Hotaru

Hotaru, or firefly, was one of the first Japanese words I learned here—strangely enough it wasn't even during firefly season. It was on one of those days last year when Tane-sensei (JTE) and Kasuga-sensei (art teacher) from Nita JHS would come over and do a bit of language/culture exchange dialogue. Well, it was supposed to be them teaching me Japanese and me teaching them English, but most of the time I just taught them English colloquialisms, and we'd discuss cultural differences between Japan and the US. On this evening, somehow we got onto the topic of Christmas songs and their ubiquity during the holiday season. They asked me if we sing New Year's songs as well. "Not really," I said, "except for 'Auld Lang Syne.'" I sang a few bars and explained the meaning of the words. "We have a song like that," they said. It's called "Hotaru no Hikari" (Fireflies' Light). Tane sang a bit—sure enough, it's the same tune as "Auld Lang Syne." They said that "Hotaru no Hikari" is often played at school graduations. I'm not entirely sure what the lyrics mean, but I'll bet it has something to do with, um, little spots of light.

With the kids from Chicago in town (more on that some other time), one of the optional activities planned for them was a firefly viewing in Maki, a village in Yokota. Mabel and I were interested in seeing these fireflies, so I called Tanabe-san and got directions to Maki. He said we'd know the place by the cars parked alongside the street, and we shouldn't go past the traffic light. Something about the elementary school, too. And off we went, in search of Maki and the fireflies.

Well, we found Maki with no problem, but where the fireflies were was a mystery. We got to the traffic light, but saw no cars parked on the side of the road. Drove a bit past the light, turned back, then made another turn at the intersection toward what I hoped was Maki Elementary. Good guess: there it was. We pulled into the parking lot and stopped the car so I could give Tanabe-san another call. But just as I was fishing my phone from my purse, a man came out of the school.

"Konbanwa" (Good evening), he said.
"Konbanwa. Ehh... hotaru wa doko desu ka?" (Where are the fireflies?)
Doubtless he heard my accent, and responded in English, "Ah, just a moment."
He disappeared back into the school while Mabel and I had a good laugh mocking myself. "Where are the fireflies? Where are the fireflies? Most random question in the world."
The man came back out a few moments later, followed by another man, and good-naturedly asked, "Where are you from?"
A bit startled at this non-sequitur, I said, "Uhh... Nita." (Lately this is the answer I give when asked this question; I know it's usually not the answer people are looking for, but I've been here a year and have gotten a little tired of being The Outsider. Now I kinda know why Rohan, when I asked him where he was from, answered, "New York City." Of course the question I should have asked was, "Where did you get your lovely accent?" and the answer to that would be, "Jamaica.")
But right, I said, "Nita." Both of the men looked a little startled, and surprisingly didn't correct my "misunderstanding," so I said, "Chuugakkou no ALT desu" (I'm the junior high school ALT). Oh, they perked right up. "Hajimemashite!" (Nice to meet you!) they both greeted me. "Nihongo wa ii desu ka?" (Japanese is okay?)
"Nnn..." I shook my head, "sukoshi..." (a little).
They invited us into the school, and the first man introduced himself as the school's sixth-grade teacher. The other guy, I don't know, maybe he was the principal or vice-principal? So the sixth-grade teacher sits us down, sets us up with coffee (black and cold), and says something about good timing. He brings me a copy of a lesson plan. ?! What does this have to do with fireflies? The sixth graders will be taking a trip in September to Hiroshima City (this seems to be a popular destination for sixth graders in Shimane), and they will be encouraged to speak to foreigners and get their signatures. So this teacher wants me to teach the kids some basic introductory phrases, and stuff like, "Where are you from?" and, "Please sign." (I did something similar last year at Fuse Elementary.) Okay, sounds good. Then we have to decide on a Monday (I do my elementary visits on Mondays). Unfortunately there remain only two Mondays during Yokota weeks before the beginning of summer vacation: one has already been booked by Yakawa Elementary, and the other is a public holiday. I told him he should call my supervisor and/or the vice-principal at Yokota JHS to find out if I can visit during the week (Tuesday-Friday); sometimes they're okay with that.

But this still had nothing to do with fireflies! I was beginning to think that he'd forgotten, or that I hadn't made our goals clear; but once this more pressing matter was settled he turned his attention to my more pressing matter. Between his broken English, his dry erase marker, and Mabel's Japanese skills, he managed to communicate to us that there were no fireflies: we had come a week early. But the other guy, well he was a firefly expert according to the sixth-grade teacher (he had a few fireflies in a small terrarium), and he could show us where the firefly spot was. So after introducing Mabel and myself formally, we were on our way to find where the fireflies would be. Maybe one or two kilometers from Maki Elementary, he lead us to a bridge over a stream. There were indeed fireflies there, maybe a dozen on each side of the bridge, so it looked to me like we were right on time, but he told us that this show qualified only as "a few" fireflies.

The flash pattern of Japanese fireflies is different from those in Upstate NY. While the fireflies in Upstate NY make little blips every four or five seconds, Japanese fireflies stay lit for about one second, then go dark for two or three seconds. Mabel says they look like fairies. We agreed we have to come back next week. Hope they're photogenic.

supporting evidence?

Here's an article about a documentary on gymnasts in North Korea from the Washington Post (you'll need to subscribe to read it, but subscribing is free).

An excerpt from that article:

The film documents North Koreans' extraordinary devotion to Kim [Jong Il], who is viewed in the country as a semi-religious figure. He is kept at the center of national life through everything from propaganda cartoons for children to state radio broadcasts in every home. The film shows how the volume on radios in North Korea homes can be lowered but not turned off.

So a British filmmaker and an American reporter saw fit to mention this radio as characteristic of a highly propagandized household in a totalitarian regime, and I have one in my dining room.

I could very well be sane.

Thanks to Mom for the subtle hint to update my blog. Yes, I'm an American living in Japan, and yes, most Westerners think of living in Japan as something quite exciting or exotic or strange, and yes, they'd be somewhat correct, but really most of that wears off after a few months and one's life quickly becomes ordinary. Our lives must become ordinary—our brains require it, I think, and without ordinary life we'd all become somewhat mentally ill.

The other day I came home at 8:30pm and thought to myself, Wow, I bet I could do TWO loads of laundry before ten o'clock. And I did. And it was good.
Such has become my life.

I've just returned home from eating out with Rebecca. We had dinner at Minari, a restaurant in Minari (they're not really the same name; they sound the same, but the kanji are different), which is the village in Nita where I live. I know the guy who owns the place (see the beginning of this post), and he gave us free ice cream at the end of our meal. It was funny, really: we'd finished eating and had decided we'd go to Poplar (the local convenience store) for ice cream when our dinner was half-digested, and after sitting around and talking for about an hour, we were just shifting our weight to get up when Ko-chan brought us two dishes of black sesame ice cream. Lucky!

The recontracters' conference in Kobe the other week was good. Those of use who live out in the sticks welcomed the opportunity to spend some time in a large city. It's different living in a city. You can ride the train for fifteen minutes, get off at a stop near the center of downtown, then think, How shall I entertain myself? Walk five or ten minutes, and entertain yourself, then walk another five or ten minutes and entertain yourself some other way. It's nice. Living in the sticks requires more planning than that.

The people who were at this conference were the same people we were with in Tokyo when we arrived (at one of the post-arrival orientations), but as Mabel pointed out, it was very different. At the recontracters' conference there was no mention of how weird Japan is or how scary it is to be living so far from home. Nothing about natto or whether Japanese toothpaste contains fluoride. In short, we've all sort of gotten the hang of it. And that's a nice feeling.

Live jazz at the Green Dolphin

in Kobe

For hicks like us Shimaneans, this is a rare treat.

Arabian Rock

in Kobe

"Kobe is a port city."

On the train on Port Island.

I like Yokota

because when the weather is warm, it smells like church camp.

My electronic dictionary is awesome

cos it has this entry.
Skaneateles Lake is where Syracuse gets its water. We pronounce it "skinny atlas."

Canon Wordtank G50

Am I missing something?

Sony Overseas Models FAQ

I've been trying to figure out how realistic this "Important Notice" is, and all I can think of is, "Not very."

Important notice for Japan Tourist models
Tourist models are neither designed nor manufactured for the use in Japan.
Refrain from using them in Japan.

So let me get this straight: A foreigner-friendly computer which can be serviced in Japan and, so far as I can tell, can be purchased only in Japan, should not be used in Japan.

If these Overseas Models were super-duper, state-of-the-art computers available only in Japan, and if this were a gimmick to increase tourism to Japan ("Visit Japan, get a new computer, and be the envy of other foreigners!"), that might make sense. But they're not, and it isn't.

Edit: I should point out that Sony's own website states that Sony Overseas Models are "products that you can use both in Japan and overseas."

Go

I just like the way this turned out.

Thick clouds were moving in over Matsue after I passed the driver's test. This is the stoplight just out of the parking lot of the Driver's License Center; the building is behind the camera and to the right. Lake Shinji is straight ahead.

Golden Week

I just got out of a meeting with all of my JTEs at both schools, and dagnabbit, I forgot to take a photo while they were all there. My lapse in memory may have been due to the coma I was about to slip into.
One room, six English teachers, and myself, and no one spoke a word of English for the entire meeting.
English teachers.
Of course they're far more comfortable speaking in their native language, but it would've been nice, what with six potential translators in the room, if someone had filled me in on the discussion from time to time.
Got me scratching my head as to why I was even there.

But in the end, going to the meeting was better than going to the Board of Education after lunch (which was the only other option, as everyone at the junior high school would be at their various meetings). The meeting let out at 3:30, and as it was held at Minari Elementary School, I just walked home afterward (and got some watercolor pencils at the stationery shop along the way). Finishing off the day at the BoE would've meant sticking around till 5.

