happy merry christmas!

Happy Merry Christmas and a happy new year! I'm in Tokyo at the moment
since I decided I wanted to feel somewhat productive with using my
time off work. I've got two weeks off from school but decided to only
spend a week in Tokyo since we planned on making an attempt to have a
semi-traditional Christmas dinner in Gifu. Didn't really feel like
Christmas though since I was supposed to work that day, all the stores
were open, and they had already taken their Christmas decorations down
in preparation for New Year's.

Anyway, me and a friend left for Tokyo on the 27th, and are planning
to stay till the 5th. So far we've been to Nikko and seen the three
wise monkeys (see, hear and speak no evil monkeys) and in Tokyo,
visited Sega's indoor theme park Joypolis and got on the
mildly-whelming (not over or underwhelming, just whelming) Prison
Break ride. I guess i may have appreciated it more had I actually seen
the show, and understood everything that was said as well. Ah well.

Unfortunately, this trip required a necessary visit to the Apple Store
in Ginza. I only enjoy visiting there when I don't need to go, not
when I have to buy a charger for my iPod after forgetting to pack it
for this trip. I actually managed to forget everything at home that I
bought specifically for this trip. Urgh.

yatta! christmas!

It was pretty stressful, and at one point, I thought it was going to be a complete disaster, but it turned out all right in the end. Kinda like what you'd expect from your standard clichéd chick flick, I guess. Minus the passionate embrace and the couple you know are gonna get together in the end.

But I digress (again) - My first Christmas party without family went alright without too many dramas! Woo! I didn't realise how much I take family (i.e. mum) for granted considering there's so much planning to do to make such a huge meal. Granted, I kinda did Christmas dinner in Australia before, but that involved an oven, and hot weather that defrosted everything, and the involvement of less flammable ingredients....

So, considering the size of my fridge and my oven/microwave/toaster combo appliance, it took heaps of micro-organising - we ordered the ham and cheesecake and chicken online from Nagoya, and it just managed to fit into our fridge. Then, since my "oven" is kinda small, we weren't too sure how long to cook stuff, so we played it safe and decided to buy a pre-cooked ham that just required defrosting. Which would have been good, had we taken the ham out to defrost long enough. Lesson learned - hams take longer than 2 days to defrost. And by baking it in an "oven" for around about 2 hours and letting it rest for a couple hours before eating it should make it less icy.

2nd lesson learnt - probably not best to try and toast almonds in an industrial-strength fish grill. Toast burns if you leave it in the grill for longer than a minute, and almonds after a few results in a fairly huge flame. At least I know now that you can put water on gas-based fires.



So yeah, after all the food-related dramas, it turned out to be a pretty good meal, and to top it all off, we decided on doing some carolling while fulfilling our Japanese quotient of the day.



Turns out, carolling is WAY more fun when it's done in a room with just you friends, a few drinks, and some Nelly, Justin Timberlake and Sean Kingston... and of course, the obligatory Rihanna song.

how to make delicious tea in a flash

oshiri kajiri mushi...

So, it's been two full weekends since my last blog, and What do I have to show for it?

• A scarf, and two pairs of gloves - I realised after riding my bike to school one wet, sub 5˚ morning that I really needed to buy more winter weather accessories. And, never seeing the snow much in Melbourne, decided I needed to make my first ever purchase of a scarf. The only one I had beforehand was a Footscray Bulldogs scarf, which was rarely used because:
  a) It's never really scarf-worthy weather in Melbourne,
  b) Surprisingly, I never really felt an urge to show everyone which AFL team I barracked for, or even let people know that I actually, at one point in time, did follow the AFL, albeit superficially and purely because I liked dogs and the colours red and blue when I actually did follow the AFL, and
  c) I'm not a bogan.
  I also ended up with two pairs of gloves - not because I felt the need to have options to coordinate with what I wore each day, but since I didn't expect to find any gloves I liked and bought a cheap arse pair that I thought I were okay. That was, until I found a cooler, more expensive pair of leather gloves in another store 10 minutes later.
  
• A Paper Doll - "Meh, I've done origami before, a paper doll can't be that hard!"
  One deflated ego, and two hours later, resulted in this: Turns out paper doll, not as origamiy as I thought. And, I found out that I have issues differentiating an inch from a centimetre, which doesn't make the art of making paper dolls any easier.
• A Japanese song stuck in my head. After Karaoke last week (yes, I went again, and please don't judge me - I got tricked into doing all these things! stupid Japan!) Our usual trip was a little different this time since we went with a Japanese guy who didn't speak that much English. Not wanting him to feel out of the loop, I tried to sing a Japanese song, and turns out, I don't know that many. The only ones I do know happen to be both kid's songs - one from 2000, and the other one, a huge hit at the moment... So much so that it's now even got it's own dance. You know how when you don't know all the words to a song, only the few words you know play through your head, which eventually drives you insane? Well, it seems to happen a lot in Japan, since I can't understand most of the words, and this song just feels like I should know more to the song, but what I know is pretty much it.... "Oshiri kajiri mushi...." dammit!
  
