Japanthropology!

and finally...

2011-04-11T00:15:00.015+09:00

years after living in japan, finally my first QR code

that's it for japanthropology! - but the blog goes on...

you can read more at davethomson.net and then there's some new ingrish filed away here.

thanks for reading.

dave thomson - formerly "dave-ish."

the engrish files #4

2007-10-31T02:32:00.001+09:00

a note at the akihabara capsule hotel i stayed at in august

japanese tv

2007-09-06T19:05:00.002+09:00

i was lucky enough to catch an episode of this show when i was round katie and akira's place, way back when. check it out:-

striking out

2007-08-27T06:21:00.001+09:00

a lucky strike captured from our hiroshima hotel window

an eleven and a half hour flight saw me return to british shores, waiting sleepily for a delayed connection at heathrow airport. i'd left the majority of my friends behind in miyagi one week earlier, setting off on one last tour of japan, hoping to leave in style. leaving wasn't easy for a whole host of reasons - that i'm not going to go into - but thankfully i didn't have to go it alone for the majority of my trip, having hashmatt as my travel companion. first stop: kyoto for the daimonji festivities.

getting a tip from some fellow travellers staying in our traditional, quaint hostel - so quaint that it lacked even air-conditioning - we got the bus to a small hill in the centre of kyoto where we were able to view four of the five gigantic kanji they annually burn into the mountains to mark the end of the festival of the dead. there was a lot of excitement, pushing and shoving once the flames were lit at each of the distant sites, people battling to either get a decent look at - and in many cases photo of (imagine long-exposure night mode in a world without tripods, trying to remain steady amongst a relatively small but thronging crowd, and you get an idea of how difficult this task was) - the far off flames. all in all a pretty low key but memorable event.

himeji castle

the next day we headed over to himeji, location of japan's best preserved and, as everyone says, most impressive castle. wandering the castle grounds, walking barefoot through the west bailey, climbing its wooden staircases to the top of the main building; being there was certainly an experience that topped visiting osaka castle (1). actually, afterwards we headed to osaka, there going on a busy night time river cruise guided by this comedian who hit us with a barrage of japanese pun riddles. later we wound up wide-eyed in the streets of dotonbori (2), somewhat of a neon paradise, with novelty building façades a dime a dozen and endless eating and entertainment opportunities - in my opinion, if you're in the area, a must see (last time we missed out thanks to bad timing and last train paranoia).

all at sea off miyajima

one shinkansen later and we were in hiroshima; getting off i couldn't help thinking i'd arrived in one of the most famous places in modern history. having decided to stay there for two days, first on our agenda was to head to the site of one of japan's official top-three scenic vistas: the shrine entrance gate standing in the sea before the little island of miyajima (3). taking the ferry toward the gate i was struck by the beauty of the island itself and the deep blueness of the sea. once on the island amongst the various tourists seeking the perfect photo of the gate, however, it's own picturesqueness very quickly became apparent. after dining at an overpriced yet relatively oishii restaurant we realised it was possible to get on the beach and get an unobscured shot of the shrine gate. once down there wading into the sea to get an even better pic trigged a desire in me to actually walk to the thing; the at just the right level to get away with it in my shorts. followed by some inquistive but fundamentally less daring japanese people i actually made it. henceforth, with the tide at ever-more appealing levels, other travellers would make their way to the gate - but we made it there before them and got the best photos!

the peace park cenotaph; a-bomb dome in the backdrop

day two took us to the hiroshima peace park and museum. visible through the arching cenotaph shown above is the skeletal remains of a building now known as the "a-bomb dome," which was right next to the hypocentre of the atomic explosion all those years ago. i was surprised when i found out the history of the area immediately after the blast; it seemed that only a few months later work to resurrect the flattened city had begun - i had expected the area to be lethally radioactive for some years. not only that but some people in the city had randomly survived unscathed thanks to being in random buildings that somehow protected them. the museum itself held back on being too gore-orientated and, somehow - despite its stated purpose of working toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons - my idea of the longterm consequences of nuclear war was vastly reduced, despite individual tragedies. perhaps by skewing my conceptions of the massacre by focusing too wide (on countries) and too narrow (on the individual stories) without criticism or anger, in a way perhaps mindful of international relations, my trip to the peace park museum had the opposite effect to what i'd expected. that day ended with the two hour thunderstorm fortuitously captured at the top of the page.

fuji at 6am on a summer morning

setting off alone the next day i eventually made it to the fuji area by monday evening. tuesday saw me getting up at 4.30am on a mission to get a decent view of the mountain, aware that in the sweltering summer it is often too hazy to clearly make out. getting completely lost meant that i didn't reach my intended viewpoint until around six. after following my urge to scale the 1180m mountain i found myself on i headed down to the shrine at the bottom of fuji, which marked the beginning of the hiking route back in the day when you couldn't just get the bus halfway up there (4). after that i went on an udon quest - the area is famous for its thick and chewy noodles - on a tip from the tourist information office and using a specialist map, eschewing the lonely planet's lazy recommendation. when i finally reached my destination there was a 25 minute queue! thankfully i was rewarded for my endeavours with the best udon i've ever had - and cold too, thanks to my request - which i ate with some electricians on a business trip from tokyo. notably, the people in the fuji area are some of the most friendly i came across in japan.

at the shrine at the foot of mount fuji

my last day i spent with hashmatt in tokyo, visiting the edo-tokyo museum and having two great meals, the first of which being chanko nabe - a sort of soup comprising of anything and everything, with the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure. because the place cited in the rough guide was sadly shut, and because we were in tokyo's sumo district - chanko nabe is the cornerstone of the sumo "diet" - we asked a nearby sumo wrestler for a recommendation; his suggestion wasn't at all disappointing. the second meal was a good note to end my time in japan on: tepanyaki at a restaurant specialising, unusually for japan, in cooking vegetables (5). to round things off i stayed in a capsule hotel overnight in akihabara. if you're thinking about doing so too one day, i recommend you don't - unless you enjoy being surrounded by snoring middle-aged men whose capsules' alarm clocks wake you up and not them, leaving you with an apparent eternity of beeping to deal with around 6.30am in the morning to cap off a wonderful night of no sleep whatsoever. though we may imagine capsule hotels have glass doors, this place only had pull-down screens: the chocolate fire-guard of noise insulation. it was something i felt i had to do but, trust me, you don't!

(1) much smaller and less authentic, both in that the necessary restoration work was much more extensive and in that it is so thoroughly artificial on the inside that it even includes an elevator.
(2) osaka's main night life district, famous throughout japan.
(3) another is miyagi's own matsushima; this one is a lot better.
(4) those who climb mount fuji - apparently the most climbed mountain in the world - usually begin their ascent from the so-called "5th station," midway up.
(5) tepanyaki is that style of japanese cooking conducted on a large hot steel surface.

the vagabond

2007-08-07T23:40:00.000+09:00

wood, sweat and beers: katie, akira and i after carrying that omikoshi

so right now i'm sitting on the veranda of matt's apartment, balancing my laptop on a bit of wood between below-the-belt clotheslines and a concrete wall, stealing some poor, unsuspecting wireless internet on a tuesday night. matt himself is away in america - hell, all my usual crew have buggered off somewhere or other, be it tokyo, the states or on a hastily-arranged trip to thailand. as of today my own apartment is bereft of gas, water and electricity, emptied out apart from the heaviest and bulkiest of its contents; my job has come to an end, my bank account closed, phoneline and internet cut-off. and, just to top things off, even the seat on my bike isn't my own - mine was nicked so i've temporarily borrowed that of my absentee host.

i have around one week left in ishinomaki before i leave for to tour of southern japan; i'm not looking forward to leaving. and yet, as of tomorrow, when i hand over the keys to my own apartment, i am officially homeless and jobless in this country. though i've started saying my goodbyes already, the hardest ones are yet to come. my leaving drinking parties are behind me, my speeches said - it's saying farewell to my closest friends that i worry about now.

but you have to have some fun in your last days, right? i have had a little luck in that department, owing a debt to my limited japanese contacts and recent summer festivals. thanks to a lady who calls herself 'maria' i was able to board one of the ships circling onagawa harbour during its summer celebrations, later being pushed into doing a little "lion dancing" before confused crowds - who just couldn't understand why there was a clueless foreigner bumbling around in the requisite costume - and a short spell on the taiko drums (when nobody was looking). i spent the day thereafter with a couple of ALTs i seldom see and a shipshape bunch of drunken japanese blokes - not such a bad combination all in all. then there was the fireworks at night, the last of which bursting the heavens and bringing an immediately-soaking downpour.

a few days later there was the two-day ishinomaki fireworks festival, the first night of which summoning up the best display of hanabi (literally "flower fire" - take note mario fans) i've ever seen and lasting nearly two hours. having been invited by my mate akira, the second day i was able to carry omikoshi (1) through the ishinomaki streets at the close of the celebrations - i.e. when just about everybody out to see their kids perform in school brass bands etc had went home - along with the man himself, his fiancée, katie, and twenty or so others. despite requiring a lot of strength - and lot of "heart," which the guys said is something i had because i am, well, a guy - it was hugely fun in a personally-challenging and yet team-orientated way to help carry the thing, and nice to be actually actively involved in proceedings (i've seen a fair few omikoshi in my time but never from beneath one) in the appropriate outfit on a sweltering, sweat-soaked afternoon (2). not an experience i'm going to forget any time soon.