Tomorrow is the beginning of Golden Week. Friday, April 29th is Green Day. Tuesday, May 3rd is Constitution Day. Wednesday, May 4th is National Holiday (yeah, just National Holiday). Thursday, May 5th is Children's Day. All of these are public holidays. And the way the days fall this year, one can take personal time off on Monday, May 2nd and Friday, May 6th, and get 10 days off in a row. I won't be doing that, as my plans for the week are currently few and, when they do materialize, not likely to be complicated. So far the only thing I know for sure is that I'm taking Ikeda-sensei out for dinner on Saturday; her birthday was last week. Tane-sensei's birthday is next week, so I'll ask her if she wants to do anything.

Walking home from the meeting at 4pm, I passed a roadside temperature readout: 30°C.
It's been many moons since I've broken a sweat from walking down the road. But there's a good breeze blowing, and golly, I just realized this weather is perfect for drying laundry. I'm gonna go to the store and get some sturdy hangers.

Ah yes.

Nothing like a little suspense to make things interesting....

The crank turns (two consecutive 90-degree turns) on the narrow roads looked really difficult from the observation room, where I took the photo yesterday, and from the back seat of the car, where I sat while the woman before me drove her test. But when I was actually driving, they weren't so daunting.

When we got back inside, we (five of us, all female foreigners) waited in chairs while the examiner called us one by one to tell us whether we'd passed or failed. The first one left after talking to the examiner: she didn't pass. Likewise, the second one left immediately. The third woman came back to the seats: she'd passed; words of congratulation were given. The fourth woman also came back, but she was just collecting her things.

He called my name, and I walked up, trying to convince myself that I'd failed, even though I felt pretty good about how it'd gone. Sure enough, he showed me on the little course map that I'd made a right-hand turn from the left-most of two lanes. Crap. I would've had points deducted for something like that in New York, and in Japan they give you no room for mistakes: it's all or nothing. He also made a point of telling me that my crank turns could have been better, that I should have turned closer to the insides of each turn. I didn't know why he was wasting his breath on style points.

Then, "Ii desu," he said.
"Ii desu?"
"Ii desu."
"Ii desu ii desu?"
"Hai, ii desu."
"OK desu ka," I said, pointing to the seats.
"Hai," he said, and motioned for me to sit down.*

I couldn't tell what miniscule mistakes the other women had made that caused them to fail, so I thought that I was a sure goner, which made the news of my passing mark difficult to accept. So I went back to my seat and told the other woman, "I passed... I think." But this was confirmed a few minutes later when I was called up to have my eyesight/color vision checked.

I am now a fully licensed driver in two countries.

<beam>

*Translation:
"It's good."
"It's good?"
"It's good."
"It's good it's good?"
"Yes, it's good."
"Is it okay?"
"Yes."

Ways to Try My Patience: No. 1

Laugh at me for writing down my birth year according to the Gregorian calendar (80) instead of by potentially ambiguous Japanese emperor calendar (55). Share this misunderstanding with your nearest co-worker, and laugh again.
For extra punch, perform the above at the Driver's License Center, after you've thrown a bunch of Japanese-only forms in my face, rattled off a bunch of instructions to me in Japanese, and waited impatiently for the ten minutes it took me to not really figure out what they all mean.

Fahrvergnügen

Ventura Highway in the sunshine
Where the days are longer, the nights are stronger than moonshine.
You're gonna go, I know...
Cos the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there.
Seasons crying, no despair,
Alligator lizards in the air.
In the air....

I'd bought a copy of America's Greatest Hits a year or two ago. I ripped the whole CD, though I really just got it for "A Horse with No Name." But about a month ago, on an unseasonably warm afternoon, I was just shuffling through the songs on my iPod, and I came across "Ventura Highway."

How could I not have discovered this song earlier? I'm pretty sure I actually listened through the whole CD when I bought it, but somehow this one flew under the radar.
Or maybe I heard it just fine, and it wasn't until now, with the sakura in the warm sky and the smell of earth under my fingernails, that it's made me feel like topping off the gas tank, rolling down the windows, and driving till autumn.

When is polite impolite?

Reading from the Japundit archives tonight, I came across an interesting commentary on a Japan Times article. Ampontan makes some good points about recognizing and reacting appropriately to Japanese conversational conventions, and John Thacker writes a comment comparing these Japanese customs to those in North Carolina.

As a Southerner, I’ve never though it weird to talk about the weather. Nor to refuse all initial offers, to insist upon an offer even if you don’t really mean it, to offer compliments to be polite, and to turn them aside in order to be polite. I also understand perfectly well getting upset if someone doesn’t apologize for having you doing something that you wanted to do anyway, or offer to pay for something that you want to pay for. All favors should be initially refused (and possibly refused a second time). If the person really wants to do it, they’ll insist. Just basic politness I learned growing up in North Carolina; thankfully it applies for the most part in Japan. (Now in New York…) ... In fact, it’s downright frustrating for me to be in New York because people have such an impatience for small talk. Makes them seem rude.

I very nearly replied to this comment on the blog's page, but decided it was off-topic enough that it should be done on my own blog. So here we go.

I can't speak for other New Yorkers, but there must be a non-trivial number of them who feel the same way that I do about what kind of behavior is considered polite.

Regarding compliments, well, it depends on the compliment. If I believe the compliment was made in good faith, i.e. the person complimenting me really meant it, I say either, "Thank you," or more humbly, "I'm glad you think so." To deny this kind of compliment would be, in my mind, to call the compliment-giver a liar. If I say to someone, "You're really good at dancing," then I have watched them dance, thought they were good, and decided to comment on it. Of course, other compliments are just meant to be polite ("Nihongo wa jouzo desu ne," when my Nihongo couldn't get me past the Level 4 JLPT) or to flatter me ("You have the most beautiful voice in the world!"). In New York, I roll my eyes and say, "That's not true." In Japan, I omit the rolled eyes.
So where compliments are used as ice-breakers, I don't see a problem with denying their verity. But in other circumstances sometimes the most appropriate action is to accept the compliment gracefully.

Refusing a favor when you would really mean to accept it is a behavior that, in my view, borders on the obnoxious. If I've offered to do you a favor, I meant it when I first offered it. If you refuse to accept it, I assume you really don't want to accept. In my mind, if I refuse someone's offer only to expect them to make that offer a second (or third) time, I am expecting them to do more work to accomodate me than if I'd accepted in the first place. It also puts the one offering the favor in the awkward position of trying to know when to stop offering. Maybe people from North Carolina and Japan intuitively understand when enough is enough, but how many refusals must I hear, or how adamantly must one refuse, before I know the person really means it? All this "asking more than once" business leaves room for people to offer favors without really meaning it. Offering a favor becomes just a polite gesture, rather than a true offer of assistance. And what if I'm on the receiving end of a "polite favor"? How do I know if they really are interested in helping me?

And we all know how gracefully I deal with small talk.

Ach, maybe all this just comes naturally to people who have grown up with these social norms, but they're confusing and wholly unnecessary to me.

I'm mildly sleep-deprived, so forgive me if this post seems a bit ramblesome.

And I probably won't get to blogging about the World Expo this weekend, but I'll get to it. In short, mostly good with small patches of lame. High temperature 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

more box

It talks to me at 8pm, too.

Words cannot express how pissed off I am.

I don't know what to call it, so I call it a box. Some Japanese residences have them. At various times throughout the day they make some noise, usually announcements about events in town. I'd heard about them from other JETs who had them in their apartments, and offered words of sympathy to the stricken.

My heart sank when my supervisor informed me last week that I, too, would soon be subjected to this monstrosity: the towns are merging and every home must have one. I groaned audibly. "Nihongo, Nihongo, Nihongo," I said, mimicking the announcer's voice. "Wakarimasen (I don't understand). Can it be turned off?" No, but I could choose where it would be placed. In the apartment entrance, I said, far from my bedroom. She went off to find some more information, and returned with the news that, in fact, I would not be able to choose its location, as all the boxes would be installed in the same place in each apartment, but there would be an Off switch. "Ah, good," I sighed in relief.

She told me the installation would take place on Saturday, when I planned to be in Aichi. But when I returned, everything in my apartment was exactly the way I'd left it (for better or for worse). Ah! No box!

Until 6:30 this morning, when I heard an ominously familiar tune.
"Ichi! Ni! San! Shi! Go! Roku! Shichi! Hachi!"
Dear God let that be the neighbors' radio on way too loud.
But the chirpy piano continued to sound as though it were coming from the dining room. "Ichi! Ni! San! Shi! Go! Roku! Shichi! Hachi!"
That stupid warm-up exercize music. I caught it on TV one morning at Tokyo orientation, and you can see each stretch, but on the radio it's just some guy counting to eight over and over in time to the music, periodically calling out instructions that I don't understand. During the summer they broadcasted it from a speaker in a lot near my apartment, and some of the neighborhood kids would run to the lot and do the stretches.
But I am not seven, and this is not summer vacation, so being awakened by a perky radio broadcast at the crack of dawn, let alone one I can't understand, makes me really grumpy; the thought of being subjected to this for the rest of the time I'm in Japan frosts me.

Edit April 7: Duh, I forgot the punchline. I cannot turn the box off after all. Wednesday morning I stumbled out to the dining room and had a look at it. It has a volume control, but that was already set to its lowest level when it woke me.

However, further examination has revealed a pair of wires attached by philips head screws. Perhaps it can be dismantled for the time being and repaired before I move out.

2005 World Expo

Today I'm leaving for the 2005 World Expo in Aichi Prefecture. Trevor and Signe and I will drive down, take in the sights and sounds on Sunday and Monday, and drive back on Tuesday.

