I've stopped updating this due to lack of time, and growing
accustomed to daily life here. I'll keep these pages online as a
record of the first year and a half in Japan. Please check out the japan photo gallery which is updated
more regularly.
I spent about 4 days up in Hokkaido around Christmas.
The skiing in Hokkaido was incredible - it was about -10C during the day, and the sheer size of the ski runs was unlike anything I've ever experienced before. I'd love to go back there again.
Some older photos I haven't linked to yet:
My new
camera in 3D.
I should change the name of this blog - Japan's become not so much an adventure as a second home.
I've been getting back into photography again, and so I've juggled
around the photos on my website. You can find them here
What better way to celebrate safety week than with robots and pink and green fluorescent girls? The sign on the left says "don't forgot your seatbeat". Click the image for a big view, or check out a news article
The taiko drummers on the left were really talented. It was probably the first time I'd seen taiko live.
昨日仕事に福岡に行ったのだ。博多駅出たらすぐこのエベントが見えた。うち の同僚が普通と思ったけど、僕たった1年間日本にいて、こういうものを まだすっかり慣れてないな。
New photos:
Today (1st March) marks a full year in Japan. It feels like only 6 months. I spent the morning cleaning up my apartment - neglected plates that needed washing, and stuff like that.
A couple of days ago I'd been speaking to a student about air conditioners. I said my air conditioner wasn't a reverse cycle aircon, and it couldn't heat my room. He said that was strange, and if it could only cool, it'd be called a cooler.
Today I remembered that conversation and decided to give it one more go. At first it started pumping out cold air, but after a few minutes it started to get warmer. Shame it took me until the end of winter to notice!
今日で(三月一日)僕はまる一年間日本にいるのだ、まだ半年ぐらいに感じるの に。今朝家事をして過ごしてた。ずっとしてなかった皿洗いをしたりした。
2、3日前生徒とエアコンのことを話してた。僕が「うちのアイコンは"reverse cycle"のじゃなくて、冷房しかできない」って。生徒が「それはおかしいよ。 それなら、"クーラ"と言うやつじゃない?」って言った。
今日その話を思い出し、エアコンを点けてみた。最初は冷たい空気が出てきたけ
ど、2分ぐらいしたら暖かい空気が出てきはじめたんだ。冬の終わりになるま
でに気がついたらよかったのに。
(a newly bought table and chairs - 新しく買ったテーブると椅子)
久しぶりだね。日本語でまだよく間違ってるけど、練習のために日本語でも書 こうと思ってる。で、どこから始めようかなあ。
この前のブログの書き入れは、ダイエットしてるって。あのダイエットをす ぐ止めたんだ。忘年会があったし、新年会があったし。さぼてた。でも最近 一所懸命にがんばってるよ。痩せるためにだけじゃなくて、体のためにも。
このごろに日常生活はうまくいってる。日本語は少し喋られるようになったか ら友達と遊びにいくとき、話の意味はだいたい分かって、ときどき簡単に答え られる。すると、最近元気だった。もう子どもじゃないと感じてるし。
日常生活以外は。。ふん。今日友達の家で鍋パーティがあったんだ。友達とバスで いった。実は、それは初めて熊本でバスに乗った。だから、払い方は分からな かった。乗ったのは大丈夫だったけど、下りるときすごく大変になった。
バスに乗ったとき切符をもらった。熊本のバスは下りるときに払わなきゃいけ ないのを知ってたけど、どうやって払うかは知らなかった。
下りるときは、まず、持ってる切符を両替機に入れちゃったんだ。バスの運転 手が顔をしかめたから僕が早くまた切符をとって正解の穴に入れた。それか ら運転手に見て、なんか彼が両替機に指さした。分かったと思ってて、お釣り をそこに入れた。別のお釣りが出てきたから、「ああ、安くなった!」と思って た。新しいお釣りをとって下りた。
外にいる友達が「200えんだよ」って。しまった。100えんしか払ってなかった。ま たバスに乗って、さっきもらったお釣りと100えんをほかの穴にいれた。それ から、やっと下りれた。
すごく恥ずかしかった。バスは込んでいたし。僕の顔が苺みたいな赤になっ てた。まあ。次から払い方を分かってるので、大丈夫だ^^
じゃあ、今日仕事があるからそろそろ寝る。また近いうちに書く、仕事とか勉 強とかがないときに。
It's been a long time! I'm still making a lot of mistakes when I use Japanese, but for the sake of practice I think I'll start writing my entries in both English and Japanese. So, where to start?
In one of my recent blog entries I said I was going on diet. That didn't last long, due to end of year parties, start of year parties, and me just being lazy. But recently I've been trying really hard to be more careful about what I eat.
Life's been good recently. I can speak a little Japanese now, so when I go out for drinks or something with friends, I can understand the general meaning of the conversation, and sometimes reply (albeit without prowess much of the time). So, I've been well. I no longer feel like a child who's unable to communicate at all.
Apart from daily life - hmm. Today there was a nabe party (cooking vegetables and meat in a pot in the middle of the table) at a friend's house. I went there on the bus with some friends. Actually, it was the first time I'd used the bus since I arrived in Kumamoto - partly due to no real need, and partly because I was unsure how to go about it. So I wasn't aware of how to go about paying for tickets. Getting on the bus was fine, but when it came time to get off..
When I got on the bus, I got a ticket from a ticket machine. This is used in Kumamoto to measure how much you have to pay - a further trip costs more. I knew this much before I got on the bus, but I wasn't vsure how to go about paying.
Anyway, when it came time to get off, the first thing I did was stick my ticket into a coin changing machine. The look on the bus driver's face was enough to know that wasn't the right place, and luckily I was able to pick it out swiftly enough with a fingernail (it'd gotten stuck). The bus driver motioned towards a bigger looking hole and I stuck the ticket in there. Next the bus driver motioned to the coin changing machine again. Okay, I thought, and stuck some money in. Some change came out! Cheaper than I thought. I carelessly grabbed the change and stepped off the bus.
A friend who was standing outside said "it's 200 yen!". I'd only put in 100 yen and still received change. Something wasn't right. I got back on the bus again, put my change and some more money into the correct hole, and finally got off again.
It was pretty embarrassing - the bus had been crowded, and my face was as red as a strawberry. Oh well. I know how to use the buses now!
Well, I've got to work today, so I'm going to sign off. I'll write
again in the not too distant future - but between work, friends and
study, it's unfortunately hard to find time for writing. Until next
time!
I went to some hot springs for the first time yesterday. I was a little nervous because public bathing is not something I've had the opportunity to experience back home. We drove to a place called Kurokawa, which is a famous hotspring (onsen) in Japan - and fortunately, it's rather close to Kumamoto city.
On the way to the onsen we drove up a mountain which offers a great view of the area surrounding Kurokawa (literally: black river). Some photos are available here:
Kurokawa is a beautiful place set at the bottom of a valley, with streams and tall trees surrounding the area, and naturally heated water with various minerals channelled into a vast array of different baths. Indoor baths, outdoor baths, baths with different mineral contents and temperatures.
We went to a bath set outside. The trees were covered in snow and there was a small stream running about 5 meters away from us. The cold air caused steam to rise from the water and made the whole experience feel a little dream-like.
We spent a bit over an hour relaxing in two of the baths (one was very
hot and hard to stay in for long). The experience isn't comparable to
a normal bath - it's really relaxing and you feel wonderful
afterwards. It was a great experience.
I just got back from Hiroshima - a coworker, some students and I went on a road trip for a couple of days. We went skiing and sightseeing, and I tried snowboarding too. Although I fell over more times than I care to count, it was fun.