(1) a portable shrine carried on the shoulders that japan, as seen plentifully in asakusa but most spectacularly in shiogama.

show of hands

2007-07-06T09:54:00.000+09:00

after having last week off to traipse round tokyo with chris one of the teachers forgot that i would be team teaching with them and left for a first year class without me. when i arrived i received a cheer from the class - the students were actually happy to see me.

i've been trying to teach them grammar this week using a weather lesson i made as the subject matter. despite grammar being not only deadly boring but also ridiculously hard to teach when it came to asking the students to answer questions they were raising their hands and competing to be chosen to answer like primary school kids. it's happened a couple of times so far this week now and it never fails to surprise me, this enthuasiam.

i like teaching this current first year - they're my students. when i came here the kids were pretty apathetic; i used to blame myself and my tendency to try and teach english instead of just playing games all day. the teachers used to reassure me that they prefered my way of doing things to that of my predecessor but classes were difficult to motivate so i was sure i was doing something wrong. these new first years, however, which has been mine from the offset, still seem to have a certain spark about them that was already lost in the previous generation by the time i'd arrived last august. when i asked one of the new teachers about it he said that he'd heard that my predeccesor was a "little strange, not so hard-working" and that in turn had had a negative impact on the kids.

all of a sudden i feel like i can have a positive impact; that some ALTs can have a positive impact. i now understand that sometimes the ALTs who have life easy are the ones who had good predecessors that prepped the kids correctly. it's not yet august - tellingly, after the summer holidays - and i might be deluded, but a little job satisfaction once in a while never hurt anyone, right?

the adventuring

2007-07-01T16:36:00.002+09:00

the oft-forgotten forth member of the so-called "three little pigs" didn't really make things difficult for the wolf

i met chris at a train station in ueno, the northern district of tokyo where we'd be staying the next few nights. it was tuesday afternoon, around 5PM. after we'd got ourselves checked in to our lodgings it was time to head to the overrated akihabara in search of a plug adaptor for chris' laptop. it took an hour of getting sent around the houses before we could accomplish our mission. after that a brief trek outside to check out the overhyped neon of the little "electric town" was enough. next stop shibuya and shinjuku.

shibuya and shinjuku are where you go to when you want to experience what you expected from the aforementioned akihabara: both districts featuring vast neon-lit streets bustling with people, the latter having more than its fair share of electronic shops and arcades if you know where to look. shibuya is famed for its crosswalk so that was a must see. after eating in some random restaurant, giving up on the lonely planet's somewhat idiosyncratic and difficult to locate suggestions, we jumped on the subway to shinjuku, home of the busiest (subway?) station in the world. heading to its skyscraper district we then checked out the view from the metropolitan government offices - which i personally prefer to that from tokyo tower in terms of impact - and quickly nipped in to the keiyo plaza (the hotel i stayed in when i first arrived in japan all those months ago). wandering around shinjuku gave us the chance to head into the insanity that is a pachinco parlour; it was a lot of fun for me to watch chris' reaction to the staggering noise of hundreds of metal balls descending through machines as we weaved a trail through the cigarette-produced smoke therein.

wednesday saw sunshine, persuading us to reorder the detailed schedule i'd hammered together and head off to kamakura in the morning - if you're in the tokyo area, heading to see the big buddha statue is one of the most rewarding sight-seeing options. last time i was there we had only enough time to visit that star attraction, eschewing the confusing variety nearby temples. this time it was different. of the four we saw our favourite was one famed for its hyderangers, plentiful and vibrant in their blue hue; chris and i were lucky to stumble into its grounds as they were in full bloom.

after bidding our escape from the heat, a one hour train ride saw us at the terminal for reaching the small island of odaiba (1). the views from the train as its skirts its way toward rainbow bridge and onto the island are impressive, though the island itself leaves a lot to be desired during the day, with various unkempt and undeveloped plots apparent if you walk from one side to the other. there chris and i decided to duck into the odaiba onsen, which is a little pricy but well worth it. you have to don a yukkata before entering this area themed on an old school japanese village, which was in essence an excuse for various money-grabbing enterprises, including restaurants and a massage parlour (2). the onsen itself was amazing though, with a supernova sauna, a jacuzzi-style bath, indoor and outdoor pools - everything you could want, and volcanically heated too. eventually bumbling back out into the odaiba streets, we were met with the vista below, featuring rainbow bridge, a scaled-down statue of liberty replica and, in the distance, tokyo tower.

thursday was destined to be a scorcher, and that was evident even as we left our ryokan at 7AM on our way to the chaotic tsukiji fish market. despite missing the auction, and thereby various mighty sea creatures, but we did eventually manage to find out way into the public market section - just - through the hectic array of vehicles milling around outside. therein some fellas were slitting the throats of living eels, others sawing up tuna fish into more managable chunks; somehow it still felt worthwhile being there just for the hustle and bustle. after sushi for breakfast it was time for us to desparately hurry over to the imperial palace for a tour of its grounds. the palace itself is somewhat underwhelming, too modern and architecturally understated to be striking on the outside - and that's all were were allowed to see. so instead we were advised, thanks to the free english audio guide, that the best place in the grounds to take a picture was in fact by the much older nearby guardhouse. so we did.

after the palace we made a brief sojourn around the national museum in ueno before getting hopelessly lost for an hour on our way back to where we were staying. one well-deserved break later it was time to meet up with little sara and her friend from back home, julie, who had coincidently got to tokyo that day. not knowing exactly where to spend the evening we headed off to shinjuku where we found this little bar where the waitress couldn't understand our japanese and the kanji-packed menu left us eating onigiri and soy beans for dinner. cutting our losses on the seating charge, we decided our best option was to wander round the streets armed with a can of beer each; it was then that we finally came across the nightlife district of shinjuku, away from where the business men stray after their long days at work (i.e. where chris and i wound up on tuesday night). it was fun just walking the streets there, aside from the burly guys trying to push certain venues on us.

on friday we got up a little late but still managed to get to nikko, a two hour train journey away, by midday - it felt like something of a coup. nikko is another special place, home of various temples and a particularly famous mausoleum, and it's nice to spend time there even on a misty, damp day thanks to the effects on the hills and greenery. after exploring the area for a few hours we jumped on to a train and began the trek to my "hometown," ishinomaki, where i was able to introduce chris to my mates and have him visit our usual haunts; from friday evening to sunday morning, when chris left for narita airport, there's nothing exciting to report per se - well, apart from us trying milk ramen!

it was fun having chris meet my mates here, and just having him around. karaoke, for example, is certainly a different prospect when you have someone on hand who knows the stupid songs from the 90s that you grew up with. the downside is that when he left it really hit home that i'm going to be leaving too fairly soon. still, happy memories in the adventuring.

