themed for the month of August. The theme was: Space Invaders. This meant there was a big ol’ space invaders game (arcade style) right by the entrance that anyone could play. And many of the shops (not all, but most) had varying amounts of space invaders wear. It was brilliant. And for those of you who are wondering why I didn't just get Christophe something there- it seemed it was an entire building of girls clothes. As for me, I fell in love with a little black hoddie with a floral patterned space invader, but wasn't willing to cough up the $130 for it.

Kay, time for a shower in the communal bath room which is only mildly questionable in that the floor is co-ed. Might lock the door despite the many signs that say not too, not really trying to show my bits to some Junior High boy.

Off to Malaysia

2008-07-29T22:23:00.001+09:00

So as with all my commitments to put a constant amount of time into something, I was really good for around a month. Anyway, it has been much too long since I last posted and today's post certainly will not make up for it. We are off to Singapore tomorrow and then down to Borneo (Kuching Malaysia) from there. When we get back there will surely be many pictures and stories, hopefully I wont procrastinate too long before putting them up.

see ya!

A biking weekend

2008-07-23T11:43:00.003+09:00

**because it took me so long to add pics, I will add several, starting with this one of Christophe by the tent. Sorry I cant turn the picture, please turn your monitor**

Not too much to report or comment on, so Ill just give you a quick recap of the past weekend.

This past weekend was a long one, Monday was a holiday, making it a good one. On Saturday Christophe and I woke up fairly early and cleaned house most of the morning. Then around 1pm we hoped on our bikes and headed off to Toya, about a three hour ride from our place. Stopped for delicious sushi along the way, good stuff. The end of the ride kinda sucks, a never ending uphill, but it did mean I felt no guilt in eating or drinking whatever I darn well pleased for the rest of the day.

We biked with camping gear strapped onto the back of our bikes and headed straight to a campsite in Toya. After roaming around the campsite we settled on a spot and set up our very little 2 man tent (2 very little men). It's hard not to get camp gear envy when you camp in Japan. The Japanese know how to camp. Two room tents, separate little tents for the dog and kids play pens, BBQs, tables and chairs, you've never seen such elaborate camping. Perhaps it has just been a long time since I went camping in America, but these guys dont mess around over here. However when you are biking with your gear, you tend to only take the bare minimum.

Once we got the tent set up we headed over to an Onsen in town and enjoyed an hour of soaking in naturally heated water while staring out over the beautiful lake. Good stuff. Then we went to Ippei where we ate copious amounts of meat on a stick and drank several mugs full of beer. About 3/4ths of the way through dinner the fireworks show started out of the lake, so we took a short interlude to run outside and watch them. Every night Toya does a 15minute fireworks show over the lake for all the people staying in the various Onsen hotels that make up the town.

After dinner we headed back to the campsite and started a little fire on the beach in front of our tent. Sipping on baileys and munching on roasted marshmallows, we enjoyed the end of our evening until we looked out over the lake to see two swans perched yards from our fire. They swam up pretty close, cleaning themselves and flexing their wings. Im guessing most people usually feed them, but we weren't sharing our 'mallows so I hid being the fire and waved around a burning stick to scare them off. This failed, they went no where, and we had a pretty tense 10 minutes where they would get closer then further from us. Swans, by the way, are pretty freakin scary up close. They are no small bird, they are big with big beaks and while pretty from far away, very intimidating up close.

In the end they went away and we passed out in our tent. The next morning we woke up around 4:30 due to some very loud birds. I managed to pass back out but Christophe decided to get up and sit by the lake to enjoy the breakfast pastry we had bought the night before. The crinkling of the plastic alerted our swan friends to food in the area and I soon woke up to him yelling at the swans. In a fit of frustration I heard him get up, walk behind the tent, then begin crinkling the plastic wildly yelling “hear that swans, I'm eating and you can't have any!”. This was followed several seconds later by “oh no, what have I done... Meghan, dont get out of the tent.”. This was enough to fully wake me so I opened the little tent window only to find myself about 5 inches from two big ol' swans who had come for the bread but were now settling for the grass directly around the tent.

When they finally peaced about 20 minutes later we decided to give up on sleeping and take a ride around the lake. This turned out to be a wonderful idea, because at 6am there are no cars on the road, so we had it all to ourselves. It was so beautiful and silent, just the sounds of the bikes on the road. There was a misty fog all across the lake that slowly rose as we went, revealing the island in the middle.

By the time we got back it was only 8am, so we decided to pack up the tent and head home- aiming to make it to the Macdonald's halfway back before they stopped serving breakfast. We made it and each had a breakfast set (gotta love that ham and cheese egg mac muffin) followed by splitting an order of pancakes. I felt no remorse about this seeing as we had already ridden around 50km that morning.

The rest of the weekend we lazed about, managing not to leave the house again. It was good.

Disc Golf and Goodbyes

2008-07-18T08:58:00.004+09:00

This weekend we headed off to Hidaka to play in a disc golf tournament. For those of you who don't know disc golf, it is basically a combination of golf and Frisbee. Simply put, there are a bunch of baskets which make up the "holes", and tee-off spots marked in spray paint from which you launch your frisbee. Then you walk up to the frisbee and throw it again and again until it's in the basket. We did this, coupled with drinking beer all day, and generally enjoyed a sunny Saturday in Hidaka. It was a lot of fun and I even managed to come in first with my partner (who was really good).

It was a bit sad also, because I had to say goodbye to a lot of people who I have come to be really close friends with over the last two years. It's strange the way friendships and relationships happen when you live in a foreign nation that doesn't share your culture or language. We often joke about how we would never be friends with some people if we were back in the States, but we are alone in Japan and they live nearby. At the same time, I have met some incredible people here who I am happy to have had the chance to get to know. You get a mix in Japan of people who coming to here because are interested in foreign cultures and internationally minded, and people who are leaving their home countries because they don't necessarily fit in there either. I suppose that sounds a bit harsh, but I guess what I am trying to say is that some people are really great and some are amazingly socially awkward.

This weekend I had to say goodbye to some of the greatest. It will be weird being here without them, although it will take me a while to realize this has happened, and I might miss it all together. With only 1 to 10 ex-pats (usually closer to 1) in any given town, most friends live in about a 5 hour radius around you. This means I usually only see them once a month or so, depending on what's going on and how our schedules line up. So while these guys won't be leaving until August, I said goodbye last weekend as I wont get to see them again before they go. This is kind of weird, because they are still here, but I have already said my goodbyes. And it probably wont be until the end of August or September when I go to some event that they would normally be at that I will even realize they are missing. I am no less sad to have them gone, just not sure when I should feel the miss.

The group of guys who are leaving this round (people tend to leave in August) pretty much makes up all the American/Australian/Kiwi guys Christophe and I hang out with (give or take 1 or 2). This is particularly difficult, as it seems to take more and more effort to make new friends the longer you are here. This is entirely my own fault, but I see it in many people who have been here a while. It just doesn't seem worth the effort. For starters, the new people are, simply put, new. And as jaded as it sounds, it can get a bit annoying sometimes to be with someone who is caught up on things you got over a year and a half ago (taking your shoes off, no central heating...). Second, there is the fact that we know we will be leaving in a year now, so why make friendships that only have a year to develop. Its a slippery slope of not replacing old friends and one I hope not to go down. I see it mostly in my friends who have now become "lifers" in Japan- ie they have Japanese wives/husbands or show no sign of ever leaving. With them it must be what I feel times 100. Every expat you meet you know will someday be leaving Japan and you so why try? Why put time and energy into relationships that have an expiration date?

I've thought about this question a lot recently, with all my goodbyes, and I have come up with an answer. Because you will lose your mind if you don't. If one by one all your foreign friends leave and you don't replace them, instead deciding to put your time and energy into Japanese friends only, you will eventually lose your mind. This is because we are different, our culture is different, our language is different and for all that people in the world have in common, there are in the end differences. It comes down to the fact that every so often you need to complain, complain to someone who understands you at their core, that there is no central heating in Hokkaido.

Are you interested in volunteering?

2008-07-11T16:55:00.001+09:00

“Many people enjoy different kinds of volunteer work. Are you interested in volunteering? Why or why not?”

This is a question from last years Eiken Interview Exam. The Eiken is an English proficiency test given all across Japan that takes place in 2 parts. First students must pass a written and listening section. They they must do an approximately 10 minute interview composed of 6 aspects; read a passage, answer a reading comprehension question about the passage, answer two questions about pictures and finally answer two opinion questions (like the one above).

The reason I tell you all this is simply to set the scene. Basically for the last two weeks every day after school I have been drilling, doing practice eiken interviews. Its been good, a lot of my students have improved dramatically since when we started and I get the idea they might all even pass. Today I had my final run of interviews and of the three students I present with the question above- all three of them answered with a clear and quick, no. This startled me and I found myself on edge just by the fact that they said no. The reasons were similar, mostly “I am too busy”, a little bit of “I don't like volunteering”. But these answers really didn't satisfy me and I felt myself looking down on these students for their lack of interest in volunteering.

It's a weird thing, I mean who ever said you have to volunteer to be a good person. Yet I feel like that in some way, I have always felt like part of the toll of not living in a starving nation or have crack head parents is the demand that I give up my own time occasionally. Like a weird paying my debt to the world for setting me pretty well up. But is that really a fair view of it, why is it an obligation in my mind and something these students are simply not interested in. All I can come to is that is was in fact an obligation for me when I was there age. At my school (as with many many schools in the States I believe) there was a requirement that we complete a minimum of 60 or 100 (cant remember) community service hours. I am going to guess that this is not a requirement here in Japan, but I will make a point of fact checking that on Monday. ]

Anyway, I was caught off guard by how strong of a reaction I had to their “no's”, so I felt like I would toss it out there and see what others thought, while trying to hash it out a bit myself in the act of writing this post.

For now, it's Friday and Tophe and I are off to Hidaka for a Disc Golf Tournament. Let you know how it went when we get back.

Sending off the 2nd years to America

2008-07-09T19:21:00.002+09:00

Let’s see, nothing really to say. Not too much has happened in the last two days. My boss didn't talk to me Monday or Tuesday because he was mad at me for not volunteering to go to the summit on Sunday (and because he is more or less a 5 year old child) but today he thanked me for giving the 2nd year students a pep talk before heading off to America, so that was good. The 2nd year students will leave tomorrow to spend 10 days staying with a host family, going to English school and Enjoying California, Mexican food and Disney Land. Should be really fun, although you wouldn't know it by the terrified and distraught faces I was met with today. Honestly, I think all the talk of you must be polite and thankful to your host family for taking your punk ass in and you will be representing Japan so you must be a good person and respectful at all times and you don't get to bath or eat white rice and you’ll like it bitches might not be helping with the excitement. So I jumped around in front of them, taught them the words to good riddance (they’ll sing it as a goodbye song to their host families) got them smiling and generally made a fool of myself shouting about tacos and cool ranch Doritos, but in the end I think they actually started getting pumped so I was happy.

I had a headache all day too, so my other double period English elective class I gave the option of taking a practice English test or watching a movie. Big shocker, they went for the movie. So we watched Goonies, it was good. Haven’t actually ever seen it before weirdly enough. And no, I don't just bail on classes whenever I have a headache, this was the first time I skipped class for a movie, but I feel I made the right choice. One of my girls said Goonies is her favorite movie and everytime I saw her for the rest of the day she would say to me "I love chunk".

Kay, that's all I got for now. Christophe and I are going to dig into the last of the huge block of cheddar cheese we got from Costco and have grilled cheeses and soup for dinner. I am excited. Probably we’ll also watch some buffy. Up to season 3, he and our roommate are totally hooked as you all would be too if you lived with someone who owned the complete series of DVD. It’s just so darn good…

G8 summit part 2

2008-07-09T19:00:00.002+09:00

Sorry, this was from Monday but for some reason it didnt post:

Today was yet another day of work at the Summit. Not too much interaction with foreigners to report, although I did help out a few US secret service guys. There was a bunch of them in the souvenir shop above which my school was meeting to head home. I cruised in about 30 minutes before meeting time to find one of my tinier first year students attempting to help a rather larger fellow with an engraving he was attempting to get on a samurai sword. I let her struggle a bit then jumped in cause he started to get flustered and a bit peeved. The only entertaining part of this story I think is that when I was telling them they could pick it up tomorrow they began to debate weather or not they would need to check them. When they came to the decision that they could carry them on I blurted out, “What the hell airline would let you carry a bunch of swords on!?”. They turned and looked at me, possibly hearing the gears in my head click into place, and I retracted the comment with an “oh, yeah… never mind”.

As for questions about protests I know precious little. There were no protestors at Toya. Just to get into the town you have to go through a police check point and give a reason (ie flash your volunteer badge). I have one student who lives nearby who will not be coming to class for a few days as she physically cannot get to our school from her house because the roads are straight shut down. What I know is that there was some protesting in Sapporo, that I didn't hear about on the news, just have a friend who went and marched a bit for the hey of it. He said there was no one unified point, just lots of people with lots of issues they want addressed. Also I know that there is a “protester campground" about 30 minutes outside of Toya where they have policed off all the protesters. Really wish I could tell you more then that but its just hear-say from a friends Japanese wife.

Oh, and on one final note. They have all the media in a town about an hour or 2 from Toya called Resutsu. All of the news reports I have heard or read have been reporting from Resutsu which is really kinds of sad because the people in Toya put a lot of work into setting up fun learn Japanese culture and learn about Hokkaido products stuff down in Toya, but the media doesn't seem inclined to leave Resutsu. Sad stuff for the Toya folks who were really pumped about the media- lots of fun exhibits and exhibitions going to waste. Nothing but hotels in Resutsu, and some great skiing but that's not really in season right now.

Volunteering at the G8 Summit

2008-07-05T18:40:00.002+09:00

So today was the first day of my school’s volunteer time at the G8 Summit at beautiful Lake Toya in Hokkaido. In an attempt to give the students a chance to have and “international experience” and get a bit of press, my school decided to sign up all the students to volunteer to help out around Lake Toya (the sight of the summit) this Saturday and Monday. Additionally, students and staff could volunteer (actually volunteer not force volunteer like Saturday and Monday) to work on Sunday- I politely declined.

So this morning I and all the students diligently went to school on a Saturday and tried hard not to complain too much about it. We were each handed a photograph name tag, a blue “2008 Summit Volunteer” hat, a matching white nylon “2008 Summit Volunteer vest” and a Hokkaido Toyako Summit Handbook (mine was even in English). Equipped and well dressed we loaded into buses, off to serve as interpreters and guides to whoever might be waiting for us in Toya.

Tricky thing though, the Summit will not begin until Monday, meaning there isn’t really much of anyone in Toya right now, other then lots and lots of police and volunteers. The police have been shipped in from all over Japan. As our bus rolled past a crowd of the lined up like an army the student next to me on the bus read off their car license plates; Gifu, Nagano, Hiroshima. I mean really, what do Hiroshima police know that we don't know. And don't they miss their police down in Nagano? None of this matters as Hokkaido gears up for what is probably the biggest thing to happen here since, well probably since the 1997 Olympics in Sapporo which really wasn't that long ago I suppose. But anyway, the last thing they are going to do is let some pesky terror activities ruin the Summit, so Toya looks like a police state if police state meant a state where only police live.

Due to what I can only imagine comes from a deep hatred of me, the person in charge of assigning us locations put me at the bus stop. So despite being in the beautiful Lake Toya area I was not placed by the free food and drinks from Hokkaido booths, nor the relaxing free foot bath, nor even the scenic base of Mount Showashinzen- I was placed at the concrete, smoke filled bus station. It was there where I watched busses come and go empty for about 20 minutes before convincing the fellow teacher I was with that I better have a look around so that should someone show up I could actually tell them where anything was. So I wandered off only to find myself stopped at every turn by volunteers who had signed up to use their English only to find out the only people in Toya are police and other volunteers. But there was me and I was foreign and happy to speak English with them so I spent most of the rest of the day talking to volunteers and enjoying all the free food and snacks from around Hokkaido that were being given out free in booths (mostly to myself and other volunteers, because the police weren’t really allowed to stop driving around in practice motorcades). I probably had about 10 servings of each item because the volunteers in charge of handing them out kept changing and every time they did the new ones would seek out my blond hair and offer up some information about Hascup berries (a sour only in hokkaido berry I cant seem to find any info on on the web- promise make a post about them sometime in the future), strawberries, Hokkaido cheese or strawberry soda along with a free sample. I just didn't have the heart to point out I already knew what they were telling me and fully aware what they were offering tasted like as I had just been munching on it 30 minute before.

Oh and don't worry about that other teacher. We decided to do 30 minute shifts at the bus stop, but halfway through my shift he called to say a student was sick and he had to deal with it so could I hang out there a bit longer. An hour later when I couldn't keep making what was getting progressively more forwardly awkwardly flirty small talk with the University student who was also posted to the bus stop I called my boss and told him I was gonna go ahead and abandon the post, which he said was fine. I went and had my 6th serving of the free Hokkaido wine.

Aomori, Sumo, Rafting and 8-Bits

2008-06-05T22:29:00.004+09:00

Whoa! A post. Thought it had been too long so I’ll update you on the many things that have gone down in the past couple weeks/months. As the weather started to tease us with occasional warmth, Meghan and I headed down to Aomori – the nearest prefecture to Hokkaido and closest piece of Honshu to us Eskimos in Hokkaido – to check out the famous Cherry Blossom Festival in Hirosaki, enjoy some scallops on the half shell, and give our new bikes a spin. We loaded up the bikes with a tent, clothes and umbrellas on a Friday and spent the following 4 days camping and biking all over the apple ridden Aomori area. The highlight of the trip was definitely our first campsite – a veritable forest of full bloom cherry blossoms. Picture below.

A week or two later, a crew of teachers and friends gathered in south Hokkaido, Fukushima to be precise, to take part in the Fukushima Women’s Only Sumo Competition. I could go on forever on this one but I better let the pictures speak for themselves. T’was a fine weekend.