After a rest at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese place to sleep, vaguely similar to a hotel), we went to Miyajima, a popular tourist destination in Hiroshima prefecture. I'll let the photos do the talking for now.
I also visited an active volcano about two weeks ago.
Not much luck with the diet. I'll get there eventually.
I finally got around to processing the rest of the photos from the Fukuoka trip. I've added comments to some of them.
Browse away: a trip to the Fukuoka sumo
One thing I didn't get photos of were the yattais. A yattai is a little restaurant run out of a van or cart. They range from something akin to a gypsy cart, to complicated fold-out things that don't resemble a car at all, lest you catch a glimpse of the spare wheel mounted somewhere. They generally fold out enough to allow 5-10 people to sit inside the covered area, and it's like eating at a tiny restaurant.
Fukuoka is famous for them, so we decided that a trip to one (or two)
after the sumo was in order. Unfortunately, we picked the most
well-known strip of yattais to go to, and it ended up being rather
expensive. Two sticks of "gyuutan" - cow tongue - which would have
cost maybe $6 in a normal yakitori place - ended up costing about $23.
We realised the price after ordering. Oh well, it was a fun
experience.
A lot of events are on at the moment - parties with coworkers, parties with students and coworkers, trips to fukuoka to watch the sumo. These have spelt hell to my diet and OT and I have spoken about a 1 week reprieve.
The trip to fukuoka was great. I'll write about it soon.
I haven't felt like writing recently. I wouldn't say I've been in bad spirits, because that would be too extreme - just a little bereft of energy.
I fell off the horse with my Japanese study a couple of weeks ago. Whenever I stop studying for a few days I find it hard to pick up again, because the seemingly insurmountable amount of work left ahead makes study almost seem pointless. Of course that's not the case, but it can be difficult to snap out of that mindset.
I've still been studying, just half-heartedly. I found a Japanese chat channel a few months ago, and I spend a reasonable amount of time there. Speaking is much harder than listening for me, so it's good to get some more practice with language construction. I've also been reviewing some of my previous textbooks, but not for the amount of time I should be.
Since I still get the occasional question from friends about my "girlfriend", I should clear that up - we stopped seeing each other a few months back. For no apparent reason, our contact started becoming less frequent. She said she was busy preparing for her friend's wedding, and eventually we just stopped talking.
She was a couple of years my senior - something that probably would have bothered me more back in Australia. But the language barrier meant that while we were able to communicate, differences in experience weren't so pronounced, as we weren't able to elocute them! I didn't think we had real long-term prospects due to this, but at the time it was fun.
When I first came to Kumamoto I was going out a lot, because there were so many new things to see, and I had nothing to do at home. Now that boredom isn't such a big factor, I've tried to tone down the number of times I head down to the local "watering hole". This is good for my body and my wallet, but weighs heavily on my social life, as most of the friends I've met here I see when we go out for dinner in a big group, or when I drop by a bar. It annoys me a bit that these two are connected, since I want to socialise more than I want to drink. The language barrier makes activities like going out for a coffee a bit of a challenge.
Work is a spirit-lifter in this regard - I think if I was doing the same job I was doing in Australia, I'd feel a lot more isolated right now. My students and co-workers are lovely and while the kids classes remain a challenge from time to time, they mostly go okay. While the kids can be difficult at times, they can also be really sweet, and I must admit to getting clucky from time to time. But I don't think I'll go down that path for a few years yet!
My lethargy for study has extended to exercise too, unfortunately, and I've put on a couple of kilos since arriving. OT and I have decided to race each other to drop 10kg. Getting started has proved a bit difficult for me and he's currently in the lead, but once I get into gear I'm going to put up a fight. You can keep track of my progress by peaking at the image in this post - it'll continue to be updated as the days go by.
It's finally cooled down here and the weather is comfortable for
walking in again. I spent half the day shopping today - picked up some
more bedding to keep a bit warmer and a variety of odds and ends, like
a cheese knife. On my next day off, I think I'm going to don my
mamachari and go explore.
(Culinary) adventures in Japan
Episode 253. Okonomiyaki, take 1.
Some okonomiyaki sauce caught my eye at the supermarket today, and I figured it was time I try and make some. I've attempted this before with someone else (thanks K - that was fun), but I couldn't remember all of the specifics.
I located some other ingredients like prawns, aonori (green ground seaweed), cabbage, and premade okonomiyaki powder. I tried to read the back of the packet with moderate success - but there were a few kanji I didn't recognise. When I got home I tried to look them up, but some of them I couldn't find in my dictionary so I gave up and decided to wing it.
When making the okonomiyaki I realised I'd forgotten katsuo bushi - bonito flakes, which are dry, thinly sliced flakes of fish. They're not essential, but they're nice. Later, I realised what one of the kanji I couldn't read meant, too - tamago, or egg. Oh well. I poured in extra powder trying to thicken the mix up. It seemed to work alright.
Okonomiyaki is a cross between pizza and a pancake - sort of like a fritter but with cabbage and sauce on top. I managed to cook it alright, though it fell into a few pieces when I tried to turn it, due to the lack of egg.
Despite the missing ingredients it turned out pretty well. Yum.
I turned 22 yesterday. Being many miles away from friends and family back home, I expected it would pass by pretty quietly. But everyone here's been so kind.
I woke up early, because it's started to get cold in the early hours of the morning and I wasn't using a a top-sheet. After whiling away some time, I headed into work. Tuesdays are my longest day by an hour or two - a total of 9 hours including a lunch break. But it generally goes quickly unless I haven't had enough sleep, and before long it was time to knock off.
A week ago I'd dropped into BT's bar. It's a "gaijin bar", which means it's popular with foreigners and people who want to meet foreigners. This makes it not the best place to go to practice Japanese, though there are people who come who can't speak any English, too. But the bar's got a nice atmosphere - good music playing in the background, but not so loud you have to yell over it. Comfortable chairs. I'm also friends with most of the people who work behind the bar. It's nice to be able to drop by and know there'll always be someone to chat to.
There's a girl who works at the bar - let's call her J - who I first met a couple of days after arriving in Kumamoto. Her friend was having a birthday party at a yakitori and via BT I got to come along.
With recent study, my listening skills are slowly getting better, but my speaking ability is still very low - it takes me a long time to think about how to word a non-trivial sentence (if I can even think of how to say it!), and I'm really shy about using my Japanese in a group situation unless it's something I know I can say quickly.
When I dropped by the bar last week, J was working. Her English is mainly isolated vocabulary and a few phrases, so when we chat it's in Japanese. Chatting one on one with her was fun, because it was a lot easier than it was a few months ago. Learning a new language is such a mammoth task that it can feel like you're not making any progress. But little retrospective revelations can be rewarding.
Anyway, while chatting with J, I'd mentioned my upcoming birthday. She asked if I'd made any plans yet, and on hearing no, she suggested we go to Kimura-san's - the friendly yakitori guy from that first birthday party. I hadn't really thought to organise something for my birthday, so I agreed that sounded good.
Back to yesterday. After work finished, one of my coworkers pulled out a card and present, and presented it to me. The card had been signed by the whole office, and the present was a nice tie. I'd mentioned in passing that I like understated patterns months ago after I'd bought myself some new ties, and my coworker had remembered. It was really nice of my coworkers to go to the trouble - I didn't expect anything.
After wrapping up at work, OT and I headed to the restaurant with one of our students who'd taken the final lesson for that day. When we got there, we met J and J's friend who'd had the birthday when I first got here. More than 7 months ago, now.
We sat down at a table and chatted away while waiting for more people to show up. By about 10pm things got started. We ate a bunch of dishes like a really delicious Cesar salad, something that looked like lasagna but which was actually made out of tofu, and various other things.