(1) the name apparently means "fort."
(2) yukkata: japanese cotton robe.

the engrish files #3

2007-07-01T16:31:00.000+09:00

a shop window in kamakura

one for all

2007-07-01T14:53:00.001+09:00

the days of four or five blog posts per month are sadly long gone; these days i seem to average one each month, though that's not always because i'm lacking in my adventuring. time to scribble some stuff down, huh?

i have no idea when it was now, but we made a weekend retreat to a place called cat island, which is, strangely enough, famed for its felines: dogs were banned there long ago; cats roam free. the human population, meanwhile, is small - like the island itself - and consists of aged japanese; the invasion of several tens of foreigners one saturday surely must have been a shock to their system. we stayed in two cottages with cartoony cat paint jobs designed by some semi-notorious manga artist. turns out that my infamous kocho-sensei actually grew up on this island - and attended the manga kitty houses when they served the function of an elementary school back in the day. for us school was out and the beers were in.

on a different weekend our friend kocho-sensei took me to a place called kamimachi (lit. "river town") where the local high school canoeing heats were held. that day i had to work on a saturday - in exchange for the following tuesday being a holiday - so i jumped at the chance to escape into the mountains. previously kocho-sensei had taken me around the schools on the ishinomaki area sports day, and on the whole the sports facilities are impressive; the stretch of river they converted into a canoe course was no exception. (i was more impressed, however, when it turned out that kocho-sensei was the president of the miyagi high school canoeing federation, the tohoku regional president and the all-japan vice president.) anyway, for me all in all it amounted to a day getting paid to lounge around in the sun, which can't be bad.

another weekend i went with annie to find this mysterious ice cream shop of myth and legend, the location of which handed down from one generation of ALTs to another via cryptically-titled scrolls with names like "things to do in ishinomaki." luckily, annie had misplaced her copy - possibly the last surviving one in existence in her apartment - so we were on our own. after asking a convenience store clerk we were on our way to an aladin's cave of ice cream delight (1). as we gazed upon its brilliance our minds were filled with delusions of pearl ice cream, shark ramen ice cream, even whale flavoured ice cream. eschewing such extravagence i plumped for vanilla. no, not really. i had the curry one - a little spicy, kind of tasty; very cool.

but who needs whale ice cream when you can just eat the real thing? i hear your jaws hit the floor as you consider the implications of what "real ice cream" might be, but you are misguided - i am in fact talking about eating whale. so we headed down to the peninsula attached to ishinomaki on yet another of these weekends, albeit not with that particular purpose in mind; mr kocho-sensei had previously recommended the place to me as his favourite in the entire miyagi prefecture, so it was with his blessing that six of us packed into a five person car and just drove down there. near the tip the peninsula has some killer views, making it good value for a n afternoon day trip, and a fun adventure park which sarah, annie and i conquered. but there is also a whale museum in the area, replete with a medium-sized whaling vessel. we didn't actually drop into said tourist trap; the gift shop alone was sufficient, proudly displaying as it did a whale foteus and two dried whale penises - both of which taller than me. with these exhibits somehow having no impact on our hunger we tired the whale jerky lying around there to dry in the sun, then stopped off at a restaurant where hashmatt ordered whale sashimi (2); kindly he offered some to the rest of us, and i can exclusively reveal that the taste is nothing special. (talking to kocho-sensei it emerged that whale used to be cheap, and thus an economical source of protein for local families, and that is why it was popular. he said i should be like an advocate for whaling when i get back to england.)

and then what happened? a friend from back home came to visit, a certain mr turnpenny stopping by via hong kong. he just called me to say he got to narita airport ok and will be jetting off shortly. stay tuned for the adventures of turnpenny and thomson.

(1) i'm over-hyping this beyond belief. there was like a fridge.
(2) sashimi: sliced fish, like sushi without the rice.

capital gains

2007-06-01T11:12:00.000+09:00

since we came here i'd always wanted to go see sumo wrestling; surely it is one of the unique experiences japan has to offer. sumo tournaments last two weeks; we decided to go down for the middle weekend of the may competition in toyko, coinciding with one of capital's trio of biggest festivals: the asakusa sanja matsuri.

we got an early shinkansen on saturday morning, deciding to make use of a weekend rail pass, and checked into our hostel before heading to the arena for around 1pm (1). with the majority of the seats empty the atmosphere was somewhat lacking; it's only the tourists who make the effort of arriving before 3pm when the major league bouts begin, hence an unusually high ratio of foreigners to japanese in the audience when we arrived. as a spectacle, too, the bouts earlier in the day are lacking, though it is worth to show up earlier so that you've got a point of comparison for when the true fun begins. so round about 3pm the wrestlers representing the east come out, all bedecked in their ceremonial sumo regalia, stand in a circle around the ring, engage in a little ceremony and depart, followed by those from the west, who follow suit. the colours are bright, the fabric exquistite; the audience is seated, there's a buzz in the air; the lights are turned down: the stage is set.

the arena is a cross between an indoor stadium and a theatre, tiered so that the run-of-the-mill seating is on the second level, with the spectators below sitting on japanese mats in areas demarked to accomodate blocks of four people. everyone faces the middle, where there is an square earthern stage marginally bigger than the outlined circular sumo ring, raised a couple of feet or so above ground level. a black-clad line judge sits facing the ring on each of the quadrilateral's side, amongst the foremost spectators, with the technicolour referee - dressed in purple, yellow or some other powerfully bright colour - standing in the ring itself. the wrestlers come out in fours, one quadruplets from the east emerging with one from the west, plonking themselves down to face each other across the sumo ring. one wrestler from each side then enters the ring, both introduced to the crowd by the chirpy introduction of the fight announcer. the sumo wrestlers then take their time pacing around, hoisting their legs in the famous way at the corners of the mound, throwing salt by way of purification across of the ring, washing their mouths out with sake and composing themselves mentally (2). a minute or two later they square up. and then go at each other.

sumo fights are fun in the same way that sushi is fun: each lasting for brief but enjoyable moment and impressive as variations on a theme. you get fast-moving bouts where the wrestlers just push/slap at each other, with one inevitably maneuvering the other out the ring; you get tense times when the wrestlers are locked together, each trying to unbalance the other; you get moments of comedy when a wrestler falls out the ring and onto squishes someone sitting in the front row; in short, you get everything you could ever hope for. the most memorable battle featured one sumo wrestler side-stepping the other from the off as his competitor charged by and then pushing the suprised and off-balance fellow into the ground for an ultra-fast victory that was both cheered and booed. toward the end we actually took to betting on who would win: the stake being, funnily enough, 105 yen plates of sushi. as always, the day ended with a traditional form-shifting performance by the yokozuna.

the highlight of sunday was the asakusa festival, famous for its portable shrines a la the shiogama matsuri from a few months back. while none of these shrines, or omikoshi were anywhere near as large or ornate as those in shiogama, what was lacked in quality was made up for in quantity - there seemed to be a never-ending number of the things moving around the district, each carried by a small army consisting mainly of men dressed in mainly white outfits, whose job it is to make sure the shrine keeps bobbing erratically and chant (3); supposedly there are around one hundred shrines. the real spectacle, however, was seeing the tattoos of japanese gangsters, aka yakuza. ordinarily tattoos, the mark of the yakuza, must be covered; the sanja matsuri is one of the rare times they can reveal - and others can revel in - their body art. it was possible to see detailed and impressive tattoos covering the backs and legs of men donning little more than an old-fashioned nappy-like garment, thankfully in a safe enviroment but in the knowledge that they were dangerous characters.

before heading home we had enough time to go the controversial yasakuni shrine, famous under the previous japanese prime minister thanks to his own visits and the diplomatic fallout they caused in china and south korea (4). the atomosphere was sombre; we didn't stay long.

(1) the bouts actually begin in the morning and continue all day, with the junior ranks kicking off proceedings and the masters bringing things to a close.
(2) the ritualistic elements are skipped in the second rank competition.
(3) their purpose is to purify the neighbourhood.
(4) the shrine is controversial since it commiserates japan's war dead, including those chinese and koreans press-ganged into service whilst japan controlled their territory.

half-century

2007-05-11T13:56:00.000+09:00

i wasn't going to accept a run of any less than fifty posts for this japanthropology malarky; finally, as my innings is nearing a close, i have reached the milestone. and you thought i'd forgot about this thing. time for the customary catch-up highlights package.

so golden week - famous for it's abundance of national holidays (i.e. three in one week) - finally came along and, thanks to the use of two days annual leave, gave me a half-term holiday just a few weeks into the new school year. the weather finally became warm too, meaning that we ventured to the beach, though this doesn't mean that the sea was any warmer than an ice cube slipping down your spine, or that we henceforth kept ourselves dry. we spent another day playing basketball and frisbee in a local park, one checking out the onsen in onagawa, what's really worth talking about is our four day trip to the tokyo area.