• A butt groove on my kotatsu chair. Due to a lack of central heating in Japan and my paranoia about using a kerosene heater, my saviour is my trusty ol' kotatsu. It's like a coffee table, with a blanket underneath the top table bit that drapes over the edges and underneath the table top and blanket is a mini heater, so as you sit underneath the table, your feet stay warm, and the heat stays in thanks to the blankets. Mmm.... toasty... I so am not looking forward to my next electricity bill.
  
• Resentment towards TV networks. If it weren't for the Writer's Strikes, I wouldn't have sat through a season-long Heroes marathon. It only would have been an 10 episode marathan of Heroes instead. Now not only am I more yay-Heroes, but I'm annoyed that this next episode that's only meant to tie up the current storyline is now serving as the season finale. Booo.
  

subarashii unda za shii...

Don't even get me started on what I think about having school on Sundays. I don't care that I get Monday off in lieu, and that the day was a bludgy day consisting of a huge sing-off involving all the classes at school, and a marching band, which means I didn't have to teach at all today, but making Sunday a work day when you're used to a standard working week is just sacrilegious.

The only thing that made my day was watching marching band dancers perform. Not because they were awesome, because they weren't the best dancers in the world, and I'm not sure how I felt about their interpretive dance trying to narrate the story of superman. But, they did perform a flag dance to Disney's Under the Sea. The reason I was excited was that it wasn't just any version of Under the Sea, it was the Japanese version! So it made me overlook their oddly inappropriate dance moves to the song.

weekend away for free! free! free weekend! did i mention it was free?

Guess what I did last weekend? What? free Weekend? How did you know?

Well, since you were so insistent on me telling you what happened, I guess I'll fill you in on my pretty awesome weekend away in Hida. A while back, some random dropped by Kiri's school and was offering weekend trips away to Hida, the northern part of Gifu, organised by Hida city's Department of Tourism. It included a whole schedule of things to do the whole weekend, meals, accommodation, and the bus to transport us there and back. All for free! The catch? Apparently none, except for giving them permission to use photos taken on the tour as well as filling out a questionnaire at the end of the trip.

It seemed a little too good to be true, and I was paranoid about there being some hidden tourist tax or something upon entering the place, but nothing at all. We were warned that people in the area weren't accustomed to many foreign tourists and to watch out for that, but that simply meant everyone didn't speak English but seemed super nice about it.

Highlights of the weekend:

• Picking apples at the apple orchard. Sounds lame, I know, but it also involved all-you-can-eat apples and taking some home, which was pretty cool. I know it sounds like my definition of cool has probably deteriorated, but free fruit seems cool in a country that sells apples for around about $3 each. So it was probably that that made it seem cool, plus it was the first thing we did once we arrived in Hida, so I think we were just pumped to be doing anything for free. We also found out that it was just a week out of apple picking season, so all the apples had already been picked, but the apple people specifically left some trees with apples so that we could pick them over the weekend.
• Walking around the area was kinda cool because it counted as a type of physical exertion (ergo, and adequate amount of exercise) while still seeming touristy and non-exercisey. And, I was wondering why Japanese people make a huge fuss about the changing of the seasons, so I'm kinda seeing why they feel that way after seeing how picturesque everything is when the leaves change colour.
  
  
• Rail Mountain Biking. Yep, you heard right. the area just got rid of their train, and wanting to encourage tourism and do something with the remaining train tracks, they made rail bikes, that run on the tracks, hoping tourists come of the gimmick and to see the sites. It was pretty much just riding a bike, but you don't really choose where you want to go, but I think it seemed fun because we were some of the first people to try it out.
• Making soba noodles from scratch was awesome. I originally went in thinking that it could be something I do at home, but after seeing how much work goes into it, and the fancypants utensils and stuff they use (they have a specialised soba cutting knife that seems like a guillotine with a handle) I think I'll just buy it in a pack, thank you very much. We ended up taking some packs of soba we made home, but it turns out, I should have learnt how to cook soba properly before trying to eat it at home. yurgh.
• Food! Yes, it's me, so of course my highlight would be the food. It was all traditional Japanese food throughout the whole weekend, which seemed a bit much, we got to try the specialities of the region. Although, I think every region of Japan has a speciality, so I'm wondering if heaps of places share specialities with other regions and they just pretend that they don't know about any other region making, say, chicken on sticks. But dinner involved Hida beef, which is pretty much the same as Kobe beef, except it's not from Kobe. So the cattle are played music, to relax them, given beer so they eat more and get fat, and given massages to mix the meat with the fatty tissue. It's also pretty expensive, which is why I was surprised we got to eat it - I was expecting free food meant just some Japanese takeaway, not some lavish feast with free beer and sake.