After dinner, the lights dimmed, and one of the restaurant staff come out bearing a slightly wonky but very exotic looking cake. We were all surprised when we found out J and another girl who was there had toiled over it for quite some time after work. It was a banana sponge cake with chunks of banana in it, topped in icing and mushrooms - the mushrooms made from chocolate sticks and chocolate drops.
Everyone launched into a chorus of "happy birthday", which was interrupted near the end in favour of another rendition with the aid of a karaoke machine - there were 2 TVs around the bar and portable mics and song selection devices lying around. After a very Japanese version of the "happy birthday" song, we tried the cake.
The cake, despite its slightly non-standard geometry, was actually really tasty, a fact that its makers were equally content to revel in. The rest of us laughed along as the cake making pair echoed back a dialog like:
"umai!"
"hontou ni umai!"
"chou umai!"
Which is something akin to "It tastes gooood! It really does! It's damn good!". It was funny to listen to them praise their artistry with such enthusiasm - but hey, they deserved it.
After we'd finished the cake, people started getting into the karaoke - a mix of some Japanese songs, a bunch of western songs, and even a few Chinese ones (OT and another guy there can speak Chinese, too). The western songs ranged from "smells like teen spirit" to "can't get you out of my head" (Kylie Minogue) to "ABC" (Jackson 5). I avoided singing for the most part (not confident about my vocal ability after last time!), but since there were two mics, I joined in on a few of them. One of the guys sung an Iron Maden song, much to his amusement and our chagrin. But it was all good fun.
The photos: a couple of months ago as I was leaving work, a photographer stopped me and asked to take my photo for a summer special in the magazine he works on. This photo is from the August edition of "Town Kumamoto". My 15 minutes of fame!
The other is a cake that was a present from one of my student's
mothers. She's a really nice lady.
Horse meat which I made a stir fry with, and another attempt at kimchee.
I've previously mentioned the nice Indian restaurant in town. The regular chef is Nepalese and he's good at what he does, though he could be accused of being cautious when it comes to spicing up the dishes - on account of the considerably sensitive Japanese palate.
The restaurant has a hotness scale from 1-50, with anything above 10 being rated as "extra hot". I'd tried a 50 and a 25 with a coworker previously and it was difficult to distinguish between the two of them. Even the hottest one was, while comfortably warming, not terribly hot.
So OT and I went back about a week ago on a mission to test our limits. We explained to the chef how 50 hadn't been enough last time, and he nodded but looked reluctant. Eventually he said okay and he prepared two curries, one a 50 (though perhaps a little closer to 50 than the last 50 had been), and the other "roku jyuu ni bai gurai" - approximately a 62. I'm not sure how he's able to arrive at such a number. Ot and I have our doubts as to the scientificness of it all.
Anyway, our curry came out after a while, along with the garlic nan we'd ordered. The 62 curry was an interesting affair, so seemingly laden with chilli power that it was viscous like quicksand. Both were a dark blood red-brown.
The vamped up hotness proved a little uncomfortable for my dining companion and when the chef came out to ask how it was, and offered to de-spice one of them, OT gladly accepted.
I actually enjoyed the heat, but the abundance of spices unfortunately turned a really delicious curry dish (we'd had it before) into something rather bland. The Indian curry I've had in Australia managed to sit at a similar level of spice yet do so in a yummier fashion - I suspect with more chilli oil and less spices.
An adventure, none the less. I think I'll stick to a 50 from now on.
So, what else is new? Autumn finally broke, and within a day the temperature seemingly dropped 10 degrees. There's still days where the weather's beautiful and it's too hot, but it's amazing just how quickly the weather changed. It's also started getting dark by about 7pm, which came as a surprise, since I've endured a combination of two summers since leaving Australia at the tail end of one.
Life's good.
Another typhoon went through this morning. My apartment's pretty new and sturdy, so the seals on the doors and windows held and nothing got wet. OT told me that water was blowing into his apartment.
He's a report from someone on the Kumamoto international mailing list:
At about 2 PM I went to my work place (Kumamoto Gakuen University) because I heard that the power was still on there. The traffic lights were out at many intersections along the way and I saw several power lines that had been blown down.To see if I could find any more information I took a look at the Kyushu Denryoku (Kyushu Power Co.) web site. They report that as of 4 PM there are 820,700 homes without power in the Kyushu area. Kumamoto has 364,000 of these. It has been the hardest hit by far of any of the prefectures this time. Kagoshima is next with 122,500 and Fukuoka follows with 120,500. These are just the numbers of households so many more people are without power. In fact, though I'm not sure there may be close to a million people without power in Kumamoto Prefecture alone (if a typical household has two or three people).
The size of my apartment doesn't leave me with much room to shuffle things around, but I moved some bookshelves and the apartment feels more spacious.
"Extra hot" curry, a brush with a typhoon, and ultra-cute tissue boxes. All stories for another day.
Nattou curry rice. Despite the somewhat unappealing exterior, it's really good.
My studying motivation has picked up again since I last wrote, and I've gone back to studying every day. Partly due to crazy sleeping habits during the holidays and partly because I'm unable to accomplish anything after work, I've taken to waking up early and studying in the morning. It really helps.
Yesterday on my lunch break I walked down to the local big department store, which is the place I tend to buy my lunch from, as they have some pretty good sushi there (and the occasional decent salad). While paying for my sole item, I was hunting around for the correct coins and I accidently dropped a 1 yen coin - the rough equivilent of a cent. The girl behind the counter looked at me briefly and I said to her "ichi en dake" - "it's only 1 cent (so don't worry about it)". I'm not sure if that spurred her on, because much to my chagrin she started hunting around underneath the counter for it. And she kept hunting. I was trying to pluck appropriate phrases from my memory to get her to stop - "ii yo" (it's fine, really), "kamaimasen yo" (don't worry about it), etc. Eventually I just resorted to "sumimasen" (I'm sorry (you're taking the trouble to do that)).
After she couldn't find it on her side of the counter, she came around
the other side and started poking about on the floor. After a minute
or two she finally stood up triumphantly, and presented me with a
slightly dusty, though still legal tender, 1 yen coin.
I had my first ride on a mamachari today. The word is a contraction of "mother's chariot", so called because they are the bike favoured by housewives running errands around town. They have thin wheels like a road bike, but they usually have a basket attached to them for transporting stuff around. Back home, they might be embarrassing to ride, but here they're everywhere, and their use is not confined to mothers.
A kind American who works as a priest - the same guy who helped me get a washing machine and fridge when I first arrived, has volunteered to get a bike built for me based on a sturdy frame and some various parts. The end result should last a while, while costing me under $200. In the interim he's lent me a mamachari to get around on.
Up until now I'd avoided riding on it, partly because I haven't ridden in 4 months and I was afraid I'd be all over the shop, and partly because that sort of bike has a stigma back home and it took me a while to get over the aversion to being seen on one.
Today I had to go into a national government office to apply for a full time visa here - currently I'm on a working holiday visa which is only good for a little while longer. My coworker kindly volunteered to lead me there, since I didn't know where I was going, and he went so far as to come up and help me along with the application process to boot. Which was helpful, as the lady there could speak only a modicum of English. I probably could have made it through a conversation without him, but it would have probably taken a lot longer. I've got to go back again soon because I forgot to take my original degree with me, so I'll get a chance to see how I fare on my own.
My two weeks of holidays have all but drawn to a close, and I don't know where all the time went. It was good to relax and catch up on sleep, though I probably could have used the time more effectively. If I hadn't been sick when they started I probably would have been more motivated to use them better. Probably.
