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

screw you, buffy

I hate Sarah Michelle Gellar. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have seen the remake of the Grudge, and if I hadn't seen that movie, I wouldn't have developed a fear of Japanese-style houses with sliding wooden door-style cupboards and wardrobes. Like the ones in my new bedroom.

Any second now, I'm expecting an albino Japanese kid to be sitting in the corner staring at me, or a crawling and moaning Japanese lady to pop out of one of the top shelves. I was shitting myself when I left the sliding door open, because when I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, I couldn't remember if it was me or the aforementioned hairy lady who opened my wardrobe door. Urgh.

So yeah, the whole living it up in a 5 star hotel is over and I've now moved into my apartment – It's way huger than my friend's, which is just a couple doors down, since unlike hers, has 2 rooms instead of one. It even has it's own laundry and bathroom, table, and coffee table as well. So, trying to make it feel more like home, but at the moment, all I've got to decorate it is an awesome coffee table photo book, a photo in a picture frame, and a whole bunch of 5 cent coins. I'm hoping to queer eye the place, but it's kinda hard when you're trying to limit your furnishings to stuff from the 100 yen shop.

Other than the furniture and stuff, it 's pretty much barren, so it's weird thinking I have to buy EVERYTHING – all that stuff you accumulate and take for granted when you live at home, like cutlery, Panadol, note pads, laundry hamper thing, cleaning products, bed sheets, and that kind of stuff. Fortunately, I'm five minutes walk away from Malera (pronounced Mall-era, not Malaria as I originally thought) so after I signed my apartment contract, and unpacked, me and my friend went to explore and stumbled upon their awesome food court – not that big,, but had a Takoyaki store, a Ramen one, Crepe place, and this fast food chain here called Fast Kitchen or Faasuto Kitchin, which apparently, in the Japanese tradition of abbreviating names, is shortened to faakin. We ended up eating elsewhere, but I so can't wait to go back. I really want to try some faakin chicken.

smack that, all on the floor...

It's a little scary what come out when you've been drinking. Who knew the lyrics to Akon's Smack That, including Eminem's rap, were ingrained in my head? Yeah, Karaoke and all you can drink really does that for you. 

For anyone who's already missing me for my outstanding singing skills, here's a couple of the songs that were "sung" (I use that term liberally) - Rihanna's Umbrella, Build Me Up Buttercup, and yes, there was a Backstreet Boys song fit in there as well. 

landed in japan

Meh. too tired to blog so I'll keep this short - Flew overnight from Sydney to Tokyo, so arrived at the airport at around 7:00am - we got to the hotel around 9:00, but since the rooms weren't ready to check into, just been walking around the city for around 4 hours finding places to eat... 

Anyways, cool food of the day was Pizza-la - Prawn Mayo Pizza-flavoured Doritos. Weird. But Kinda Prawn Crackery. and Corny. I'll post a pic of it once I get my camera cord...

matrix date

Aah, Japanese TV - you never disappoint. If it isn't a wacky gameshow where people are punished for wrong answers by being farted on bare-butted (which evidently can lead to pink eye), human tetris, or a dancing tree and weird sperm-dude singing a song for curry, then it's a cool live action matrix-esque date.



While I am doing the going to Japan freak out thing, this at least gives me something to be excited about...

Knocked Up

Knocked Up - way better than the overhyped 40 Year-Old Virgin.  I don't know if it was the spontaneous decision to see the movie (and thus little to no expectations or anticipation) that made it funny, but I thought it hilarious - Probably not as rewatchable as Dodgeball or Zoolander, but awesome nonetheless.

I think I also partially enjoyed it because I've finally discovered the female equivalent to the "frank and beans" scene in There's Something About Mary - you know, the scene at the start of the movie that invokes the strong reaction from all guys. Some girls don't fully understand why guys squirm and nervously cross their legs (if they're not in a fetal position squealing already) when they watch the Mary bathroom scene. But now there's Knocked Up's more-graphic-than-you'd-expect giving birth scene to bring the same feeling of uneasiness to those of the opposite sex. 

One thing that kinda bugged me was the same thing that bugs me in clichéd sitcoms - Katherine Heigl is so out of the main guy's league! It took me the first third of the movie to get over that inconsistency and appreciate the movie. 

two too many mango puddings later...

I don't know what it is about the premise of nearly-limitless food, but I don't know many people who would say no to the idea. Even if the food isn't that good. In fact, when people think of buffet food, most people's expectations in food quality drop when they know there's vast amounts lukewarm, semi-questionable seconds (and thirds, fourths, and sevenths). 

On a totally unrelated note, I went to all-you-can-eat yum-cha today! only $16.50 per person! It was awesome! I so wanna go there again!

woo. japan.