the things we did down in toyko, for the most part, are altogether too predictable for japanese people to be interested in whilst at the same time lacking the clout to make those unfamliar sit up and take note. we went to asakusa, which is famous for its HUGE red paper lantern; we went to kamakura, famous for its outdoor sitting buddha statue - yes, yet another sitting buddha statue! this one, however, is my fav so far due to the fact that it was aged, authentic and approachable - and where we managed to locate a pretty nifty turkish restaurant; we went to the china town in yokohama (one of the biggest in the world), home of a myriad of reasonably-priced quality chinese restaurants and various tourist-orientated shops; and we went to tokyo tower - the japanese capital's questionably attractive eiffel equivalent. we also managed to go to akihabara (tokyo's famed "electric town"), which is a place i've wanted to check out since i was a kid. unfortunately when we first went there - at 10PM on a sunday - all the lights were off. heading back there a few days later, after a relatively expensive failed mission to get a idyllic vista of fuji on an unfortunately rainy day, we did experience its distinctive neon glow, however - which for the record is shut down at 8PM. now, having been there, it seems to me that the name "electric town" presumably comes more from the fact that it is THE place in japan for discounted electronics than its illuminations.

tokyo is some place: huge, time consuming and costly. however, while this makes it totally unlike the sapporos, sendais and kyotos of this world - your typical mid-range japanese cities - it lacks the class of london, paris or hong kong. perhaps what it lacks in character it makes up for in quirkiness. on our last night we ended up at this place called "lock down" - walking into which being akin to short haunted house ride (with the odd rattling corpse and what have you catching you off-guard in the darkness) - where we were greeted by a waitress wearing this blue plastic dress and waiters dressed as prisoners. the best thing about the place was the drinks, which all were themed in the style of concotions you might find in the lab of frakenstein or some such crazed scientist. served in beakers and connical flasks, and coming with mixers contained in test tubes and fluid injectors, were various eccentric cocktails with names like "jekyll and hide" that were as easynjoyable to drink as they were fun. sadly we had to escape before we missed the last train back to our hotel, thereby missing out on further hijinks. i forget the name of the district that the bar was in, but i do remember the streets outside teeming with people sheltering from the rain, anonymous beneath endless umbrellas, walking a criss-cross crosswalk between brightly lit streets as we ran between them - it was like a picture perfect movie scene.

there is one last thing to mention. the night before annie's birthday (fifth of the fifth) our mate akira, who's father is a fisherman, took us to ishinomaki international harbour on the way back from a kareoke session. he made us get out of the car and watch while he grabbed a poled fishing net from the trunk, put it in the sea and slooshed it through the water. magically the net lit up, illuminated by the phosphorescent plankton therein. amazed, we experimented with the net, splashing it into the surface water. the effects were unreal, the blue-green sparkle unforgettable - as a memory, it was unbeatable. thanks akira!

pieces of april (3)

2007-04-19T09:55:00.001+09:00

at my main school twenty teachers left and twenty-three arrived, meaning that there would be more new teachers than sekisyo veterans. underpinning this wholesale change was the unshakable belief of kocho-sensei - a PE teacher in a previous life - that sporty types are more confident, upbeat and, through their coaching of sports teams, good for boosting both morale and the school profile; apparently the new recruits were chosen first and foremost on their sporting records from their own high school days.

working with the new teachers has been an interesting experience thus far - especially because, all of a sudden, i am the experienced one. the guy who i teach third year oral communication classes with, for example, has proved willing so far to accept my input into how the class is taught instead of just depending on my teaching materials, even venturing as far as to put things together himself for use in class (1). the other new guy i work with - only 25 years old - is so new to the job that he is deferential to me rather than the other way round. he's a good guy though: he's already invited me to a hanami party on sunday and is a lot more chatty than the other english teachers i know; he's also a big fan of soccer.

the transition between the placid six week period without classes and the start of the new school year was abrupt. up until the past couple of days it's been a constant battle to keep up to date with lesson planning and marking, though thankfully it was easy enough to slip back into the routine of teaching per se; in the first week the new first graders were dazed and confused by the fact that they were all of a sudden in senior high school, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and subject to unknown rules, and in this docile state they were easy to teach. week two for the first years has seen them much more settled - the noisy and cheeky kids, resembling their predecessor first years, have already begun to emerge - even though they now have to cope after school with what my old supervisor called "a kind of hell:" cheering practice.

on tuesday afternoon my new supervisor recommended to me that i go to the gym, where all the first grade kids had gathered, and go and see what all the fuss was about. when i entered i saw that the kids were spaced out throughout the hall, standing individually and reciting the school mantra at the top of their lungs. amongst them, reminding me of fascist camp guards, walked some of the kids i taught last year - the kids from the worst class in the school - who had been handpicked by kocho-sensei in the role of prefect, pacing around full of power and with menacing gaits. along with their school uniform they had red armbands, white gloves and stern facial expressions; thinking that they were like a cross between nazis and the bully characters from roald dahl's tales of childhood i was glad, as a teacher, that they had no authority over me. the first graders looked pretty intimidated by their presence, especially worried that they might be sent to the stage, where everyone could see them, for somehow failing their brief: not standing straight enough, not shouting loudly enough, etc. throughout this torture there was a large drum beating, its sound filling the gym, mingling with the sounds of the students' periodic collective screams of "hai" in miltaristic symphony.

today they're off the hook, and so am i: the last class of the day has been cancelled - which i was due to teach alone - and so has cheering pratice. this we owe to the benevolence of the principal, who declared that we would all go and see the sendai vegalta soccer team train the the nearby ishinomaki city football ground. taking two of the possible meanings of the phrase: it's nice to get a break once in a while.

(1) seriously, this never happens.

pieces of april (2)

2007-04-18T20:41:00.000+09:00

there's a lot of small details in everyday life that i tend not to write about for some reason: the way that the postmen scoot around town throughout the business day on motorbikes, riding the yards between houses and leaving the engine running whilst they run to the next postbox; the way that japanese people almost invariably reverse into car parking spaces; that the convenience store chain spar is called hot spar over here. there seems to be a never ending amount of - perhaps trivial - things i just don't talk about but never would have known before coming to japan.

it seems all too obvious to me now, but it turns out that the japanese nation is obsessed with cherry blossoms. the season kicked off much further south a few weeks ago, ushered in by forecasts in the news about the percentage said flowers will be blooming in subsequent days, and finally has reached ishinomaki. the common way to celebrate the coming of the "cherry blossom front," as it's known in the vernacular, is to grab a sheet of tarpaulin and some alcohol and sit under the cherry trees enjoying the scenery; there is even a verb, "hanami," that means "flower watching" to describe this national pastime. apparently it's best to go when they're fully in bloom during the day, again at night, and finally to see the "storm" of fallen petals blowing around on a gusty day. actually, the hanami season is short, with the cherry blossoms fragile with regards to wind and rain - both of which are in abundance in spring here.

last weekend sarah, andrea and i headed down to ogawara to check out one of the supposedly top one hundred places in all of japan for hanami. the place is in fact famous for having over one thousand cherry blossom trees lining a river and, despite imperfect weather, it made a good day out south of sendai. then today my japanese teacher cancelled our class so that we could go to a local hanami site. you may think that i've lost my mind, or my sense of masculinity, by engaging in such activities but it's just the done thing here. you also get to experience the seasonal food that goes along with hanami, which words english ordinarily fail to describe but is often tasty; today marked a departure on this front, however: transparent noodles that not only looked like they were made out of dried PVA glue but also smelled and tasted just like it. i knew something was wrong when my japanese teacher, who ordered them for me - it's basically impossible to pay your own way if you've been invited out by a senior - started liberally apply the bemusing combination of sugar and soy sauce to whatever had just been put in front of me. my advice: avoid. start spreading the glues.

pieces of april (1)

2007-04-18T11:54:00.000+09:00

when i'm haring along from the train station to school on onagawa mornings i love it when the students try to keep up with my pacy walk, jogging along and venturing to talk with me in japanese as they do so. it's happened a couple of times before, and it happened again this morning with one of the now-second-year male students (1).

onagawa kids, on the whole, take me a lot more seriously than their sekisyo counterparts - usually calling me "sensei" (the respectful way to refer to a teacher) in class, usually more communicative outside of school hours. i even remember one of the guys asking me for tips on how to get a girl; according to my mate akira, whose sister attends onagawa high school, i'm quite popular with the ladies here. not that any of this helps them remember anything about me - my name, age or what country i come from. i've actually lost count of the number of times this one girl has asked me these questions, bashing me in the shoulder when it turns out i'm still not kevin, 24, from america. you think i'd have learned by now, right?