This holiday period was centred around "Obon", a buddist festival where Japanese people pay homage to their deceased ancestors. During this time a number of fireworks festivals are held, and on Saturday I got to see one of them.
My girlfriend picked me and two of her friends up, and we drove to another of her friend's houses. We picked up tea, coffee and drinks on the way. This friend's house was in very close proximity to where the fireworks were held - maybe 2 blocks away.
We sat around eating, drinking and talking. I was a bit dazed due to lack of sleep (awful sleeping habits during the holidays) and the residual effects of a cold, so I spent more time listening than speaking. My girlfriend's friends are really lovely and despite my inability to contribute much to the conversation, they were friendly and tried to include me where they could. Questions directed at me are generally easier to follow than conversations between them - especially as they're likely to drop into the local Kumamoto-ben (dialect) when talking to each other. I have enough trouble following standard Japanese!
I was drinking iced coffee for the majority of the evening as I feared I'd fall asleep if I had any alcohol, but most of the others there were indulging in some beer. The traditional beer accompaniments over here are different to peanuts or jerky. There's edamame - which look like beans but with bigger peas inside, and you squeeze the peas out and eat them like that. They're less sweet than green peas but still pleasant. Then there's shredded bits of ika (squid), resembling jerky but much thinner. I think they put a bit of sugar in with them.
Most of the girls there were in their late 20s, and two of them had children - the host, and one of the girls we'd picked up along the way. The lady who we picked up had brought her child along.
Both of the kids were about 1 1/2 years old, and really cute. At my school I teach kids about as young as that, but it was interesting to be able to watch them outside the context of an English lesson, where the mothers are chasing them around trying to get them to behave. By about the age of 2 or 2 1/2, they start to become attentive and able to participate properly in the lessons, but at 1 1/2 they're still very much at an explorative stage and unable to focus for long. At one point I murmured "chotto abunai" (a little dangerous) to the 1 1/2 y/o girl's mother, as the daughter had wrapped a curtain cord around her throat and was at risk of hanging herself if she fell down. The mother had only turned away for a split second. Remind me not have kids if I ever develop a heart condition!
The fireworks started about 8pm, and we stepped outside on to the veranda to watch. The show was quite good - by estimation bigger than the firework festivals we have back in my home town. It was actually a smaller festival - the day before, a big fireworks festival had been held, but I didn't go to that one. Maybe next year.
Today's dinner (see photo) - a raw egg cracked over instant noodles.
When you pour hot water over it, it cooks the egg and the noodles.
Yum.
It's been a lazy month. In the last month I got the internet and a new computer, which has alleviated what used to be a major motivator in my study, friendship making, etc - a lack of things to do at home.
Catching up all the computer stuff I used to busy myself with back home has been fun, but it's left me feeling a little guilty as I haven't accomplished much this month. It was good to get it out of my system, I guess, but I've about hit the stage where I think I need to put down my internet sites, pick up my textbooks again, and spend more time with friends.
On the plus side, my food and drink budget was considerably lower this month, on account of eating out less!
An often talked about phenomenon for people living in a foreign country is "culture shock" - depression or other unpleasant experiences due to living in a different country and being constantly exposed to different things. For some it's immediate, for others it follows a "honeymoon" period where everything is new and exciting - then reality sets in.
I don't think my lethargy was due to that. My experiences here have been largely positive, and I'm actually really happy to be here. While sometimes bemused by the things that go on, what I've seen here didn't differ to a great degree from what I expected.
There are trying things, but they're things that apply to living in any country where you can't speak the native tongue well. Some people come here and never bother to learn Japanese. That's okay, if that's what they want - but I was always determined to be able to speak with a degree of fluency by the time I returned home. I'd still love to attain that, but sometimes it's hard to keep up the motivation to study every day in order to meet that goal. The study is usually fun, but it requires energy, and it's infinitely easier to relax in front of the idiot-box or similar.
When I first got here I talked about how debilitating it can be to be unable to speak the language. For simple social interactions I no longer bumble about; communications with shop attendants are for the most part smooth and I've made some good friends. The more complicated inevitabilities of life are still taxing at times, though - bills written in Kanji with no clear indication of if money is due or not, the renewal of my visa, the possibility of a trip to a doctor and how complicated that would be - finding a doctor with a modicum of English ability, or dragging a friend or coworker along to help me out.
I'm aware that by tackling the language issue I'm indirectly solving my other concerns, but that knowledge alone is not a sufficient motivator. While it's nice to know that by improving my language ability I'd be reducing concerns about bills, trips to the doctors, conversations with people - for the most part I'm able to get by pretty easily. I can function enough in daily life now.
So recently I've been trying to remember my original goals about studying the language. And I'm finding it necessary to set a schedule of time to study, or I never make the time for it. I actually enjoy studying when I do it. It's just some subconscious aversion to the energy required that makes it hard to start.
On another note, convenience stores (conbinis) are everywhere here, and reasonably priced. There's one about 2 minutes walked from my house (in fact, there's at least 4 within a 5 minute radius). I often walk to the local one when I want a bottled coffee or something to eat. The food photo is what I had for lunch today - "soumen". Soumen are cold, thin noodles dipped in a combination of water and soy-sauce. Great in summer.
The other photo is my new computer next to my old one - if you look
carefully you can see tape on the left side holding the screen
together.
Atarashii tokoro omedetou (congratulations on your new place)
K opened a new restaurant down the road from his yakitori a few days ago, and on the night after the grand opening, OT, BT, my girlfriend, her best friend and I arranged to meet there.
It was just down the road from K's yakitori place, and it didn't take us long to find it. We walked in to be confronted with a relatively nicely furnished interior, about the same size as the old place but a different kind of shop.
A high set bar counter stood next to about 10 natural wood chairs (each about $350, apparently). On top of the counter were a number of the dishes being served that night, in big open plates which they served from. This new place was an izakaya (traditonal bar / restaurant) rather than a yakitori (meat on sticks place), and so there's a bit more of a focus on good food and less of a focus on alcohol.
We sat down at this big communal table, that was filling up the rest of the shop. The table was big enough for approximately 12-16 people to sit down, and the lack of other seating apart from at the bar meant that you generally sit down near people you don't know. This is mildly unnerving at first - if you're perched across the other side of the table from someone you don't know, it feels a little funny to be staring into their face. But at the same time, it's kind of a friendly atmosphere.
I apologised to my companions for my lack of genkiness (energy), as I was a bit dazed by my head cold. But I was happy to be there. We ordered a variety of dishes and some beers. The girls didn't drink, as they had to drive. There's no legal driving limit in Japan. Any in your blood and you're in trouble.
BT had brought a bottle of shouchuu for K as a little thank you gift, which "unfortunately" resulted in K's staff donating a bottle of shouchuu from the shop back to him.
The food started coming pretty quickly, and there was an interesting variety of things on the menu. The highlight (much to the chagrin of readers back home, no doubt), was strips of raw chicken, dipped in a mix of soy sauce and wasabi. They were really fresh, and just divine.
Also on the menu was a salad with tofu and .. I'm not sure, it looked like onions but tasted like something sweet. And these mini potato-like things, about half the size of a golf ball, with a furry skin which you clasp and push the potato-esque affair out of. And a separate dish of just tofu, sprinkled with katsuo bushi (shaved fish flakes) and a bit of shouga (ginger). Tofu is generally quite delicate here, and it's really difficult to pick it up with chopsticks. I'd like to think I'm usually okay with chopsticks these days, but tofu gets me every time, and I end up accidently mashing it to pieces while attempting to pick it up. Much to OT's amusement, though he fumbled some food later in the night and I took the opportunity to get him back.