A week later, Meghan and I hopped a plane to Maui where we met her parents and mine for a full week of sun burns and unpronounceably difficult Hawaiian words. Not really much to say here other than it was fantastic to 1) not be at work for a week and 2) spend some quality times with those who birthed us. While there was sadly no surfing to be had, we did get to snorkel and drink $16 mai tais.

Finally, this past weekend, a bunch of us headed to Hidaka – home of squirrels and valley lilies – to help celebrate two birthdays while doing some white water rafting. The rafting was fantastically fun – as was the Korean food and karaoke that followed.

And for the month of June…we are going nowhere. Nowhere at all. It’s time to stay home. These past two to three months have been non-stop. Cat hates us for being gone all the time. The house has been a perpetual mess. The time has come, during this frustratingly rainy time of Hokkaido weather, to simply stay put for a while. And how wonderful it will be.

While this much needed rest time will be useful to get back in cat’s good graces and put the house together, it will mostly serve as time for Meghan and I to do some much needed research in the way of graduate schools. While our homecoming may still be a ways off, most school applications go in at the end of the year or the beginning of next year which means sifting through the many programs and schools has got to be done now.

Aside from that, Pax June will allow me to work on my woodcuts and linocuts again – a large part of my application to any school – and potentially enjoy a little musical distraction every now and then. If I haven’t mentioned it yet, this newest musical distraction comes in the form of a couple classic Nintendo Gameboys loaded with game cartridges programmed with music production in mind: one being LittleSound DJ by Johan Kotlinski and the other being Nanoloop 1.3 by Oliver Wittchow. Both carts, created long after the glory days of the classic Gameboy, allow you create your very own music – as simple or surprisingly complex as you like – from the Gameboy’s rather limited 4-bit (or 8-bit) sound processor. While I’m sure you can guess what music from a Gameboy sounds like, I’m sure you’ll be surprised by how melodic and interesting it can be. Not that mine necessarily are. Here's a sampling of what I've worked on recently.

Please enjoy.

If you’re interested in more, 8bitcollective is a good place to go.

That is all for now.

Meghan's New Job

2008-03-27T12:33:00.002+09:00

Hello peoples,

Gonna make this quick but just thought I would catch the world up on my life a bit (assuming you care…). This coming Monday will be my last day of work at my wonderful job. As you may well know, I have been working at an English school that caters to the afterschool kid crowd and some adults. Mostly I teach elementary school kids, so we have a blast playing lots of games aimed at building vocabulary and picking up choice phrases like: “What is this/that? It’s an eraser”, “I like peaches”, “I want pizza”, and the classic “Is it a pen? Yes, it is.”. I have one class of more advanced kids who I have been getting into past tense, but this is a pretty advanced class of 5th graders who are now mostly able to answer the question “What did you do today?”, assuming they 1. went to school or 2. ate something.

I also teach a handful of Junior High kids, who are much deeper into the past tense and future tenses and love to answer questions like “How often do you watch TV? I watch TV everyday”. And finally I have a collection of High school and adult students who I actually carry on full blown conversations with. I love them all and have a great time teaching them all, so its been a really sad two weeks as I have had to tell them I am leaving. I have had a few kids cry, which breaks my heart a little, but mostly I have held it together. We’ll see how I do when I have to say goodbye to my boss, who has been possibly the best boss I have ever had.

So why you ask am I leaving this job I love so much. Well, as always, for a boy. Christophe and I work reverse schedules, he from 8:30-4:30 and me from 3:30- 10:00, meaning we only get to see each other in the brief morning and the tired evening. And as much as I like to be a proud independent and powerful woman of this modern age, I do miss cooking dinner. And hell, Ill admit it, I miss cocktail hour. So starting April 1 I will become a full blown High School teacher at the local Catholic High School (which currently only has one Catholic- the priest who teaches religion class). I will go to a regular person schedule of 8:30-4:30, which I think will be good for me since despite my many plans I usually just spend my mornings sleeping in, watching random streaming television and spending way to long looking at emails. Now I can do that in the afternoon and not feel so bad about it ‘cause I will have already done something with my day (gone to work). And I can have cocktail hour again, just in time to enjoy the coming nice weather, sitting on our patio watching the sunset. Here's a link to the schools website- if you download the PDF on this page you can see lots of cute pics of the kids and school. The English page is shite, but I have been asked to clean it up so check back in around 6 months (I've decided to teach myself proper website building, so it might take me a while).

So my first day will be April 1 and I will be sure to post about the school once I get there. For now I thought I would just let people know what’s up with life here. Christophe and I recently invested in some very beautiful road bikes, but I will leave it to him to post photos of them and such. Bought our plan tickets for the upcoming trips to Maui (May) and Borneo, Malaysia (Aug)- looking forward to both of those. Cat’s gotten into the habit of knocking down flower arrangement, which is a bit of a problem what with the water spilling all over everything. We are still working on the best ways to deal with this recent development of life with a cat. Any suggestions welcome.

That's about all for now.

Later crew,
meghan

14 Year Old Cotton

2008-03-20T13:06:00.002+09:00

So today I went to the dentist. My dentist and I are friends, which is novel for me. It’s novel because, as a general rule, I hate all dentists. I’ve had lots of good people work on my teeth, but I have never been able to separate the fact that they are working on my teeth with the fact that they are people, let alone good people. But here in Japan anyone who is trying to learn English is probably going to become my friend and some of them become true friends in time. My dentist is one of the true friends. And to be clear on how much I hate the dentist, I have to wear headphones blasting music while they clean my teeth because the sounds freak me out so much. If I could talk them into it, I would be gassed for every cleaning.

So I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned- actually only my top teeth because Japanese insurance only lets you get half your teeth cleaned at a time… I don't know why, neither does my dentist. Post cleaning we started talking about my tooth that died when I was 10 years old and is very slowly turning black. We decide to take an x-ray of it to look into ways to bleach it, because it was a special root canal that I needed when it died since the tooth was so small and basic bleaching doesn't work on dead teeth like mine. Observe a brief summary of how the conversation about the x-ray went:

“So how’s my tooth look”
“….mmmm…. not good.”
“what’s not good?
“He did bad job.”
“So is my tooth going to fall out”
“…………mmmmm……….”
“What! That is not the correct answer! When is my tooth going to fall out?”
“no no, not fall out. Just, bad job.”
“What do you mean, bad job”
“………do you have time?”
“sure”
“okay, please sit down”
“Wait, what are you going to do?”
“I will drill a hole in your tooth and fill it with medicine”
“A hole?”
“Can you come back on Monday so we can check on the hole”
“I’m going to have a hole in my tooth until Monday?”
“Yes, we will check on it.”
“I don't think I can be walking around with a hole in my tooth right now. I am talking to student’s parents, saying good byes, then next month I start a new job, this might have to wait. Is my tooth going to fall out this month?”
“No, not fall out. Bleach tooth.”
“With medicine? What will the hole look like, will it be obvious? Will you see it when I smile?”
“It is small hole”
“but what color will the hole be, how big?” (I point at my tooth to indicate, wondering when I can possibly get away with a hole in my front tooth).
“No, in back of tooth”

You get the idea. Welcome to life in Japan.

So they finally get me in the chair, lay me back, I pop in my headphones and start blasting music into my ears and he begins to drill a hole in my tooth. (Just a note, my dentist is Keisuke, he works for his father who owns the practice. He comes from a family of dentists, including is brothers, father and grandfather who was the first dentist in Muroran (the town we live in). So he and his pops are leaning over me as he drills this hole.)

Now in the Japanese language there are many ways to say “what the hell is that”. As they sprayed water and cleared away the hole, I heard all of them. I lay there, mouth open, Keisuke tugging at something inside my tooth with his little pliers, his father and the nurse leaning over him exclaiming different versions of “what the hell is that?”

Long story short, there was a small ball of cotton that was buried deep within my root canal. They yanked it out. I got the root canal give or take 14 years ago. The cotton looked pretty good considering its age.

So they filled the hole, once it was totally emptied of cotton, with some kind of bleaching medicine and called it a day. And now for the reason why you should be friends with your dentist- he gave this little bleach hole to me for free.

Oh, and guess how they closed up the hole. They shoved cotton into it.

PS- Today is the spring equinox. How do I know this? Because in Japan, it’s a national holiday! Japan, your people may be awful workaholics, but man do you know how to give us days off.

Cat Hats

2008-02-23T18:37:00.004+09:00

With winter comes a lot of snow here in Hokkaido. In many ways this is a bad thing- its cold, they don't plow the streets, I have to do lots of shoveling, I often slip on the snow/ice and have lots of bruises as a result. Still, it can also be a good thing- great snowboarding conditions, always pretty white snow none of the gross grey old stuff, and lots of time for indoor activities. One such activity for me has been making hats for the cat.

It actually began as a mask-making project. February 3rd in Japan is a holiday called Setsuban. For setsuban you make someone put on a devil or demon mask (there is no singular devil here, lots of different ones exist). Then you have them walk in through the front door and everyone else in the family throws peanuts and dried beans while yelling at them “Out bad luck, in good fortune” or something to that effect in Japanese. Apparently it doesn't take much to scare off a demon, because they are then supposed to turn and flee.

As a general rule you have the “man of the house” don the demon mask. But Christophe wasn't up to it this year, so I got the other boy in the house to dress up- our little cat Inu Chan. They give away free masks with peanuts and dried beans around this time of year, but naturally those masks are a bit big. So I improvised with the peanut packaging and created a kitten sized mask.

He did a good job running away when we threw peanuts at him. He later returned to investigate the peanuts, although by then he had lost his mask.

More recently, I decided to make him a hat. My vision is based off the Mario 3 frog suite. The hat is as of yet completed, but Ill give you a sneak peak.

I pretty randomly decided to sow him a hat, but have since been putting reasons behind my decision. One such rational is that it is a “I’m sorry” present, since next Tuesday I will be taking him to the vet to have (as it was translated to me) “his testicles popped out”. Not sure that forcing him to wear a frog hat is really that good of an I’m sorry present, but what ya gonna do. The even better justification for the hat actually came yesterday. As it turns out February 22 is cat day! So it is his cat day present. The reason it’s cat day is a bit complicated, so bear with me.

In Japanese any given kanji (picto letter) has multiple pronunciations. So, for example, the kanji for 1 can be pronounced as “ichi”, “hito”, or “eee”. The kanji for 2 can be “ni”, “futa”, or “nia”. The sound “nia” is very similar to the sound cats make in Japan- not meow but nian. So when said fast, the date 2-22 sounds like nian, nian, nian- so its cat day. In English it would be meow, meow, meow day.

A quick side note before I part- all the animals in Japan make different noises from the ones in America (when imitated by small children). This is by no means surprising, but I always get a kick out of it. My other two favorites are dogs- “wan wan”- and frogs –“gero gero”.

Catching Up to Do

2008-02-12T19:24:00.000+09:00

A pretty crazy amount of stuff has gone down over the last three months. To begin with, Meghan and I went home for the first since in over a year. To tell the truth, I was a bit anxious about going back home. What would it be like to go to a place where everyone speaks your language? What will have changed? What would I do without a drink vending machine and convenience store every 13.5 feet (4.11 meters)? Which side of the road would I drive on? Well, gladly, these things barely came up – with the exception of driving on the wrong side of the road, which only happened once. It was great to be home – to see friends and family – and both wonderful and frightening to be back in a place where everybody understands what you say. Wonderful was the feeling that I didn’t ever have to struggle through an explanation that the DS I was sold had a broken pixel. Frightening was the feeling that I had somehow lost the ability to smoothly and calmly communicate with people that spoke my language. In the first couple days, it seemed that in every interaction with people (other than friends and family) I found myself questioning my body language and how I was presenting myself. Most of all, I was shocked by the directness, loudness, and – despite only happening a few times – rudeness of people I encountered. For the sake of conversation, let’s limit ourselves to shop clerks, and whatnot.

Service

One thing that Japan has over – most likely - the rest of the world (definitely France and America) is the way in which shop clerks/employees-in-general treat patrons. In my experience so far, I don’t think I have come across one single rude employee in the hundreds of restaurants, shops, karaoke establishment, and bars that I have been to. This isn’t to say that these establishments didn’t have pissed off, underpaid, overworked employees. They simply didn’t take out their shit on 1) people they didn’t even know and 2) anybody that was paying them for a service. In the two weeks back in the States, I was on one occasion totally speechless at the rudeness of a bar owner and totally baffled by the total lameness of several other misc.. America is by no means the worst but it it’s pretty clear that most people don’t give too much of a shit who you are – whether you are paying them or not. Reverse culture shock. If there’s one thing I will take away from my time in Japan, it’s that a little courtesy goes a damn long way.

"Look Around You" Rant

Another fear I had when coming back to the States was that I would return to find a place full of life and opportunity that I was missing out on by living half a globe away. This seems to be a common fear among the language teachers here and, I can only assume, young expats throughout the world. Many ALTs in Japan come here directly from an undergraduate college (as Meghan and I did). This combined with jobs that often lack intellectual stimulus and sometimes any stimulus at all, leads many, especially during the winter of their first year, to questions whether moving to Japan was the right idea. This anxiety is magnified by the remarkably quick and easy access expats have to their best, stateside friends. It’s tough to watch your friends go on to gradschool or build careers while you attempt to legitimize your reason for staying abroad another year. But this comes down to the questions of success, happiness, growth and youth. What makes you a successful person? What makes you a happy person? What allows you to grow both your world experience and understanding of yourself? How old is too old to begin a career? What is a career?

Going home was not the ball of regret and missed opportunities that it could have been. Instead, I felt that my thoughts of staying yet another year in Japan were bolstered. Sure, America still has my family and friends and I do miss them incredibly, but all things told, there’s too much I haven’t done in Japan to jump ship now. There’s too much I still am doing and too much I have to learn about myself and the people around me. This is a critical point that I feel many expats in the same position – generalization alert – seem to miss. They are so blinded by what’s going on at home that they miss out on what’s going on around them. In this, I think the same JET experience twenty years ago - without the internet - would have been a significantly deeper and more meaningful journey. The internet allows one to feel much closer to distant loved ones, but keeps us inundated in our own, more comfortable culture and potentially keeping us from the culture that physically surrounds us. Of course, all this is what you make of it. Maybe I just spend to much time on the interwebs.

Moving

In other news: upon returning to Hokkaido, Meghan and I (who had put in a request to rent a house much closer to Muroran’s more lively Nakajima area) began the packing process and eventually moved toward the end of January. We have finally moved from a moderately sized, government-owned apartment on the fourth floor to a 5DK with a garage in a much more desirable part of town. The house has some serious character. Being built in the 1970’s, the house has a more Japanese feel than most modern Japanese homes. The majority of the rooms are tatami with sliding doors. One of the rooms has a space for a Buddhist alter (which will house the tv – awesome) and flower arrangement/hanging scroll thingy. Because of this, the house was super-undesirable by regular folks. Most people in the market for a house are looking for mostly western-roomed homes with all the modern amenities. After our apartment with no hot-water, a 1970s home seems like the distant future. The fact that the rent is disgustingly cheap helped a bit too. We’re still unpacking but, on the whole, we're moved in. The perks? I can now bike to 1) the sushi place 2) the video store 3) the recycle shop 4) the train station 5) everywhere. It’s awesome. The only down side is that we live on pretty much a cliff-side. Architects must have studied the grazing habits of mountain goats for years to figure out how to get a house to stay on a hill this steep. So far it hasn’t been much of a problem (knock on wood) despite several large snows.

This past two weekends, Meghan and I indulged in the fine snow and ice structure building skills of Hokkaido’s population. The first trip was to the Shikaribetsu Ice Village and the second was to the ever popular Sapporo Yuki Matsuri or Sapporo Snow Festival. Here are some pics from both but check out the flickr page for all the goodies which if I haven't updated by the time you read this, will happen soon.

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Generosity Grows Wild ...and Dangerous

2007-11-21T21:29:00.000+09:00

Finding a turkey in Japan is no easy task. Seeing as Thanksgiving is right around the corner, we’ve been trying to find one for – I don’t know – the past month. Last year, a friend of ours ordered a turkey from an “exotic meats” butcher in Sapporo but had seemingly misplaced the number. So it was up to Meghan and I to find a large, native-to-north America, piece of fowl.

One of my attempts was to ask all of my teachers about turkeys and possible turkey farmers in the area. There have been many foreign teachers at this school and one of them must have, at some point, desired our North American Feathered Friend for everyone’s favorite “Thanks for the corn and here are some slightly used blankets” Day. Apparently there are no turkey farmers around these parts. But, I did get an interesting story from one of the teachers. While asking about turkey acquisitions, she brought up wild mushroom hunting.

Every summer (at least in Hokkaido), people of all ages strap on their bear bells, hop in the undersized SUVs, drive to the middle of a mountain and begin the hunt for the elusive, yet apparently delicious, mountain vegetable. These are just regular root vegetables but they’re all natural and whatnot and apparently don’t taste that much like dirt. Well people also do this for mushrooms. As we all know, mushrooms can be dangerous. Eat the wrong one and you – in the worst case- die and – in an only slightly better case – watch trees breath and gain a better appreciation for the color blue for about six hours. But there are a couple other brands of poisonous mushroom that may only exist in Japan.

While explaining the intricacies of wild mushroom hunting, this teacher offhandedly mentioned, as if everybody knew about it, the mushroom that makes you overly generous and then kills you. Being well versed in this teacher’s particular brand of sarcastic humor, I laughed aloud and followed it by a “Good one!” This time, however, there was no laughing.

“I’m serious,” she said. “People sometimes eat this mushroom by accident, give away something very valuable and then die. It happened to my cousin. He went mushroom hunting and ate the wrong one. He then gave away his car and died.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t contain my laughter so instead of being overtly rude I tried to mask my inability to stop laughing by proclaiming between each giggle my amazement with “Wow!”s, “I can’t believe it!” s, “I’m so sorry.”s and “That’s so horrible!”

She warned me once more about the dangers of wild mushroom hunting and walked off to class.