So all in all, cool weekend - but the whole time, I was just thinking how amazing it was all for free, so I'm not too sure how much I'd pay for the weekend if I were to do it normally. Like, the rail mountain bike was fun, but if I was paying money to experience the feeling of riding my bike and the tunnel, I think I'd have to think it through. But did I mention it was free?

nirvana in nara

You should feel privleged reading this. Why? Because this blog, dear reader, is now written by someone who is now enlightened - that is, according to the Japanese legend that says if you pass through the Buddha's nostril (by Buddha's nostril, they mean hole in a pillar in Todaiji temple) you are promised enlightenment, apparently accompanied by a pompous and condescending tone that emerges in retrospective blog posts.

So, this moment of clarity and pretentiousness occurred during my weekend to Nara - Well, planned for a weekend in Nara, but ended out to be maybe less than 24 hours in the end. We had initially thought that going to Nara from a larger city such as Nagoya would make it quicker and easier to get to, but turns out not to be the case, as we found out soon enough after an riding a bike with a flat tire home as fast as possible to just miss the scheduled train to Nagoya, and the well-intentioned but seemingly ill-informed train driver in between Nagoya and Nara. We asked the train gu what was the fastest way to Nara, and told us to get off at a different stop than we had planned, and was even so nice as to stop the train at the station we were to get off and walk to the end of the carriage to us to tell us that was our stop, and would get us to Nara quicker. Unfortunately, after 5 hours of train riding, we found this not to be the case.

But our time in Nara was pretty awesome - turns out, just seeing the two main sights in the area can adequately fill a short weekend escape. We ended up visiting the nearby Daibutsu (Big Buddha), and seeing the hordes of sacred deer in the park. They were pretty cool deer, but I think I was a little disappointed when I saw them up close, since they kinda look like kangaroos. I wonder if Japanese people think the opposite when they come to Australia...



But see the similarity? It's kinda like how Goofy and Pluto are both apparently dogs. I still don't know how Mickey keeps one as a pet and hangs out with the other one though. Kangaroos are the like the Goofy to Pluto-like Deer. But they were still cool nonetheless - I got swarmed by like 10 when they all thought I was feeding one of the deer, and being Japanese deer, also bow as well! I ended up bowing and looking like a tool getting all the deer we encountered bow back though.

The visit to Nara also meant a visit to the Kasuga Shrine, which was cool, but a bit similar to most other shrines and temples here. I think I'm getting to the templed out point now, since temples slightly different, but still the same after a while. I used to think "wow, this temples amazing!" but it's degenerated to a feeling of "oh, this one's red...". So I think I might have give the temple/shrine visiting a break and explore other traditional Japanese culture to fill my Japanese quotient, which now thinking about it, may be difficult since the only other Japanese culture I can think about is Karaoke...

i did something i'm not necessarily proud of...

Don’t judge me… I’m in Japan, and just trying to experience the Japanese culture thing… And sure, it may have been the second time I’ve done it here, but it’s only because I only got the hang of it recently, so only due to my slight analness I went a second time to try and master the whole “decorating print club stickers with a time limit thing”… It’s not like I’m a huge fan or anything… Honest!

festival fun

Yay festivals! They’re kinda done to death here, with what seems to be at least one every weekend, but for the unassuming foreigner who has been here for less than 3 months already, it’s not too bad!


Some festivals seem kinda random though – like this Sword festival in Seki, which involved lots of Iron Chef knives (both left & right handed knives, I might add), Iron Chef knives for kids (seriously, like hardcore knives with baby elephant characters on them) and the occasional sword or swordy paraphernalia available.



I also thought they’d be more ye-olde and traditional and stuff – when I heard of the lantern festival, I thought it would be just a village lit up by those traditional red lantern thingies lining the streets – Didn’t really cross my mind that it may involve Godzilla...

or that guy who lives in a pineapple under the sea…




Plus, I think I just found out what would happen if the powerpuff girls decided to make a mediocre Japanese girl band instead.




Festivals – fun for the whole family! Even the sake festival, which included almost-limitless amount of free doburoku sake (think thick white, chunky soup with rice bits, and if the soup was made from rubbing alcohol) was apparently a family event, with parents getting drunk while their kids watched and looked all cute in their little kimonos and stuff.

yoshio kojima

Yes, this is a huge hit here in Japan, with all my students doing their presentations about this and asking if I know what "Sonna no kankei nee" is.