I'll let'cha'll know how it goes.
(Let'cha'll?)

Takeshima Day

I hardly know what to make of this, so better that you educate yourselves.
Ask your favorite search engine to return webpages containing the words "Takeshima," "Shimane," "Japan," and "Korea."
Then run the same search again, only replace "Takeshima" with "Tok-do."

And since most of the results for either search will be for Japanese news outlets, make sure you hit a Korean site, too. They'll tell you why exactly South Korea is so pissed about this. The Japanese news is notorious for reporting that the Koreans are pissed, but rarely give any explanation.

Takeshima means "Bamboo Island."

****************

N'kay, where was I?

I'm glad the schools here have ceremonies to say goodbye to the teachers who are leaving. When I was in tenth grade, I made the audition for the next year's show choir at my school. Mr. Windheim was going to be our teacher, as he had been for the past, oh, twenty-something years. That September when I got my schedule there was no teacher listed next to Show Choir, only a line of asterisks. During math class on the morning of the first day of school, I asked Matt Pellow about it. "Mr. Windheim retired," he said.
"He what?!" Why hadn't he told us the June before? I never got to properly say goodbye.
The school had hired a new music teacher, but she couldn't leave her former school without giving them x weeks notice, so our class went through several substitute teachers during the first month, none of whom knew a thing about choir directing. One guy tried to make us write papers about some kind of music history. Took us to the library and everything. We decided we'd all do a bit of research for the same paper. I went home and typed it up, making the appropriate number of copies, and Aimie printed out different cover pages for each student in the class. I think it was on Native American music... I really don't remember a thing about it. On the due date we all handed in our identical papers. Never did get any feedback on it.

But I digress. Last night's enkai was one of the better ones I've been to, maybe the best so far. I hate to say it, but I think I prefer the enkais where everyone pays attention to me. I mean, of course no one likes to be perennially ignored, but if I am dining with other English-speaking foreigners, I can participate in conversations without being the subject of those conversations. I can listen in and add my own thoughts whenever I like. But my Japanese is still very poor, and when I dine with Japanese people, I'm usually the only native English speaker in the room, so in order for me to participate in conversations, everyone around me must deliberately speak in a way quite different from the way they would if I were not there. If I am to enjoy talking with others, they must be acutely aware of my presence and make changes accordingly. Consequently, these conversations tend to focus on me, what I like, what I think. If there's a JTE nearby, she's usually dragged in to translate from time to time, which sometimes is helpful and sometimes is annoying. At Yokota's graduation enkai last week, for instance, the fellow sitting to my immediate left called down to Ikeda-sensei, a few seats to my right, and asked her something. She replied with, "Nuu-yohku shuu" (New York State).
"Did he just ask where I'm from?" I called down to her. She nodded. "Oh come on," I said to nobody in particular, "I could have answered that." He certainly could have phrased his question, even in Japanese, so that I understood. And this fellow even speaks some English; he's said too much already, he can't fool me now.

But having Ikeda nearby was very helpful at the second party last night (oftentimes after enkais, a smaller group will continue on to another, less formal party, at a nearby late-night restaurant or karaoke bar). A couple of guys (one married and one not) and Kimachi-sensei (my JTE's wife) were sitting across from me, and the married guy tells me he has a question for me right about the time Ikeda gets up to use the bathroom. So he starts telling me about the single guy, how he's 26 years old and lives with his parents and plays tennis and is looking for a girlfriend between the ages of 26 and 36. All that took about three minutes to explain, and all the while I'm thinking, What do I have to do with this? Kimachi-sensei wondered the same thing. "Me too. Why?" she said, looking at them. When I knew that I didn't meet the age criteria, I relaxed a bit, but I still kept on guard for the possible set-up.
"Ikeda-sensei," I whimpered when she returned. "What are they talking about?!" They filled her in quickly and she started to explain everything that I already understood. "I get it," I said, "I only want to know why they're telling me this. Are they just making conversation?"
A few more words passed between them, and she said, "They want to know, do you think it can work? Ten years age difference. That is like if you marry a 14-year old. You are 24?"
"Twenty-five."
"So, fifteen years old. San-nensei," she smiled.
"No." I chuckled. "No. No. But when people get older.... My mother is 50 and my stepfather is 41."
"Really?" she said, surprised, and started to tell the other three in Japanese.
"Wait, wait, lemme do it." So, with a bit of help, I managed to explain to them the age difference. "Good marriage," I said. That made the single guy happy. The married guy told us that his wife is six years older than he. I get the feeling that marriages between older men and younger women, sometimes with a significant age difference (more than ten years) are much more common in Japan than they are in the States... but I have no idea how common marriages between older women and younger men are.

If Mr. Single Guy (I swear, that's gonna be my nickname for him now) were living in the States, my first piece of advice would be, "Move out of your parents' house." But in Japan it is very common—and socially acceptable, it would seem—for single people to live with their parents. Even married people sometimes live with the parents of one spouse. Tane-sensei grew up in Nita, and lives with her folks in Fuse (that village in the north part of Nita) now that she is teaching here. Ikeda is from Matsue, and while Matsue is a little far to commute every day to Yokota, she goes up on the weekends and stays with her folks, even though she has an apartment here. I guess with all the shuffling around they do, it's nice to have a fixed point to call home.

Shuffle.

My recent absence from the blogosphere is in no way related to the recent earthquake in Kyushu. Just in case you were wondering.

Today is my last day at the Nita Board of Education. Ordinarily I'd be at Nita Junior High School on a Friday, but yesterday was the last day of school, so the next two weeks are Spring Break. Not that I get time off; I have to use personal days to get out of work, so instead I'm just reporting for duty at the BoE. Which means I have lots of time to blog in the gaps from the last two weeks. I think the thing I'll miss most about this place is having a computer at my desk. It's slow as an ojiisan in a Carry Truck, but it works and it's online. The people, yeah, they're all nice, I'm sure, but I hardly know them. Yokota BoE has always been my "real" BoE, which is to say that they're my contracting organization, so I know the people there better. Next week when the towns merge, I'm not sure if anyone from the Nita BoE will move to the Okuizumo BoE, or if it'll be staffed entirely by Yokota BoE people. For that matter, I don't know who will be rotated out of the Yokota BoE at the end of the month.

I had thought it was just teachers, but it turns out many professions shuffle their employees about their prefecture, moving every three to six years. Yushi is a police officer in Nita, and he sometimes attends my English conversation class. Last time I saw him, he said he was packing his belongings, because he suspected he would be transfered elsewhere at the end of the month (the, I guess, fiscal year begins in April, and this is when these moves take place). He didn't know for sure, and certainly didn't know where he might be transfered. So not only is it stressful to move—and more so for those with families, who must decide whether they will all move, or if just the one who is transfered will move—but they are given very little notice. Maybe two or three weeks. Tane-sensei told me on Tuesday who would be leaving Nita JHS (but made sure I understood it was "top secret" until the 24th when the students would be told). Ikeda-sensei held out until... well, I never did find out from her, but from Kimachi-sensei, one of my Nita Japanese Teachers of English, whose wife works at Yokota JHS. And I found out from him yesterday, at the same time as the students.

So of my five JTEs, Itohara-sensei at Nita JHS will be moving to Daito JHS. This is not such a bad move for his family, because Daito is immediately north of Nita, and his family lives in Fuse, the village in Nita which is closest to Daito. He'll have a slightly longer commute, but that's about it. My two favorite JTEs arrived just last April, so I knew they weren't going anywhere, but I'm a little sad to see Itohara go. I like all my JTEs, and I don't know how well I'll like the woman who will take his place. Kimachi says she's from Hiroshima, but that's all anyone knows about her. Maybe we'll get along swimmingly. Kimachi was not so optimistic. "I will be the only male English teacher!" he lamented.

Oh, someone just turned on the TV here, and the local station is broadcasting some program about the history of Nita, it appears. Mostly a narrated slideshow. A bit of nostalgia before Nita and Yokota are absorbed into each other.

I feel fortunate to be here now, being able to know each town individually, and witnessing their merger. Not that life will change dramatically after March 31st, but... well, I don't know how it will be different. I guess we'll all find out.

This slideshow is part of a larger ceremony taking place a couple of blocks from here, and televised live. There are lots of old men in the audience. Oh, and the head BoE guy at Nita, he's on stage now. I hardly wondered where he was going when he left here an hour ago.

All this is mildly interesting for me, and about a tenth as interesting for you, so I'll stop the play-by-play.

Yesterday was the farewell ceremony for the teachers who are leaving. Six each at Nita JHS and Yokota JHS. Since this is a Nita week, I attended the Nita JHS ceremony. So Itohara is leaving, and so is Kasuga-sensei, the art teacher. She speaks some English, and last year she used to come to my apartment with Tane every week for some English/Japanese lessonness—I think we spent 90% of the time on English, but I did learn some things about Japan. She lives in Izumo and drives over an hour to get to Nita every day; she'll be transfering to Hiikawa, a small town immediately east of Izumo, so her commute will be shorter (and less treacherous, avoiding Rt. 26 during the winter). The other four teachers I hardly knew. At Yokota, the only teacher I really knew was the music teacher (and I didn't even know his name), so I'm not too sad about their leaving. It'll be interesting to see who comes in to replace them.

Last night both schools had farewell enkais. The folks at Yokota asked me a week ago if I could attend, so I accepted their invitation. The folks at Nita asked me one day before if I could attend. Nope, sorry, Yokota booked me first. But it was good to participate in some sort of farewell event for each school. Kyoto-sensei at Nita joked yesterday, shortly before I left for Yokota, that I should be split down the middle and half of me taken to each enkai. "Ow ow ow!" I exclaimed.