Oh. She also mentioned to me the mushroom that, should you eat it once, will cause you to laugh for the rest of your life. I told her I thought I’d heard of that one.

In other news: it snowed yesterday. Lightly, but it still snowed.

UPDATE: it snowed a lot today. A lot.

UPDATE x 2: I looked around a bunch on the interwebs (read: I googled it once and pareused the first 2 pages of results) and found no mention of wildly lethal, generosity mushrooms. If anybody finds anything on these fungi, let me know.

Rib Rike Prant 8

2007-11-08T18:41:00.000+09:00

Hey hey. Here's a new Live Like Plant. Numero Ocho for those who are counting. I was gonna include a track from Saul Williams' recent The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust but decided you better just go and check it out yourself. They decided to do the same thing with this album as Radiohead did with In Rainbows. However, the only choices are $5 or $0. Trent Reznor produced it. I had no idea the man had so much funk in him. It's a good album. I'm still taking it in right now but so far: me likey. Check it out. Anyway, here's the new LiLiP. It's weird and a bit on the short side. Oh, and google broke my embedded player so just click on the link (you can do save as or just let it play in browser.

Live Like Plant Vol. 8 (46 minutes)

List of playing:

Justice - Genesis
Daft Punk - High Fidelity
Cansei de Ser Sexy - Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above (Spank Rock Remix)
New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream
Data Rock - I used to dance with my daddy
Hermeto Pascoal - Remelexo
Manu Chao - La Vie A Deux
Hot Chip - Down With Prince
Fugees - The Mask
Wilco - You Are My Face
Wendy Carlos - Concerto Brandebourgeois 3 in G Minor - III Allegro

Ramblings de Religion and FFVII Potion

2007-10-23T17:26:00.000+09:00

It's getting cold. Me no likey. During the day, the chill is acceptable (barring the wind) but at night it's downright frosty. Sadly, this cold has very little to do with the "Two Months of Assorted Sickness" that Meghan and I are finally seeing the pseudo-end of. While I don't really want to go too deep into it, know that it went something like Meghan coughed and hacked up green shit for 3 weeks straight and finally went to the doctor to find out she had a mild infection in her trachea and I was stung by something that resulted in massive, puss filled boils that covered the majority of my fore-arm and leg. Phew! Anyway, we're all fixed up now, thankfully.

What's as of late. Hmmm. I recently ripped through Resident Evil 4 - a game that any and every zombiephile should play. The game is seriously excellent. Few times have I played a game so complete on all fronts (with the exception of one seriously tacked on plot point and the final boss battle). The cinematics, the story, the controls, the sound - all excellent. I never got a chance to play it on GameCube so it was nice to be able to get it the third time around. Plus it's in English with Japanese subtitles as opposed to being the other way around. HA!

What else has gone down. Oh yes, Sunday, Meghan and I (well, really, more like Meghan) were invited to attend one of Meghan's students' Shichi-Go-San (7,5,3) blessing. The ceremony is one where girls at ages seven and three (and boys at age five) get all dressy and are blessed by a priest in a little ceremony. I'll let Meghan tell you more about what she got to do and I'll just give you my thoughts on the actual ceremony itself, seeing as it was my first real Shinto ceremony.

Christianity, in the forms that I've experienced it, is a very personal religion - it's all about your personal relationship with Christ or whoever. Now, I don't even begin to pretend to know much of anything about religion, Eastern, Western, or otherwise. If I really wanted to make any sort of educated comment on the differences between styles of worship between Japan and the United States, I would go out and read volumes of scholarly material - not to mention the original religious texts themselves. But, as I'm sure you are aware of, I am unabashedly lazy. So I will instead make most likely wrong and ridiculous assumptions and generalizations and hope you enjoy them.

This past school year, I have been assigning opinion essays to my higher level students in an attempt to have them give me their ideas and their own thoughts, something that is often overlooked by their other teachers, on things ranging from music to human cloning. (For the record, the idea came from the late, great Dr. Peterson who did the same project at a different school.) One of the essays I decided on was "Religion is important for a good and moral society." I honestly was quite interested to see their responses - mostly because I wasn't able to predict what they would say as I had with so many of the other essays ("Students should not be able to have jobs." 90% responded with something along the lines of "I disagree. Students needs jobs so they can get money. How the hell else am I supposed to buy my designer wallets? I would have to start mugging people. Sheesh.")

Their answers were interesting, to say the least. Most ran along the lines of "I know about religion but I don't think Japanese people need it for a good and moral society." They told me about how politeness, courtesy and a willingness to keep a community together through friendship were the most important parts keeping a good and moral society. One or two student's responded with explanations of religion in their homes - their altars where they pray to their ancestors or Buddha. A fair number of students had an interesting inability to differ between religion and cult. For them they are the same thing - a society or group that share a belief. This I found quite intriguing especially since the line between religious zealotry and cult fanaticism can sometimes get quite fuzzy. The essays that really got me were the ones that not only explained that Japan did not need religion but questioned why other cultures needed them if they only caused war. A surprising number of students shared this sentiment. Sure they don't understand the much deeper and meaningful aspects of Juedeo-Christian religions - teaching respect and compassions, etc. - but it's what they see that allows them to create their opinions.

This idea comes from the "America is a violent place." comments that I get so often. While America may not always seem like an overly violent place to those who live there, most Japanese people will tell you that they are afraid of traveling to America (New York, DC, whatever) because they are afraid of being mugged/killed/etc. At first, I found this to be ridiculous. The more I started to pay attention to the news, the more I realized that the only news that most people get about America is violent. So in their minds, they create America as a very violent place. Switching to religion, most Japanese see Christianity/Islam/Judaism as directly related to the war in Iraq and the coming war in Iran. To them it's not necessarily a "we gotsta keep our freedoms so we can sells it on ebay later", it's a religious conflict that is confusing and downright detrimental to the face of the involved religions. Not to mention, the rest of the news Japan gets about American Christianity revolves around hating gays, blowing up abortion clinics (which Japan has tons of, by the way), and influencing the government to do the same. It don't look so purdy over here fellas. News of soup kitchens and homeless shelters gets lost somewhere around Guam. And it really is too bad. Religious groups do an amazing amount of good through numerous different institutions. Outside of news of the religious Middle East conflict, Japan gets Mormon's and Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeah. Not painting a great face is it. War and people who bother you on the street and at your front door asking you if you've accepted Jesus in your heart. Hmmm.

The thing that got me above all else: these are highschool students. What answers would we get in an American highschool? These students are no angels, they'd rather pluck their eye-brows in class and draw hug-nippled renditions of Billy Blanks on the desks than listen in class but it's quite amazing what they pull out when you ask them their own thoughts on a serious topic.

Two interesting quotes I received from my students (they might not be perfect but you get the idea):

Religion is a thing that imposes a one-sided view on people and it coerces people regardless of personal dignity and volition. I can't hit on an advantage of religion.

I think religion is a good thing but it is not good to threaten people like, "if you don't believe in christ, you can't be rewarded."

Back to the ceremony. As I said, Christianity is a very personal religion. Shinto is not. Or it is, but in a very different way. This ceremony was not. The temple is a very golden place that regular peopleses can only exist in a limited portion of. The ceremony itself was mostly on the part of the priest. He walked around the rest of the shrine - chanting and doing his thing - and we just watched. Only twice did he acknowledge us. The chanting itself is done in a language so old that it's barely understandable even to Japanese people - much like Latin in Vatican I. The priest is there, I'm told, to call the gods to the shrine - not to speak through him. Quite different.

Anyway, as I've lost my line of thought, I'll continue to bore you with my ramblings on religion later. And I'll be sure to have Meghan tell the awesomeness that she got to take part in (pictures included).

Side note: I received a little bit of Final Fantasy VII goodness today from my co-worker. Suntory is making a commemorative beverage for the 10th Anniversary of Final Fantasy VII - Potion. It's yellow (should be blue). It re-ups your hit points. Here's the original commercial and a taste test from earlier today.

Tales from 幌別の英会話

2007-10-18T22:57:00.000+09:00

A few quick stories from my place of work this last week:

Do what to a duck?
I have a student who is in the 5th grade. She is a young outspoken student, who seems pretty popular if a bit bossy with her friends. Every so often she wears a certain sweatshirt to class which puts me in a state of heightened anxiety. This sweatshirt, at first glance, looks like it has a laundry detergent label on the front (a circle with another swooping color, you know what I mean). However when you look closer you will notice along the circle there is text, the only text on the whole sweatshirt, that reads, “fuck a duck”. Every time I see it, it takes all my will power not to laugh, get my camera, explain it to my boss, stare at it openly… The reason I can do none of these things is because how do you explain to a 5th grader the meaning of “fuck a duck”?

Verbs
The other day in my 6th grade class (which I team teach) my boss (who I team teach with) was explaining “verbs” to the students in Japanese. To do this he was working his way around the room asking the students to describe their days using only verbs of what they do (get up, brush my teeth, eat breakfast…). They would say the verbs in Japanese and he would quickly translate them to English then move on to the next. I’m not going to lie, I started to zone out (too much Japanese) when he turned to me and said “she sleeps around?”
“What!?” I asked, rather a bit startled.
“After school, she sleeps around?” he inquired again, searching for the right verb in English.
Now fully back to reality I looked at the 11 year old he was motioning to and rapidly searched my brain for what exactly she might be doing after school. Sensing my confusion he tried for another English explanation,
“You know, she sleeps around. She’s on the couch, then her bed, then in the kitchen.”
“Oh, I got you. She lays around. She does nothing for a while. She relaxes, she unwinds…” I started overflowing with the countless other options. Never could look at that girl the same way again though.

What does the frog need? It needs eyes.
So I’m teaching my 4th graders the verb “need”. As such we have been practicing the following sentence structures:

What does the baby need?
It needs milk.

What do the elephants need?
They need noses.

To this end I made/gathered a bunch of pictures of different animals missing parts, a reindeer missing Santa, some plain noodles, some plain fries, etc. For most of these items students and I were on the same page on, but two of them caught me off guard. Read the following two sentences and think about your gut reaction to what they might need (picture the items with nothing on them):

What do the noodles need?
What do the French fries need?

For me the natural answers are sauce and ketchup (or maybe salt). My students however went with:

What do the noodles need? They need soup.
What do the French fries need? They need butter.

Ah Japan, it’s those little cultural differences that keep me on my toes.

Thanks (A Portait)

2007-10-06T13:21:00.000+09:00

Some More Updates

2007-09-22T10:51:00.000+09:00

Well naturally there has been a lot happening this summer and Christophe’s massive recap post really only brought up a short week or so of it, so I will try to fill in some more gaps. Then maybe we will be kind of caught up and with the winter creeping in will have more time to stay on top of posts.

Muroran Port Festival:

So in-passing I mentioned to some of my fabulous students that I thought it would be really fun to carry one of the portable shrines -Mikoshi- in a festival. NOTE: In Japanese festivals, instead of doing giant techno-color floats on top of pick-ups, they do giant techno-color floats and mini shrines that are carried by 30-150 drunk people.

Of course though, I am a princess, which means I can't be carrying a big heavy float (although girls do carry them), so my students arranged for me to ride on one - and for Christophe to carry! This is how I found myself the last weekend of July shimmying into spandex, painting my face and downing many many tiny beers. In order to prepare for carrying the shrine everyone involved (around 100 people for our shrine) gets together, gets dressed, gets some face paint, gets fed and starts drinking.

The actual parade consisted of me perching on a small platform and holding tightly onto a little rope while waving a fan and shouting “waaa-shoy!”. For Christophe it involved joining with 50 or more guys in lifting this platform up onto their shoulders, marching in a zig-zag fashion and shouting “waa-shoy!”. All of this was supplemented with lots of beer. When we first got to Japan, we kept seeing these tiny cans of beer that we simply chalked up to a combination of the Japanese love for tiny things and the Japanese tendency to get drunk really quickly. On this day, we learned their true purpose. Every few minutes the carriers would set down the platform onto saw horses and someone would come around with tons of these little cans. We would have a few minutes drink in which time everyone would down a can, and then we would continue.

One other aspect of the parade is that people are encouraged to take bowls full of water and throw them at us. There are few things more entertaining then watching a tiny little old Japanese grandmother in full kimono waddle up to Christophe, chuck a tub full of water on him and run off giggling.

Luckily for you, I have some amazing people here in Japan. The same fabulous man who set this all up for us also followed us around all day taking a video of the event! Enjoy the youtube action (only a short segment, I promise!)

Kitten

So we gots ourselves a little black and white kitten- he fits in well with the theme of our blog. Around 70% of the time he is a really cute cat. This is generally when he is sleeping. His favorite two sleeping spots are on top of the towels above the washing machine and on my chest when I am on the computer or watching TV. He also enjoys sitting on Christophe’s shoulder while he is doing the same activities. When he is not cute is when it is 4am and he is meowing in my ear, or when he spends an hour meowing for his sister who lives next door. We are hoping this will pass. Not much else to report on the ball of fuzz but I will give you one antidote:

Not too long ago Christophe and I were watching a movie. He got up to grab something from the fridge when he noticed the floor was wet. Looking to the left he saw the wetness lead to the kitten’s litter box, where the kitten was rolling around getting covered in kitty litter. Christophe reached down to see what was up and discovered the kitten was sopping wet. Curious, he followed the wetness trail in the opposite direction to discover it lead directly to the toilet. Yes, that’s right folks, our cat fell into the toilet. And I don't think it will be the only time either, he seems perpetually intrigued by it.

Speaking of the bugger he has woken up and is now attacking my fingers as I type, so I am going to take this as my cue to stop writing.

Jim in Japan: A Recap

2007-09-13T21:07:00.001+09:00

We’re horrible at doing this thing in a timely manner. Moving on.

Jim came. Jim went. It was good. Our trip started with Meghan and I leaving Tomakomai, a nearby port city, on a ferry bound for Ooarai, a city near Tokyo. We left Hokkaido at the same time as Jim left New York. He arrived before us. Yes. The ferry took 18 hours. The trip was quite nice though. We initially had reserved an economy space for two but when my poor-planning-self found out that I had reserved a ferry that left too early, I had to switch the reservation to a later ferry (1 AM) which cost us about 40 USD more but gave us a cabin instead of a square of floor.

I’m quite happy that I screwed up the reservation actually. When we got on the ship, we realized that we were the only ones in our supposed four-person cabin. We stretched out and spent the next eighteen hours lounging about while watching season two of Scrubs (Meghan’s recent obsession).

Eighteen and some change hours later (we’ll all forget that I gave both Jim and Kari directions to the wrong hostel. How the hell was I supposed to know. C’mon. Sakura Hotel vs. Sakura Hostel? That’s a one letter mistake that costs 20 minutes of backtracking and 200 yen in trains. Sheesh.), we arrived at the hostel to meet Jim and Kari.

Tokyo was wondrous as usual. Wondrous but hot as all hell. And godforsakenly humid. Actually, keep that in mind as you read this – the entirety of Honshu is a sauna during summer. It sucks. It makes travel impossible; especially when you are lugging around backpacks and whatnot. Upon returning to the cool, relatively dry summer of Hokkaido, I thanked my stars that I was placed here.

Two events stand out for me in this most recent Tokyo experience: the Tsukiji Fishmarket and an Akihabara Maid Café (that I don’t have photographic evidence of because – sketch – they don’t allow photography unless you pay.). The Fishmarket, a somewhat touristy 5 AM excursion, was truly awesome. Instead of waking early, we stayed up through the night - enjoying karaoke and a final good-bye to the world renowned Dr. Miller Peterson – and made it to Tsukiji at about 4:15-4:30. Needless to say, we were a bit early and a touch “happy with drink”. While I would like to go on and on about the market that churned to life before us, the array of colors found among the fish, crustaceans, mollusks and more, the complete lack of “fish smell” because of the absolute freshness of all the fish, I can’t really because all I could think of the entire time I was there was my complete and total need to poop. Oh, and there were no bathrooms. But other that, it was pretty amazing and should you ever make it to Tokyo, head to the Tsukiji Fishmarket in the early ‘morn. ‘Tis worth it.

From Tokyo, we took a day trip to the Ghibli Museum (Hayao Miyazaki’s – the guy made Spirited Away – studio’s museum) in Mitaka. For one who has enjoyed many a Miyazaki film, it was a real treat. We watched an adorable short-film made for the museum called みずふも or Water Spider. Totally adorable. I won’t go into the details of the museum for fear of sounding like a total whale’s penis.

After a couple days, we left Tokyo altogether and headed toward Osaka with a quick stop-over in Iga to visit the famed (mostly among whiteys) Iga Ninja Museum. Yes. It was totally amazing. It could have only been made more amazing by the addition of Lilliput-esque robots with occasional robot vs. ninja battles. The highlight was the live ninja show complete with one (1) strong yet remarkably effeminate ninja and totally ridiculous kung-fu sound effects that accompanied every roundhouse kick and neck snapping. Did you know that ninjas were usually vegetarian to minimize body odor? Now, you may say to yourself, “But wait! Most hippies are vegetarians and quite stinky!” That's just ‘cause they don't bathe. Ninjas bathe – in fire.

That night we headed toward Osaka – funny capital of Japan. There’s something you need to know about Osaka: most people (generalization alert!) in Japan claim Osaka people are very different from the rest of Japan. They most often cite three reasons that Osakaites are different: they love making money (which to me is a fishy reason), they have a different language (ok, they do have weird accents and some crazy words), and they are allowed to be funny. Wait. Japanese people are not allowed to be funny? No, apparently they aren’t – unless you are from Osaka. I had a teacher give me some ridiculous statistic that went something along the lines of 98% of Japanese stand-up comedians are from Osaka. Apparently, ‘they are allowed to speak their mind with out fear of the social ramifications.’ So they are funny. Before arriving in Osaka, we often joked about not being able to wait for the Osaka laugh-fest coming up.