After the girls went home due to work commitments the next day, we decided to go back to K's yakitori place - mostly because I was suggesting to OT and BT that a place with food would be good, rather than just a bar somewhere. We ordered a bunch of meat on sticks which was particularly yummy that night. K was working there at the time, and he introduced us to a type of sauce based on halapenos which isn't even on the menu, because it's too hot for the tastes of most of the customers. It was great.
BT decided to go home shortly after, as he was dog tired and slightly
inebriated. I suggested to OT we drop by a texmex bar/restaurant that
we've both been to, and OT seemed receptive to the idea. We were 2 of
only 3 people in the restaurant (which perhaps isn't surprising for
3am on a Thursday night). We ordered some burritos and "spicy pickled
cabbage" - which just turned out to be pork kimchee (buta kimuchi),
though it was yummy. We sat around and talked computer geek talk for a
while before deciding to meander home and get some rest.
My summer holidays - 2 weeks of vacation - started yesterday. I'm coming down with a cold so a chance to rest is welcome.
So, back to the genki mothers story. Instead of ramen, Kimura-san (K) made a phone call and suggested we remain at the bar. About half of us were drinking this drink which was a mix of shouchuu (a bit like weaker vodka) and tea. It was pretty good.
About 15 minutes later, someone shows up at the bar, brandishing a huge tray, about the size of a hubcap or bigger. On the tray was a huge, perfectly presented assortment of sushi.
The highlight of the assortment was a fish-based sushi that was for some reason spicy - and not a wasabi kind of spice. It had a flavourless pepperyness to it. It was really yummy.
The girl I was sitting next to I'd met at the previous place we were at. She asked me where I lived. I told her the suburb.
"Nan-chome?" (which block?)
"Icchome" (the 1st block)
"Nan-...." (I forget. Basically prompting for more detail)
"5" (1-5)
"...."
"22" (1-5-22 - a street address)
"Uso!" (no way!)
It turns out the girl lives in the same apartment block as I do. She's a couple of floors above me, but I'd never seen her there before.
Japanese street addresses are interesting. They're indexed by block and a set of coordinates running perpendicular to each other. There's no street names here - just a suburb and something akin to "block 5, street 1, house 22". Taxi drivers over here have their work cut out for them if you can't direct them to where you want to go.
Eventually we all decided it was time to go home, as it was approaching 5am and the shop owners wanted to close up. Well fed on the sushi, we asked K how much it would be, only to be told once again that it was his treat.
The girl who lives in the same apartment block as I wanted to catch a
taxi. I would have been happy to walk home, but as it was hot I didn't
take much convincing to jump in a taxi instead. We were driven the 5
minutes back to our apartments where we parted ways. A good night.
The second half of the previous story will come, I've just been busy. This blog entry is just a note to my parents to let them know I have been mailing them, but their email provider (inbox.net) is constantly broken.
To my parents - thank you for the parcel! The last two emails I sent you have not arrived, so I suggest you switch from your current provider to someone like yahoo.com, which are fairly reliable I gather.
Peace and happiness to you all. Tonight I'm going to check out
Kimura-san's new restaurant. Reports to follow.
The evening started around 7, when I went out with a mutual friend of OT and I - the bartender which I've mentioned previously. I'll call him BT - bartender. We went to a yakitori place (meat on sticks) that BT recommended, and ordered an assortment of things - fried liver, chicken skin, pork, mushrooms, capsicums, etc. The ventillation wasn't well designed in that place and as the food was being cooked, smoke started filling the room. A lot of yakitori places are like that, apparently, which is one of the reasons why OT doesn't like to go to them. We asked the waitress what some of the menu items were, and she explained with some difficulty - prompting a conversation between BT and I about different people's abilities to simplify their language. Some people are really good at it - using examples and simple definitions they can easily explain concepts to people learning the language. But a lot of people aren't good at it. When you don't understand a word, they just keep giving you other words (of equal or greater difficulty) in an effort to convey their meaning.
BT had a party to attend around 10pm, so with some time to kill we decided to stop by Torijin, the yakitori place with the kind bartender who'd showed me basashi on a previous occassion. It was only around the corner from the current place we were in, too.
We walked into Torijin and had a seat, greeting the kind bartender (K) and the rest of the staff - who're also nice people. We ordered some more meat on sticks - and asparagus, too, which they do really well there. When you sit down you're given a small plate of vegetables - some chopped carrots, cucumber and cabbage, and this miso-based sauce to dip it in which is delicious. We sat around drinking beer, eating our meat on sticks, and waiting for OT to show up. He'd had to work that day, but we'd sent him a message suggesting he come and meet us after work.
K came over and told us that he was going to meet 8 girls in a little while, and suggested we come along. At about 9:30 we walked a few blocks to this interesting bar on the 4th floor. They had a couple of TV screens placed around the bar, and it appeared to be an interesting combination bar / karaoke place.
I don't know how the girls all knew each other, though I think the connection was K's girlfriend was one of them. They ranged in age from 21 to late 30s, and some of them didn't know each other. But they all seemed to be getting along.
After we'd had a chance to chat for a while, 4 guys stood up in the middle of the bar with wireless microphones. At least two of them were bar staff - I'm not sure about the other two.
Morning Musume is a popular Japanese POP band - a bunch of girls who all look like they're about university age, singing somewhat mindless JPOP. I guess you could equate them to the Japanese version of Britney Spears.
Suddenly the music started playing in the bar, and the four guys, mics in hand, started dancing to a Morning Musume song - and then singing to it, too. Not accounting for the rather mediocre song, they were actually really good at it - their dancing looking much like you'd see Morning Musume doing, and they could sing. It was quite an interesting sight, and almost definitely something you wouldn't see back home.
One of the girls who was sitting with us - a mother in her mid 30s who looked 10 years younger and definitely not a mother, had said earlier that if the 4 guys do their act, then "her show would start". We'd thought she'd been joking.
After the 4 guys wrapped up their ensemble, the unlikely mother stood up and .. started dancing to the music which had just started. The sort of dancing you see on a Britney Spears video. And she was singing, too. It's impossible for me to convey what a sight this was - all of the rest of our party was cheering her on and this just made her ham it up more. OT had never seen anything like this, either, and we just sat there stunned - but having fun too.
It didn't stop there, though. In between the bouts of no music where we got a chance to chat to each other, we were treated to a rendition of a kabuki dance. And then one of the bar staff suddenly appeared in the middle of the bar with his shirt undone. A girl stood behind him and started fanning the shirt, mocking the "being blow by the wind" effect that this song's music video must have had. Another girl stood in front of him and feined blowing air at him - but then in the middle of his rendition she started trying to undo his pants, and the guy retreated to safety.
Eventually we departed the bar, and K offered to pick up the tab for OT and I again! It's sometimes considered impolite over here to refuse a person's offer of paying, so we couldn't do anything but graciously accept.
At this point OT decided to head home, along with some of the others in the group. About 8 of us remained, and we went to a little bar with a nice atmosphere. At this point they were mainly using normal-speed Japanese, making it mostly impossible to follow what they were saying - but occasionally I'd catch the gist of the conversation for a while. K graciously offered me a one or two sentence summary occasionally, in half English, half Japanese.
Eventually someone announced that they were hungry, and suggested we go eat ramen. But K had a better idea.
(to be continued - I have to work now)
Yesterday I taught another "summer party" and consequently fell asleep at 7pm last night - though I hadn't slept much the night before. They're pretty fun, though, and I'm getting lots of exercise.