(1) that's right, the first years grew up - i'll talk about that some other time.

memoirs of a gaijin

2007-04-01T00:54:00.000+09:00

my travel buddies and i in kyoto having tracked down some geisha-wannabes

it's typical: you go on a short vacation only to find when you return that one of the school buildings has been taken down and half of the teachers are leaving, including four of the six english teachers and the kyoto-sensei. just another manic monday, right?

but i'm over-dramatising events: the disappearing building was in fact a temporary pre-fabricated job anyway - deigned to stand only for as long as it took to refurbish sekisyo - and that teachers are leaving is due to the academic year having just ended here, triggering the transfers of various teachers between various schools and the odd retirement (1). everyone was amazed at just how many teachers are leaving, however, with nineteen jumping ship instead of the usual total of between five and eight - including some real characters who the staffroom won't be the same without. with regards to the english teachers, i'm glad that the two who are staying are my current supervisor and my new supervisor (ironically the woman who first helped me get set up here), though "unluckily" - as my supervisor puts it at least - all of the new english teachers are male (2).

for my vacation i headed down to kyoto, osaka and nara, which are all in the kansai area of japan (round about the middle longitudinally) and can be reached by bullet train in around four hours from sendai (3). we stayed in kyoto at traditional japanese lodgings known as ryokan, which are good for travellers working to a budget: ours cost a mere 3500 yen per person per night (4).

in modern times kyoto is famous as the location where breakthroughs on global climate change just don't happen. historically the prefecture is renowned for its geisha and, especially from a tourism point of view, it still is

this is kiyomizudera (or, in english, 'purifying water temple'), one of the places to see in kyoto. founded in 780 it is located in gion, a well-known geisha hot spot. whilst there we spotted a couple of geisha parading around an appretice who looked smug as a bug in kimono

some of the random things we got up to in kyoto included finding quite possibly the tastiest scones i've ever had, eating at subway sandwiches for the first time in the east, using a little spanish in a mexican restaurant and drinking in both an english pub and an irish pub. regrettably we also ended up going to a place called gion corner, where we saw the most superficial overview of traditional japanese culture put together into a bit-part stage show for a steep 2,800 yen. easily the most touristy thing we've put ourselves through here, the show really made us value the genuine experiences we've had elsewhere - which some might say are priceless, but they've probably just seen too many mastercard advertisements.

todai-ji temple in nara is one of the most impressive sights i've ever seen in my life. once in this huge wooden structure's grounds it's easy to become immersed in a vision of historical japan

housed in the wooden building above is the largest gilt-bronze statue in the world, the daibutsu, which is 15m in height. much much older than the effort i saw in hong kong, this calm-looking buddha has quite literally lost it's head on several occasions

it was on the second day of our trip that we headed to nara prefecture; whilst there we went through nara koen - a park famous for being plentiful in (very docile) deer - on the way to todai-ji. our third day would be spent in osaka where, alongside seeing the umeda sky building and the castle, we patronised an aquarium that featured incredibly cute sleeping sea otters, dolphins, a manta ray and a whale shark, before returning to kyoto for the remainder of our trip. aside from a little drama, and a little earthquake, a good time was had by all.

the umeda sky building in osaka - the second most populated prefecture in japan - which is easily the most distinctive and interesting feature of the downtown skyline

osaka castle, which is much smaller than, say, edinburgh castle but still well worth checking out. inside is a museum featuring various relics of old japan, though my mates and i were instead captivated by a five-year-old japanese girl who somehow had better english than most of our students and parted from us with the words "see you later, alligator"

mozu in kyoto, home of an astounding 14,000 of these shrine gateways. good for a walk, even on a rainy day

kinkakuji (the 'golden pavilion'), another of kyoto's best-known tourist attractions

(1) those wishing to move have to put a transfer request in, whether or not it is granted, and any subsequent movement, are all at the whim of the principal.
(2) somehow the total of new female teachers is only two out of twenty or so.
(3) the real name for the bullet train is the shinkansen. although these trains can travel at up to 190 mph the difference between travelling by rail in england is sadly not-so-pronounced, though certain carriages do have interiors more reminiscent of planes. entirely unlike english trains, however, shinkansen are invariably on time and seem to make no discernable noise: i was walking along the platform when i saw my first one; it stealthy slid up beside me with the grace of a gigantic metallic sea serpent, catching me by surprise.
(4) the room that my four mates and i shared was barely big enough to accomodate the five futons therein and featured a jam-packed bathroom where it was barely possible to turn around - never mind swing a cat or any other domesticated animal that may be to hand. actually, we were in our room getting ready to check out on sunday morning when we felt last weekend's infamous earthquake, though thankfully we only experienced a mild tremor lasting for a minute or two.

welcome to the machine

2007-03-14T09:29:00.000+09:00

having heard about junior high school graduations, in retrospect the graduation ceremony at sekisyo was sort of disappointing: nobody cried. this might have had something to do with the fact that third grade consisted of exclusively male students, but i can't help feel like corners were cut. perhaps crucially, instead of each and every student mounting the stage and receiving a certificate of completion, the students merely had to stand and shout "hai!" - sometimes in stupid, laughter-inducing voices - before their chosen representative was sent up to collect one certificate on behalf of their class - a time-saving measure freshly implemented by the teachers here.

yesterday saw the counterpoint to graduation: the entrance examination results being posted. junior high school (JHS) students spend their final year at that level preparing for senior high school (SHS) entrance exams and the stakes are high: they can only apply to one place (1). a certain number of students are then recommended by JHS staff to the SHS's in question, meaning that they can attend an interviews and may secure places without examination (at sekisyo 80 places up for grabs at this stage). next the remaining applicants face tests in five areas with their average result becoming their final score. how difficult it is to get into a school is based on the level of competition - there isn't a predetermined benchmark score that'll get you in; at the top school in ishinomaki, sekikou, about 1.6 students apply for each available position, whereas at sekisyo it's a still-impressive 1.3 students per place - there are 200 minus the 80 reserved places - and at onagawa it's a lowly 0.5.

on results day students must travel to their chosen SHS in time for 3PM, where the boards showing the successful applicant's student numbers are hung above the student entrance and unveiled; prior to this moment you could cut the atmosphere with a knife (2). then all of a sudden there comes this swelling noise of jubilation, a cross between a scream and a roar, eminating from the amassed former JHS kids. one student jumped up, punched the air and slammed his satchel into the floor; others were merely hugging (3). but then there were the mothers crying, calling their less-than-confident kids on their mobiles to tell them they didn't make the grade - those guys have a tough time ahead of them.

for those that didn't make it it's not necessarily over: they can apply to schools like onagawa that didn't fill all their places. by doing so they are, in a way, admitting inferiority in a system built on prestige where second choices aren't really good choices. failing that they can sign up for expensive private school tuition in a big city like sendai, or call it quits and go and get a job. actually, education is only compulsory until the end of JHS in japan, and henceforth students have to pay 110,000 yen per year even to attend a public school, be it high level like sekikou or uncompetitive like onagawa, with compulsory uniform costing another 50,000 yen (4).

once upon a time sekisyo and sekikou stood literally side by side. now sekikou, a decade younger than its 95-year-old rival, is recognised as the best school in the area. the kids there will learn academic subjects, with the majority going on to university. here at sekisyo, however, the kids will learn employable skills like book-keeping instead, and the level is improving - especially since girls are now admitted (the number of girls who made it this year is around 95, up 15 from the current first grade). at the end of the day i can completely understand why emotions ran high yesterday. it's just a shame that, like one of my collegues says, those kids will soon forget how excited they were to get in. i wonder how long their enthusiasm will last.

(1) interestingly, i've heard that students work harder preparing for university entrance examinations than they ever will at university - in japan its actually getting into a presitigous place that takes priority.
(2) and i would have missed it had kocho-sensei not came to get me from the otherwise empty staff room.
(3) meanwhile, at annie's sekikou, kids were hoisting each other into the air and, contrastingly, at koubunkan - the formerly all-girls school where andrea works - celebrations were somewhat muted (emotional response seems to be in direct proportion to competition rate).
(4) i asked kocho-sensei about this and it turns out that the tuition money goes to the miyagi board of education, not the school budget - there isn't a point where an unpopular school cannot afford to stay open.

get bento

2007-03-12T13:18:00.000+09:00

today was an standing order bento lunchbox day: nothing special. although a 480 yen bigger bento is available, the choice bento at sekisyo costs 420 yen; sometimes it's so tasty that i want to track down whoever made it and hug them - which is a pretty unusual feeling for me to have; it really is that good. wednesday last week, though, special bento were compulsory - thankfully they were afforded out of the teachers' fund, which everyone subscribes to. to be honest i didn't enjoy it at all: it was bigger but fattier and i just ended up feeling bloated. so when it came to thursday and friday and i had the option of ordering what my supervisor calls a "more luxurious" bento i declined, choosing to keep with the 420 yen one rather than risk between 1000 and 2000 yen on another misfire. my supervisor, locked into the japanese system, was calling my lunchbox brand the "number one" by the end of friday lunchtime - and me the "king of bento". appropriately, my bento maker is called arigato or, in english, "thank you".