It still hasn't completely sunk in yet. Yeah, I know that I'm leaving next month and stuff, but it still seems like such a far-off concept I haven't really thought about it much. It has been something I've been thinking about doing for a while, but actually doing it? Just seems weird.

Me. In Japan. For a year.

I got a little excited yesterday when a package came from Japan - it was from the Motosu Education Board with info about the place I’ll be working/living, the schools I’m teaching, and postcards and stuff. So it looks like I’ll be teaching at Motosu Junior High & Motosu Elementary School – knowing the actual names of the schools I’ll be teaching at makes it seem a little more real than just knowing that I’ll be teaching at a random Japanese school actually.

My biggest concern about going to Japan was finding I’d be teaching in the middle of nowhere, so I was relieved and somewhat ecstatic when I got a map of the city – Motosu has a shopping mall! And a shopping centre! And banks! That’s right, more than one! I know that seems really superficial, but I don’t think I’m ready to move to a place where buying things becomes an event, rather than something you can do any day. Plus, it’d kinda conflict with my current view of technologically-advanced Japan, with robots and stuff on every street corner…

jetsetting to japan

It's now pretty much official - I'm going to Japan to teach English! I've handed my letter of resignation at work, and making a list of stuff to buy and do before I leave in 44 days, 17 hours 43 minutes, and 37 seconds. It hasn't really sunk in that I'll be moving my whole life to a whole nother country knowing next to no one, but I think that will come once it gets closer to the flight - It didn't even strike me that I was going to go to Korea until I landed in the country and took a 3 hour bus ride to Jeonju last time, so maybe I should expect the same thing this time around.

There's already a huge list of things I have to do before I go - exchange all my money into Yen (since I don't know how rural the place I'm going to is, and may not have any banks or ATMs nearby), get an international driver's license, a Power of Attorney, catch up with everyone, and you know, get my affairs in order and stuff...

...And by "affairs", I just mean downloading the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy that I may miss, as well as the next season of The Amazing Race.

But don't worry, not all my affairs are seemingly useless and a pointless waste of time - In preparation for the huge void that I will inevitably leave in your lives, I've created a cybertwin, who I'm in the middle of training to be a replacement me for emergency situations. Sure, he won't be much help when there's food to be eaten and things that are out of reach for the vertically challenged, but hopefully he'll be able to answer any question you have...

As long as it's basic. And about liking cheese.

busy at work...

Yeah, I know. Long time no blog. But I can assure you there'll be more blogworthy stuff in the next month or so. At the moment though, I've just been working like 5 days a week, and what have I learned over the past 6 weeks? I'm really good at being fake nice, where to the casual observer it seems "nice". There are some minor differences that are only noticeable if you are keeping a close watch on me though - if you're yelling at me, be it for something that is so not my fault (like, your phone not working, and me not being able to call the repair hotline because they're closed on weekends), or just dropping all-round racist comments (which happen a little more frequently than I thought they would) chances are, I'm being fake nice.

My job's also made me appreciate the extra spending money as well - I forgot how cool it was to buy frivolous stuff and not have to worry as much about saving money - I like having the peace of mind knowing that a piece of pie will not affect my standard of living - well, other than lead me on the almost inevitable path of diabetes and/or heart disease.

it'll only get worse...

I knew this day would come, but still, there was a naïve, optimistic part of me that was hoping that it wouldn't get to this:


3rd on the ladder - not bad. Pretty good actually, considering my lack of knowledge about all things football, but I was still hoping that I would arse my way through the whole competition and come first.

is this po-mo?

Excuse the lack of blogging. It's not that I hate you, because firstly, I don't know who you are and don't know you well enough to make my initial, superficial judgements of you. According to my site meter though, I do know what ISP you're using, and what time you check my site, and whereabouts you are and stuff. Unfortunately not able to find stalker-y amounts of information on you, so just checking my site meter to find what kind of browser the few blog-readers are using is about as far as my voyeuristic hobby goes. Yeah, my hobby involves reading info about people who are reading info about me. Does that count as postmodern by the way? I know a friend who's embarrassing moment involved being asked to go in front of a group of people to talk about her most embarrassing moment, and having a non-embarassing story, which in turn, was embarassing. So if that was considered postmodern, does that make my hobby postmodern too?

You see, the whole point of my digression (which as people who know me well, is something I rarely do - that, and not being sarcastic) is to cover the fact I have little to update about - do have a job now, which is... interesting, but has made me especially aware of the fact that information I post online makes me instantly google-able... So anyways, I'll definitely have more stuff to blog about in the upcoming months...

But in the meantime, please enjoy this pointless video! I posted a version of this Algorithm March a while ago while I was in Japan, but found another version involving subtitles and a Japanese soccer team, and still cracks me up whenever I watch it - I already know all the moves, so feel free to study the moves in case the need for a well-coordinated march ever arises...