And no, I don't know what it means, or get why it's so friggin funny, other than being on face value, a Japanese dude prancing around in a speedo.

the mystery that is fanta

Another extended period between blog posts, so figured I should write something. What have I been up to? Meh, just the usual, went to Kyoto for the weekend a couple weeks back and last weekend had a water weekend involving rafting and stuff. Meh. no biggie.

But Kyoto was pretty cool, despite already being there before and seeing most of the things I saw last time - I was paranoid that all my photos would look pretty much the same as the ones I took in December since it was overcast and forecast to rain the weekend, so though the only noticeable difference was the clothes I was wearing. But nonetheless, manage to get some cool summer-esque photos more than last time. As our timing would have it, the places we visited this time around that we didn't go to previously, we only reached at the end of the day, so we had a fairly limited viewing/ optimal photo-taking time, which was kinda sucky, but all the more reason to go there again I guess. One of the sights we were planning to see was fushimi inari taisho, which is supposedly not a well known, but nonethless awesome place to visit (my English teachers at school had no idea what it was) - it's essentially just 30,000 red torii gates all lined up in a row, and if you get there at the right time, then it looks awesome.


We kinda missed the boat in terms of optimal awesomeness, but there was still interesting to visit the place at night - It's a shrine dedicated to the Shinto god Inari, who apparently is always associated with foxes, so there's heaps of fox statues and fox prayer card things throughout the shrine as well.


The other place I have to visit again is Kiyomizu temple, which is allegedly one of the new 7 wonders of the world.



Literally a minute or so after we arrive at the front gate, the heavens opened up and drenched us even before we got to see the clear waterfalls that the temple is known for, along with everything else. So, after an hour or so of running from shelter to shelter, we finally conceded and left before seeing everything there.

So that was a couple weekends ago, and last week I went on a Water weekend. I initially signed up because I read about shower climbing, which apparently involves climbing some waterfalls and going down them in a sled-type thingo (I'm pretty sure that's the technical term for that apparatus) and didn't realise it involved white-water rafting until after I had already said yes. But still, after a big karaoke night out (which I might blog about later if I can be bothered) I was still pretty keen for it despite being slightly sleep deprived.

Rafting turns out to be, not as scary as you'd think it would be. I was a little nervous, considering my lack of physical fitness and after the 10 minute safety training we took before getting in the water, which involved showing us what we should do in the event of falling out during the rapids, or if our raft crashes into a mountain/rock, but it was surprisingly tame - apparently, it was due to the lack of water in the river at the time which made it pretty breezy. It even felt like the raft guides were kinda just making us do stupid things for the sake of making it seem a little more dangerous and adventurous, like making us all sit on the right side of the boat as we go down some rapids, or all stand up, or sit in the back to do what can only be described as a wheelie down some rapids...

Unfortunately, the next day of shower-climbing was not meant to be - Ironically, since it was raining all night, there was a flash flood where the shower climbing would be, so it got cancelled, and the amount of water would have made it an even better time to go rafting that day, which was our original plan. But it wasn't a total loss - instead of doing some physical activity in what could be described as "exercise", we instead went to Gifu city, and ate heaps of food, so it kinda works out to be a fairly similar experience.

Oooh, and probably the most memorable part of the weekend?


Mystery Fanta - yep, that's right, this urine-like fanta is mystery flavoured, and you're supposed to guess what two fruit flavours are in it. My guess: Peach & Apple.

So to sum up - went on what could be seen as an adventurous weekend, and a trip to an old ancient capital, and the highlight of my trip? Fanta.

Yep, seems like I've got my priorities straight...

japanese gladiators

Finally, all is not lost when it comes to wacky Japanese TV. I found this weird Gladiators-esque show while eating dinner today - it involves people of different ages and professions trying to complete an obstacle course which looks ridiculously difficult, but being Japanese involves dramatic pauses in between breaks, action replay for falls, and showing people's reactions to what is being shown on TV... awesome!

sushi train!

I don't know who to blame it on, but while I'm here, I've felt the urge to eat excessive amounts of sushi - I'm not too sure if it's just the fact that i'm in Japan, so it seems like the thing to do, or if it's because I've been telling my students that it's my favourite food, and so to not eat it would be a disservice to them - It's hard to explain to kids who can't speak English that good (and want to learn other stuff good too) that I like a variety of foods, and my favourite colour depends on what day you ask me, and that I don't actually like sport that much, but feel the need to pick one because I'm asked all the time, which is why I say "tennis"... So this pressure makes me feel obliged to like sushi more and contemplate actually playing tennis soon.