Got a women's luncheon to attend with the Nita ladies now, so I'll write more when I return.

One-Point English Conversation Class

Trevor, down in Akagi, does this little mini-eikaiwa on the local television station. He showed us some video clips from a DVD. The shows are mostly kinda boring, with classroom-style English lessons, but in each episode there is a skit. A really funny skit. When we saw them, I fairly begged him to put them online. And now he has.

One-Point English Conversation Class

You'll need to download each one to view it. My personal favorite is "That Stupid Girl."

Someone of influence up in Unnan City caught one of these programs and liked it, so they're going to be broadcast up there soon. How much longer can it be before this crazy show takes Japan by storm?

Edit 3/21/05: For those of you having trouble watching the movies, Trevor recommends downloading the XviD Codec at this site: http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/
You don't need to know what XviD or a codec are; just pick the one you need (for Windows or Mac; if you use a different OS, you probably already know how to fix this problem) and install it.

You probably heard it here first.

Nita and Yokota will be merging on March 31st, and the new town's name will be Okuizumo. "Oku," as Tane-sensei pointed out to me, means "back" or "bottom," and Izumo is the name of the eastern region of Shimane Prefecture. Nita and Yokota are tucked into the lower eastern corner of the prefecture, so I guess the name is appropriate. The name is already associated with this area, as there's already some stuff around here called Okuizumo this and Okuizumo that. The Okuizumo Orochiloop is the only thing that comes to mind right now, but I've seen it elsewhere.

The towns' Boards of Education: I don't know if they're merging employees, or if just Nita BoE is getting the axe. The "new" BoE will be the Yokota BoE, and I have no idea who will be staying or going, but I'm glad that at least they chose to use that building; it's newer, and the AC works better.

Whether or not I'll be moving to Yokota in July is still up in the air. Though I think I've reached the point where I'd rather move (for a variety of reasons) than stay where I am, though if you'd asked me five months ago, I would have said I wanted to stay in Nita, given the choice. The towns have always shared the junior high school ALT evenly, so they alternate which town the ALT lives in, and those who stay for more than one year have to move to the other town. Now that they will no longer be different towns, it seems (judging by what Tokue-san, my quasi-supervisor at Yokota, said to me last week) that I could just stay in Nita. I'll see what I can do about moving, but my guess is that wherever I end up in August is where every JHS ALT will live until... well, until the end of the JET Programme, I suppose.

I'm not even kidding...

If you send me Cadbury creme eggs, I will send you Hello Kitty toilet paper.

Send me e-mail to the address at the bottom of the sidebar, and we can discuss details.

I can't believe

I just bowed to my supervisor
over the phone.

The birds and the bees

Today is one of those days that feel like a midsummer morning, just before the air has gotten hot. It's a balmy 6C outside right now, and the sky is blue blue. And after visiting the Nita Town Board of Education every other Monday for seven months, I've finally realized that the nests that hang under the eaves at the neighboring town office aren't those of wasps, but some sort of bird. I should have known better, because the openings are much larger than what wasps require, but today is the first day I can remember actually seeing anything in those nests. And they are full of birds.

They look cozy.

I'm enjoying the relative quiet of the BoE before I go to Minari Elementary in half an hour. I have no idea yet what I'll be doing with the second graders, but that's not unusual. The fifth grade teacher faxed me a lesson plan, photocopied out of an English lesson plan book.

Oh, wait, I just realized I do know what I'll be doing with the second graders. The second grade teacher is the mother of one of my students at Nita Junior High School, and she (the student) gave me the lesson plan two weeks ago. And it's still in my purse. Safe safe.

After lunch, I'll be off to Fuse Elementary (that's "foo-say," not the thing what's used instead of a circuit breaker). I think I've seen the fifth grade class there before, but almost every time I go I'm there to teach the sixth graders; I haven't seen any of the younger kids, except to walk by them in the halls. I guess that makes more sense than spending all my time with the younger kids and not teaching the older. So today I'll be talking to the sixth graders about graduation ceremonies in America. I don't know when they'll be graduating, but it'll be soon. The senior high school students have mostly all graduated, and my junior high school students will graduate next week. I look forward to seeing the sixth grade students as first grade students in the junior high school (U.S. seventh grade is the same as Japanese first grade junior high school). I'll probably be the only teacher any of them know at their new school, and the experience of other JHS JETs is that the sixth graders who move up to JHS are their best buddies (and also more likely to pull the dreaded kancho, but I think they're less likely to try to pull that on a female JET).

Coupla links

Signe's brother found this website containing several articles written by a JET in Kyoto: I am a Japanese School Teacher

And I stumbled upon Japundit on Saturday, and thought this particular article was interesting. Most of them are, actually, but anyone who can demonstrate that the Guinness Book of World Records has made a mistake gets kudos from me.

On finickiness

Dad e-mailed me yesterday to ask what I wanted for my birthday. I thought about it for a while, then wrote back and told him what I really wanted:

IBC root beer.

Every time I tell someone out here about root beer, I have to spend four minutes explaining that, no, it's not beer, no, it doesn't even taste like beer, and no, I don't know why they call it root beer. Except for Joe's theory, that it used to be called "herbal tea," but in order to increase manly man sales they changed the name to something more "masculine."

No, I don't know who they are, either.

So if Dad mails the root beer on Monday like he said he would, I'll be able to bring them to eikaiwa a week later on my birthday. Woo! Nothin' like kickin' back on a chilly late-winter evening in your local community center with some cold ones and watching your eikaiwa students politely sip on their non-beer carbonated beverages just to be polite.

I'm sure that's exactly what's going to happen, cos most of the Japanese I know are such picky eaters that one marvels at how long they've maintained their member-in-good-standing status within the international community.

Mabel and I have discussed this several times. I think my problem in understanding this pickiness is that, to me, Japanese food is exotic and, well, the Japanese eat lots of Japanese food, so they must like exotic food. I never consciously thought this, but after being surprised several times to see Japanese people turn away food that I thought was delicious, I realized that's exactly the presumption I'd been operating on all along.

In November or December, I attended one of my first Japanese classes, at the invitation of the traveling school councelor at Yokota JHS who is one of the volunteers for the group. Some of them (including the aforementioned Ueda-sensei) had just returned from a trip to Thailand, and in true Japanese fashion had brought gifts of Thai desserts to share with the group. There were these lovely, little sandwich-type cookies, very light and with lovely flavors like pineapple and coconut. Wegmans sells things like this, and when I worked there I used to hork some of the broken ones from the freezer. Yum! But not for everyone else there that night. These things aren't very large, but they broke them up into smaller pieces and nibbled at them. "Oishii, yo!" I said, popping a whole one in my mouth. But they could not be swayed.

I'd told my eikaiwa class about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups ("PeaNUT butter!") in December, so when I was in New York during the holidays, I picked up a box of peanut butter cups at Sam's and included it in the packages I mailed myself. After the packages arrived, I brought some peanut butter cups to the next eikaiwa. "These are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups," I proudly proclaimed. Mabel was there, too, and she'd never had them before, either, so this was a new experience for everybody. I distributed the peanut butter and chocolate orange goodness... and everyone ate exactly one cup. No one touched the second one in their package. Except for me, of course. But even I had become accustomed to the Japanese diet, and said, "Wow, these really are sweet." When I was in high school, I would buy packages of minis when they were on sale (especially after holidays when CVS was trying to dump the holiday-themed packages) and eat them like I was going for the world record. But no longer. I'd also bought a 44oz bag of the peanut butter cup minis and small KitKat bars, which I keep by my computer desk and do not share with anyone; after two months, I'm about three-quarters of the way through.

But I digress. It didn't bother me so much that no one thought the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were oishii, but that, as Mabel told me later, one of the guys had made a yuck face after eating his. She didn't tell me who it was, and I didn't see it myself, so I'm glad I don't know who it was. But we agreed that we have three words for any Japanese who turn their nose up at Western food:

Raw. Horse. Meat.

Mabel went to an enkai with her teachers where they tried to get her to eat this stuff. She vehemently refused. Gag me with a spoon. I think raw fish is delicious, but keep me away from uncooked mammals, thank you. Or birds. Or amphibians. In fact, let's just stick to the fish.

And earlier this week the Yokota school lunch included a large helping of natto salad. Natto doesn't make the school menu here nearly as often as it does in other places, but that's okay cos it's a taste I don't feel any pressing need to acquire. Natto is slimy slimy, and tastes like vomit. So the teachers kind of chuckled when I finished the rest of my lunch and returned to the lunch table to dispose of my natto salad, virtually untouched. Watanabe-sensei proclaimed, "I like natto very much."
"Do you want this?"
She paused. "Really?"
"Yeah, I'm just going to throw it out."
"Ah, thank you!"
Cool. Got rid of my natto salad, and didn't feel like a loser for chucking it.

So I think I'll just bring one or two bottles of IBC to eikaiwa with some paper cups. If they really like it, I'll bring more the next week.

Let's Asking Originally!

I've spent the last six days reading through the comments on this post on Chez Miscarriage.

Wow. For two reasons, wow. One, that people dish out flak like that. Two, that I actually read through the whole thing.

I was going to post a comment of my own, but since it was somewhat off-topic, I thought I'd just post it here.

Some people commented on the distinction between a true "drive-by" and insipid questions or observations. By the time people had started bringing this point up, I was already noticing the trend myself. While some suffered at the hands of egregiously insensitive people, others complained about nothing more than hearing the same things over and over again, and getting sick of providing the same answers.

Story of my life. Or, at least, the last eight years of my life.