Then we arrived in Osaka. Maybe it was just the part of town we were in, but Osaka lived up to the hype. People were everywhere in the streets, people were chatty and, yes, even funny. We stepped into an Apple Store at one point to wheeze the free A/C and internet and this portly fellow that clearly had his hair cut in the ol’ fashioned “bowl” method approached us and began talking about Jyankees. I thought he was talking about junkies at first but it was soon made clear that he was, in fact, talking about the baseball team. While I don’t remember them now, I do recall that he cracked one joke about a lawyer and one joke about Microsoft. (Jim, Meghan or Kari: if you remember them, I’m sure the internets would love to hear them.) That was all we needed – Osakaites are funny. The rest of the time was spent with a new friend from Korea, some delicious ramen and a lot of lychee liquor based drinks.

Our next destination was Himeji – a city famous for it’s castle – made famous by James Bond (see You Only Live Twice). This was an exceptionally hot day. The castle was really beautiful but, I swear to you, all I can remember is the godforsaken, brain numbing heat that penetrated my every orifice and had me still sweating buckets even after my pores were empty and my shoe laces were drenched. If you come visit Japan and you can ONLY travel during summer, steer clear of anything south of Hakodate in Hokkaido. Please believe me. Fall? Spring? Surely wonderful. Winter? A different kind of beautiful. Summer? A body enema that drains you of your will to live.

The next and final stop was Hiroshima. While I was truly excited about visiting Hiroshima, I can’t say that I wasn’t a little anxious and confused about what exactly to feel – or what I would feel. Needless to say, Hiroshima was a distinct change of pace from the frivolity of the previous week.

The American Public Education system concentrated the majority of their Atomic bomb teachings on the bombs importance in ending the war. My classes within the East Asian Studies major at Bucknell obviously approached the bomb from a different and more Japan-centric standpoint. Before going to Hiroshima, I felt that I had a pretty good handle on the situations and after-effects of the bomb, having studied it from two sides (and also having studied with a professor who’s focus was the victim mentality of Japan in the time immediately following the bombing until today.) The problem with getting most people to understand not only the unimaginable destruction that occurred but also the gravity and global ramifications of the bombing is quite simply that most people are not brought face to face with these facts on precisely the space of land where only 60 years ago, the first nuclear bomb to be used on a populated city, exploded 2,000 feet above land instantly killing tens of thousands of people. Do I even need to say that a text book doesn’t hold quite the same effect? Especially when your possible drunk US history teacher is saying it had to be done.

The space immediately under the bomb has been preserved as a park – a beautiful and quiet space that breaks the busy charm of Hiroshima. Not only does the park contain the famous Bomb Dome but among its trees you can find a few that show the burns and markings of the atomic blast. Even as you walk around the city outside the park, it’s difficult not to think about that fact that 60 years ago the majority of it had been leveled in a matter of seconds. Yet today, you can find almost no traces of the event outside of the Peace Park. I’ll finish my little ramble by just saying that, especially as an American, Hiroshima is a remarkably important place to see. You can read all you want about it but nothing is comparable to a slow walk through the Peace Park.

On one of our days in Hiroshima, we decided to head over to the famous island of Miyajima; known for its ginormous torii gates and water temple (not a la Zelda). I knew that the island was close to Hiroshima – and I also knew that our hostel rented bikes for 500 yen a day. The day before our trip, I talked to one of the staff about biking to the island. He told me that it was mostly city streets along the way but it wasn’t too bad of a ride. About 20 kms. And he also mentioned that the island was quite beautiful to bike around and, if we were up to it, there were some pretty, quite private beaches around the back of the island. I relayed this information back to the travel tomodachis and we decided to try it out. We rented bikes early the next morning and got on our way.

The beginning of the ride was quite nice. We rode along one of the many rivers that wind in and out of Hiroshima, but after about 10 kms ended up back on bumpy city sidewalks. The ride was long. Oh, and hot. But we eventually made it to the ferry terminal. Meghan bought a lemon snow cone and spilled it. We got on the ferry and ten minutes later we were on the island. We decided to go relax on these private beaches before enjoying the torii gates and the town. From here on out, let me just say that it was my lame-ness and twisted desire to reach these secluded, private beaches that lead us to, not only pass the first several beaches, but also drag my poor travel companions up and down several monstrous hills (could you really call those hills?) in search for these mysterious beaches. So after a collective swimming pool of sweat, calling me every name they could think of and threatening my life 8.25 times. We arrived at these private beaches.

There were people there. Wait. Not just people – fisherman. That means hooks in the water. Oh wait! What else was there? Jelly fish. We hung out for ten minutes and then headed back up the hill-from-hell so we could enjoy the REAL beach. The pictures don’t capture the sheer rage that was directed in my direction. Other than the ride, the gate was quite beautiful. The tide was out which meant that we could walk up and stand under the gate. This made the Water Temple less picturesque but all in all was still quite amazing. We boarded the ferry again. Boarded our bikes again. And twenty kilometers and four chaffed, sore asses later, we were back at the hostel.

And that’s that! We waved bye to Kari and Jim the next day. Jim would meet us a couple days later in Hokkaido (he headed up by train while Meghan and I headed up by plane). The following week was spent meeting friends, showing Jim where we live and just generally enjoying the mild summer that Hokkaido loves to brag about. So Jim, how’d you like Japan?

(And how’s that for a monster post?)

Oh crap. In other news, my bike arrived. I have been thoroughly enjoying it’s presence and biking home from work a couple times a week. I found a Voltron model at a recycle shop – apparently he was called King of Many Animals: Go-Lion here. The cat (that we DON”T have – ahem) won’t shut the hell with the exception of today when I came home to find him curled up on the electric blanket listening to Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield. I’m finally working on a new print inspired by a poem by our friend and tea ceremony instructor, Tomoko Miyake.

that is all.

Let's Play Catch-Up

2007-08-07T18:51:00.000+09:00

And now for the monthly post.

Summer in our neck of the woods is a busy time (if you couldn't tell by the complete lack of posts); a time of festivals, out-door beer ingestions, and general good time-ness. Summer in Hokkaido, all 6.2 weeks of it, is truly a thing to celebrate.

Instead of boring you with a post containing text of mythical proportions, why don't we let's enjoying a slide show of sorts?

Finished That Bike

Sorry. No before pictures.

School Festival: Three Days of Strange Snacks and Plenty of Dancing

Furubira's Tengu Matsuri: Watch A Guy With A Long Nose Walk Through A Bonfire

...with, of course, gratuitous beer consumption...

...even Liam got in on the broom throwing action...

...that hair...

...they just ran through that fire...

We DID NOT Cat-Sit These Kitties For Two Weeks

John and I Carried A Mikoshi and Meghan Rode On It

Sorry about the lack of pictures with us actually riding/carrying. We have those, I promise. We just haven't gotten the picture CDs yet. We'll post them when we do get them though.

Enjoyed The Date Samurai Festival and Some Local Beer Gardening

...is that his ass?

...and met a dandy new ALT!

Phew. Now you are all caught up. This Friday, Meghan and I are hopping on an 18 hour (yes, 18 hour) ferry down to Tokyo to meet Jim (of the Meghan's brother variety) and Kari. We'll be a couple days in Tokyo then head to a bunch of places on our way to our final destination: Hiroshima. There we will enjoy some Peace Park and some okonomiyaki. We'll send a post your way upon our return to the north! TTFN.

Happy 4th of July

2007-07-03T23:36:00.000+09:00

I had an interesting experience tonight. I teach a two-person class with two women who have fairly high level English. While their grammar is often off, they are very good at communicating - which is basically all learning English is about. We have been together for about 4 months now and have discussed our families, our high school and college days and lots about Japanese versus American cultures and customs. Recently we have been on a kick of “Travel English”, which has meant making hotel reservations, ordering at a restaurant, navigating the airport, you get the idea. I thought I would take a break from that this week and try to have a more serious conversation. In that it is the day before the 4th of July, I decided to talk about Patriotism in America and in Japan.

We started with a simple conversation about the 4th of July, fireworks and BBQs. I asked them if there were similar holiday’s where people in Japan celebrated Japan. They said there was one, but they couldn't remember the date (sometime around February) and they never did anything for the holiday. So I tried again, is there a time when people in Japan put out Japanese flags? Silence. Do you have a Japanese flag? No. Why not?

A long pause followed this one. The best answer I got was that people in Japan of their generation (my parents generation) don't care about the government of Japan. So I tried to prod more (I knew where I wanted the conversation to go, even if they weren’t going to follow my leads). Is there any connection to WWII? What do you think about this shrine in Tokyo to people who died in the war that the former Prime Minister visited? Do you think his visit was a good idea? Slowly I coaxed answers out of them on the subjects that have been in the paper clippings I get from my Dad. But each one came out only with much leading and offering of my opinions (which were generally then agreed with). What about the Minister of Education wanting to cut passages about the Okinawa suicides from High School textbooks?

Generally I got the most conversation when I went for more factual questions. What is the name of the shrine? Who is it dedicated to? I don't know what happened in Okinawa, can you explain it to me? The few opinions I go were very guarded.

At the end of class I thanked them for talking with me, apologized for the sad subject matter (how the people in Okinawa committed suicide was our final topic) and told them that while it was difficult to talk about I thought it was good to try to discuss more serious subjects sometimes. One of my students replied with, “So, next week, can we return to travel English?”

Of course, I told her. But I thought it was important to have political conversations sometimes too. If you go to America, I explained, people will want to talk to you about these kinds of things. People will ask you about things they know about in Japan, things they learn about in the Newspaper. Questions like, “What do you think of Prime Minister Abe?”, “Do you think Japan should increase its military?”, are not entirely unlikely to come up - especially if you plan on spending a lot of time talking with foreigners. My dad, I explained, would probably ask you these questions. He often asks me what my students think about these things.

“Oh”, my student replied. “These are things I only talk about with my husband.”

“Really”, the other exclaimed. “You talk about this with your husband?”

“Only sometimes, not all of it. Sometimes we talk about these things, not often”, she hurriedly explained.

I promised them a return to restaurant menus next week and said my goodbyes, but the class left a strong impression on me. I had heard a lot about how people in Japan have a real-private self (honne) and a public self (tatemae). I have learned that just because a Japanese person tells me they also think tuna is the best sushi doesn't mean they ever order it at the sushi bar. It is a matter of agreeing with what the other person has presented, a matter of making a bond over common interests even if they don't really exist. This greatly effects what people choose to talk about. While a Japanese person wastes no time in asking your age and marital status (which decides what level of junior or senior you are to them which further dictates the way they will act toward you) they will never ask you what you think of a recent political event. Things where people have very real opinions, touchy subjects if you will, are entirely avoided. Thinking back on it, my students probably felt as if I was being very intrusive with the questions I was asking.

I felt for the first time that I got a very real look at the split between the character of these women that I see and their true selves. I almost feel as though I have had the tiniest peek of a room I wasn't supposed to see. It made me rethink my students earlier comment, “we don't care about the government”. Perhaps there I was supposed to understand, “we don't care about the government as far as any conversation we are having here is concerned”.

agree's pepole where were?

2007-06-29T16:54:00.000+09:00

Just a quick howsyermother here. Meghan and I are headed to Furano this weekend for camping, meeting-time, grilling and more. We shall return with tales of unstoppable heroism, vicious dragonry, and unabashed sexy revelry.

To tie you over, however, here is an interesting "essay" I received the other day on the topic of Censorship.

Ok. Ok. I know it's unethical to publish your students' works on the wide web world but there is zero chance that you will ever find out who this person is and an even lesser chance that the person would even care if they found out that their "censorship" essay was now on the interwebs. Plus, it's too good not to post. Without further a due:

Do you agree or disagree with the statement? Please provide support for your opinion.

Censorship is a good thing.

Worm is not....
Why worm?
I understand it.
worm is not happy.
Everyone die... cry...
I disagree worm.
agree's pepole where were?
I not belive.

It's poetry, really. How do you get worm from censorship? That's the eternal question. It's all about faith, people. FAITH.

Look out for a new LiLiP coming soon - once I leave lazy-town.

"Daylight Savings - I Never Thought I Would Miss You" and Mystery Sausage Tasting

2007-06-25T19:05:00.000+09:00

Inspired by Powers'ss's most recent post, I've decided to actually post something (whoa. I know.)

Hokkaido is finally hot, and when I say finally I mean it was still pretty chilly up to and including several weeks ago. The warmness has brought more surfing (Meghan went for the first time on Saturday), more grilling (very illegally grilled some meat on the patio - we live on the fourth floor) and camping (which will be occuring this coming weekend). The only real downside of summer in Hokkaido is the godforsaken sun. Not that it's too hot or anything. Just that Japan refuses to implement any sort of daylight savings time. In the winter, this is no problem but in the summer - sweet, delicious, candied fecal matter is it aggravating. Not to mention that our balcony (and bedroom windows by default) face perfectly east.

So what does this summer lack of daylight savings do for a human being? Well the effects are two-fold. Unless you live in a meth lab (I'm looking in your direction Jared and Colin) or have poured-cement curtains, the sun comes blasting through your window at FOUR-MOTHERCRAPPING-THIRTY IN THE MORNING. You wouldn't believe the tan I have right now just from sleeping. The second disastrous byproduct is the feeling of being a real asshole everytime you walk out of a bar at 4:30 in the morning and it's complete daylight. Me no likey.

Other than being rudely awoken by Ra everyday, life has been quite enjoyable. Meghan and I have been busy (well, mostly Meghan has been busy) planning a trip we'll be taking in August to visit Hiroshima, Himeji and a bunch of other fun places when Jim comes out for the first annual "Jim Teaches Japan Who's Boss". Other than that, Meghan's been busily tending to an herb garden that is growing exponentially with each passing day. While shes been green thumbing, I've been working on restoring/repainting/breaking-the-front-derailleur-by-accident a crappy road-bike that I picked up from a recycle shop while I wait for my Fuji Track to arrive in July. Ooh, I forgot about this. We made a little food story/review for you all so here she goes.

A little background: sometime ago, I made a purchase at 7-11 and it turned out that they were doing some sort of campaign where, depending on how much I spent, I could pull raffle tickets and win treats. The clerk told me I could pull two tickets. The first one I pulled won me a bottle of 紅茶(koucha or black tea). I was pleased. The second ticket I pulled out got me a free something (I couldn't tell what it was). The clerk went and fetched me my mystery object and it turned out to be this:

Written in big letters is JUMBO across the whole thing. The top says TUNA. The bottom says SAUSAGE. Oh, yeah. I was truly excited. And in a little green bubble it says, "This is not made out of egg." Great. I was worried there was egg with my tuna sausage.

So, of course, we made an event out of sampling it. Here is our adventure in several photos.

How was it? Exactly as you would expect: flavorlessly fishy, oddly textured, and with a total lack of egg. Why anyone would ever want to puree tuna - let alone steam it into the shape of a sausage - is beyond me. Leave sausage to the pig and cow variety. Blood - your not allowed in that category either.

Keep a look out for the next fun-time strange food tasting.

BLACK VINEGAR JUICE BOX BEVERAGE!
sounds dericious don't it?

A PLANET FULL OF UNICORNS (cop out post)

2007-06-21T23:13:00.000+09:00

measles shmeasles.

2007-05-21T10:13:00.000+09:00

Yes, its true, Christophe did indeed have the measles. I suppose it might seem strange for me to post about this- but him having the measles pretty much made up my life for the last two-ish weeks. Well, that and the Polestar which I will get to later.

It all started about two days after we got back from Nagoya. He seemed to have s cold with a slight temperature, so I left him on the couch, brought him food at regular intervals and hit up as many onsens as possible with Kari. But three days later the fever still hadn’t gone away, so right after dropping Kari at the train station we headed to the hospital.

A quick note about getting sick in Japan. First, buying medicine is a bitch. It is near impossible for someone like me, as there is no way I know the kanji needed and for some reason the pictures are shockingly confusing and misleading. For Christophe it would be easier, but he was a) sick and b) eternally lazy (and, of course, there is always the fear of buying the wrong medicine), so actually getting him to the store to do it was harder then trying to learn the kanji myself. As such, he had taken no meds for three days of fever and – surprise - he still had the fever. Also, when you are sick and want proper meds, you don't go to the doctor’s office, you go to the hospital or the clinic. There are no doctor’s offices as far as I can tell, just lots of very busy hospitals. They are made even more crowded by the fact that if you are old and your family ignores you, you also go to the hospital - they pay attention to you there.

So we went to the hospital, along with, it seems, all of Muroran. I dropped Christophe at the door and spent about 30 minutes waiting to park in the hospital parking lot, gave up and parked in the department store next door, went to find Christophe (picture the only white girl in the place saying in pretty darn broken Japanese “foreigner – where – foreigner – where” and it actually worked), realized he was going no where fast, went back to the car and played 2 hours of Pokemon. All told, three hours later Christophe had been told he had flu like symptoms and given a metric ton of strange meds.

These meds weirdly came in powder form. Apparently the concept of containing all the powder in one easy to swallow capsule has eluded Japan. Instead you dump the whole package of powder into your mouth then glug it down with a big gulp of water.

Anyway, that afternoon, the spots showed up. They were everywhere- all over his face, on his chest, spreading to his arms and back. Christophe decided these were hives from his horrific hospital experience (something about having a half a foot of toothpick rammed up his nose) and went to school the next day anyway. Wednesday he found a clipping waiting for him on his desk that spoke of a measles epidemic sweeping Japan and that described his symptoms to a tee. So, back to the hospital.

This time, we walked up to the information desk (parking was had!) and showed them the article, Christophe saying he might have the measles. Before we knew it two nurses had descended on us, we were rushed to a corner of the hospital and Christophe was masked. But alas, at the end of the day it was declared he didn’t have measles, but Chicken Pox. New meds and we left.

Two days later, back again for the results of the blood work and it was official: Christophe had the measles! While kind of official, I guess after two wrong diagnosis the docs didn't want to declare anything too definitive. This time, because he had failed to wear the mask they gave him last time, he was donned with a huge blue industrial mask that I think they would have attached permanently if they were given the chance. When we left, a nurse snuck us out a side door as to allow minimal contact with the thousand old people milled in the lobby.