Sunday was a good day. My girlfriend picked me and her best friend up, and we drove about 15 minutes to an interesting set of shops, run by her best friend's fiance's uncle. On the drive there I got to see some more of Kumamoto that I hadn't seen before. I think it's a bit bigger than I'd imagined.
When we got there, we walked to the back of the shop where there was a building with one wall missing - sort of like a big garage. Inside were tables, and lining the walls were ceramics in various stages of completion. It turns out my companions had been here previously, and they were going to paint their previous concoctions - a deliberately wonky vase and a bowl. I watched with interest and amusement as the ojisan (uncle) prepared some ceramic paint and showed them how to undercoat and drip paint on to make interesting patterns.
In one corner of the room was a showcase of some of the things that had been made there - painted and gloss coated. Some of the art there was really cool.
Once they'd finished painting, the ojisan got out some new clay, and put the clay on a rotary plate and started it rotating. He molded the clay into a pillar with expert efficiency, and then gave us all a chance to work our magic on the pillar - turning it first into a cup-like affair, and then into a plate. I remember having a chance to make a clay mug when I was in primary school, but I don't think I've ever had a chance to mold clay on a rotating platform before. It was fun.
In front of the ceramic workshop is an onsen (hot spring), which we didn't check out. But beside the onsen is a traditional Japanese-style restaurant, and we stopped by on our way back - ordering a cold udon dish. I've only ever tried thick udon noodles before (like the ones you can get back home), but these udon noodles were cold and thin, almost like the soumen I've mentioned before. They were really tasty.
Speaking of tasty, I had an opportunity to try a Japanese hotdog for the first time a few days ago - the sort of affair you'd buy from a guy in a trailer back home. The hotdogs were interesting - slightly smaller than a normal hotdog bun, and there was no conventional "big wiener" in sight. There were various options to choose from, like a hotdog comprised primarily of cheese, or tuna. There was a wiener dog, but that was made from a few little wieners, each about the size of a little finger. I opted for the tuna hotdog (after asking for a recommendation), and it was actually really nice - tuna, mustard (that tasted almost like wasabi), and a few other random ingredients.
In other news, I've finally got the internet connected at home. It's
about 6 times faster than affordable broadband in Australia, and from
some sites close to 30 times faster. Wow.
Blood-type dominoes and 117kg melons
It's Tuesday. I'm sitting in my apartment with the air conditioner on full blast, and the soothing sounds of the washing machine in the background. I'm comfortable.
Usually Tuesday is my longest day at work - from around 12 until 9, with a lunch break. Today, though, it's a day off, because I had to work over the weekend. There was another summer party on Sunday.
I'm getting into the groove of teaching kids, and my voice has become much louder than it used to be. When I first got here and tried elevating my voice, it'd hurt my throat, but now I can yell out vocabulary or praise with very little effort. It's not so much a discipline technique as a way of keeping their attention - getting the students to yell words back at me when I yell at them tends to be more fun. Sometimes I'll whisper or speak in a funny voice just to keep them on their toes.
Speaking of body parts, my legs and shoulders are sore again, from the workout I got over the weekend. By the end of these summer parties I'm going to be pretty fit indeed.
Well, if I can consistently eat well, anyway. Most of the time I buy healthy food - sushi, rice-based bentos, etc, but sometimes I buy a pile of unhealthy things just to give me something to do after work. Even though I've been going out a lot, there's still the odd day where I go home after work, and the lack of internet means the only thing to do when I get home is to watch TV I can only barely follow, or study. Eating (and cooking) is a way of combatting the boredom.
All that will change tomorrow, though - finally the internet company is ready and they're coming around tomorrow morning to install the line. I'm so happy.
Japanese TV has its ups and downs much like TV at home. The prime time slots generally have something interesting worth watching, and there's a bunch of dramas on during the day to cater to all the housewives here. To their credit the dramas are better than the "bold and the beautiful" trash that they play back home.
I've accumulated a few amusing shows to recant over the last week or two, so without further adieu:
One of them that was on a few days ago involved a boy and a girl sitting at Chinese restaurant. They're given a fortune cookie which says something to the effect of "if you break up, something bad will happen". Invariably they end up having an argument and the girl rides home in tears. Up until this point the drama had been perfectly normal, but suddenly she swerves out of the way of some passing animal, and her bike (with her still on it) catapults over a bridge and into the water below. When she wakes up, she's shrunk to the size of a matchbox. It was a little bizarre, but fun.
Then there was the taiyaki variety show. Taiyaki is a thing made out of batter and filling, and pressed into the shape of a fish. The batter is roughly equivalent to fritter mixture back home. On this show a bunch of panelists took turns suggesting different types of fillings to try, and once the taiyaki was cooked they'd all sit down and try it - eliciting responses such as "umai!" (yum!), "atsui!" (hot! (it'd just been cooked)), or sour faces for the bad tasting ones. Some of the ingredients they tried were tomatoes (good), grapefruit (bad), rice (so/so), some sort of salty uncooked sea creature (horrible), and so on.
Then there was this show that was showcasing some of the local food produce - things like pineapples, some sort of interesting root which was purple on the inside, papayas, etc. But first a bit of cultural background: Japanese love their melons. Watermelons, canterlope, etc - melons are loved by many people here. And they're really expensive. For an average sized melon that you could buy back home, you'll probably have to pay about $10-15. And good melons are often much more expensive - and are often given as gifts. It's not unusual to see a good melon in a box on sale for $30 or $50, and in rare cases even $100 or $200.
Anyway, on this show they had this locally grown melon which was 117 kg. It was huge.
Then there was the show which goes around interviewing "bimbo"s. "bimbo" in Japanese means poor (as in financially struggling). This show visits people in their homes and enquires about how much they spend in a month, and looks around their house to see what interesting things they can find. Most of the people they interview are students, so it's not a malicious stab at the lower-class so much as a "let's make fun of the students" affair. Actually, 90% of Japanese identify themselves as "middle class", so there's not so much of a lower-class as in other countries.
There's an interesting variety of people on the show. One girl had stuck a stick through a tissue box and put a roll of toilet paper inside, so she had a makeshift box of tissues. Her apartment was an absolute wreck, and the people interviewing her commented on how astonished they were that such a pretty girl could live like that.
Then there was the guy who lived in an apartment about the size of our laundry back home. The interviewers dug around his kitchen and discovered .. cat food. The guy living in the apartment obligingly made a sandwich with some and took and bite, and then gave the two interviewers the chance to try it.
The first interviewer cautiously took a bite and a look of great confusion spread across his face. After a while he finally muttered: "umaiiii!" (yummmy!). The other interviewer was equally surprised.
Then there was the guy who served the interviewers some water out of some glass jars, and then cooked his special dish: rice and chilli rice. He'd cooked up a large batch of rice, divided it into half, and then dumped a large amount of paprika into one of the halves. He then served the dish up in two separate plates.
The interviewer took a bite and then expressed in a mild panic that it was too spicy! The bimbo ushered him to the unadorned bowl of rice to correct the problem.
Another cultural preface before the next show. A large number of Japanese people attribute a person's personality to their blood type. The blood type is seen as having similar properties as horoscopes back home, but there seems to be a more widespread belief in the blood type thing here than in horoscopes back home. On a lot of dating agency applications one of the important parts to fill out is your blood type.
I've been given a few strange looks when people asked me about my blood type, because I've actually forgotten what it is. Mum, help me out here!
Anyway, there was this show on a few days ago that had divided the
kids up into small groups that shared the some blood type, and then
the kids were segregated in their group and told to play with some
dominoes. Some of the groups were more constructive than others, some
preferring to knock things down more quickly. From this observation,
the show (with the help of some "doctors") drew conclusions about the
effects the kids blood type had on their ability to play.