with my supervisor able to return to the arigato lunchbox today, he was once again praising its virtues. as it turns out, though, tomorrow is another special bento day. why, you ask? well, it's the job of one of the teachers to invoke the speciality lunchbox - and that's what's happened. but who decides? my supervisor! intregued, i wanted to find out more. in his words, the japanese are all about "cherishing harmony" and are, at the same time, very much locked into their respective groups or, in this case, grades. it's his duty, essentially, to gage the opinions of his co-workers and, if necessary, order a "more luxurious" bento tomorrow in line with what he thinks most people will want. henceforth there are no options: all teachers in his (third) grade will have the selected lunchbox tomorrow. at this point i briefly outlined what might happen instead in england and, impressed at the "logical" nature of my thoughts, he said he was unsurprised that foreigners, having a "broader perspective" than their japanese counterparts, could come up with such a system - a system that benefitting the individuals in question. so at the end of the day he's jealous of my freedom - but he would never dream of breaking from the japanese way of doing things. anyway, since i don't have a grade he says that my decision is "not so serious" - even if the office staff are trying to co-opt me into their collective.

apparently there's a bit of joking on with the lunchboxes, making me realise why some teachers are willing to pay up to 2000 yen for theirs. in instances where other teachers in range have paid less for somewhat more compact bento, they can expect to take a bit of flak from the third grade teachers, who might, for example, poke fun at the relative size of a colleague's shrimp. on days when the third grade teachers are feeling a little less extravagent, however, they tend to remain silent and avoid drawing attention to themselves or their supposedly inferior lunches. it seems to me like a sort of conflation of the idea of "face" in asian culture with good ol' fashioned banter. although, according to my supervisor it's only "half-serious", who'd have thought lunchbox politics could be so complicated?

tradition impossible

2007-03-12T09:02:00.000+09:00

the portable shrine at shiogama hote matsuri

monday morning, 9AM, and against all odds it's snowing. this is the most snow i've seen in this part of japan in, according to one of the teachers here, a year "雪一番" - or "number one for snow". somehow i managed to survive cycling to work despite the treacherous conditions, making it in on time: to do absolutely nothing. for the past two weeks or so i've had no classes, with this state of affairs is set to continue until april 8th. however: being on time (for an 8.25 start) is especially important these days in light of me getting to work two fridays ago at 9AM, hungover like hell, after being out drinking with various teachers (1). on the plus side i've managed to jettison my jaunts to onagawa for the meantime, so at least i don't have to get up quite so early and i don't have a train to miss.

this post is a bit of a catch-up on the "cultural" events that i've become acquainted with over the past few weeks. the first is actually non-japanese in nature: chinese new year, which fell on sunday february 18th. held in yamoto, site of birthdays and holidays galore, we celebrated mainly through food under the guidance of annie - what better way to celebrate the year of the pig (2)? heading first to the local supermarket we managed to find suitable of enough ingredients to make a hot pot soup and chinese dumplings. back at andrea's apartment, as is becoming the norm, i was drafted in to help with preparing the vegetables - cooking was good fun that day - before akira appeared just in time to skilfully prepare the fish. happily, i also managed to knead the dough to make dumplings with; when it came to making the dumplings themselves this was very much a multiplayer activity - though we ended up frying them all thanks to time constraints despite our intial hopes of wonton action. we rounded off that day with making a chinese new year poster card, a fun collaborative activity to round off a fun day.

in japan the third of march is hina matsuri, the dolls festival to commemorate girls's day. in terms of the associated customs i really can't say anything more on the subject than sara, who deals with the matter in depth in a recent post (3). kocho-sensei here managed to win some free local newspaper publicity for the school by bringing in the exceedingly expensive seven-tiered doll display he bought for his daughter when she was born - and apparently was still paying for two years later - since this is the first year that the school includes girls and she is now married and in her 30s (my PE teacher mate has a similarly grandiose display for his daughter, minori). on the day itself some of us headed down to the international centre in sendai in an attempt to somehow participate in the festival, though disappointingly in the end the event there was a japanese-only private party. that day we did manage to go and see traditional japanese flower arranging exhibition though - which i guess is girly enough; it was actually interesting since japanese flower arranging is so completely different to western forms.

finally, the weekend just gone saw an unusual festival in a place called shiogama - about forty minutes south of ishinomaki by train - called the hote matsuri. here's how the japan national tourist organisation describes the event:

The Hote Matsuri is a festival held every year at Shiogama-jinja, a shrine in the city of Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture. The shrine is at the summit of the mountain Ichimori-yama, located almost in the center of Shiogama. The approach to the shrine is straight with a steep incline and 202 stone steps. The highlight of the festival occurs when a large portable shrine is carried down the stone steps. This o-mikoshi carries shrine maidens dressed in beautiful attire, and parades through the city with a flag hoisted like a sail. Tradition has it that the festival began around 1680. Back then fire was a common hazard, and the festival's original purpose was to pray for protection from fire. Since then, prayers for the prosperity of the city and wellbeing of families have been added, and the festival thrives to this day.

and they're not kidding about the highlight. the shrine is a hugely heavy thing and, combined with 202 particularly worn steep stone steps, the act of carrying it from top to bottom is a dangerous, strenous feat. part of the crowds lining the staircase, i saw from less than a metre away the strained expressions of the bearers at the front (something like ten men bear the load on their shoulders to the fore, with perhaps another fifteen behind doing their best to hold up - and hold back - their end of the deal) as they made their difficult journey down the stairs, swaying to the left and the right en masse as they descended, with many in the audience heart-in-mouth. meanwhile, some were attempting to throw 100 yen coins into the shrine as it passed them, often as not pelting those carrying the thing instead. personally i can't remember seeing such a trial upclose and personal; it was quite something - especially since the decayed state of the stairs had proved itself felt only moments earlier when the old man at the head of the procession had fell and rolled down five or six of them (thankfully he seemed unharmed). instead of following the procession and thereby seeing the parade, i joined up with my mates and went to explore the temple at the top of the staircase. whilst there we were lucky enough to see a short musical play about an ogre trying to overthrow this king who, in the end, is able to feed the ogre's head to his trusty pet dragons - especially entertaining.

traditional japanese dress and instruments in the portable shrine procession

the shrine carriers having just began their descent

(1) the preceeding thursday had been graduation. we'd started off that night at this place very popular for office parties (or えんかい - enkai), 石もり (ishimori), with a sort of semi-formal dinner party. afterwards, with kyoto-sensei and kocho-sensei both disappearing, i ended up hanging out with the PE teachers, one of whom is the famous dinner invitation guy. at this next place, featuring fairly nasty wine and kareoke, the onagawa teachers randomly showed up too. i ended up hammered for three reasons: 1) the japanese system of pouring drinks for each other from interchangable and infinite bottles makes it impossible to know how much you've drank; 2) the japanese custom of pouring no drinks for yourself and only for others as a gesture of friendship; 3) the japanese belief in the white guy as an enzyme-powered god of alcohol and my tendency to forget i'm not as i become increasingly out of it. i remember i ended up ballroom dancing to kareoke with both of the waitresses - which i was embarrassed about until i found out my predecessor's predecessor, who was also english, ended up doing the same on a regular basis. since i didn't have my watch with me i have no idea what time i got home, though it might have been after midnight. waking up by chance at 7.45AM i had the potential to get to work on time but was so tired and intoxicated there i didn't have a chance in hell. having been in work for a couple of hours, kyoto-sensei told me i was in trouble with the principal, who as apparently "very angry" - though when i went to his office i didn't get told off; he just said that the japanese honourable way of doing things was to get hammered and stay up all night but make sure you get to work on time, no matter your condition, and warned me against making the same mistake again. that day i was so hungover i ended up taking the afternoon off.
(2) for the record, 2007 is the year of the boar - or wild pig - in japan, and representations of the animals in question are very different in the two countries.
(3) thanks to my japanese teacher i've tried those hailstone things and they're pretty tasty, their sugary texture reminding me of merengue - though i think they are more crunchy.

links awakening

2007-03-07T11:31:00.000+09:00

sometimes when i'm at work i forget that i'm not just stigmatised because i'm a foreigner, i'm also a temporary worker with a fixed expiration date - which means i'm screwed both ways. check out this article from time magazine.

and, on the lighter side, here's something on the strangely titled white day and valentine's culture in japan.

made in hong kong, chapter four

2007-03-05T09:26:00.000+09:00

there was always supposed to be a fourth, final chapter to made in hong kong. two months after getting back, here it is.