When I was finishing high school, conversations always seemed to go,

What college are you going to?
S.U.
What are you going to major in?
Physics.
Oh, physics! That's hard. I could never do that.
... Okay.

When I started college, it was,

How do you like college?
I like it fine.
What are you majoring in again?
Physics.
Oh, physics! You must be smart. I could never do that.
... Okay.

When I was finishing college, it was,

Are you going to grad school?
Not right away.
What kind of job are you looking for?
I'm not sure yet.
You know, I'll bet you could teach.
Yep. I bet I could.

After I graduated from college and was working part time, it was,

So, have you found a job yet?
Not yet. Promise I'll tell when I do.
You know, I'll bet you could teach.
Technically.

After I found out I was going to Japan, it was,

Tell me again when you're leaving for Japan?
July 24th I fly out of JFK.
You're going there to teach physics, right?
No... they have their own physicists there.
You must be excited.
Yep!

When I arrived in Japan, it was,

Do you use chopsticks?
Yep.
[brief demonstration]
You are very good at using chopsticks.
Thank you.
Are you accustomed to Japan?
A little.

When I went home for Christmas, it was,

OHIO!
... What?
Oh-HIGH-Oh.
Ah. Ohayou gozaimasu.
How's Japan?
Japanerrific.

The problem with the curt answers I sometimes give, out of sheer boredom with the conversation, is that they turn people off. Sometimes that's okay, as most of the offenders are friends of my parents and I feel no obligation to maintain anything more than a superficial relationship with most of them. But during the holidays I met up with people I liked whom I hadn't seen in months, and the only thing they could come up with was, "How's Japan?" I think some of them may have interpreted my Emilyesque "Japanerrific" reply as a desire to end the conversation, but closer to my true motivations was that I was simply trying to reflect the nature of their question in my own answer.

How's Japan?
Okay. Economy's good, but the birthrate's down. Koizumi's brought in an entirely new cabinet to boost his party's popularity.

And I'm sure that's not what you want to hear.
Work with me, people! Ask specific questions!
Before I flew home, I was reading on BigDaikon about how most JETs who had moved back home had learned that it was best if they didn't talk about their experiences in Japan unless asked directly—I'm sure this goes for anyone who has lived overseas. Most of their friends and family were curious at first, but quickly lost interest because their experiences over the last few years had had so little in common with the JET's experiences in Japan. So, for the most part, I tried to keep my mouth shut unless I was asked. This was a big mistake. I was only home for three weeks: I should have blabbed about Japan non-stop until everyone was sick of my company. The thing is, I don't know where to start, because everyone's curious about different things. That's where you come in. Wanna see my visa? My foreigner identification card? Some Japanese cash? I'm happy to play show and tell.
But please, for the love of heated toilet seats, don't resort to, "How's Japan?"

No Pony

Back in my freshman year of college when I worked in the law school copy room, a few of us were just sitting around doing nothing in particular between the "must have photocopies NOW" rushes. One girl was talking about her particularly romantic weekend with her boyfriend, and another one sighed, "I want a boyfriend!"
I laughed, then sighed, "I want a pony!" She saw the humor in my comment, and we had a good chuckle.

But I'm sighing now.

It's not even an issue of jealousy. Most of the JETs I know are single, and I don't envy any of them who have left their significant others back home; this is the best time in my life to move halfway around the world, unattached as I am.

Still...

Normally my baseline is a general feeling of, "Yeah, I'd like a boyfriend, but I'm in no hurry to get one." Sometimes it weirds me out to think of spending the rest of my life attached to someone, and sometimes it's the most pleasant thought in the world, but most of the time I'm simply content.
But there's something about Japan... probably not Japan itself, but there's something about me being in Japan that makes my desire for attachment stronger. I feel sorrowful lonesome at times, during a period of my life when I'm experiencing so many new things, and the people with whom I am normally close can't understand. I have friends here, both Japanese and foreign, and they're all great, but I'm beginning to wish more and more for someone I can call mine. Someone with whom to be quiet together. Someone to whom I can say, "You know what So'n'so said today?" and he knows exactly why it's so hilarious. Or poignant, or whatever.

I suppose I can be thankful that I don't have some Mr. Unattainable in mind; that would drive me truly insane. Been through that before.

Here I am
Take my hand
Lead me to the promised land
I'll take you there
if you're ready
Dance with me in some fields
Move with me, you've got the deal
You can't hide
Disguise is futile

Make me see summer is ready
Make me feel complete
Take me to the forever show
Make me feel complete

-shapeshifter, "Move with Me"

Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb

Among the things we did in Hiroshima City last weekend was a brief visit to a decent-sized music store that has a jazz section. Jazz! I miss jazz music! So of course I had to buy three five eight CDs there (not all jazz), one of which was Chanticleer's newest album, How Sweet the Sound: Spirituals & Traditional Gospel Music. The first song on this CD? "Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb."

From the lyrics printed in the extra Japanese liner notes:

(You know now) Ev'rybody's worried
'bout that atom bomb.
Well, no one seems worried about the day my Lord shall come.
(You better) set your house in order,
(well He) may be coming soon,
and He'll hit like an atom bomb when he come, when he come.

In 19 hundred and 45, the atom bomb became alive.
In 19 hundred and 49, the USA got very wise.
They found that a country across the line
had an atom bomb of the very same kind.
People got worried over the land,
just like the people in J-pan. [Japan]
God told Elijah He'd send down fire,
send down fire from the sky.
He showed old Noah by the rainbow sign,
it won't be water but fire next time.

(Oh well now) Ev'rybody's worried (don't you know)
'bout that atom bomb.
Well, no one seems worried about the day my Lord shall come.
(You better) set your house in order,
(well He) may be coming soon,
and He'll hit like an atom bomb when he come, when he come.

Now don't you get worried, bear in mind,
trust King Jesus and you shall find
peace, and happiness, joy divine,
with my Savior all the time.
God told Elijah He'd send down fire,
send down fire from the sky.
He said he would, and I believe He will,
He'll fight your battles if you keep still.

Ev'rybody's worried
'bout that atom bomb ...

... And He'll hit...
And He'll hit like an atom ...
Hit like an atom ...
Hit like an atom bomb when He come, when He come.
(You better straighten up and fly right 'cause He may be coming soon.)

Widdershins

Yesterday I got into my first car accident.
I'm fine, Dad's fine, the car is mostly fine, and there were no other cars involved.

I drove to Osaka to pick Dad up from Kansai Airport yesterday. And that is one long, crazy drive. We agreed that when anyone else comes to visit me, they should definitely fly into a closer airport (Izumo, Yonago, or Hiroshima) or resign themselves to taking the bus to Matsue. Osaka has no snow, and was relatively warm as we were driving back (and getting lost in Kobe—but that's another kettle of fish).

Saijo is a town in Hiroshima Prefecture, just across the border from Yokota. So we were almost home when I took a lefterly curve a bit too fast (~60km/h). The air was freezing, and it was snowing lightly, but the road was clear... except for this one stretch of ice. I felt the car sliding, and then we were spinning counter-clockwise for ages, and I had a vague sense that something dangerous was happening, and that I must be dreaming but probably wasn't. I don't remember if the car made one full rotation or two, but when it finally stopped, I realized my feet weren't on any pedals, so I guess I did well.

I pulled over and we got out to survey the damage. Not too bad, except the left foglamp is broken, and the front left signal is broken, too, and now the left signal blinks twice as fast as before, so there's some circuitry damage as well. The left headlight is a bit damaged, but still works. Dad noticed a bit of fluid running downhill—from beneath the car, it appeared—but it didn't smell or feel oily, so I'm not sure what it is. Maybe antifreeze. Then Dad said, "Let's get out of here, before someone does the same thing and crashes into us." So we were off. I drove very slowly back home, with visions of the car careening off the Okuizumo Orochiloop, which we still had yet to pass. (The photo is the first one on that page.)

But we're gonna take her out on the road again today, to drive to Akagi where we'll meet with Trevor and Matt, and ride down with them to Miyoshi, and take the train to Hiroshima. The roads look dry here, and it's not too cold outside, so we should be set. Gotta get back up on that horse.

Once bitten, twice shy

At eikaiwa (English conversation class) last night, only Tanabe-san (the man who organizes the class) and Kenji (the teacher at Yakawa Elementary) were there, so instead of playing a game with the proverb cards I'd borrowed from Tane-sensei, we just talked about English and Japanese proverbs.

After looking over the list of English proverbs, Kenji said, "I think there are more positive English proverbs than Japanese."
"Oh, I'm sure they just picked the positive ones for these cards." So I looked through my notebook for some proverbs I'd remembered on my own. "Like this one: 'The lesser of two evils.' This is a saying we use when we have to make a decision between two bad things. Some people said it during the last U.S. election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. 'Bush... Kerry... I'll pick the lesser of two evils.' In fact, some people say that about every election." They thought that was funny.

"Or this one: 'Once bitten, twice shy.'" I bit my hand to show "bitten," and said, "If something or someone hurts me once, I will be careful around it two times. I mean, not exactly. For example, if I pet my neighbor's dog, and the dog bites me, then I will stay away from that dog for a long time."
"Ah," said Kenji. "We have a similar proverb. 'Atsumono ni korite namasu o fuku.'"
Tanabe-san laughed. "Have you heard it before?" I asked him. He hadn't. Kenji explained: "It means I burn my mouth with hot food, so next time I blow on cold food." He looked it up in his electronic dictionary (many of which contain idioms), then laughed and showed Tanabe-san. "What is it?" I said.
He showed me the screen. Next to "Atsumono ni korite namasu o fuku" was written, "Once bitten, twice shy."