So that was that and after a week and a half of hospital visits and no school, he was cleared of the illness and allowed to return to work. Everyone said I won’t get sick because I have had the vaccine, but then again, so had Christophe… Anyway, not too much else has been going on as a result. I made a lot of Chicken noodle soup, he slept a lot, and we worked on the Polestar. The Polestar, by the way, is a ‘zine- a “magazine” printed on letter paper folded in half that gets sent out to all of the members of the Hokkaido Association of Japan’s English Teachers. Basically, a group of expat English teachers here in Hokkaido. We were elected (in s furious campaign against no one else) to be the editors of the group’s monthly magazine, so each month, for a week or so, it consumes our lives. Yes, it sounds scarily like a college club activity, a lot of things in Japan feel like college activities. Right down to the disco balls and the fog machine.

Plant, Live Like. No 7.

2007-05-18T19:01:00.000+09:00

I have heard the voice of the people and deliver unto you the seventh installment of Live Like Plant. If I didn't mention it before (and I don't think I did), I got the measles. I'd like to say that's why we haven't been posting very much recently but you and I both know that it's not. I've always had a severe case of "The Lazy". But in all seriousness, I did get measles and it was so-so. I missed about six days of work but had to deal with fever delusions, red spots everywhere and doctors continually misdiagnosing me. I'm better now (the exception being a fever blister which I'm sure has something to do with stupid measles). If you bug me enough, I'll tell you more but this isn't the place. No, no. It's Live Like Plant time.

This time around I've put together some old favorites, some nifty things I found over at Metafilter Music and stuff I've been listening to an awful lot as-of-late (see Decemberists, Belle & Sebastien). But, then again, isn't that pretty much how it's always been? Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Oh. And be sure to listen well to the last track - if you haven't yet. 'Tis a fine example of great storytelling and songery.

Live Like Plant Vol. 7 (54 minutes)

List of playing:

Kim Weston - Eleanor Rigby
ORthey - Shake Your Head If Yes
Belle & Sebastien - I'm a Cuckoo
jake - Dracula Man X2 Alpha Turbo
Bad Brains - pay to cum
Q and Not U - Soft Pyramids
J. Live - Schools In
Booka Shade - Karma Car
Fugazi - Turkish Disco
Steve Goldberg and the Arch Enemies - The Road
Dr. Octagon - Halfsharkalligatorhalfman
The Velvet Underground & Nico - I'm Waiting for the Man
The Decemberists - The Mariner's Revenge Song

Robots in Nagoya. Intergalacticalistic Disco Warriors in Space.

2007-05-08T20:56:00.000+09:00

You. Will. Not BELIEVE what happened to Meghan and I since we last made any sort of post almost a month ago. So, on April 10th, the day after our last post, I recieved a rather anonymous looking manila envelope in the mail. I thought nothing of it at first and went on with my afternoonly lounging about. In between laying face down on the floor in snorkle and floaties- pretending to swim and re-enacting my favorite scenes from Dianetics, I began to think about that mysterious letter. After several emotion-filled moments of pretending to be Tom Cruise, I broke character and fetched the mysterious envelope. Inside was a small coffee stained piece of paper. It stated very plainly: Meet me at Sakimori Station at 10:15. First I thought, "whoa. english mail." Then, "Seeing as this is the time and place that I ususally pick Meghan up after work, I can only surmise that she is being a total wierdo in sending me directions that I already know via the post." I took a nap and woke up precisely in time to hop in the car and make the 4.6 minute jaunt down the hill to my mysterious meeting/not mysterious meeting.

I arrived, as I almost always do, and took out the DS to pound out a couple minutes of Mario before she arrived. Her train showed up right on time and moments later the car door opened. She wasn't alone, however. Standing behind her was an older looking man in a dark robe, a shiny thing sparkling from underneath. I knew him. And he knew me. He leaned into the car,

"They call us once more."

"What for? It's been over ten years since our last misson! They can't expect us to be prepared..." I replied.

The truth is that I was prepared. Prepared to play. Tennis. On the Wii. That's what I was prepared for. Oh, and bowling.

"You are prepared. As is Meghan. Come we must hurry. There isn't much time."

Meghan leaned in, "Come on. This'll be the last time. We've got to answer. The galaxy needs us. You know it does."

I gripped the steering wheel and looked at the road ahead of me. How easy it would have been to peel off and never again deal with being a Super-galactic Robotronic Defender of Earth, Galaxy and Funk (S.G.R.D.G.E.F)

I got out of the car and met them at the edge of the road.

"But you have to promise me one thing,"

"Of course, Captain Funk-o-mast-a-tronic the III from the Order of E.W. and F. Anything." said the caped disco warrior.

"You don't get to pick the music on our trip to Funk-o-tron. I can't listen to Celtic R&B for 6 lightyears."

"It's a deal." He replied with a thumbs up and a wink, revealing both his shiny robot arm and his grossly disfigured...gross...face.

Meghan and I spent the following 28 days, traveling from galaxy to galaxy, battling the evil Yanni who threatened all disco forever - making occasional stops at the residence of Mr. and Mr. D. Punk (in order to go through with the ritualistic daily slap that is reserved for those who, as musicians, create films that a) have none of their own music and/or b) have almost no music at all.)

And that's why we haven't posted anything for a month - inter-galactic disco war. Just be happy that we saved you from total Yanni domination. Think how less funky your life would be had we not spent the last month fighting for your funkdom? You'll thank us someday.

Of course, while our real selves were off pummeling the Festering Anti-Funk Flutist, we still had real jobs on real earth and didn't see our bosses giving us vacation for "intergalatic disco saviordom" so we left totally sweet robot replicas on earth to call our friends back, make fun of students and get drunk on weekends. Heres a letter they left us about what they did while we were off "disco destructionizing".

Hey d00dz,

How was space!!???! I'm sure it was totally cool ;) Well Robot Meghan and I did some really, really neet stuff while you were gone! Honestly, right after you left, it kinda really SUCKED cause your work started again and you had 16 classes a week. BOO-urns! You know what I'm sayin!? LOL ROFL. Then Meghan and I had to layout the Polestar, that magazine thing you guys signed up to edit (whoa did that take a long time. best of luck second time around, bruvvahs! LOL ROFL).

Then we went down to Nagoya to visit your friend Kari. Nagoya was awesomely warm. It was crazy!!11!!1! We forgot what 'warm' was all about after being stored in your damn shed for 6 months. In Nagoya we at a ton of miso-katsu which is just tonkatsu covered in miso. We also visited Nagoya Castle which, while being cool, is an entirely concrete replica of what stood there before it was carefully bombed into the shape of a rice-patty. We also ventured out to Inuyama, a little city outside of Nagoya. Inuyama might be one of the coolest little cities in Japan. It's like a tiny wonderland of kawazy theme parks! Whoa!! They have a place called the Sweet Castle which I can only assume is a castle made of sweets (They have like the worlds largest cake or something). Inuyama also has The World of Tiny Man or Little World of Man or something. I think is has miniatures. Inuyama also has a monkey park and a shrine to Momotaro, Japan's famous peach boy. It was coooooo!!!

But the only thing we actually saw in Inuyama was Meiji-mura, a massive collection of buildings from the Meiji Era. Having a coffee (which I didn't actually drink because robots don't drink coffee) inside the lobby of Frank Lloyd Wright's Tokyo Imperial Hotel was the awesome.

We also saw a baseball game! Yomiuri Giants vs. the Chunichi Dragons. We'll tell you more about that later though! Oh, guess what!! Nagoya has a Robot Museum. We went and tried to explain to them that we are robots and that we wanted a discount on a dmittion but they were having none of it. Silly humans. We saw some tin replicas of my our distant cousin Lilliput. It was way better then stupid dinosaur museums. By the way, did you know that T.Rex had six-inch long serrated teeth only to open coconuts? Well, he did.

Then we came back to Hokkaido and reraxed until you guys got back from the far reaches of the disco outter worlds. Glad you guys made it back safe!! Looking forward to some backgammon sometime soon! Get us out out the shed a little more often these coming months, 'kay?

Luv you guys!!!LOLROFLOMG!!!!,

--Your robot counterparts

P.S. Here are some pictures of us enjoying Nagoyers

Looks like Lewisburg, doesn't it?

Toe-Kee-Yo, Ohanami and Disney Sea

2007-04-09T19:19:00.000+09:00

Spring is actually here – last time I wrote that, it snowed the next day. No, spring is truly here. Green grass is beginning to pop up from the cracks in the street and is trying its hardest to break through the half foot of dead plant life that covers practically everything that isn't already paved over. Warm rains bring that smell that everyone knows but no one can describe. Since about last week, the temperature has consistently been in the mid-40s and 50s. Not exactly loin cloth weather but nice enough to get by in a sweatshirt as opposed to the 2.5 layers of long underwear, dry suit, and air tight, climate controlled, full body, suit of armor that we are all used to sporting around town. So the perfmafrost melts, birds chirp, and everyone, as if on cue, gets an urge to get drunk in public places.

Last weekend we went to Tokyo for a four-day jaunt. Friday night at 9 PM we hopped on the Hokutosei train. This train took us on the sixteen our trip through fields, underwater, and over mountains to our final destination: Tokyo. The train was quite nice. Having only been my second time on a night train (the first being a train from Dresden to Prague where about every four hours an ex-soviet block uniform would pound on our cabin door to ask for [cue stereotypical soviet block accent] “PASSPORT”) I found it quite pleasant. The cabins fit four and were roomy enough to hang out in. The train had a couple good lounges and a restaurant (which was suspiciously over-priced).

After arriving in Tokyo, we b-lined for our hotel in Asakusa in order to drop off our loads of crap and get to the exploring. Once we were load-free, we thought it a good idea to grab some lunch. Where else but T.G.I. Fridays? That’s what you do when you go to a bigger city – you get the food that, in the States, you wouldn’t normally eat because a) you can’t get a decent burger in your town, b) you’re tired of ton-katsu and ramen, and c) it’s the closest thing to Taco Bell (although still horribly far off) that you can get. So we went and gorged ourselves on grease, some more grease, and “foreign” beers like Sam Adams. Oh by the way, you know how T.G.I. Fridays has all those kitchy tins and posters all over the walls? So they had one for Pabst Blue Ribbon. Upon seeing this we, of course, wanted to indulge in some fine P.B.R. Much to our dismay, they didn’t have PBR. It was just decorative and I’m guessing our waitress had no idea it was a real beer until that very moment. PBR pounder, we’ll meet again someday. Just not in Japan.

After finishing our gigantic, fit for a circus-of-underfed-mountain-lions meal, we began our journey to find a certain park that was suggested to Meghan as a great place to view the cherry blossoms.

(Sidenote: I forgot to mention that the weekend we we’re in Tokyo was one of the first weekends for viewing cherry blossoms. Ever year when the cherry blossoms come out, legions of devoted followers of the drink flock to parks all over Japan to get completely toasted in public. This ritualistic partying is known by the name Ohanami, or, flower viewing. Truthfully, Ohanami has little to do with looking at flowers and far too much to do with being embarrassingly passed out on a park bench at 1 in the afternoon, possibly with a puddle of urine around your feet. Sidenote to the sidenote: When talking about Ohanami, one of the teachers in my office said, "It's like us Japanese people have a Pavlovian reaction when we see cherry blossoms. We immediately feel like getting drunk.")

So we trekked and trudged through the packed streets of Tokyo. Eveneutally, we found it. None of us we’re ready for it. It was crazy. Thousands of people had descended upon this little park. Practically every inch of grass was covered in blankets and tarps that were covered in food, drink and shoes, which were surrounded by boisterous, inhebriated people of all ages.

Some the things going on at said park during said day of Ohanami:

A group of about 10 people playing badminton
A girl wailing on a drum by herself
An impromptu dance party in front of a shoddy DJ setup
Some out of tune karaoke crooning
A guy walking around with a blowup sex doll - harassing people
Many people asleep in silly positions
A pretty heinous, live art/techno combination
A fixie convention (I cried – oh by the by, my bike was stolen a couple days before we left for Tokyo)
A guy wailing on a marimba and some cymbals all while dressed in full, competitive cycling fatigues

Sadly, we weren’t able to partake in the festivities. Having only one full day to explore Tokyo, we decided not to get blitzed at two in the afternoon. Although when the cherry blossoms get to Hokkaido, it’ll be a different story [grin]. After our stroll through the park, we thought it would be nice to head over to Akihabara, the famous “Electric Town” of Tokyo. Akihabara is famous for having absolutely ridiculous amounts of dirt-cheap electronics. In reality, the stuff there isn’t all that much cheaper than most other places but when you find a deal, sweet-chocolaty-Jesus do you find a good deal. However, before heading over to the place where I was most likely to find parts for the crime fighting robot Kodiak bear I am building, I thought we should stop by Ochanomizu, an area in the very middle of the Yamanote circle that is known for low priced instruments (it’s thanks to fellow in-Japan-Mefite flapjax_at_midnight that I now know about this great area of Tokyo). We spent a little bit of time perusing the shops. I bought an octave of children’s hand bells, and we continued on to Akihabara where my robot parts waited.

Akihabara is a dork’s wonderland. They’ve combined electronics, dorky anime models, and French Maid Cafés all in the same place – not to mention some amazing video game stores. Seriously, you can buy anything electronic in this place. Even stuff that shouldn’t be electronic like …wood, and stuff. Moving on.

Oh.

You want to know what a French Maid Café is? It’s just a coffee shop. You know, coffee, pastries, all that – but the staff is dressed in French Maid outfits. Nothing weird. Oh, and you can also get a foot massage. And there are other French Maid establishments like French Maid Optometrists. Who wouldn’t want their eye doctor dressed like a French Maid? So, yeah. Nothing weird. Move right along, nothing to see here.

In our Akihabara journeys, we turned down a little alley with only a couple neon signs and only two or three Maid cafes. That's when John and I heard it – the contagious 8-bit beats of Bubble Bobble coming from the third floor of a near by building. We took off running. Upon arriving to the third floor, I was graced by the sight of possibly the most amazing video game store of all time: it was called something like “Classic Games Floor” or something totally uninspired. This tiny place was full, I mean totally full, of classic games and consoles. From Famicom to Sega Saturn, this place must have had every console and game. They even had a Virtual Boy on which I enjoyed some Virtual Boy Wario Land. The awesome-ist dork thing about the place was seeing all the consoles that were never released in the States (i.e. Famicom Disk System) and the consoles that were released in Japan under different names (i.e. Sega MegaDrive = Sega Genesis). This place is truly the Dork Palace’s much wiser and cooler, but far more broke, older brother.

The next day, we got up early and hopped a train to Disney Sea - Disneyland Tokyo’s younger and more adult friendly cousin. Disney Sea is to Disneyland Tokyo what Epcot and California Adventure are to the State-side editions of Disney’s fun park for short humans. I think the last time I went to a theme park before Disney Sea was probably about four years ago. I had forgotten what theme parks are all about: standing around and paying lots for sustenance. That being said, Disney Sea is fun. (I know I’m old when I say this but) Probably the best part about it was the food. We ate way too much. Every time we rolled up on a new section of the park there was different food and drink so, like any good starving whiteys, we ate. And ate. And ate. And when we got to Mexico land, we drank margaritas, tequila slammers and Dos Equis while listening to a mariachi band. It was like real Mexico. But full of Japanese people. Oh, and we saw this guy walking around with his wife and toddler.

That night we stayed at a capsule hotel - one of the many bizzarities that you often hear about when strange Japanese things are mentioned. I was so curious to try out one of these used-to-be-space-aged sleeping establishments. In summary, it was great. Each capsule is large enough that you can sit on your knees with your back straight (that was one of my biggest worries – I had imagined sleeping in a drawer) so space wasn't an issue. There was a TV and a radio and an alarm clock. Each capsule was closed off and totally private and you even got a locker to store all the crap you wanted to keep safe. This particular place had clean showers, free wireless Internet and a lounge. The only downside was that the men’s and women’s capsule areas were separated by several floors but other than that, it was righteous. Meghan put it best by saying it’s just like a hostel but with total privacy. It’s even close to the same price ringing in at around 30 USD per person. Without a doubt, I would stay in one again. T’was truly sweet.

The next morning we hopped a plan back to Siberia and rode the dog sleds back to Muroran.

More pictures can be seen on the flickr account.

In other news:
I got a chance to check out Daft Punk's Electroma. My thoughts soon. Also, I posted a track onto MetaFilter Music so check it out here if you're bored.

A Concise Summary of What Could Have Been a Long And Possibly Boring Post

2007-03-28T10:28:00.000+09:00

It’s been too long since my last post; I apologize. I tried to write an interesting post about my ballet classes but found that it wasn't very interesting and long. There were four basic points:

1. The class is in Japanese, which is a bit intense when “we’ll have nine beers” is pretty much all you know how to say in Japanese ( I know this because when counting beer and other objects, 9 = coconuts- said with a stereotypical Japanese accent).

2. For some reason we are always doing things in sets of four, where I feel normally they would be sets of 5 in America. This has nothing to do with 8-counts so don't go there. Example, during stretches we will randomly kick 4 times on each leg or when it comes to sit ups, we do 12.

3. At the end of the hour and a half class that we all paid to take, we spend 15 to 30 minutes cleaning. This includes vacuuming, sweeping and Windex-ing everything we can reach. One time the teacher yelled at us because the week before we hadn’t cleaned well enough. As a result we stayed for 45 minutes cleaning and I wiped down the same mirror five times.

4. Today I had to get “sport insurance”, because apparently if I get hurt in ballet my normal health insurance (nor anyone’s normal health insurance) won't cover it. It should be called ballet insurance though, because it doesn't protect me for any other sports.

Otherwise life is good. I was given a kimono the other day, a pretty huge gift. The pic above is of little ol’ me rockin' the kimono at tea ceremony. It was a fantastic experience I plan on repeating often.