But anyways, I'm really just looking for any excuse to try new foods, or eat more sushi, so I was uber excited to find a sushi train restaurant within biking distance of my place. I think one of the cool things I've found out about Japan is that I have little to no knowledge of what makes a good Japanese food here, so I've found I've hardly been disappointed with any food adventures. It may be because I have little to no knowledge of what constitutes a good restaurant or good Japanese food here in Japan, so I can't be disappointed.


So surprisingly, the sushi restaurant we visited the other day was awesome - Me & Kiri had a day off from school so decided to trek to our beloved sushi place. I'm a huge fan since they have fairly fancypants sushi at ridiculously cheap prices - only ¥105 per plate for 2 pieces of sushi, and with types of sushi like sweet prawn, raw octopus, squid, pan-fried salmon, scallop carpaccio, I can't find much to complain about.



I figured trying some of this fancy sushi I've never tried before would fulfil my Japanese quotient of the day.



The best part of the restaurant is that it's meant to be a family-friendly restuarant, so in between the wasabi-flavoured scallop and sea urchin, there's plates of takoyaki, hello kitty juice boxes, and hamburger sushi for kids as well!



The sushi place, being a chain, is completely automated - apparntly they use machines to prepare the rice and cut the fish for the sushi as well, but I so can't taste the difference so I'm not too fussed. Along with the fast-food-like sushi comes with the automated intercom, so you if there's any type of sushi you want to order, you can just use the intercom to request specific food from the people in the back...



And they put it on a special plate for you on the conveyer belt! This one's what we ordered from our table number 24...



10 plates later, and completely full from sushi, but totally worth it.



Finishing's also pretty cool, since you press the special button to summon a waiter to count how many plates you ate and to give you your bill - only ¥1050 all up! I love Japanese culture...

tyhoon!

Aaah, what a wonderful day to have a day of sports in Motosu.



But despite the crappy weather, the school still attempted to continue with the sports festival, even during the torrential downpour.




Like everything else Japanese, it started with an opening ceremony and address by the principal, which in turn, resulted in approximately 10 minutes of bowing at random people as they got on and off the stage, before the seriously sports began.

I seriously feel that if sports days and stuff were like this in Australia, I may have actually liked sport. Rather than just do lots of running and cross country and obligatory sprints that everyone had to do, there was skipping rope, related games, a three-legged-race like thing, only involving the whole class in a row, and year level-specific sports. My favourite sport was the 1st years, who played a game called "tyhoon".



Sigh. If only sports were like this in Australia. But the sports day was eventually cancelled after lunch, when they realised it was probably a hazard to have people running on the school ground while a couple people's sole job was to shovel dirt on puddles to help avoid slippage uring the relay. Sadly, they decided this after everyone did their relay, which unfortunately, included me running on the teacher's team. I would have liked to brag here about how I beat the arses of 12 and 13 year old boys and girls, but sadly, I didn't...

One week of kanchouing down, only 47 more weeks to go!

So, this is my first week of teaching done! Huzzah! I made it out alive, despite not having any clue about what I’m supposed to do or what if I’m doing it right either, but I’m getting used to resigning all control I have over my day to people at schools. On Tuesday, at around 5th period, everyone in the staffroom gets up and collectively go outside, along with the rest of the students putting on their outside shoes and moving to the oval. It took my a while of wondering around outside trying to talk to students to realise they were practising for their sports festival Saturday week.

But so far, I’ve only “taught” 3 different classes – so most of which just involves me doing a self-introduction about where I’m from and my hobbies, and answering questions have about me. I was freaking out about my lack of preparation (and blogging instead) but after my first class, it didn’t really matter much – there’s not much I have to study or do when I just have to talk about my likes and dislikes (and if anyone Japanese asks, my hobbies are swimming and tennis – I don’t want to shatter their image of sporty Australians and stuff) Today I got into the real meat of the teaching, where I just read out a story aloud from a book as students copied what I said. Fun!

Thursday was also my first day spent at a pre-school. I find it a little strange that I’m trying to teach English to kids when the oldest is like 4 years old, so the teaching by myself thing (and not knowing what the hell I’m supposed to be teaching) was a little meh, but I spent 2 hours beforehand playing with the kids, which was pretty awesome. Sure, I was sweating ridiculously from the bike ride there, and after all the kids insisted on getting piggybacks, but it was pretty fun. I love how like the simplest activity seems amazing from the eyes of a 4 year old, like trying to play catch (I forgot that it takes ages for kids to throw and catch a ball) or just running and chasing people and stuff. It was a little less fun when they decided to play “Let’s all throw balls at the English teacher” and I was bombarded by like 8 or 9 balls at a time, but a little more fun than the kanchouing that I had been prepared for.