I woke up late today. I didn't go to bed particularly late last night, but I don't think I ate enough, so my body was trying to regain energy.
Yesterday was Sunday. I spent the day half-heartedly studying, with an obligatory trip to the internet cafe as well. The half-hearted studying is not for lack of interesting material to read - just laziness. There's less intellectually challenging things to occupy me as well, and it's difficult to muster up the energy sometimes. But soon I'd like to organise a routine for studying, where I put in a given amount of time each day. Sporadic studying marathons are doing me more harm than good.
One of the reasons I haven't been so motivated recently is because I've been picking up a fair few words when out in restaurants, bars, etc. This is important because it teaches me how to communicate with real people rather than how to speak textbook Japanese, but the downside is I'm probably not picking up as much as I could be from the books. Ideally I should be doing a bit of each.
Last night I met a certain someone and we went out to the local Indian restaurant called "Nanak" - "nanakku" in Japanese. I've been there once before with OT, and I wanted to go back there because the food was good. I can't remember if I've described the heat system in Nanak before. When you order a curry, there's a scale from 0-50 where you can select your spiciness level. There's even some accompanying English on the Japanese sign - "pick up the hotness of your choice". The sign advises that 0-1 is mild, 2-4 is medium, 5-9 is hot and 10+ are super hot - or some numbers close to those. The numbers are calibrated for an average Japanese palate, however, and thus not quite as hot as the categories would denote.
Last time I was there with OT, we ordered a #5 - which wasn't very spicy at all. My companion also likes spicy food, so this time we decided to hazard a #12 - the low part of the "super hot" category. It was still pretty mild! I want to try 20 or 30 next time.
On the drinks menu at the restaurant is a drink called "lassi", which is a famous Indian drink. It's basically a yoghurt drink, but quite thin (not viscious). It kills the spiciness rather effectively, and would probably be an essential companion to a real super-hot chilli. I wonder if you can find it back in Australia.
Those of you who know me well probably know that two of my main vices back in Aus were curries and internet access (probably in the reverse order). So I guess it's time for an update on the progress of my internet application.
A few weeks after I arrived in Kumamoto, I put in an application for internet access to a fibre-optic company. For about 6000yen a month (~$72AUD), you can get an unlimited traffic 100Mbit up/down link - they run the fibre right into your apartment. This is incomparable to anything on offer in Australia - consumer internet access for the same price back home is in the order of 100 times slower. So being the computer nerd that I am, I was anxiously awaiting the processing of my application. I thought it'd be 1 or 2 weeks.
After about 3 weeks, they finally contacted me and requested a time when I could meet them in my apartment. Great, I thought. It's almost ready. They came over to the apartment, poked around the power sockets and looked outside. They had digital cameras and took lots of photos of the apartment, where the cables would run. I was mildly amused by the technicians using the light attached to their mobile phone to illuminate the inside of the wall cavities. Mobile phones here can do anything.
After they were finished doing their thing, they tried to explain to me that they'd need to contact the building owner and obtain permission. We struggled a little as my Japanese is pretty limited, but we got there in the end without too much hassle.
Then begun the waiting. I put in my application on the 25th April. It took the apartment owner about 6 weeks to finally contact the internet company to let them know they had permission to proceed - so I've now been waiting about 9 weeks for anything to happen. A few days ago I received a letter from the internet company indicating they'd finally obtained permission. Now they're commencing "preparations" (running fibre along the power poles near my house), and they'll be in touch when they're ready to install it in my apartment. It'll probably be close to 3 months by the time it finally gets hooked up.
But at least I can use free internet in the international centre in the interim.
It was my sister's birthday on Saturday. Happy birthday, sis.
Just a quick entry, because I'd like to get some Japanese study done before work, too.
On Saturday I taught a "summer party". During the June-July period my school holds a series of these parties for students that are taught by native Japanese, so that at least once or twice during the year, the students can get a chance to interact with native English speakers. Each party is about an hour long and the primary emphasis is on having fun - producing stuff they already know rather than learning new material. So we play a lot of games and run around, dance, etc.
By the end of the day I had become acquainted with a previously undiscovered level of tiredness. But it was a fun day, and I'm looking forward to teaching another one in a few weeks.
Most of the students I taught are in shougakkou - primary school, though one of the classes I taught was full of junior high school students. The shougakkou students range from about 6 years old to about 12.
In one of the shougakkou classes, there was a girl who was about 10
years old, wearing a playboy t-shirt. I'd read about things like this
on the internet before, but I was still suprised to see it up close. I
doubt the parents had a real idea of what the t-shirt meant.
Hisashiburi (it's been a long time)
My updates have been infrequent of late, as work, study and socialising is occupying the bulk of my time.
On Sunday I went to Suizenji park with some friends - a famous Japanese-style park & shrine. We ate soumen - thin white noodles, served in water with some icecubes. You take some noodles out of the bowl with your chopsticks, dip it in a soy-sauce-esque sauce, and then eat them. Good in the hot weather!
A few days ago I went out to a European restaurant with the other teacher and some mutual friends. One of the guys there works at a bar in the city and he's known the other teacher since school. He's a good bloke.
We mainly ate pizzas - fairly small and thin for the $12 a pop that they cost, but we're in Japan - so it's take it or leave it as far as that goes. They also had some nice salads, olives, etc.
(I'm forever referring to the other teacher as "the other teacher" since it's not really my place to be plastering people's names on the net - but since this is a cumbersome affair I'm going to start calling him OT from now on)
Last night I went over to OT's place after work. He'd cooked up some good spaghetti and we watched "the last samurai" and "kill bill 1" on his gorgeous HDTV home studio. The last samurai was a pretty fun movie, and it was good to watch KB1 again, now that I've seen KB2.
My Japanese is slowly improving, though perhaps not at the rate it should be. This is because often I wake up shortly before work starts, and it's difficult to study in the evening, either due to other commitments or just because I'm too tired to be bothered. The good side is that I'm becoming more comfortable listening to others speak, and I'm less shy about speaking as well (even if what I can say is fairly limited). The English level of some of the friends I've made varies from very proficient (due to study abroad, etc) to almost non-existent.
A few days ago I went to an Indian restaurant with OT. It's the first time I've had Indian food since I arrived in Japan, and it was a welcome meal. The curries were pretty good, if a little less exciting than the ones from the Indian restaurants back home - though it's not for lack of variety, with things like spinach curries being available (they're good!).
On the other hand, the garlic nan they served there was the best I've ever tasted, ditto their pappadums. I definitely want to go back there again.
After we'd eaten we went to a bar - the one the above-mentioned bartender works at. They employ a magician every couple of weeks and at one point the magician came over and started showing us tricks.
It wasn't the first time I've been shown magic tricks in Japan.
A few weeks ago, while walking down the main shopping street with some people from my school, two Japanese guys stopped us on the street and started trying to show us magic tricks. The first guy held a sponge clasped in his hand in the shape of a ball - sort of like a rectangular sponge being compressed into a different shape. After demonstrating its shape to us (never letting it leave his clenched fist), he rolled it around in his hands and "magically" it transformed into a rectangular sponge.
Then the other guy showed us his trick. He held a wand-like thing in his hand, and after waving it about for a bit, he turned it into a scarf. At least that trick had some semblance of impressiveness to it.
One of the co-workers I was with at the time was really surprised that we'd been accosted like this, because throughout her entire life in Japan, that's never happened to her before.