Bad news and not-so-bad news

So Dad's missed his flight.
Highly uncharacteristic, I know, but I guess he misread his departure time.
Fortunately, he was able to re-book for the same time the following day. In fact, his entire flight itinerary has been shifted one day into the future, so he will also be leaving Japan one day later.

The bad news: I'd planned on having Dad visit Yokota JHS next Wednesday, and then taking that Thursday off so I could drive him back to Osaka. Now that he's leaving on Friday, I need to take that day off to drive him, but Thursday is still up in the air. I've e-mailed Ikeda-sensei to ask if it would be possible for Dad to come in again on Thursday—this will allow me not to use up an extra day's nenkyu (paid personal leave). She will tell me to talk to Kyoto-sensei (vice-principal), which I know is the proper way to go about it, but what I really want to find out from her is whether this change will inconvenience her and Watanabe-sensei; if it will, there's no point in me asking Kyoto-sensei, as far as I'm concerned. The last time I explained this reasoning to her, either I didn't communicate it very well, or she was being purposefully obtuse about it, cos she only reiterated the necessity of talking to Kyoto-sensei first. Anyway, Dad has volunteered to "walk around town" for a few hours if I need to work on Thursday, so that's another option; the third option is for me to take both Thursday and Friday off, which again leads me to the problem of inconvenience. Ikeda's suggestion that I not come in on Friday leads me to think that this won't be much of an inconvenience, though.

The not-so-bad news: The changed flight itinerary doesn't change my plans for the weekend, which was to go to Hiroshima City with Dad and some other JETs on Saturday and maybe stay the night. I had planned to just lay low on Friday to let Dad acclimate somewhat to the time zone, so all we have to do is skip that part. Dad has no problem with this.
Last week I requested nenkyu for today (I guess it is today now, isn't it?). For about ten minutes after I got off the phone with Dad, I actually considered going in to school (Nita JHS) tomorrow. But my apartment still looks like a disaster relief zone (umm, except without the death toll), so a full day to clean in a non-panicked state will be nice.

Gmail Invitations

So after feeling not left-out at all for a few days, I have finally found myself among those Gmail users who have suddenly been given 50 Gmail invitations. Woo.

And since I have nothing better to do with them, I'll give them away to whoever wants one.* Just leave your current e-mail address in the comments section of this post, or e-mail me at the address in the sidebar.

Oh, and to make this at least marginally worthwhile for me: if I give you an invitation, tell at least one person about this blog. I know, some of you will pocket your invitation and walk away chuckling, "Sucker...." But even if I never learn of it, a certain sorrow will have entered my life. Don't let that happen.



*Terms of service are subject to change without notice. Offer void where prohibited. The Gmail invitation is provided "as is;" Em makes no guarantees, either express or implied, that Gmail will always be available, accessible, uninterrupted, secure, and error-free, nor does Em warrant the quality of e-mails sent through Gmail. Use Gmail at your own risk. Floss regularly.

The Quiet American

Ikeda-sensei just gave me something to chuckle about.
Michihata-sensei is a social studies teacher at Yokota JHS. His wife once attended my English conversation class. (I don't remember who she was; she probably introduced herself by her given name.) Michihata told Ikeda that his wife's impression of me was that I was a quiet American. "She said you were the only quiet American she's ever met."

Oh, that was a hoot. "How many Americans has she met?" Ikeda didn't know.
"If she's only seen Americans on TV, well, only the loud Americans get on TV. The quiet Americans don't make it."


She's also concerned about me working on Friday, two weeks from today. Dad's plane leaves from Osaka at 7pm, so I'll be driving him there and driving back afterward. I'd told her I'd probably be in the next day. "I usually don't get to bed until after midnight, anyway."
"I am worried about the snow," she said.
"It's two weeks away; maybe the weather will be okay." Pointing to my calendar, I said, "I should know a couple of days before if the weather will be bad. If it's too bad, then maybe I won't come in on Friday."
"Ki o tsukete! (Be careful.) I don't want you to die!"
"Well, I don't want to die, so we're good!"

Groundhog Day

Isn't it funny how, despite whatever miserable weather February 1st brings, it always seems to clear up for Groundhog Day?

Yesterday there was talk of stopping the buses because of the snow, which would have meant sending the students home early. The bus company decided instead to delay their runs for this morning, so school started two hours late today... but of course the teachers had to be in at 8:10 like usual.

"We are adults," Ikeda-sensei said, explaining why we had to be there on time.
"So are the bus drivers!" I protested.
She was unpersuaded... not that she likely had a say in the matter. But even if the bus company's decision to delay their runs was not influenced by the school, shouldn't it indicate that maybe the roads aren't safe for anybody?

So the drive home yesterday was my most harrowing driving experience yet: the main roads had last been "plowed" hours earlier, visibility was poor, and students who didn't dare walk on the buried sidewalks carefully picked their way along the streets, occasionally moving over to let the cars pass. Mabel had asked if I wanted to go out for dinner, and while nothing sounded lovlier than eating tasty food at the cozy warm "Italian" restaurant in Yokota, I realized how impossible that would be when I pulled into Mabel's parking lot. It had clearly not seen anything vaguely resembling a plow, and my door pushed about 4cm of snow out of the way when I opened it. It was then that I knew I couldn't just wait out the storm (which showed no signs of abating) but had to get home before dark. Getting back out of the parking lot, pushing and packing snow as the car went, was definitely a trick. My little car is brave.

Visibility this morning was better and worse. It didn't snow at all while I was on the road, and the bounds of the streets are more well defined, but since they were never thoroughly scraped, the snow that remains on them is hard-packed and highly reflective in the morning sun. I usually hum some Copland or Holst to distract myself from the psychological component of my photosensitivity, but sometimes it's too bad even for that.

I discovered that my car has anti-lock brakes; that is to say, when I pulled out of the parking lot down the little hill to the street, the brake pedal started pumping under my foot. For some reason. I hadn't even started to slide. My car is smart, but sometimes she's a little too smart for her own good, making executive decisions like when to change gears and when to go into ABS mode without conferring with me, resulting in much frustration and gnashing of teeth.

This entry was composed entirely on my cell phone. It took two hours to write, and contains 2,811 characters. The sky was sunny when I began, and now it's snowing again, just like yesterday.
(>_<)

Big Kerosene Heater

In the Yokota JHS teachers room, This is the shrine at which we pay our respects several times a day.

Most ritual prayers involve the sacred incantation, "寒い…　寒いですよ！"

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness

One thing I've learned from being in Japan is that it doesn't often do me much good to predict how I'll feel at a given point in the future. I thought not being home for Thanksgiving would totally bum me out, but I was okay. I thought buying a Nintendo DS would provide me with hour upon hour of gaming pleasure, but really it hasn't had nearly that impact. I thought having a car would merely be convenient; now I can't imagine what I'd do without one. I'd like to get a minidisk player for my car, but I have a feeling I'd soon adjust to that, too, and no longer appreciate it so much.

What's nice is that according to this article, I'm not alone.

My Day in a Nutshell

Well, I just discovered that my refrigerator, washing machine, 1200W heater, telephone/fax machine, and toaster oven are all on the same circuit. Though the fridge, washer, heater, and phone were all on at the same time, this wasn't a problem until 10 seconds after I turned on the microwave. Yep, that's on the same circuit, too. Fortunately, it was just the breaker I had to flip, not a fuse I had to buy, so I turned off the heater, flipped the switch, and waited for my microwave tasties to finish cooking before I turned the washer back on.

Oh, and the modem, too. And since my laptop is now recharging, I guess that was also on the same circuit. I didn't test the TV, but if we assume that it also wouldn't have worked, then every electrical outlet in my apartment is on the same switch. There are three of them, so one must have been for the lights, since they didn't go out. The third one... maybe for the water heater? I dunno.

Edit 1/28/2005: The television plugs into the same outlet as my halogen lamp, which did get cut. And the water heater is on the same circuit as everything else, as I discovered when I later tried to wash my hands. Fortunately, it heats the water as it's needed, not stored in a big tank, so getting hot water to run again was just a matter of turning the heater back on and waiting 15 seconds.


I stayed home from school today with a cold. Yesterday, Tane-sensei and I discussed the next lesson for the san-nensei (third year students). There's a dialogue in the textbook between Mark, one of the recurring characters in the New Horizon textbooks, and a doctor. He goes in complaining of a headache; she looks in his throat, decides he has a cold, and gives him some medicine. Tane and I had a long conversation discussing this lesson, which digressed severely to my middle school days. After we wrapped things up, my throat felt sore, and I thought it was cos I'd just talked so much. How funny to show symptoms of a cold immediately after discussing a doctor's visit skit.

But it didn't go away, it got worse. So I went to the hospital this morning. Tane said I should go there, rather than the town doctor, cos they speak English at the hospital. That turned out to be not-quite-true, but they were able to help me with a bilingual manual. And they had a surgeon come down and examine me, because the regular ENT doctors don't speak English. I had my insurance card, which I carry with me all the time at the advice of our Prefectural Advisors, and the bill for the hospital visit was 970 yen (~$9.50), and the medicine the doctor prescribed me was 260 yen (~$2.50). It comes in little pouches of powder, and I'm supposed to take one at each meal for three days (nine pouches all together). You tear open the pouch, and swallow the powder with some water. And I think it's supposed to make me sleepy? I'm not sure I understood the pharmacist. I took a long nap after I got home, though I hadn't taken any medicine at that point. I took some about an hour ago, and I don't feel sleepy now.

I wouldn't have even bothered with the whole hospital/doctor thing—my cold isn't that bad—but I'm pretty sure I need to have seen a doctor in order to get paid sick leave.

What sucks about living between two countries:

Five minutes before my taiko drum lesson, I discover that the sports bra I bought at Kaufmann's back in Syracuse and had shipped to me with a host of other items that just arrived last Wednesday still has attached to it the plastic security thing that can only be removed by a Special Plastic Security Thing Remover. Angry!