I had no idea that this constituted a game, but all the primary school kids and elementary school kids love kanchou,  which main involves clasping your hands together so only your two index fingers are sticking up – kinda like a gun. Kids then precede to play this game by seeing how far they can stick up their index fingers up an unsuspecting victim’s arse. Despite initial thoughts of being an extremely isolated activity, apparently sometimes there’s a scoring system involved (double points if you can stick it up until your middle finger joint, or up to the knuckle) and apparently at school, some teachers routinely get into kanchou fights with kids. Meh, chalk it up to a culture difference I guess. Maybe it’s just me - Maybe I find it hard to understand since I’m too old, or like, you know, normal.

quiz time!

Is this:



a) A piece of sports equipment for some random and inexplicably wacky Japanese Sport,
b) A gogo gadget pole used to grab and support things that are out of a vertically-challenged Japanese person’s reach, or
c) A suspicious person-handling pole, used to immobilize suspicious people (and police officers looking suspicious for role-playing purposes) by surrounding the person and using the poles to pin them at the waist, thereby also making the pole handlers out of suspicious knife-slashing range?

japanese quotient

While I was sipping on my Frappucino and checking my emails in Starbucks a while ago, I decided that I should try to do at least one thing everyday that's Japanese that isn't usually found in Australia – my Japan quotient. It started off really well, with bubblooning, and going to a Japanese festival, and eating tofu and stuff, but kinda deteriorated to just ordering a lemon green tea or green tea frappucino in Starbucks. I think one day I found myself just eating Pizza Pringles, which techinically, filled my Japanese quotient since I don't think you can find them in Australia, so to me they were something I associated with Japan and thus adequately Japanese.

 

Anyway, with my Japan quotient in mind, I decided to see Noh performance in the city – which, after watching it, should be my share of Japanese culture for at least the next week – It's this ye-olde Japanese theatre that's performed outdoors, and with the words sung in a really slow way. It's supposed to be one of the official, national forms of drama in Japan, so decided to check it out.

 

It was pretty cool… for the first 15 minutes. That's pretty much all the time you need to see what's going on, appreciate it, and then want to move on. Fortunately I showed up late so I apparently missed all the boring bits. Well, "boring" is all relative I guess, but apparently the bit I saw was the better part.

 

After being culturally enriched the adequate amount that day, we headed off to soak in Japanese culture at this place called Sekky's – it was the traditional Japanese place that took the shape of a retro 50's diner, so I ordered a chilli cheeseburger with fries. That also counts as Japanese right? I mean, how many other retro 50's American diners run by Japanese people are there in Australia? Plus I've never seen a chilli cheeseburger in Australia, so come on, that must be Japanese…  

earthquake ride

It's a Friday, and I starte work at 11 and finished before 4. I doubt there will be many days like this in the future, so I'm making sure I appreciate it the adequate amount (by blogging and facebooking, of course!)

It started with a meeting with the teachers in the local area, who split up into their teaching specialisation groups - talking about what I can only assume to be about teaching methods and that kind of stuff. Like everything Japanese, it started with a huge formal meeting with all the teachers, but thanks to my lack of Japanese ability, I was told not to come to the initial 2 hour meeting since I wouldn't understand it - not going to complain when it means I'm at Starbucks instead of falling asleep in a meeting...

Anyway, we were asked to do powerpoint presentations about our countries. Sounds easy right? well, yeah, kinda was. I ended up talking about food, cultural events in Melbourne, and sport. Yeah, I learnt my lesson from last time, so I made sure to actually do some research about sport - I think it's amazing that people think I'm really sporty and stuff here (especially now I'm mega tanned from riding my bike for an hour a day) and just wondering when they're going to see through the whole façade. 

In an effort to spend more time active and not just sitting at my desk, I ended up going to an earthquake museum in a nearby village - it's pretty much a museum about the 8.0 earthquake that hit in 1891 - it was so big, it left train tracks twisted and ground that used to be flat is now like a 6 metre cliff. They've got like newspapers and stuff from when they were reported at the time as well, which is a little eerie. But what I thought was a little weird was the earthquake ride - It's kinda the best way I can describe it - they put you into a room, give you 3D glasses and get you to buckle your seatbelts - you then watch a movie from what I gather, is about this boy who goes on an excursion and manages to get transported to the time of the earthquake, and then wakes up, and goes on an excursion to the same earthquake you're in - all the while being 3D to immerse you in the whole experience (read: There's lots of soccer balls kicked towards you, and this girl sticks her hand out to give a present to someone). Then you eventually watch the boy going on the same earthquake ride you're on, and he's shaking, so they make your seats shake a bit as well - a little post-modern, but weird.