* * * * *

if you want that "nice suit," a "nice watch" or a foot massage then kowloon is the place to be. always prepared, we were relying heavily on a copy of the hong kong Lonely Planet when we went there - only it was about ten years out of date. for our first destination, having seen the film chungking express back at uni, i petitioned matt that we check out the chunking mansions - which LP lovingly refers as a hell-hole. chungking mansions is in fact a place notorious for its dodgy stores and even dodgier accomodation, though somehow it still felt disappointingly dark, dingy and dense compared to how it seemed on film. aged or not, our LP was (sometimes) on the money.

after grabbing something awful to eat at an awful restaurant - where our lonely "non-smoking" table was literally surrounded by smokers, the service was abysmal and the tea lived up to hong kong's infamously poor standards - we decided to check out kowloon's park. according to our LP, kowloon park is (or more accurately was) a monstrosity. thankfully we ignored its outdated advice and found ourselves an interesting park with an entertaining exotic avary in its centre. whilst there we also spotted some old men playing a game that, from a distance, looked like a crazy version of draughts. it turned out that it was chinese chess - xiangqi - which is played on using the lines, not the squares, of a 8 x 8 grid; searching for a set of our own was something that would henceforth become a subquest of our hong kong adventure. i remember this old guy laughing as he kept taking his opponents pieces with his cannon, surrounded by other old guys gripped by the chess battle in hand.

it's worth noting that in kowloon are also various markets, including the famous bird market - home to hundreds of birds in insuffienciently-sized cages. there are a few trees in proximity; seeing free birds flying between them and alongside their caged brethren only served to intensify my misgivings about the cirumstances of captivity. actually, on the whole the markets in kowloon are disappointing - we found better on hong kong island at repulse bay, home to its own disappointment in the shape of an over-hyped, unremarkable beach. (it was there that we finally found an inexpensive portable chinese chess set.)

* * * * *

it must be said that matt and i, bearers of the archiac LP, are neither the most experienced nor efficient of travellers; it wasn't until one of our spontaneous friendly guide women suggested that we get ourselves a free, up-to-date tourist map that we even procured our cumbersome fold-out one. anyway, we'd planned to stay in hong kong an extra couple of days to catch new year. however, we failed entirely to locate exactly where we should spend it - only realising this huge oversight on december 31st. we were in trouble.

we'd talked several times about finding a good place to go drinking, even doing some scouting a couple of nights before new year. we discovered that soho was underwhelming and that the nearby superior drinking area - all of the western bars were packed into a cul-de-sac, showing re-runs of football games and selling british beer - was patronised by middle-aged clientele. despite having a good time drinking that night we decided new year would be best spent amongst our own generation, although we were clueless as to how we could make this a reality.

now it was december 31st and, what was worse, it was evening. we'd heard time square was a good place to be but we didn't know where that was (we found out the next day that it was moments from our hotel, seeing photos of proceedings in the newspaper). the best we could come up with was to go to the habour area, where we figured we could catch the fireworks at midnight amongst people and amazing neon-lit scenery. having learned it was legal to drink on the streets, we found ourselves a 7-11 and each armed ourselves with a bottle of alcohol. but when we got to the harbour it was empty and, soon enough, so were our beer bottles. somehow it had reached 10.30PM. there were no shops in sight, and we had a mission on our hands.

by the time we found a 7-11 it was around 11.30PM. on our travels we'd passed a crowd watching a (presumably) local band playing by on the waterfront - we were planning to get back over there in time for the midnight festivities. when i was waiting in line to pay for my beer this girl in line behind me said "hi" so i turned round; she asked me were we were spending new year. when i told her she said that we'd already missed the fireworks (they'd been on at 8PM!) and she'd be at this place called "red" near the IFC building. totally forgetting that there were actually two IFC buildings but pleased with this recon, i headed outside to tell matt that our plans had changed. once we realised that we didn't actually know where we were going, with about fifteen minutes left to midnight, all seemed lost. we were wondering why we'd left the girl (and her boyfriend) behind.

everyone we asked for directions couldn't help us. but then, when were in this mall, this guy saw that we had beer and asked where we'd got it from; evidently he was as screwed as we were: the closest 7-11 wasn't close enough. matt asked if he knew where "red" was. he did! not only that, despite living in hong kong he'd had no idea of where to spend new year either and, seizing this opportunity, he said he'd take us there. when we told him we were sorry to have missed the fireworks he said that he hadn't even known there would be any. feeling altogether less idiotic, things were starting to look up.

not only did we find the place - a rooftop overlooking the harbour on one side and the city on the other, with the smaller of the two IFC buildings towering over us - but we got there in time. and we were surrounded by people our age. we'd rode our luck for all it was worth and we'd pulled it off. it was a good feeling: made in hong kong.

quick march

2007-03-01T11:40:00.001+09:00

graduation for third year senior high school students fell this year on march the first, and i've just got back from preceedings. ceremony is an strange beast in japan. there's a lot of people walking off the stage, bowing to flags and returning to their seat before being announced as the next speaker, going back up the stage, getting some more bowing in and speaking into the microphone once more. notably, the speaker always faces whoever he's addressing, leading to instances, for example, where the student leader has his back to the entire assembly bar the principal. meanwhile, for the audience there's a lot of bowing in various directions at various times; sometimes you have to get up from your seat, bow, sit down, stand back up a moment later, bow again, and sit down again (it keeps you literally on your toes). the nice thing about today's proceedings was that, for a change, they'd pre-heated the hall, allowed us to keep our shoes on (cold sports hall floors aren't too welcoming) and given us seats. graduations are special occassions: you can tell because the hall is bedecked in red and white stripes if nothing else.

schools here have their own songs, official mottos and logos; sekisyo recently became one of the few to also fly a flag - one of the many publicity stunts kocho-sensei pulls to get this place in the local newspapers. according to kocho-sensei the general passion of the students has declined since back when he was merely a teacher here. he was telling me about how the pupils used to get into fights with their counterparts at rival school sekikou (one of annie's two schools) at the annual sports meet/derby, and dive into the river when their team won in the boat race - regardless of whether or not they could swim, inevitably leading to the emergence of the local rescue boat. the students are nowhere near as masculine or brave these days; when you let them loose on the internet, for instance, the best they can do is browse 300 quid wallets and fashionable jeans. but they're still guys at the end of the day: in my language classes they're always trying to find rude words - though the best they usually find is a misconstrued term like "welling up" - and shout them in my direction.

i realised today that i recognise quite a few of the departing third years, mainly thanks to kocho-sensei's cleaning time initiative (an idea stolen from the office head teacher), whereby the students assigned to tidy his office are lined up and made to converse with me on a daily basis. then there's the guys who i taught three times a week (all twelve of them); there was some good guys and real characters in that class - i wish them well. a lot of ALTs are wondering right now how their wishy-washy second years are going to somehow evolve into third years in just over a month. i think, however, that the trick is that the new first years will just look so young as to make everyone else that bit more mature by default. to be honest, i don't know what to expect from the next generation of students here - the school will certainly have a different vibe with girls in two of its three grades - but i'm looking forward to starting from scratch.

snowbiz

2007-02-19T12:30:00.000+09:00

fall guy: akira diving backward into the snow

if you're wondering where winter was hiding this year then the answer is northern japan, where the days are nippy and the ground is slippy. such is the setting for the sapporo snow festival, annual magnet to the odd busload of ALTs.