We are going to Tokyo this weekend- whoot whoot! We will be taking the night train from Muroran to Tokyo, going through the world longest underground tunnel. Saturday we will wander Tokyo and partake in Cherry Blossom Celebrations, Ohanami. From what I’ve been told, this means we will go to a park, find a blossom covered tree, set up a picnic under it and eat and booze the eve away. Sunday we are going to Disney Sea!! This is the adult version of Disney land, so explained by the majority of Japanese people by, “you can get beer there”.

Posts and pictures to come!!

いろいろな写真 from El Festival del Sporto.

2007-03-22T17:26:00.000+09:00

I can feel it in the air. Spring. It is near. Today was relatively warm (4 degrees..ha) and the sun was out all the day. This weekend is supposed to be a flesh roasting 9 degrees (celcius, of course. I'm disgusted by the fact that I only kinda know that 9 is close to 50 farenheit. And that's only because of the little dashboard widget that tells me so.) Anyway, 9 degrees, a winter wetsuit, and my newly purchased longboard means that I will be going surfing this weekend.

It has begun.

Today we had the sports festival that I mentioned the other day. This one was alot like the one we had in fall so I'll spare you the re-explaination. Here are some righteous pics!

The olde flickr page has a few more if you are still interested.

Gradumation and Gettin' In

2007-03-21T18:25:00.000+09:00

The school year is coming to an end. Our last day of classes was this Tuesday the 20th. After that, we’ll have a sports festival, a two week break and then the whole thing will start over again. So let’s see – what has happened since we last spoke?

Graduation.

Graduation was quite nice. The whole event was held in the gymnasium. The walls of the gymnasium were covered in a white and red striped fabric that reminded me of a circus tent or a strangely painted fence. Take a look at the picture to see what the main stage was like. As expected, parents, siblings and the like were available to yawn and pretend they weren’t sleeping. The majority of the graduation went as one would expect a graduation to go: process in, opening song, speech, speech, speech, speech, diplomas, process out. But the diplomas were delivered a little differently than they are in the states. Let me back up. Each grade is split up into five classes. Each class is put together when they enter high school and they don’t ever split up unless they are expelled, drowned or drafted. The classes are known by these class numbers during their time in their respective high school: Third year - First class, Second year - Third class, and so on. Instead of calling each student separately to give them their diplomas, the kocho sensei, principle, called up the head of each class, one by one, and handed him or her a packet of diplomas that were, presumably, to be dispersed later on. This makes sense though. There is so much more emphasis on the success of the group over the individual that this sort of graduation makes perfect sense.

Towards the end of the event, they dimmed the lights, lowered a projection screen and started a thirty-minute flick chronicling the third year students’ progression from lowly first years through the present day. It had me a little misty eyed and I didn’t even know half the kids. After this, the students turned around and faced their parents and teachers sitting behind them and began to sing their “final song”. Those who had made it dried eyed through the video were undoubtedly slain by the teary and heartfelt rendition of some-song-I’d-never-heard-before by the whole grade. After this, there was a short session of shouting out thanks to specific teachers and the third graders processed out accompanied by Auld Lang Sine (which, just so you know, is also played in most department stores five minutes before they are about to close for the night).

And that was it. Oh wait, no it wasn’t. Once the graduates and their parents had left the gym, everyone left stood up and started packing the place up – folding the several hundred chairs, taking down the circus fabric, packing up the stage and cleaning the floor. Teachers, some students, administrators, everyone was packing the place up. I thought to myself, “Don’t we have underpaid minorities for this?” The answer was a resounding “NO” for many reasons that will someday grace a separate post. The gym was back to normal in probably about fifteen minutes. We then stood around for fifteen more minutes looking like we didn’t know what to do next and then scuttled back to the English Office.

Grading Entrance Exams.

A couple days after graduation, junior high school students came to school to begin the grueling two-day entrance test. The first day consists of a writing test in each subject and the second day is set aside for one-on-one interviews. On the third day, the teachers all lock themselves in a classroom with other teachers from their department and they grade, check, double check, triple check, and sometimes even quadruple check, each test. I wish this was a joke.

Each teacher graded a different part of each test and hanko or stamped it to show they had completed their check. It would then get handed to someone else and they would double check their corrections with a different colored pencil and then add their hanko next to the first. This process was repeated until we had corrected and quadruple checked every test. But it doesn’t end there. Then we had to read aloud the scores of each test to one of the teachers who filled in, with a pencil, a printed Excel sheet. Once the spreadsheet was filled in, he went downstairs and plugged all the number into an actual spreadsheet. He printed a copy of this and brought it back to us. We compared the penciled in copy with the printed copy and all added our hankos.

Finally, we had to take a random sampling of the tests. Every answer from every tenth exam (there were several hundred exams), had to be read aloud and put in a spreadsheet. More hankos. I don’t understand how these stamps don’t have to be replaced like every two weeks. In addition to sore stamp hands, we got some pretty delicious (although small, portion-wise) sushi out of the deal so I was happy.

About a week later, the junior high school students who applied showed up at 930 AM to get their results. Have you ever seen Starship Troopers? Do you remember that scene where they find out what branch of the military they are going to, or what their test scores are, or something? They post the results on a huge board for everyone to see, right? Well, this was kinda the same thing. There was a white board with scores written all over it. The board was covered until precisely 10 AM when the “officials” uncovered the board - cue the running and giggling and crying and hugging. The kids all rushed to the board to see if they got in (they did). It was a joyous event. To get the full effect, dig the video of the moment.

(Sorry for the rather bland post, yall'zes. I broke my humor bone recently and my wit gland has been pretty sore as a result. Should be mended soon.)

I Wish I Could Take Everyone I Know to Tomakomai

2007-03-12T18:27:00.000+09:00

A couple weeks ago, Meghan, John and I went to Tomakomai, a city about an hour from Muroran, to celebrate a friend of ours' birthday. Tomakomai is what I imagine Muroran was in the 70s and 80s: fun. That's not really fair. Muroran is alot of fun but it lacks a youthful population. Once you graduate high school in Muroran, you move to Sapporo. If you can't get to Sapporo, you move to Tomakomai. If you can't get to Tomakomai, you float to the nearest Russian coast on your bathtub. So, Tomakomai is young.

First we took in some izakaya goodness - horse, tempura-ed everything and beels flowed with ease. After filling our gullets, Liam (our resident Tomakomaian) thought we should head to a favorite bar of his. He mentioned something about instruments available for play and I was in.

Seeing as most bars in Muroran will have at 6-8 people in them at one time, this place was packed. Sure enough there was a drum kit in the corner sitting next to a stand-up piano. The night started out slow. People chatted, did some karaoke behind the bar, and generally enjoyed themselves in a peaceful manner. We met some local Tomakomites, most notably Rina: a 39 year old that insisted on telling everyone her age, how many kids she had(3), and how she was happily married all while hopping from one dude lap to the next (her "husband" no where in sight). We met four guys that all worked for YKK, the company that makes the zipper on your pants. But they didn't make zippers. No, they made windows for a zipper company. Wierd, right? Then, someone put on a karaoke track apparently every one knew and loved. John jumped on the drums for accompaniment and the night erupted.

Somewhere around the third or fourth rockin' karaoke track, girls (+Rina) jumped on the bar and began abusing the stripper pole that I hadn't noticed was sticking out of the middle of the bar. Three things of note here:

(1) This kind of boldness is rare if not unheard of among the female population of Muroran.

(2) People didn't really move from the bar: they just let people dance over there beverages/heads.

(3) The party gravy that had been so preciously stewed on the bar floor was now making its way on to the bar surface. One girl, being her cleanly, Japanese, albeit drunk, self would dance on the bar and then notice she tracked gravy all over the palce and would immediatly bend down and wipe up the mess with a tissue then continue dancing - only to apply another coat of gravy. Rinse. Repeat. It was hilarious.

After a while of this, the owner/bartender of the place was getting pretty crazy. He put on a favorite karaoke track of his and started the show. All while singing, he:

Put a bottle rocket in his ear and set it off.

Started lighting small firecrackers and throwing them all over the place.

Told the girls on the stripper pole to duck while he took a mouthful of 151, sparked a lighter and spewed a huge ball of fire over their heads towards the ceiling.

I shit you not. People were going nuts. After this show of shows, the mama-san or female accompaniment to the owner and barman (I forgot to mention, the owners were both in their late sixties/early seventies), broke out a couple of cardboard boxes and started passing them throughout the bar. Five minutes later, I was wearing a bra as a hat, two pairs of sunglasses while wailing my life away on a cowbell. Meghan was wearing a junior highschool girl outfit. The barman was wearing a pink sequened tube top, a blond wig and a cowboy hat. The mama-san, who is a 4.5 foot grandma, hadn't changed out of her old-lady apron but was wearing a party hat and blowing on a whistle while teaching the surrounding 20-somethings some dance that I'm assuming was popular in like 1854. Not to mention, everyone had just started going behind the bar and pouring their own drinks.

God, as I write this I don't believe a word of it. Wow. The night wore on. People played every instrument, sang every song, wore every costume. It was nuts. The real proof that it was, in fact, crazy? Very few pictures were taken. I seem to have lost my bra in the picture I did give you.

Live Like Plant Six. (whoa)

2007-03-02T22:00:00.000+09:00

Whoa! What's this? You thought you'd never see one again, right? Well, you were wrong! A brand spankin' new Live Like Plant comin' attcha! Phew, too many exclamation marks tire me. There is only one way I can explain the long, long overdue-ness of this here installment: musical drought. Looking for new music can be a difficult task, as you well know. And, honestly, none of the music in this installment is really even all that new (with the exception of the Talib & Madlib track and The Beatles track).

Just a side note, The Beatles track comes from an excellent album released just this past November. A bucket load of Beatles tracks were remixed and re-mastered (from the original reels and hours of unreleased material) by the son of the producer who originally mixed many of them at Abbey Road (not to be confused with Dr. Yebba). It's great, and wonderful, and should be checked out by any and all Beatles fans.

Back on track, this LiLiP is, as you will notice, full de mash-ups. Sometimes I just can't help myself. Mash-ups, when done well or very, very poorly, can be great fun. I may have gone to far here by putting two tracks by the same mash-up artist in the same installment but you'll just have to deal. I really think they are worth a listen. So, pour yourself a fresh cup 'o joe, get comfortable, and take a listen to this here Live Like Plant. This day isn't gonna pass on its own - you're gonna have to help it along with a healthy dose of perusing news websites & blogs with some naps interspersed. Good luck, and godspeed.

Live Like Plant Vol. 6 (47 minutes)

List of playing:

Humble Pie - 30 Days in the Hole
Aphex Twin - Yellow Calx
Marvin Gaye - Come Live With Me Angel
Talib Kweli & Madlib - The Function featuring Strong Arm Steady
Inner Circle - Black Roses
Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss & Emmylou Harris - Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby/Julia [Transition]
The Beatles vs Blondie - Glass Octopus (dj lobsterdust mash)
Edith Piaf - Hymne a L'amour
Stevie Wonder - Master Blaster (Jammin')
Run DMC - Peter Piper
Supercar - My Way
System of a Down vs Anita Ward - Bring My Own Bell (dj lobsterdust mash)

Oh. And here is a video of a band we saw playing at the mall. They are wearing afros. Their instruments are not even close to plugged in.

Back With a Little Kaiseki

2007-02-23T09:53:00.000+09:00

Sorry for my absence, I have spent much of January and February with my nose deep in the six Harry Potter books that are currently out. The fact of the matter is that the seventh, and last, book will be coming out on July 21st and those of you who haven’t been entrapped by this series should really buck it up and pick up a book. I recommend starting with the third book since that’s when they really start getting interesting.

Anyway, about this post… I haven now been taken out three times to enjoy a ‘Traditional Japanese meal’ in honor of my birthday. The first was a lunch on my birthday; I was taken by the members of a weekly free conversation class I do. The second was with Christophe and our tea ceremony teacher. The third was with a Buddhist monk buddy of mine.

All three of these meals were at Kaiseki restaurants. Kaiseki is a Japanese meal that was explained to me (by no less then three people) as a Japanese meal in the French style. What this meant, I learned, was that it is a meal served in a series of small courses with intense emphasis put on the presentation of the meal. Traditionally Kaiseki meals are meant to accompany the tea ceremony, although these days they are also simply a way of marking an important event. Really, the comparison to French meals isn’t that far off, considering the French emphasis on presentation, although it is important to note that it was in fact the Russians who introduced the concept of courses brought out one by one to Europe, service à la Français is in fact all courses served simultaneously. The comparison is tricky with the Kaiseki meal, as each of my meals was a little different. For the first meal each dish came out independently, the second meal consisted of two or three waves of many dishes at once and the third meal I was served all the dishes together followed by cherry blossom ice cream (delicious).

Regardless of how they got to me, each dish came out looking beautiful, although I often had no idea what I was eating. I managed to forget my camera on all occasions, so I stole these pics off of flickr (apologies to the photographer whose flickr pen-name I have already forgotten). At my first meal (service à la russe) each dish was accompanied by a short Japanese poem written in calligraphy. These poems were meant to deepen your understanding of the food you were looking at, to help you understand the metaphor of the presentation of the dish. I am sure this would have been much more impressive had the poems not been translated for me by my beginner level English students who could offer, “tree… ummm… box…ahhh….one life”.

Every dish had its own plate, meaning the plate ware collections of these places must be enormous! Ceramic and laquer bowls, plates, baskets and cups of every size shape and color you can imagine. In addition to beautiful dishes and little poems, there were also edible decorations. For example twice I was offered a tiny orange with a perfect leaf that could be opened and was filled with something else. You ate the food inside (once a potato blend, once a blend of shrimp sashimi) then ate the container it came in.

The restaurants all had a small Japanese style garden outside, visible from some of the rooms. Each room was sectioned off, once the group was seated the waitress would slide closed the door leaving your party alone in their own room. All the staff wore Kimono and really beautiful ones at that. The floor was of course tatami, although one of the restaurants I went to had a whole under the table so while you looked like you were sitting on the ground your feet actually rested comfortably on the heated lower floor. This is buckets because sitting seiza for several hours will make you believe your legs may never work again.

Inside the room there was always an alcove that was decorated by some aspect of Japanese art or another. The first party was the biggest and our alcove had a small fountain that trickled water of bricks, a large hanging painting of some Japanese card game that was described to me by everyone at the lunchen smacking the table very hard then laughing delightedly as I did the same, and a beautiful ikebana display. The second meal was a smaller three person dinner, and our alcove had a buddah statue and a calligraphy wall painting that several members of the staff attempted to translate for us but to no avail. Some Japanese poetry just can't be conveyed. My final birthday lunch was in one of the rooms that overlooked the garden, so on the opposite wall there was a small alcove with a painting hanging in it. This would have been a very nice effect if there hadn’t been an electric heater sitting just in front of the alcove with its plug snaking back in, but hey, its damn cold in Hokkaido.

All and all, it was a series of fantastic meals with great company. You can’t help but feel cool when you wow the whole table simply by your ability to use chopsticks.

Rambling and An Emergency Situation (updated)

2007-02-19T17:48:00.000+09:00

The last couple weeks have been pretty quiet (as far as work is concerned). For the first four-or-so months here, I taught every grade (first years, second years and the already-checked-out third years). This changed a bit around Christmas.

In this-here country, third year students (the equivalent of seniors in 'Meruka) do not return to classes after winter break. The idea is that they can spend that last quarter of their year as third year students to find jobs, study for entrance exams, and ~~get drunk while neglecting the aforementioned~~ relax. For the first several months, the bulk of my classes were with third years. When I found out that they were not returning after the break (somewhere around November), I began to wonder what my life would be like with one or no classes to teach each day. Seeing as my first several months were made up of between two and four classes each day with rarely a day sans classes, I had a hard time imagining what life would be like and an even harder time believing that the third years really wouldn’t come back until graduation.

I’m here to report that the third years did not, in fact, come back after winter break and it has been somewhat of a blessing and a curse. For example, this week – all week – I have three classes. I’m finally getting a taste of what many other JETs complain about – an abundance of free time that must be spent in an English Office. You see, most JETs have it kinda like I have it now but for a whole year; they have to be at work at a certain time (be it the same school, or a different one, every day) and they often don’t have to teach. They might teach a couple classes a week and have the rest of the time to study, read, practice necromancy – the usual. Before coming to Japan, this is what I heard from many JETs: find something to keep your boredom at bay. After being here for a couple weeks, I felt like the entire internetting JET community had lied to me. I was teaching between twelve and sixteen classes a week. I had no free time.

Then came life after winter break. It was a breath of fresh air. But then I found myself with an exorbitant amount of free time and little motivation or content for blog posts. So, what did I do? I read all the Harry Potter (or H-Po, for you literary types) books starting from Prisoner of Azkaban. I was that bored. But, having now finished Half-Blood Prince (the last published book) two days ago, I have to say that I am more pumped than a squirrel with an I.V. of Mountain Dew about the up-coming final book and fifth movie (Deathly Hallows and Order of the Phoenix respectively) that will be coming out in June. To those of you that still maintain H-Po is for kiddies, I have this to say (without giving to much away): in that later books, lotsa people get offed, there are more broken and bloody noses than at a soccer hooligan convention, and Harry gets curb stomped (minus the curb). This next and final book is gonna rock straight passed the casbah and on to whatever is cooler and more disco.

Talking about H-Po reminds me of a story I’ve been meaning pass-on to you allses. Most of last week was spent reading at work. The few times that I did have class, I wasn’t required to really prepare anything. On one of these days, I had a class that I knew was going to be a breeze. They were working on a project that was going to have them drawing and chatting for the whole period. During the class, I found myself drifting in and out of thoughts about the H-Po books. The Japanese teacher and I spent the majority of the class just casually pacing the isles; making sure all artworks resembling penises, or nipples, or any combination of the two were erased from the desks by the end of class. At one point, lazily hanging out by the blackboard, the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) turned to me and nonchalantly asked, “What would you do if you were in a bathroom and you had no paper?”

Kind of surprised I asked, “You mean, what would I do if I was, you know, number two-ing and I found out there was no toilet paper?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess I would try and get someone’s attention and ask them to toss me some paper or something.” The whole time thinking that, perhaps only a moment ago, he was in the bathroom with no paper. My curiosity grew. “Have you ever been in that situation?”