Anyways, getting ready for yet another "getting to know your fellow JET people" thing again for the whole weekend - just another event to hang out, eat and drink, so can't really complain about there being too many...

obon week updates

Meh. You'd think after spending 2 hours trying to set up wireless internet and actually working, I'd be going nonstop and blogging like crazy. But now I've got a whole day I put aside to facebook and stuff, I find myself at a lost of what to do - I think it's a sense of being overwhelmed now that I have finally got the internet after not having access for like 2 weeks. But I can't be bothered linking lots of words together that wouldn't bore people, so I'll keep this short.

• Mango Citrus Mentos = Awesome. I had to stop my boycott of Mentos (stupid mentos nipple guy), but worth it. Plus, it fills my "Must eat/do something you can only get in Japan" quotient for the day.
• There's a Motosu city theme song, which is pumped through the speakers every night at 6, which you can hear from my place. Was kinda expecting to hear anti-American propoganda following the song though. Also, everyone loves the song. I went to a concert last night, and the song was performed 3 times within the span of 3 hours.
• Fireworks are everywhere - I went to see a fireworks show that went for 2 hours, and you get lots of freebie fireworks from random stores - like when we signed up for internet. Most are like glorified sparklers, but there are some which are kinda like mini bazookas that shoot out fireworks rockets every few seconds..Despite my paranoia of blowing off my face, it's awesome! Yay burning things!
• Karaoked again - Mr Brightside, Don't Lie & Obligatory Maroon 5 song... Is it sad that I'm already planning what songs I want to do next time? Maybe you shouldn't answer that...
  

dear mr/mrs starbucks,

Thank you, Mr. Starbucks. If it wasn't for you, I would be uncaffeinated, internetless and cranky. I've been trying to do this thing where I try to eat or do something uniquely Japanese a day, so I justify going on a regular basis since they've got Lemon Green Tea as well as well as a Green Tea frappucino... they're traditionally Japanese, right?

Anyway, it took me a good 2 hours to set up wireless internet at school, as it involved a bunch of translating, trial and error using a bunch of credit cards, and a fair amount of surfing to find a service provider. It didn't help that most of the sites were blocked at school, so I kept having to switch from using my mobile to computer. But it's finally over, and now I've got Wifi for like ¥300 per day! yay! I hope I read the contract right, since I'm pretty sure it's only for each day I use it, not like per month... ah well, I guess I'll find out soon enough...

day at work

It's Obon week here in Japan, which means that people go to their hometowns for a huge family gathering and honour their ancestors. So, when people live further away, they usually take this week off to travel back and spend time with their families - Kind of like Christmas, except it's not officially a holiday or anything. 

So you'd think that since everybody pretty much has this week off, and on top of that it's summer holidays, schools would be closed, right? But here I am, typing away, not even making an effort to look busy anymore. While most teachers have taken the week off, instead of closing the school for a week, they made a rotating schedule for at least one teacher to go to school everyday to open and close up, and answer the phone. So, as I type, there's only me and another teacher just reading the newspaper. 

The only sounds I can hear at the moment are the sound of the air conditioner, and the typing on the keyboard. It's SO dead. Even though it's summer holidays, teachers still have to come to school every day, for full working hours - Apparently, it wasn't like this  5 or 6 years ago, since students also had school on Saturdays, but when they got rid of Saturday school, someone had the bright idea of making up for that working time by making teachers come during school holidays, despite having  nothing to do, but just trying to look busy.

So here I am, not having much to prepare since i'm an Assistant Language Teacher, trying to fill my hours from 8:30-4:30...

8:30: Arrive at school after riding my bike for 25 minutes to get here. Sweat profusely.

8:45 Continue sweating. 

8:50 Read emails. Try to prolong this for as long as possible, even considering reading junk mail just so there's something else to do. 

9:10 Write emails - Preferably as long as possible as to stretch it out for an hour or so.

9:45 Finish writing the first and longest email ever. Then decide to write shorter emails as to not waste too much time.

10:23 Finish writing all emails. Wish that I stuck with writing ridiculously-long emails again.

10:30 Write emails to other JETs to see if they're as equally bored as me at the moment. 

10:43 Check blogs (Thanks Google Reader!) and read  every single article. Wonder about trying to hide the fact i'm just surfing when the Vice principal walks by, but concede and continue to read.

10:47 Wikipediaing Cybill (the TV show) since a blog post mentions how a former writer of the show is now writing a CSI episode, and plans to make it about the murder of a snooty, sitcom star who was hated by everyone on set. 

10:54 Check facebook and myspace on the off-chance that the firewall blew up overnight and now allows me to access the pages.

11:00 Decide to print out cards for a class activity. Feel a sense of satisfaction for doing something remotely productive.