48 of us met up in sendai on a thursday night, many arriving straight from all-you-can-drink parties to discover there was no toilet onboard our coach. we left sendai at about 1.30AM. everyone was suprised when we got to the ferryport just four hours later, two hours ahead of schedule; many of my fatigued companions resorted to sleeping on that most uncomfortable of beds, the concrete floor, upon arrival since we were soon unceremoniously dispatched from the bus. waiting for us were the ever-lovable microwave vending machines (side-stepping them most people seemed content with ice cream for breakfast). eventually it was time to board the silver queen, where our living standards were upgraded to include carpeted floors and small cuboid leather pillows. a quick reccé of the area yielded the discovery that the "restaurant" onboard was staffed exclusively by more microwave vending machinery. it was time to get some sleep.

after an eight hour ferry ride and another bus journey we arrived at our hostel; clean, cheap and comfortable it was a good find as far as i could c. those of us who wanted to had enough time to grab a shower before heading out into the snowy streets of friday evening in the city of sapporo. our destination was the sapporo beer factory, host to a 90 minute all-you-can-drink-and-eat party featuring mutton, which you cook yourself on grills built into the tables. there were three beers available, each brewed onsite by the famous sapporo beer company (one of the top three brewers in japan): the usual light-coloured whizz pop variety, its darker smoother brother and a "half and half" combination of the two. after the fun and games there most people headed over to an infamous foreigner-friendly club called "booty" for dancing and drinking (to date my only clubbing experience in japan).

for some reason stitch's popularity is perhaps only second to that of winnie the pooh when it comes to disney in japan

having been inexplicably sensible in my alcoholism on friday night, saturday morning woke me without a hangover. that day we did three notable things: ate some of the sapporo's trademark ramen for lunch, saw panoramic views of sapporo from the JR tower in the evening, and saw the snow sculptures that make the festival - turns out the army make the sculptures - both by day and by night. some of the sculptures, slightly melted thanks to winter lacking its usual force, were undoubtably impressive, perhaps between fifteen and twenty metres high and detailed in design. highlights included a japanese temple, palacial building and an ice mansion, all of which looked better when artificially illuminated against the pitch-black night sky. the day ended with a snowball fight and us making a snowman.

on sunday i joined akira's brigade and headed to a famous town called otaru. quite a lot of the day seemed to be spent driving, though on travel excursions like this one that's not necessarily a bad thing and it beat the endless walking of the day before. the town itself was pretty quaint, sort of reminiscent of towns in the lake district in england, and we visited a couple of craft shops there, including this one with an igloo outside. oh, and there was this lane in the town reserved for "snow gleaming" where people were making these snow/ice buckets to put candles in at night and random piles of snowballs. once we left we headed via gondola cable car to close to the top of this mountain, taking a caterpillar-tracked snowmobile to the summit for more kick-ass views of hokkaido. i wound up the day with some tasty chinese food at the english-friendly restaurant steamed in sapporo.

the mighty snow temple

i had a really good time in sapporo. i remember the taxis revving up on the icy roads, desperately trying to get some purchase, while other cars skidded to a gradual halt behind them; i remember going for ice cream on saturday, despite it being the iciest day i'd faced this year; i remember eric singing songs from aladin in the communal baths - i've never had a friend like him; i remember it snowing in otaru, with over a foot of snow already on the ground and akira falling in. there's no business like snow business.

yesterday's news

2007-02-14T09:53:00.000+09:00

if there's something that really annoys me it's when figures use their authoritive status to pull the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting audiences - the case in point being the first article i linked to yesterday, concerned with "terminating" the use of ALTs in japan. once upon a time i was forced to study a "critical thinking" course at college, which back then i considered to be the biggest waste of time in the world; crucially it made me remember to question why you believe what you are told: is it because of who's telling you and not what's being said? our friend, the "professor of English as a foreign language at Toyama University of International Studies," is guilty of using his status as an authoritative academic to sidestep due academic process, writing something up in a newspaper that would be shot to pieces within seconds if posted in an academic journal.

where's the research, the balanced arguments, the referencing? what's this guy's agenda? why did this truncated and rehashed version of an article he wrote last summer appear just the other day in the press? i wonder. he's far too willing to rely on "anecdotal" evidence and a very limited range of examples to provide a foundation for his grandiose generalisations, while at the same time complaining that there have been no "comprehensive studies with valid empirical evidence" to prove the value of ALTs - where's his equivalent evidence that they're so entirely useless? personally i would never argue that the current ALT system is particularly efficient or necessarily effective on the whole, but to pretend that there are no successes, or to imply that no ALTs have qualifications, is just smoke and mirrors. obviously ALTs were introduced in the first place for a reason; why not suggest improvements rather than calling for their termination - perhaps downscaling ALT numbers in conjunction with an actual ALT training programme, requiring preliminary teaching qualifications even, and better ALT supervision (including progress reviews) throughout their time working in japan? and i'm confused as to why he thinks Assistant Language Teachers always supplant the role of the main teacher in class - the ALT is just as often the one sidelined - or why actual co-operative mutally beneficial team teaching is never the result. i have good relationships with many of the teachers i work with and i genuienly think things can work rather well on occassion.

and it's not exactly obligitory for ALTs to play games every lesson and thereby turn english study into some sort of joke. most senior high school ALTs base their activities on the trying to make the dead english in the textbook come to life, or even fight against the old-fashioned/misfiring english therein. i myself, with no restrictions on what i teach, try and come up with useful material too - and i'm getting better as my experience grows. ALTs actually are pretty useful too in allowing the students to interact with english speakers (one of my students at onagawa was complaining the other day that he could understand only JTE english so why did he have to put up with me - but this is real life kid), see english being used as a living language in conversations between ALT and JTE (that i could understand japanese words thanks to english explanations seems like a magic trick to students): there certainly are benefits. on the whole the actual english ability/experience of JTEs (and textbook writers) is insufficient in itself; why not use ALTs at least as a crutch until the japanese education system can go forward unassisted?

finally, our professor totally ignores the internationalising function of the JET programme too. he makes reference to the "ministry" (concerned with education) - failing to acknowledge that JET ALTs may be paid as teachers but are employed too with a view to propagating cultural and racial enlightenment by three different ministries! and, as a gaijin in japan, i think internationalising is pretty important. the second link from yesterday - about a school hiring blondes with blue or green eyes as their ALTs - tells you alot about the mindset of some japanese. my supervisor, despite his interest in english, in fact never wants to go to an english speaking country and never has been - that tells you something too. then there's that racist magazine that was onsale throughout japan until recently (you can draw your own conclusions on that). at the end of the day i still get stared at an awful lot in my daily life for just being white, and the students often call ALTs by their predecessors names: it's important for them to learn, in this globalised world, that we're not quite so scary and that we're not all the same. don't forget the word gaijin means "outsider."

in his piece our professor even plays the populist card of pointing out what a great waste of taxpayers' money ALTs are. it's a shame someone is willing to stoop so low to try and destroy completely what remains potentially useful in the name of a narrow-minded idea of progress. i wanted to write a response, as much for my own sake as anyone else's - though it's somewhat ironic that i can use my spare time at work to do so! viva la JET programme!

blonde internationalisation

2007-02-13T16:19:00.000+09:00

today i've stumbled over a couple of contrasting articles that seem worth linking. the first is a bit of an assault on the humble ALT, ignoring totally any internationalising aspects of the JET programme; the second is about blondes...

senbetsu

2007-02-08T16:18:00.001+09:00

i'm off to this snow festival in sapporo, on the northernmost island of japan, this weekend, leaving tonight. and next weekend's plan of going to this other festival in the west of japan seems to be on ice since a (rare) japanese friend of mine is getting married. by mentioning these things to kyoto-sensei here at sekisyo i learned a couple of interesting cultural pointers.

first: the holiday form of senbetsu. according to kyoto-sensei's electronic dictionary senbetsu means ‘a parting (farewell) gift,’ though it may be invoked at less decisive moments such as when someone is departing for a trip. in this instance the way it works is that you give somebody a white money envelope containing a certain sum, with a view to getting a souvenir back from the trip to the value of 33% of that amount. about ten minutes after explaining the concept to me - and i wasn't certain why he was - kyoto-sensei came up to me and gave me a money envelope containing 3,000 yen. so now, in sapporo, i have a mission.

secondly: the events form of senbetsu. on special occassions, such as when one is moving, getting married or having a funeral, then senbetsu takes on that function of a farewell gift. apparently at a wedding it's the norm to give about 30,000 yen to the couple nowadays, with this amount being about three times what it was back in the day. guests get presents in exchange for attending. from what i can gather the value of the gift is fixed in most instances at a percentage value of the money given, which is interesting and probably has something to do with the eastern obsession in ‘face’ (i.e. the meaning being the same as in the expression ‘save face’). according to kyoto-sensei, since i'm not invited to the family-only wedding ceremony itself, my contribution should be something like 1,500 yen with perhaps the gift in exhange being valued at 500 yen.

getting involved in this sort of calculated situation without knowing your role seems to be a dangerous business; you could seem to be snubbing someone just by paying a reasonable yet officially insufficient senbetsu if you don't completely understand the rules of engagement. it's at times like these that i feel totally out of my depth, like the lead character in the book i'm reading at the moment - "the idiot" by dostoyevsky - who is incapable of dealing with the alien world of high society. i wonder if this story will have a happy ending.