“Yes. One time.

Eagerly, “Well, what did you do?”

“I ripped the toilet roll and used that. And I found some paper in the trash can.” When he said this, I knew it hadn’t just happened. We don’t have trashcans in the stalls at school. I felt a wave of relief.

“So, what made you think of being stuck in the toilet with no paper?” Keep in mind, we are still in class standing at the front of the classroom; students chat on about everything except what they are supposed to chatting about.

“Oh, I bought a book about people in strange situations.” he explained. I immediately wondered what book – no – what publisher would waste time and money on a book about people stuck on the crapper with no paper? “Do you know what he did?”

“Used some clothes?”

“No. Eww, no.” With a grin, “He used his hand. He splashed toilet water on himself.” He mimed the action of splashing water on one’s rump. “He splashed and wiped until he was clean… like Indian people.”

As if controlled by some supernatural force that my brain could not overpower, my eyes shut tight and right hand, palm open, smacked my forehead.

I courteously reminded myself aloud that I should check on the students’ work and returned to the isles of giggles and pencil-sketched penises.

UPDATE: After reading Colin's comment and doing a little bit of research, I have come to the conclusion that I overreacted to the teacher's "like Indian people" comment. I guess I was a little bold in assuming that people didn't wipe with their hands anymore. In fact, if people are curious, I found this site that pretty clearly explains the proper usege of an Indian style toilet. Many claim that the Indian method is actually more sanitary and leaves you with a cleaner feeling than the dry-wipe western alternative. One thing is not addressed in this explanation: your hand. Fine, your butt is a little cleaner and happier because you cleaned with water, but now your hand has poop on it. And as far as I'm concerned, I think I'de prefer to have the poop residue on something I don't use for everyday tasks. I know you're not supposed to eat with your left hand but I mean come on. If you can't eat with it then you shouldn't be able to shake hands with people, open doors, touch anything public, hug people, or any other task with your left hand. Now that's just inconvenient. Someone please help my ignorance here. Wouldn't it be better to, like, reuse and clean a cloth or something (if you're worried about not being able to purchase t.p.)?

Festival of Frost-Bite and Beertube-Induced Brawls

2007-02-14T17:49:00.000+09:00

It’s official. This has been the longest absence of bloggifying in this online journal’s history of Japanning (take that, grammar). What have we been up to, you ask? Oh, plenty! Most recently though, we took a trip to the mighty Sapporo (home of beer and victorious Ham Fighters) to see the 58th Annual Sapporo Snow Festival, or Yuki Matsuri. We left early Sunday morning to get the most out of our two days of holiday (Monday being a day off for seemingly no reason). We arrived in Sapporo around eleven and strolled down to Odori Park where the massive snow sculptures were attacking the poor unsuspecting population. Ok, that's not fair. If anyone was doing the attacking it was the ridiculous population of tourists that traveled from all over Japan in order to see the carefully carved piles of snow. It is said that the population of Sapporo grows by 625% during Yuki Matsuri making it swell to a little over 11 million (that's a lie). Because of this, strolling up and down the long park, leisurely taking in the sights of the massive snow sculptures, turns into a slow moving crowd of old people, trudging through frozen mud and corpses of those who have fallen from the bitter frost.

Let me back up a bit, the Yuki Matsuri is a yearly festival that takes place for one week in Sapporo. The city’s main park, Odori Koen, stretches from the famous Sapporo TV Tower to …the other end… and is decorated by fountains and statues along the way. During the Yuki Matsuri, the Japanese Special Defense Force, alongside volunteers and competitors from other countries, build huge snow sculptures representing everything from a huge cow head to Japan’s famous castles. Along the walk there are smaller sculptures, food stands, people handing out tissues, ice slides and many other wonderful things.

So, once we arrived at the park, we made one lap around and met up with some friends. They had just arrived and wanted to see the sculptures so – we made another lap. Each lap probably takes about forty-five minutes. At this point we were all frozen and decided to grab a coffee. After a short hunt, we stumbled across a small, but homey looking, coffee shop that was totally empty. The five of us hobbled in and took a seat. The waitress came over. An order was placed for an Irish Coffee and the rest of us, seeing this as a good call, placed the same order. Despite our best efforts at saying “Irish Coffee” with a Japanese accent, the waitress had no idea what we were trying to order. So we explained, “You put whiskey in the coffee.” The waitress smiled hesitantly and went to chat with the, I presumed to be, owner of the place. She came back with five coffees followed by the presumed owner. With quizzical faces we looked up at the two of them. The owner grinned and put a bottle of Suntory Whiskey in the middle of the table with a “Doozo.” (“Please, help yourself.”). And that was that. The best part is, they charged us 500 yen for each – a steal of an Irish Coffee.

After hanging out at the coffee shop for an hour or two, we headed off to dinner – an enkai, party, for Hokkaido JETs to meet some of the other JETs who had come from all over Japan for the festival. The enkai took place a the Kirin Beer Garden (mentioned before). Again, the all you can eat lamb, all you can drink beer tubes, and company were good. Compared to the last time, however, this trip to the Beer Garden was decidedly more violent. Long story short: Dude is joking around with girls in the door of the girl’s bathroom. Meathead decides it’s his job to teach him chivalry and to stay out of the girl's bathroom and tackles him through the door of the guy's bathroom. Meathead walks away. Other guy is drunk and pissed. Promises us he won’t retaliate. Looks calm. Goes out and jumps the meathead in the dining room. Japanese staff stare with mouths agape (possibly having never seen two six foot tall guys duking it out). Meathead fights back but is restrained by being thrown through some drywall. Fight ends. Drinking continues! I’ll be surprised if JETs are allowed to go back to the Kirin Beer Garden.

After that fiasco, we decided to head to Suskino which is something of Sapporo’s club/hussy/bar district. Word on the street had it that Susukino was lined with ice bars and sculptures. My friends, the rumors were true. We walked down one of the main roads for a little bit and popped from ice bar to ice bar, enjoying the often warm beverages – Hennessey and Tea, Bailey’s and warm milk (might I say that Bailey’s and warm milk is ab-so-lute-ly delicious.) After this short jaunt, we decided to head to Booty, a club owned and run by a French guy named Sebastien and his wife. If you remember, Booty is the club where Meghan and I had won the costume contest but not received our 100 USD prize. A little tipsy, I thought it would be a good idea to barge in, ask to see Sebastien, and ask for our prize. All went as planned and we drank for free! Booty was a great time had by all – a dancehall DJ was downstairs, the JETs were plenty, Pac-man was played, and somebody threw up under a table surrounded by people he didn’t know. All’s well that ends well. The next day, we woke up to a half foot of snow on every surface with more falling. Seeing no end in sight, we trained it back to the Muroran.

And that’s it. Check one off for “Things To Do Before I Leave Japan”. Yuki Matsuri, you’ve been done.

Oh, here are two videos of some stuff at the festival. The first one is of this strange glass pod on a stage where people played this massive Yamaha electric organ. The little girl is playing a Disney cover. The second video is of a Taiko group performing in front of the Disney sculpture. Enjoy. Oh, and be sure to check out the flickr page for more pics.

Do You Like Hippu Hoppu?

2007-02-02T17:27:00.000+09:00

Every year, the Hokkaido Association of JETs, hereafter referred to as “HAJET”, holds a Hokkaido-wide English contest for elementary school students and first year high school students known as the Hokkaido English Challenge. While the motive behind it is to improve the students’ English skills (for later English bill paying) and comfort in using said language, the real motivating factors are the prizes. The prizes range from beefy gift certificates to a home stay in any English speaking country. That, and the top ten winners are given a free week of English Summer Camp run by a bunch of JET volunteers.

I’m telling you all this because a funny thing happened while we were entertaining three first year students’ questions about the Hokkaido English Challenge. You need some background on one of the three students in particular. In every class I’ve taught him in, he has been either a) with out shoes or socks, b) with a towel wrapped around his head, c) with his shirt completely unbuttoned, or d) sitting on some other dude's lap (this is far more common between heterosexual dudes in high school than you want to know about) or any combination of those. Furthermore, at any chance he can get, he shouts catchphrases like “Are you kinky?”, “Do you like men?” and other nuggets of brilliance. Not to mention, whenever I give them an activity that involves drawing, he draws a penis or a shirtless guy with huge nipples. “Today you will draw what you want for Christmas!” Nipples. “Today you will draw a make believe animal!” Penis. “Today you will visualize on paper the Arab-Israeli Conflict as viewed by the Maori population of Brisbane!” Barechested, huge nippled guy with a massive penis for a leg.

The catch: his English is really, quite good. He has a decent understanding of basic grammar and, aside from his massive collection of "testicles” synonyms, his vocabulary is pretty good.

Anyway, this student came into the English Office with two other guys from his class to talk about HEC. They sat and chatted for a while. We then began explaining to one of the students how the HEC test is administered while subtlety trying to convince him it’s worth it and fun. The crazy student would occasionally tap one of us on the leg and lean over to whisper one of his time-tested and famous phrases. By not reacting to his calls of “Do you like big nipples?” and “I like butt. Do you?” he finally got the idea that we weren’t interested in his shenanigans. So, like anyone would do in that situation, he started to undo his pants – in the English Office – with the Supervisor four feet away: first the zipper, then the button. John and I commenced the “flipping out” and he paused, smiled, and refastened his pants. At that point, the conversation had boiled down to “Do you like girls? There are many girls at HEC camp. You can ‘talk to them.’ (wink)” Then, of course, we had to show them pictures, as proof, of last year’s HEC camp. The following twenty minutes were a veritable marathon of Hot or Not. We learned that “Tekisasu gaaru habu biggu [motion to erupting chest]” (Texas girl have big [insert favorite colloquialism for “breasts”]). Every girl following that was not sporting a double D was labeled as “Nottu furomu Tekisasu” (Not from Texas).

Arguably the best part of the encounter came while we were looking at pictures online from last year’s HEC. Let me rewind. During the earlier explaining of the test, crazy student had interrupted in order to ask, “What kind of music do you like?” We went through the list, singing the melodies to all sorts of songs. Crazy kid then asked if I like hippu hoppu. “Yeah. I like hip hop.” He then asked if I liked the song “Raito Zaa”. I had no idea what he was saying so I asked him to sing a bar of it.

“Ai raik it na na na na raito zaaaaa!”

A light bulb went off. “Oh, you mean ‘Right Thurr’. Chingy.” He exploded in agreement and ended with a fast “I like hippu hoppu”. Now, back to the online pictures. We were perusing the pictures of the camp; the three students playing Hot or Not and From Texas or Not with every girl. Students, JETs, bystanders – no one was left out. And then there came a picture of one JET counselor in particular: a tall, darker skinned, well-built guy. And the students literally erupted. Pointing and dancing they yelled, “Hippu Hoppu!” Over and over. My jaw dropped. From there on, every picture with this guy in it resulted in a choir of “Hippu Hoppu!” accompanied by a veritable dance party of pointing. Then they noticed a picture I have on my desk from my predecessor – a picture of a bunch of Americans and Canadians that came to visit the school last year. There are three black guys in the picture. Cue “Hippu Hoppu!” chants and dancing. At that point, the dance fest had grown out of control and the Supervisor ushered them out of the room.

But I guess that’s not as bad as last year’s students dressed as Chained Slaves and Plantation Owners dancing to a loud speaker blasting “Who let the dogs out?”

Down a main road, no less.

And Happy Birthday, Meghan! Her birthday was yesterday but her party will be tomorrow!

Oh, and the below mentioned song has been drilling through my head for two days now. “And it’s not gonna leave unless I blow it out. With a bullet.” –Carl

Enjoy. The song and video combination will amaze you in ways you have seldom been amazed. You'll be humming it despite wishing it had never been created. It's actually a carefully designed audio virus that plants itself in your inner-ear. I need tarako. Or at least I would if it didn't look so gross.

An Epic Ending

2007-01-29T13:39:00.000+09:00

Once, long ago, at the beginning of our senior year of college, a project was begun. Last week, nearly 10,000 miles from its starting point, this project was brought to a close. It took many hours, but all were well spent. And the pair, who had set off down this path so long ago, were left feeling accomplished but empty as we completed what would forever remind us of days on a long blue and green splattered couch with a soft white pup, a bottle of red wine and a small wooden box. Those days were now officially at a close; one more thread that held me to that time has been cut.

Yes, as many of your have by now deduced, Kari and I sat down to the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . It was decided, when there was only one season left, that we would wait to be reunited in Japan to complete the series. As the owner of that final season this was a trying wait, but the journey had to be completed together. We have now watched all 7 seasons and are still amazed by the glory of this show. Truly, few shows were so able to capture humor, terror, love and vampires so well. As I am sure you prepare to throw your stones, I must tell you the completion of this series has given me an armor stronger then your stones. You cannot insult what you haven’t experienced; you cannot understand what you did not live.

I find myself at a loss for words and a desire to begin the journey all over again.

There's Something I Have to Tell You

2007-01-26T20:43:00.000+09:00

I have something that I have to get off of my chest. I have a problem. From practically my first day in Japan, I’ve been a victim of this horrible yet quite pleasing practice. I long considered never telling a soul about my habit; seeing as it’s extremely frowned upon, if not illegal, in the Americas. For a while I even considered not telling Meghan but, sadly, she too has joined me in the ranks of those who enjoy an act that some might describe as revolting, barbaric and downright abominable.

I decided a couple days ago that I should get this thing off my chest – tell the world about my vicious, possibly even self-destructive habit. And what better place to do it from than this virtual soapbox of internet-dom.

Before telling you this secret of secrets, I must ask you to not think of Meghan or me differently once you know. Don’t look down on us for what we choose to do in private or in select other locations that will go undisclosed. We, as adults, have chosen this habit and fully accepted the potential social and familial consequences that accompany it (although our families will no doubt support us). The truth is, many people in Japan and other countries throughout the world do what we do. Friday night, Saturday night – even sometimes during the week. You get a couple beers in you and you just crave it. Really, it’s unlike anything else you’ve ever tried. It’s so – different. I should just spit it out shouldn’t I? All right, here it goes. (I’m gonna regret this.)

I eat horses. Raw. And usually dipped in a wonderful sauce made from a mixture of soy, garlic paste and fresh green onion. It’s easily one of the most delicious meats I have ever eaten. The fact that Meghan, rarely the eater of red meats that she is, also eats horse should stand as a testament to how delicious raw horse, or basashi, can be. Yeah. It’s bar-food. But I’ll be a two-toned rooster in a submarine if it isn’t the most appetizing and succulent bar food ever. I know most of you right now are thinking, “Sweet Mother Theresa! Holy Polenta! I can’t believe I know this person! He should have his passport taken - his citizenship STRIPPED! HANG THE BASTARD!”

And I understand. I would have reacted the same way six months ago. But the truth is that raw horsemeat is fantastic. It’s some of the silkiest, most beautifully marbleized meats I have ever eaten. Writing this is a chore. I’m salivating to a point where I have to wonder if this keyboard came with a waterproof coating. Luckily, however, we are going to an izakaya tonight and the horse will be plentiful - alongside, the yakitori, ramen salad, tsukune and zangi, of course (not this zangief).

So there it is: my heart on a platter right along some fresh slices of Black Stallion. I’m ready to be forever ostracized.

By the way, Kari arrived this Tuesday and has been hanging out with us here in Muroran. It’s been quite fun although I haven’t been around the majority of the time; work ain’t not not fun. Ask Meghan how the week has been. Tomorrow we will head off to Sapporo to take in the big city lights before Kari’s grand departure for Nagoya (with bigger, brighter city lights) on Monday.

[time warp] Christmas Cookies are Delicious! [/time warp]

2007-01-15T23:48:00.000+09:00

Being the type of person I am, I naturally made tons of Christmas cookies this December. T’was a bit of a feat, since not all cookie ingredients can be found in Japan, but with the aid of one package from America, a good friend’s run to Sapporo and some creative substitutions, cookies were made. And they were good. The point of this post is not so much to talk about the making of cookies, but rather the interesting reception my cookies got. Quickly, here is my cookie list: lemon bread, bourbon balls, sugar cookies, lemon bars, Christmas wreaths, butterscotch chocolate sandwich cookies and ginger snaps. I prepared platters of all these cookies for classes, my tea ceremony teacher, Christophe’s school, etc, etc, etc.

Approaching the platter: Everyone I presented with a platter took a surprisingly systematic approach to the plate. Naturally, they wanted to try all the different kinds, but this was no ordinary take one, then take the next. On several separate occasions about halfway through the cookie eating process an eater would pause, count off (outloud) which ones he had already eaten, then list (also outloud) the ones which still needed to be tried. This may not seem strange to some, but in all my days of cookie offering, such a clear and careful approach to the plate I have never seen.

Favorite Cookie: Gingersnaps won by far, not a great surprise considering the love of ginger out here. Actually, I became so inspired by Japan’s love of ginger that I made some ginger cake with fresh shredded ginger shredded added (it was a success).

Least Favorite Cookie: No one dislikes my cookies! Besides, this is Japan, they would sooner commit seppuku then insult my cooking to my face.

Favorite Cookie Tale #1:

For those of you who read ‘Christmas Wreaths’ and thought, “hmmm… that isn’t edible”, these cookies are basically rice crispy treats in a doughnut shape if you change the rice crispies for cornflakes, add green food coloring and spot them with red hots (mailed from the USofA- thanks mom!). I was just finishing up making these little numbers when an early Christmas present knocked on the door: two gas men came to install hot water at the kitchen sink (thank god). So I quickly moved the pot (which looked like it had been filled with the green ooze from teenage mutant ninja turtles) into the sink, but had to leave the “kitchen counter” covered in little cooling wreaths. The men set about their work quickly, but occasionally one of the other would run down to the truck for more parts. It was during one of these interludes that I noticed the remaining workman was eyeing my wreaths how I imagine a suburban housewife might look at an unsupervised bag in the airport.