Unless, of course, someone knows how to remove one of these things with Ordinary Japanese Household Items.

This just after I get an instant message from my brother telling me that a package, which should have been mailed to my apartment in Japan, has turned up on Meadowbrook.

This list of Things that Suck about Living Between Two Countries is by no means complete, but I'm late for taiko, so it'll have to do for now.

A word is born.

Props to Shambly for coining a new word and being the first to register it on UrbanDictionary.com: Flickrazzi.

And he did it on Mom's birthday, too. That can't be mere coincidence.

You know the weather's bad...

when people actually follow the speed limit.

Normally, the folks around here tailgate like tricycles after the ice cream truck, but the last couple of days, everyone's kept their distance.

I'm in Yokota this week, and it started snowing hard yesterday during school. Since the sky had been sunny and the ground clear, I'd foolishly worn sneakers to school that morning. In the afternoon, one of the teachers came in from outside and said, "Emily's car... snow," gesturing that my car was covered with a pile of snow. Lovely.

When I was leaving the teachers room and saying my Osakinis ("osakini shitsureishimasu" means, roughly, "I'm leaving before you, please excuse me," which everyone within earshot generally follows with a Sayonara, or "otsukaresama deshita"—thank you for your hard work—regardless of how hard you've actually worked)... anyway, when I was leaving, Yoshida-sensei, the P.E. teacher, bravely tried, "May I help you?" Kusunoki-sensei, a special ed. teacher who speaks quite a lot of English, laughed. "Say yes!"
"Yes," I said tentatively, "but I'm sure I'll be fine."
If I got into any trouble, they told me, I should shout, "Yoshida-sensei! Help!"
"Okay," I smiled. And since I knew the ichi-nensei (1st-year students) were going skiing the next day, and their teachers with them, I said, "This snow is good for skiing. Have fun!" I'm not sure if I managed to hide my jealousy. I didn't try very hard.

Sure enough, a three-inch blanket of snow covered my car. So that's why everyone was parked underneath the building, I thought. I set to work brushing it all off and scraping the ice from the windows. About five minutes later, I heard behind me, "Are you okay?"

Ikeda-sensei was out without her coat. "Yeah, I'm fine," I said, "but you must be freezing!"
"Everyone is worried about you, if you can get out."
I chuckled. "I'm a little curious, myself." The parking lot was covered with the same three inches of snow. "I think I'll be okay."
"If you can't get out, I will dig," she said, motioning like she had a snow shovel.
"Well, I hope it won't come to that."

I'd just finished cleaning the car off, so I got in and backed out quite easily. Woo! Go little car! The way home was slow going since everyone was being careful, but I arrived at my apartment without incident.

This morning I'd forgotten all about the snow, so though I left exactly on time for a fair-weather day, I had to spend seven or eight minutes clearing off another three inches of snow from my car, and then discovered that they don't clear the roads here like they do in Syracuse. Imagine a little neighborhood street in Central New York that doesn't see a snowplow for a day or so after the storm. Now imagine that little neighborhood street is the only road between two neighboring towns. Now imagine that even when the snowplow does visit this road, it doesn't even scrape down to the level of the road, but leaves about a centimeter of snow where it passes. So I got to school fifteen minutes late, but I don't think anyone was too upset.

There was a small disturbance in the teachers room at the beginning of first period, with the teachers there talking excitedly. I put on my curiosity face and looked at Ueda-sensei, who sits immediately across from me. She's one of the volunteers for the Japanese course I attend, but her English is pretty poor. She drew me a picture of some kind of transportation vehicle (a bus, I thought), and drew some snow around it. These she annotated with "snow" and "stop," and showed the drawing to me. "Oh, it stopped in the snow," I said, and spun my arms around each other making a noise like wheels spinning in the snow. She laughed and nodded.
"This is a bus?" I asked.
"Train," she said.
"The train stopped in the snow!" I was quite surprised, because I know they have a plow for the train tracks (I've seen it), and I've always considered (and especially this morning) that if the snow were ever too deep to drive in, I'd just take the train. "Where did it stop?"
She didn't understand, so I outlined an imaginary train line on my desk. "Minari... Kamedake... Yokota?"
"Yakawa," she added, which is the station after Yokota, then "Minohara," which is the mountain in Yokota Town that has a ski slope.

I finally understood the hubbub. "Ichi-nensei?!"
"Hai."
So the poor ichi-nensei had taken the train to the mountain, and were now stuck in the snow. Further conversations between the teachers and on the phone mentioned a school bus ("sukuuru baasu"), so I'm guessing they've sent one by now. They'll have to send a few, since there are about 80 ichi-nensei, and maybe eight teachers. I haven't seen Kyoto-sensei today; that might be where he is.

So with a third of the school population on a field trip (cry), it's been a quiet day. I have only one class, which Watanabe-sensei rescheduled to sixth period, so I have a large chunk of time to study Japanese post a blog entry. And then maybe study Japanese read the Daily Yomiuri. And then maybe study Japanese.

BlogShares

I'm not sure if any of you have noticed the little BlogShares banner near the bottom of the sidebar. Back in August, I noticed that Scott and Joe had signed up, so I looked into it, was mildly curious, and decided to sign up. It's a fantasy blog share market, where incoming links make your blog shares more valuable, and the more valuable the shares of the incoming links, the more valuable your blog becomes. I think that's how it works, anyway.

After signing up, I'd never been contacted by the folks at BlogShares until yesterday, when I received two e-mails from them. The first was welcome news:

Your 1000 shares in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com/> were sold at B$19.98 ea. for a total of B$19,976.20. This brings your account balance to B$20,476.20 but the transaction will NOT be in your transaction history.
This was done because it was merged into How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com>.

Nice. They're reorganizing, and I turn a profit.
But then I got another e-mail from them:

Your 1000 shares in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com> were sold at B$.20 ea. for a total of B$200.00. This brings your account balance to B$20,676.20 but the transaction will NOT be in your transaction history.
This was done because it was merged into How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog <http://modernemily.blogspot.com/>.

So, wait... they're merging A into B, and B into A, and autosold all of my shares in each?

I didn't understand it, but when I visited my BlogShares page, I noticed that a new blog had linked to mine: JAPAN BRATS-Gaijin Blogs. I have no idea who they are or what they want from me, but I don't mind the free press.

<shrug>

o_O

I never thought I'd hear Eminem's "Cleaning Out My Closet" played over the school's PA during lunchtime, but here I am, at Yokota JHS during lunchtime, and there it is, playing over the PA. It's not the clean version, either.

I had to control my urge to bust out laughing in the teachers room.

Home

So I'm back in Nita, in my messy apartment, and what do I think of my visit home?

For one thing, it's really weird visiting home. I've gotten used to visiting Mom and Kreg in Poughkeepsie, cos Pok never was home for me. Mom and Kreg were, but not the house, not the city. I got to Syracuse on the 28th, and Chris had long since taken over my bedroom (he's done good things with it--it looks cozy), so I stayed in the guest room. (Grammy, when she came over, stayed in Chris' old room in the basement.)

Reverse culture shock was minimal. The first thing I noticed was that 65mph is really fast when you've been stuck with 50km/h speed limits for months. (I don't think my car is physically capable of exceeding 110km/h—it gets very unhappy between 80 and 100.) They opened a new 24-hour Dunkin Donuts on Marshall Street, and P&C supermarket bought the old Peter's near Drumlins. I learned that President Clinton had had bypass surgery (not all US news makes the headlines in Japan, and I don't read the newspaper faithfully or thoroughly), and SU head football coach Paul Pasqualoni was recently fired. Of all these things, maybe the P&C/Peter's thing was the most startling, but it didn't affect me much.

I visited with some friends, saw some folks at church, and tried to think of new ways to answer the question, "How's Japan?" I'd forgotten a lot. Not really forgotten, but it felt like the previous five months had drifted behind me into a cloud of fog, recognizable only by its silhouette. I would remember funny stories or strange details one at a time, here and there, but they never amounted to what had felt like volumes of things I'd thought I'd be able to tell people about living in Japan. And while I missed friends back in Shimane, I didn't miss Japan, because I knew I'd be going back.

The guest room wasn't too bad, but all of my stuff had been packed up into boxes in the basement, and, I dunno, it was just weird to return to a place that I once called home, and not feel like it's home anymore.

In a way, when I was on the train back to Nita, I felt like I was returning home.

Location, location, location

Back in Japan now, waiting in Osaka for the night bus to Shimane, so I thought I'd entertain my faithful readers with this photo.

Taken in the "Cash Corner" of the Sanin Godo Bank in Yokota, it appears to be a lottery advertisement.

False Alarm

Maybe learning Japanese will help me get a job.

For fun, and cos I was kind of bored, I updated my resume at monster.com a few days ago. Though I'd never before received a cold e-mail from someone who'd read my monster.com resume, today I got one from a Ms. Araki of New York City, asking me to contact her to discuss my "interest in jobs."

It's not all that it seems, of course. Her e-mail was awfully vague, so I checked out the company, Tabata Oxford Personnel, LLC, and it's just another job placement agency. They offer positions in Japan (though none are currently listed on the site), so the new "Japan" in my resume was probably what caught the attention of the search they ran.

Meh. I'm not planning on leaving the JET Program for at least another 19 months, anyway. Just thought I'd get an idea of what might be available for me after I do leave.

Oh, and pretend that it's Monday, January 3rd, at 11:40pm. Cos it is.