11:05 Give up on trying to cut out the cards and pasting them on cardboard. Don't want to get too ahead of myself. 

11:06 Be taunted by a notification that someone wrote on my Facebook wall that sits in my inbox.

12:08 Teacher came and asked if I wanted to buy a car. I said yes, and now he's on the phone to a car place. Awesome, albeit unexpected. 

12:28 Get mail - it's my ATM card in teh bank, along with 2 booklets and a little form! Yay! I can't understand it so it'll take ages to translate it all!

12:52 The Vice Principal turned on the TV to watch the baseball. It's official. There's not even any semblence of work being done now.

1:53 finished translating a document about "Net cash" that came with my ATM card - though the information in it doesn't really say anything about how to use netcash...  back to wasting time on the internet...

3:36 exhaust almost every possible avenue of entertainment on the internet without the use youtube. begin studying Japanese just for the hell of it. 

3:42 Give up on even trying to continue this blog post about what happens in my day, despite thinking it would ease my boredom...

bubblooning

During one of our daily visits to the Hyaku-en shops (Think $2 shop, but with EVERYTHING i.e cutlery, household cleaners, stationery, food, tupperware and toys) I found a product which started my newfound hobby: bublooning!

Kinda like a bubble, kinda like a balloon, and thus the name - I don't know if it's the fumes of the stuff which make it so fun, but I'm telling you now - it's addictive. And it's catching on fast!

Over the weekend, we made our way to Neo village - it's techically in my city, but it's still like a 45 minute by train, through 3 or 4 mountains. And by train, I mean a train that comes around every hour and a half, that's only 1 carriage long. We ending up going there since Julie, another English teacher who's from Canada, had to head back to her apartment in Neo, and so me & Kiri decided to tag along for the ride.

Neo feels kinda of like a traditional Japanese town - there's only a population of 2000, and maybe only 3 or 4 shops in the whole village - the grocery store is about the size of a small 7-Eleven, but opens when they feel like it.

Anyway, we heard that there's a river in the village that people swim in and have barbecues and stuff, so decided to spend the day by the river and have a picnic.

Sounds like a plan, right? Well, in theory, it would have been picturesque eating our homemade sandwiches by the river. But we forgot that Gifu is apparently one of the hottest places in Japan and freakishly humid. So after a 15 minute trek to the apartment, we camped by the air-conditioner and had an indoor picnic. I guess to most people, that's just called "lunch", but I'm sticking by "picnic" so it seems like we did something special and fancy.




An hour or so later, we convinced ourselves to leave the comfort of our apartment and search for the river. We eventually found an area with a bunch of other people and set up a place by the water with our newly purchased 100 yen "picnic rug" (a table cloth), snacks, and our bubblooning materials!



Our awesome new hobby also got the attention of another family there as well - so we ended up making friends with this kid and also the Chinese exchange student as well.




hours of fun for only ¥100! Best new hobby ever!

allez cuisine!

Move over, Michiba-san, I just made my first meal in Japan on Monday! It was like 2 parts Iron Chef, and 1 part Macgyver, since as I was cooking, I realised I didn't have many cooking utensils, and had to improvise. My kitchen has like nothing except for a couple pots and pans, and a rice cooker, so I'm slowly accumulating cooking utensils and ingredients as I need it. I bought this Iron Chef-esque knife, which has Japanese characters written on the blade, and has holes in it, which I'm not sure about what they do - I think they make the knife go faster, but I'll let you know.

So as I just put all the food in the pot on my gas stove thing, i realised I had nothing to actually mix and turn things - I had a fork and spoon, and that's pretty much it -I managed to find some disposable wooden chopsticks and cooked using them - how Japanese! but it all worked out well - despite my lack of Japanese cooking vocabulary knowledge!

I've mainly been going out for dinner most other days, since there are some welcome events, people to catch up with, and I can't be arsed the rest of the time. But I found out how awesome the supermarkets are here in Japan - they've got a deli type of section with ready-to-eat foods, like bento boxes and fried chicken, and food accompaniments, all ready to take home and eat! It's a bit like department stores, which have a whole basement of food products, but with less stuff - but I guess I should expect that when I live in an area that is filled with rice paddies every now and then.

The coolest part is, since all the food is made daily, they end up discounting food after 7, which is the exact same time I decide I can't be arsed cooking every night!

All in all, a pretty good meal - I was kinda proud of myself for buying the weird-but-probably-healthy vegetable thing AND fruit! I heard about someone who was living by themselves in Japan and was eating nothing but 2-minute noodles, until he discovered all these red welts on his body - he went to get it checked out and the doctor found he had Scurvy! I do like pirates, but that may be going a little too far...

my apartment