“Cookie”, I offered, “Christmas cookie”. The gaze turned from the cookie to me. “Try one,” I said, motioned to a wreath. Gingerly he lifted the small treat and turned it from side to side, checking it for signs of something edible perhaps. Finally, he popped the whole thing in his mouth, rather impressive considering their size, but I suppose he decided the only way to eat plastic was to take it in one bite. As a smile spread across his face the second workman returned. He walked in and looked at his partner incredulously, then at me and I suddenly felt I had done something terribly wrong. Luckily he simply started laughing at the two of us huddled around the cookies, and after much convincing from the first worker, even agreed to try a wreath himself. Holiday cheer and understanding was spread. More cookies were consumed, systematically of course- no Tupperware was left unopened

Favorite Cookie Tale #2 (brought to us by cnote):

A couple days before Christmas, I brought Meghan's dish of delectable treats to my office at school. As with the heater installation men, whispers of "Is this food?", "Is it safe?" and "Where did I put that container of nuclear waste?" could be heard among the teachers as they sampled the treats. Words of precaution were soon replaced by "Oishiiiiiii!" "tasty!" and "Sugoiiiiii!" "Wonderful!".

I went to class knowing that I, well – really Meghan, had done good.

I got back from class, dumped my books on my desk and slumped into my chair. I sat in silence for about thirty seconds before I heard behind me,

"Christophe Sensei?"

It was a teacher behind across the room from me who had been sitting quietly at his desk.

"Yes?"

"I have a question about Meghan's cookies."

"Sure."

"Do any of them …have alcohol in them?"

For a second, I panicked. The Bourbon Balls (well, really Jack Daniel's Balls). Instantly, images of me in jail for the rest of my life for bringing liquor to high school flashed into my head. I grinned nervously.

"Yeah…they do. But it's a totally negligible amount. And, and…it's cooked which means the alcohol is evaporated out and only the flavor stays behind. I think."

Then came a barrage of hesitant jokes: "Now I can't drive home [nervous laugh]!", "Phew! I'm getting warm! [nervous laugh]!", "Class is going to be fun [nervous laugh]!" And this continued with three other teachers. I would go to class and, seemingly every time, return to someone's disastrous realization that there are COOKIES THAT TASTED LIKE ACOHOL in the English Office. One person was allergic to alcohol. Another was very sensitive to the "devil juice".

And every time I tell them how amazingly little amount of alcohol there is in one ball (because each teacher only had one ball). They didn't listen.

All things told, there were no consequences – no one freaked out. I figured everyone had eventually listened to my shouts of "THERE'S PRACTICALLY NO ACOHOL IN THESE BAD BOYS!"

A couple days later I received a call from the school on my cell. I don't usually get calls from the school. It was a teacher. I started sweating profusely. And then she asked my about our last project for of the third year classes. Phew! We finished up the conversation and as I'm about the hang up she mentions the cookies.

"You know, I loved those cookies that Meghan made! Especially the alcohol ones." I rolled my eyes with such vigor that it hurt. "You have to give me the recipe! The meeting I had after I had eaten one was so relaxing. I was so…so…"

"Elated? Happy?"

"Yeah! Like drunk! They were great!" I practically rolled my eyes onto the pavement below.

I agreed to give her the recipe and started explaining yet again about the negligible amounts of alcohol but stopped when I realized there was no point.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that Bourbon Balls will not be on next year's cookie platter. It just means more for me to eat in place of breakfast. Mmmmmmm breakfast cookies.

Got Some Catching Up To Do...

2007-01-10T21:10:00.000+09:00

Okay. You got us. It's true. Our blogging has been hiding out in the Subpar Department since sometime around Christmas - my sincerest apologies. That could be my New Years' resolution: to get back to this here depository of Japan-in-origin tales and anecdotes.

So let's hit it...

For New Years, Meghan and I joined the ranks of the other whiteys in Muroran for some celebrating, counting, and sunrise watching. We started the night at an izakaya for some strange pre-arranged dishes that left something to be desired. Around 11:30 we headed to the windiest spot in Muroran for Kaunto Doun 2006. Now, the whole event was marketed with the promise of fireworks and a raffle. The raffle happened and none of us got shit. The fireworks, however, did not happen. After talking to some people, I discovered that they always promise fireworks and they never go off because it's always too windy. Because of this, I've naturally concluded one thing: they never buy fireworks. They just say there will be fireworks and bank on the wind. Bastardos. I wanted fireworks.

After said lack of fireworks, we headed to a friend's house to hang out until the first sunrise of the year. At about 5:15 we applied the 15.6 layers required to venture into the "outside" and headed for chikyu misaki, or "Cape Earth", to watch the frist sunrise of 2007 over El Pacifico.

It was a sunrise. We went to bed shortly after.

Since then, it's been alot of relaxing. Shortly after Christmas, Meghan and I purchased Zelda: Twilight Princess. For those of you who have played a good chunk of Zelda games, I must say: it's abso-freaken-lutely fantastic. And I'm saying this about a game that I haven't been able to read one word of due to the strange language it's in (see Nipponian Script). While I am admittedly only comparing it to Ocarina of Time, it's gotta be one of the best of it's kind. The only plus side of it being in Japanese is that I am learning also sorts of ridiculous words that I will never ever be able to use in any meaningful conversation (see soul, shadow realm, brave hero, wild animal and goblin.)

Wow. I can't believe I'm having a hard time coming up with things to write about. Has life really gotten that "run-of-the-mill" here in Olde Nihon. Oh, right. Meghan and I went to a thick tea ceremony. Allow me to back track a bit.

As I'm sure you all can recall, Meghan and I started taking tea ceremony classes. After several weeks of classes with our awesome teacher, Tomoko, we were invited to attend a thick tea ceremony by our teacher's teacher. Now, the usual ceremony, and one that we have been learning, is the thin tea ceremony. This is most like the tea that most people know: watery, translucent, light in flavor etc. Thick tea, however, is as one might expect: thick. Imagine green tea. Now take the essential flavor of green tea and mix it with something thats the consistency of a light yogurt - thats thick tea. It looks like green paint and might taste something like it. I kid, it wasn't so bad. Tasted like tea.

There were three things in addition to the thick tea ceremony that were totally "buckets", so to speak. First, every one there was in kimono. It was honestly the first time that I'de seen so many kimonos in that pretty much no one wears them except old ladies and people that do traditional arts. Meghan left wanting a kimono with all her person.

Then we found out how much they cost. Like whoa.

The second is that thick tea is apparently only given once a year. It's a winter time beverage (if you can call it that) and so has become kind of a special thing in that it, and all the tools involved in the process, are quite expensive - not to mention its apparently pretty difficult to make well.

Third "bucket-factor": our teacher's teacher brought out one of the tea cups from his personal collection. I wasn't aware of this before starting tea ceremony, but tea cups can go for, no joke, millions of dollars. This one that he brought out was over 150 years old and I'm sure went for a pretty penny. It was pretty nifty to be able to see and fondle it.

Since then, not much has gone down. I've started to mess around with circuit bending toys from the recycle shops. It's been fun and quite interesting but I have to learn a little more before I describe to you all my successes and many failures.

A while back I forgot to post these videos from Kyoto. These first two are of Meghan feeding deer in Nara and the last is of these guys making rice treats. Sorry about the squashed video. I couldn't figure out how to get it to tranfer properly.

And Powers, you would be proud:

Tonight, I doused my rice in Cholula. I closed my eyes and I was in Mexico.

Apple's Greatest Achievement and a Happy Slappy New Year to All

2006-12-31T16:57:00.000+09:00

Dear Apple,

It's not 'cause you make pretty operating systems, sexy products or induce cult like symptoms in those who purchase your goods - it's because you made these t-shirts in 1983. This is why you are where you are today, Steve Jobs.

It wasn't the ipod, or the iBook, and definitely not the G4 Cube. Your success will someday be traced back to these fine threads: most probably evolved from the robes of kings of olde. via

Happy New Year, all yalls's! Tonight were off to watch some countdown fireworks by the bridge and, six hours later, to watch the first sunset over the Pacifico Oceano. We'll let you know how 2007 is seeing as well be there 14 hours before most of you!

Hope everyone has a great New Year. We're thinking of all of you out here in the future. Keep on rockin' in the free world.

Niseko and Interpreting Christmas: A Truly Straight-forward Post

2006-12-27T20:28:00.000+09:00

In the days before “El Christmoose-o”, as it’s called in Mexico, a bunch of us from Muroran and some of the other outlying steel factories decided to go up to the quickly-becoming-world-famous ski town of Niseko. Some info about Niseko:

Niseko has long been a great spot for skiing. It’s two main mountains have more than three great resorts with onsen everywhere and lots of great food. In the last five to ten years, Australians have discovered that Niseko is the nearest, heaven-simulating ski spot available to them. Because of this, Australians have quickly begun snatching up real estate left and right. In addition, the local population’s English level has skyrocketed (either that, or they started only hiring people with at least basic English skills) along with the number of whiteys that come through during the ski season. Really, it’s turning into not-Japan. There are coffee shops that don’t serve tea, bagels at the bakeries and Vegemite in the convenience stores- all quite strange.

The snow was plentiful and amazing. The snow in Hokkaido is quite similar to the snow on the west coast: light and fluffy. This results in fantastic powder and great tree runs. The resort we skied at is called Hirafu; one of three on the same mountain. This particular resort is quite large with a good variety of runs ranging from super relaxed to mogul-y difficult. I regret not going to the peak but both days were too snowy and windy for me to venture that far up.

I have only two issues with this resort:

You now how the runs on many mountains meander across one another and cross at various points? This mountain kinda missed that concept. If you hop on a run, you probably only have one, maybe two, chances to wander onto a different run without tearing through trees and getting stuck in waist deep powder before you get to the bottom.

They have abominably long flat spots at the bottom of runs. This might be fine for you skier types but us snowboarders, who happen to be riding unwaxed, second-hand snowboards with the bindings set too far forward, find ourselves skating along too often.

Despite these annoyances, Niseko can easily hold its own against the likes of Park City and The Canyons. No joke, there is some absolutely amazing snow up here in Hoe-kai-doe. (The biggest difference is definitely riding by/over reeds of bamboo.) I mean, if Australians are flying 8+ hours just for a piece, it’s worth something. The NY Times has talked about it recently too.

Other than that, Christmas in Nippon has come and gone. Japan has fully embraced the holiday known as Christmas – with only a few changes. Let us explore:

First of all, Christmas isn’t a family holiday; it’s a couple’s holiday. You get together with your significant other and romantically watch the snowfall outside the window and exchange presents. (It should be noted that Christmas Eve is not a holiday at all. The 25th is the holiday.)

There is a traditional meal on Christmas Evening: roast chicken and Kurisumasu Keiki, or Christmas Cake. Because roast chicken is the Christmas specialty, grocery stores that usually do not carry whole birds, stock them for the month of December. In addition to this, KFC sees possibly hundreds of pre-orders and reservations for chickens. KFC saves those who are too lazy or are without a large enough oven to cook a full chicken and the local convenience stores carry the cakes for those who don’t have the means to bake up a mean cream and strawberry Christmas Keiki.

Japan does not have candy canes or stockings or mistle toe or, worst of all, real Christmas trees. The most popular option for a Christmas Tree is a fake one; usually between 1’ and 3’ in size. They come in many different colors: blue, silver, white, olde-fashioned green, pre-decorated, and my favorite, color-changing, fiber-optic and not-English-Christmas-carol singing transparent. We opted for the 500 yen one from the 100-yen shop (I know that doesn’t seem to make sense. Just roll with it.)

Santa Claus is not from the North Pole. He is apparently from Norway. We checked with a great number of people who didn’t know one another and, after comparing our notes, we have concluded that he is, really, from Norway. This begs the question: if Santa is from Norway, doesn’t he have neighbors? And don’t those neighbors get suspicious of the seemingly hundreds of midgets that he keeps locked in his 3LDK? And what about all the banging and drilling and miscellaneous construction sounds that emanate from his loft while he is busy not making enough Wiis and PS3s for every good boy and girl? No matter. He is from Norway.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is not named Rudolph. He’s just – reindeer. But to their credit, Rudolph would be one hell of a name to say in Japanese, let alone sing to a tune: “Rudorufu za redo nozu reindiiru!”

The words to Silent Night are creepy and religious and hard to explain to Japanese students without giving them each a copy of the New Testament as a prerequisite.

Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus. Who is Jesus anyway?

But I guess it makes more sense than my personally created Christmas which involves a Cyborg Santa who delivers face melting keytar solos to the children of the world from the back of his neon green El Camino pulled by eight ninjas dressed as light cycle riders.

For more pinctures...

2006-12-24T21:56:00.000+09:00

Merry Christmas to all,

And to all a good Santa Cruise...

missing you guys out here in Nippon
Love, Christophe and Meghan

Scary Gaijin

2006-12-20T10:26:00.000+09:00

I wrote this post about a month ago but forgot to ever post it! Still, these are two of my favorite stories to tell...

An interesting thing about Japnese people, they are generally terrified of foreigners. It does not matter if you speak Japanese, they are more often then not too scared to even understand you if you speak perfectly. I scare a lot of Japanese people because I am about twice the size of most women and can speak almost no Japanese at all.
Below are the two best stories of terror so far:

Door-to-door fear
When I first moved into the apartment, if the doorbell rang I simply would not answer it. I cannot speak Japanese and did not know how I could be of any use at the door. However, after a package was not delivered because of my refusal to open the door when home alone, I began opening it anyway. Everyone on the other side is always shocked when they see me, but most are able to get over this initial moment of surprise/terror long enough to hand me my packages or try to convert me to their religion.

Not so for the woman handing out coupons for the new whole foods shop in town. I opened the door while she was digging around in her bag for papers to hand me, so when she looked up and saw giant white girl standing directly in front of her the shock sent her backwards about 2 feet. “I-eeee!” she gasped, throwing her hand over her mouth. I simply smiled and said my usual, “Konichiwa”. Recovering her strength, she launched straight into her practiced speech as fast as she could. I finally cut in with an “ego?” (English?) which was clearly the last thing she wanted to hear because again she staggered back a few paces and her eyes widened even more then they already were. Again she recovered herself, then saying many things quickly in Japanese that I will never know, she shoved the papers and coupons in my hands, backed me into my own apartment and closed my door in my own face. I then heard her running frantically down the stairs.

Grocery Store Gaijin Attack
So I decided to make summer rolls for my dinner party last night and wanted shrimp and tuna to put inside. I found out the word for Tuna in Japanese (conveniently tsu-na) and felt fully equipped to make this trip to the market on my own. I was ready, the market was not. I found my way to the fish section and stared down at a variety of slices of fish. I didn’t see any tuna, but there was some extremely red salmon that I thought might be tuna, so I turned to the staff woman near by and motioned at the fish saying “Tsu-na des?” (It’s tuna?).

Again the eyes began to get large, a clear sign panic is beginning to set in. Worried I was simply not saying Tuna right I repeated my request, “Tsu-na, des? Ta-su-na des?, Tuna?”. This was the wrong thing to do, if you are not understood, do not keep repeating what you are saying over and over again in different ways. The woman began to slowly back away from me, eyes wide open. Then suddenly she balled her hands into fists, pounded at her head with a sound of ‘iii-eeeeee’ and ran away from me as fast as she could. I froze, terrified of what I had just driven this poor woman to do. A man next to me smiled gently, then motioned to the fish saying something that was not Tuna (I assume the Japanese word for salmon) and I offered a meek thanks. It was at that moment that I decided we would just have shrimp spring rolls because I knew where the shrimp was and did not want to drive any other staff from the store. As I stood over the shrimp a few minutes later, I was startled by the sudden appearance of my original staff woman. I smiled at her, worried why she would have returned to me, and was met with a short, clear “Salmon”. Immediately after successfully informing me of the fish I had been pointing at, she ran off again. I have never seen her since...

I typed "monster woman" into google image and somehow got this.
I know it's not a unicorn, but still, I put it here for you jax.

Let's Enjoying Rearrange Apartment!

2006-12-13T20:55:00.000+09:00

You know what's weird? When you tell yourself all-day at work, "I'm gonna do [insert any hobby/thing/disposal-of-that-bear-carcass-in-the-corner that you've been meaning to get to all month] when I get home from work!" and you get home and all the sudden it's midnight and all you've done is sit on your oshiri for five hours and accomplished nothing. Rinse. Repeat 5 days a week. And the weekends are no better.

Meghan and I managed to rearrange the apartment after the aquisition of a tv about twice as large as our original one. (My supervisor took pity on me one day after I told him I had been playing my new hard-fought-for Wii on a 13" screen. He was like, "Oh well, we have all these tvs laying around the office 'cause they are totally obsolete and have been replaced. We can't throw them away because they were bought by the board of education so throwing them away would require 16 approvals from 12 different officials in 4 offices who never work them same hours and one of which moves location ever 1.5 days. Why don't you take one?" So we did. And reorganized the apt. to accommodate its presence.)

We got rid of the entertainment tree. It's inconvenience outweighed it's disco glory.

The apartment reorganization was also in hopes of maximizing out heating efforts. We moved all of our entertainment things to one room - the one with the stove. Yes, our apartment is heated by a stove. Imagine a log cabin in the wild west. It's heated by a big black stove in the middle of the room, right? Well, the majority of homes in Japan are heated in a similar fashion. Take that log cabin heating device, run it on gas, make it flashy, and toss the words TOYOTOMI LASER POT on the front and you've got our heater. Anyway, by tossing all our crap in one room thus only needing to heat one room (instead of 3) we can spend less money on staying toasty.

Other than that, not much has been up. We've been hanging out. Slowly making our way through every episode of 24. Reading. Exciting really.

Oh, I only had one class the other day and finished up this flash thingy I was working on. It's nothing special. I was just trying to figure out how to make an interface for loops and samples. Let me know what you think. (And so you know, it's up to you to make the loops match. If it proves too diffictult, try pressing the Up and Down keys at the same time. Click the thumbnail or here to check it out.

Hasta la pasta.