In America

If there's a way to change the time stamp's time zone for individual posts, I don't know it. I can only change the time zone for all of my posts. Right now my entire blog displays JST time stamps, even those posted before I moved to Japan. So rather than change the time stamp to EST, then change it back in a week and a half, just pretend with me that it's 5:30am here in Syracuse... cos it is.

I'm still on Japanese time, it would seem.

Getting to Kansai International Airport was much easier than I thought it would be, since I ran into Davina (a Matsue ALT) at the bus station in Matsue. She was taking the same bus as I, and also traveling to Kansai, so we stayed together till we parted ways in the terminal. This was great for me, cos Davina's a nice person, and she's been to Kansai before so she knew just how to get there. It was strange for me to see so many foreign faces in Osaka. I kept thinking maybe I knew them.

If you ever rent the DVD for The Triplets of Belleville, watch the music video included on the same disc. I swear, there's a reference in there to badgerbadgerbadger.com.

In other news:

Everyone loves Magical Trevor,
Cos the tricks that he does are ever so clever.
Look at him now, disappearing the cow.
Where is the cow? Hidden right now.

Taking his bow it's Magical Trevor.
Everybody's seen that the trick is clever.
Look at him there with his leathery, leathery whip.
It's made of magic, and with a little flip,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the cow is back!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the cow is back!
Back, back, back from its magical journey!

What did he see in the parallel dimension?

He saw beans, lots of beans, lots of beans, lots of beans.
Saw beans, lots of beans, lots of beans, lots of beans, yeah, yeah!

That's my cue. Goodnight, everybody!

Holiday itinerary

I should be packing, but I thought I'd write a short post to explain my travel plans to any folks on the homefront who're wondering.

I'm due to leave my place in less than two hours. Sayuri is giving me a ride to Matsue, cos she has a meeting up there at 9:30 anyway. This is great, because I was previously looking for a place where I could park my car in Matsue for three weeks. I'll catch a bus at 10am to Osaka, and arrive there sometime around 3pm. My plane leaves shortly after 7pm, so I need to get to Kansai Airport at 5pm. This gives me two hours to navigate the trains between the bus station and the airport, which I trust won't be too much of a problem. I'll see about catching a shuttle directly to the airport, if possible.

Then it's 12 hours and 15 minutes to Chicago, one hour and 40 minutes milling about O'Hare, and two hours and 20 minutes to New York City. If all goes as planned, I'll be touching down at LaGuardia at 9:25pm, local time.

Mom and Kreg are picking me up at LaGuardia, and I'll be spending Christmas in Poughkeepsie; Chris has to work on Christmas Eve, then he'll be down to Pok for the holiday as well. Sometime between Christmas and New Year's, I'll be going to Syracuse to spend the rest of my holiday there. Dad's driving me to LaGuardia on the morning of January 8th, and I won't return to Japan until the afternoon of January 9th. Monday, January 10th is a public holiday in Japan (Coming of Age Day, for all the 20-year olds), so I'll catch the night bus back to Matsue, and then probably take the train back to Nita Monday morning, and sleep the rest of the day. Or go to a Welcome Back party that's being hosted somewhere in the area. It depends, I might desperately need the sleep, or I might desperately need the company.

Tane-sensei has my birds. She's such a sweetheart. I asked her two weeks ago, "Do you like birds?"
"Mmm... why?"
"Heh."
So I told her I needed to find someone to take care of them while I was out of the country. "Anyone, really. Teachers. Students."
I forgot to bring it up at Yokota, but I figured it would probably be better to get someone in Nita to watch them, to minimize travel time. So when I returned to Nita JHS this week, I still hadn't found anyone. Well, that's not entirely true; Amy in Kisuki had volunteered, but Kisuki's a half hour away, and apparently her apartment gets pretty cold. I've since discovered this isn't such a huge problem (someone on BigDaikon rationalized, "Some of these birds come from Florida, and sometimes it freezes in Florida"). But still, yeah, Kisuki's kind of far.

So I had the plane tickets, the bus tickets, and a bit of pocket cash graciously loaned by Mabel; my last stress was the birds. I said to Tane again yesterday morning, "You sure you don't like birds?"
"Mmm..." she thought about it for a minute.
I explained to her that it was okay if the birds weren't kept toasty warm all the time, but that it was more important that they be kept away from kerosene and other oil heaters.
"Oh, they don't like it?"
"It will kill them."
"Ahh, so ka."
She lamented the fact that she has only kerosene heaters, and I agreed it would probably be best if I found someone else.

But then during lunch, she said, "If you can lend me your halogen lamp, I can care for your birds."
"Yes! You can definitely borrow my halogen lamp! Oh thank you, thank you!"

So she came over last night and I showed her how to change the food and water, and told her that if they got too noisy, she could put a blanket over the cage to make them fall asleep.

So I've got to remember to pick up some Lucky Charms while I'm home; Tane said she wants to try them. "They're very sweet," I warned her, as most Japanese people don't care for very sugary things. She was unphased.

This post is longer than short, so I'll finish off now.

Christmas in Japan

I had an interesting conversation with some of the folks in my eikaiwa (English conversation class) back in September. A typhoon was blowing through, and though we only got some bad rain, I think that was the main reason why only three people showed up that night. I'd planned on playing Charades, but with only four of us I abandoned that idea. Kenji, to whom my predecessor asked me specifically to say Hi for her, is turning out indeed to be a pretty cool and interesting guy. I hardly knew him at the time, though, so he startled me first with his English, which is pretty decent, and second with his questions.

Right out of the starting block: "What do you think about 9/11?" Then he wanted to know what I thought about the Iraq war. These things are difficult for me to express in the full robustness of the English language, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what I think about them, but it was a real challenge to explain these things in a way that he (and the other two people at eikaiwa that night) could understand. So, okay, I was mostly concerned with explaining them to him, since he could translate bits for the other two.

"What do you think about the war in Iraq?" I asked him.
"I hate it. I think George Bush is a terrorist."
He's nothing if not opinionated.

"Are you a Christian?" he later asked me.
"Yes, I am."
"Protestant?"
"Err... yes."
"Mmm...."
"Most Japanese people are Shinto, right?"
"Umm...." They looked at each other.
"Or Buddhist?"
Kenji said something to the other two in Japanese, and then, "Most Japanese people don't have a religion."
"Oh. But those who have a religion are Shinto or Buddhist?"
"I am Buddhist," he offered. "On December 24th, we are Christian. On January 1st, we are Shinto." He smiled.
"Oh." I didn't know quite how to respond to that, so I said, "In the U.S., we often celebrate each other's holidays, without 'becoming' another religion. I've celebrated Chanukah, but I'm not Jewish. Not everyone who celebrates Christmas is Christian. Do you mean something like that?"
Yes, they decided, that was more like what they meant.

It makes me uncomfortable when people here assume that I'm Christian just because I'm American; it makes me think that they don't have any regard for any choice I may have made to be Christian.

On a related note, Christmas itself is a well-known holiday, with its own Japanese traditions now associated with it, but it is wholly commercial. In the States, we always talk about how commercialized Christmas has become, but at least we know (or most of us do, anyway) the meaning behind Christmas, and those who don't believe that the birth of Jesus Christ is of any particular significance generally view the season as a time to remember our fellow man, and so forth... what I mean to say is that for most Americans (and if conversations with my other Western friends are any indication, for most of the West), the holiday season means something. And in Japan... I can't say that it does. It's all Santa Claus and Christmas cake. If it means anything more, I don't know it yet.

It's as if we started celebrating the Obon Festival in the States, but knew it only as a big drinking party.
"What do you do for Obon?"
"Oh, it's a blast, man. Best party of the year."
Though Obon is something with which I have only recently become familiar, an attitude like that just smacks of sacrilege.

I don't say this without realizing that we've probably already done this with a host of other holidays. And the Japanese attitude toward Christmas is a disrespect based in ignorance, so I can't fault them for it; I just wish that it weren't that way.
And it's why I want to be home for Christmas this year.

Indian food in Hiroshima

Made by real Indians!
I don't remember the name of this restaurant, but it was a great place to escape the rain and eat something tasty. Pretty popular with the foreign crowd, too. But then, Hiroshima City probably draws more tourists than all of Shimane Prefecture.

December Dandelion

I know! Can you believe it?!
I can't.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

The 3rd-year students are doing a unit on giving directions using train lines. So I drew up this highly simplified NYC subway map.
Critique it if you like, but I already know it's severely flawed. My goal was to include several popular sites on as few lines as possible, and to make it easy on the eyes for students sitting in the back; I think it succeeds, but I'll know for sure when I actually do the lesson.

Christmas Cards Please!

I know it's normally a social faux pas to request Christmas cards, but that's just what I'm doing.

Itohara-sensei wants to do a Christmas lesson in two weeks, and he asked if I had any Christmas cards to show the students. "Mmm... not yet, but let me see if I can round some up."

So if you're up for it, please send me a Christmas/Chanukah/New Year's/Holiday card by this Saturday, December 4th. It takes about a week for cards from the US to reach me (Grammy has been writing to me faithfully about once a week since I've been here), and it'll run you about 80 cents (again, if you're mailing from the US--I have no clue what postage will be from other countries).

I can't tell you on what days I'll actually be doing the lesson. No one ever knows what next week's class schedule will be, let alone two weeks in the future, so the safest thing is to ensure they reach me by Monday, December 13th (when I have no JHS classes). I suppose if they were mailed out on Monday, December 6th, they might arrive in time, but that's cutting it close.

As I'm reluctant to post my mailing address here, I kindly ask you to e-mail me first; my e-mail address is at the bottom of the sidebar (the column to the right). I'll get back to you straight away with my mailing address.

And if you know anyone else who might be interested, please let them know, too. I would be one sad, sad gaikokujin (foreigner) if I got only one card.

Do it for the children.
:P