Perhaps there's some sort of magical "show me magic" aura to me. Because a couple of days later in a restaurant, a different bunch of Japanese people started showing me magic tricks again. The highlight of this second performance was a guy with a rope. After waving it about for a bit, he made it transform into a scarf like the guy had on the previous occasion. But he did so in a way that it was painfully obviously the rope had been wrapped around the scarf prior. Barely able to contain my astonishment at this fellow's prowess, I mumbled "jouzu" to him, which basically means "you're skilled".
Anyway, back to the magician at the bar. He was actually good. In
fact, he was great - I've never seen such amazing sleight of hand tricks
from across the table. He was making cards change size, magically
push themselves out of a deck, lemons appear under cups, etc. It was
really cool.
Those g-string-esque things I was talking about last time are called fundoshi. And here's a photo, taken by someone who was there that night.
My boss got a transfer to Osaka recently, and on Saturday night we went out with the rest of the school staff and some of the regular students to give him a farewell. The "official" farewell was the night before - shabushabu - meat, veggies etc cooked in hot water. It'd been yummy.
The Saturday dinner was held at a European restaurant, where a selection of dishes were placed in front of us. "Nomihoudai" had also been organised - basically all you can drink in a given period. We ate, drank and chatted and had a good time. My favourite dish (and I suspect it wasn't European) was raw meat soaked in some sort of marinade. Yum.
After the dinner, we were walking along the main city shopping street. Most of the posse were headed to "nijikai" - the "second party", which I think was karaoke, and I was headed to a bar to meet with some newly found friends I'd arranged to meet earlier.
While we were standing around deciding where to go and saying our farewells, we suddenly heard this big noise, like a riot had suddenly started.
It wasn't a riot, and eventually the cause of the noise appeared.
About 50-100 male university students, dressed in a sumo-esque outfit
(something resembling a g-string), were running down the main city street
yelling something about the university.
I went to bed early last night, and got up early for the first time in weeks. So when I woke up at 8am, it didn't bother me that my neighbour's alarm had gone off.
I conjecture that he has two separate alarm systems - one with a snooze feature that he repeatedly hits - and another rigged up to his stereo system. The stereo slowly gets louder and usually stops after a while - presumably by my neighbour getting up and turning it off.
Except I don't think he's there this morning.
I went and had a shower, and made some breakfast, and when I got back it sounded like the music had switched to electronica. My parents were always complaining that some of the music I listened to sounded like one monotonous beat when broadcast through walls, and I figured it was more of the same.
But 20 minutes later, I started thinking that maybe the CD had got stuck.
Eventually someone got into their car downstairs, and the minute vibrations were enough to get the CD going again. It played through most of a new track - and then got stuck again. 10 minutes later, it's still going. Thanks, neighbour-san!
I've never actually met the guy - I just assume it's a guy because I hear male voices coming from the walls sometimes. It's polite to introduce yourself to your immediate neighbours when you move into a new house or apartment, though not all Japanese people do that anymore. I never did because I was too scared about my Japanese ability when I first got here. Now I'd look silly showing up about 2 months after moving in to say hello.
For breakfast today, I had a craving for vegemite instead of the usual natto-on-bread affair. In the airport in Cairns, I'd picked up two gift-sized (read: amazingly small) jars of vegemite, at the time thinking it'd be fun to introduce to Japanese people. It still would be fun - but now I need more!
Work, study and going out have been keeping me busy. My boss is
getting transferred in a week or two, and tonight we're going out for
"shabushabu" - from what I can tell, you get a plate of raw meat and
dip it in boiling water (or maybe it was oil? I'm not sure). Either
way, it looks yum.
Hey look, my blue tongue lizard photo's on the web!
Spent most of the day reading.
The first item on my agenda was another meeting with the guy at the Kumamoto international centre. They'd purchased a wireless router but had difficulty setting it up, and asked if I could come and give them a hand. I happily obliged and when I left it was all up and running. Hopefully it'll be announced to the public in the next few days.
On my way back from the centre, I swung by the city bookshop. I got paid a few days ago and had a bit of money to spend on another Japanese grammar book. I finished reading a book on the first English person to live in Japan a few nights back (amazing how the lack of regular internet can renew my interest in reading), and I wanted to pick up new material to keep me interested.
I ended up opting for "catch me if you can" - an autobiography of a
con-artist which was later made into a Hollywood movie. When I got
home I started reading it, and it's quite fun - I've almost finished
it already. Alas, it was at the expense of any Japanese study today.
I have to do more next time.
Some photos that I took on Sunday - the order to the text isn't the same as on the photos, but you should be able to figure it out.
After finishing the last two Japanese lessons in the series (only 1/3rd left to go now), my spirits were lifted a bit. That and I'd had some coffee.
At about 11:30 I decided I was not yet ready to go to bed, and I felt like going for a wander. There's a yakitori bar two streets down from my apartment (very close), and I decided to see if it was still open. I haven't explored any proper restraunts by myself before, partly on account of them costing a lot of money and partly because it's slightly scary walking into a place by yourself when everyone looks up to check out who's just walked in.
Alas, the nearby yakitori was closed. I kept walking, trying to decide what I was going to do.
First I swung right, destination: 7-11. I had no real reason to go to the 7-11, but I wasn't sure where else to go. While heading there, I pondered visiting a yakitori in the city - the place where the kind bartender had showed me basashi and natto. Yeah, why not. Let's give it a go. I swung left, avoiding the 7-11, and headed into the city.
When I got to the road I thought the yakitori was on, it looked like it was closed. Bugger. I kept walking and hung a right at the end of the street, on the chance the place was the next street up (my memory of the first time is a little hazy now). As luck would have it, it did happen to be on the next street up. I peaked in as I walked past and saw a bunch of people in there, and almost continued walking. I pondered for a minute and decided to brave the entry, complete with stares from all the other customers.
The friendly bartender remembered me and ushered me to a seat, introducing me to the other customers - a few women in their early 30s, and their male friend. The usual questions followed - where are you from, how old are you - gosh, so young! I chatted to the bartender and one of the ladies in broken Japanese, occasionally assisted by the bartender (who knows enough English to help things along). He got me a beer and insisted he'd pay because he's "very rich", and he suggested "itsumo ok" - come any time.
The lady who I'd been chatting to - who'd gotten out of her seat and come over to sit next to me - tried to have a conversation, but it was pretty difficult. She knew almost zero english, and kept using vocabulary that I didn't know, then apologising over and over. She was constantly enquiring whether I was sleepy or bored. I think the questions were multi-faceted - both out concern but also because I think she was, in a bumbling way, trying to hit on me.
A little later, one of the other ladies asked if I'd ever been to karaoke. I said I hadn't and their eyes lit up - let's take him to karaoke! The bartender joined in the convince-Damien-to-go-to-karaoke campaign. I told them "demo .. uta ga dekinai" - but, song .. can't do. They said this wasn't a problem and I agreed to come along, curious about what it'd be like.
A karaoke bar was a few minutes walk from the yakitori bar. It was a huge place by Japanese standards, with many rooms. Each room was themed - one room I saw had benches supported by chains, like in a jail. The room we were in had big red couches and was themed like a shower, with a shower head sticking out of one wall. Curious.
We ordered some beers and food - ranging from cheese and crackers to pizza with tobasco and a salad. Pizzas are about 2-3 times as expensive in Japan as in Australia, for something not quite as big. Tobasco is a popular condiment with them.
They handed me the "foreign song list" - a fairly massive book akin to the white pages back home, but with bigger print. I was a little peturbed about being the first one to sing, as I had no idea what to expect - and I also had no idea what to sing. There were plenty of songs in the booklet which I recognised, but very few that I could probably sing. After being told to "hurry, hurry!" by the girl who was hitting on me and "take your time" by the others, I eventually opted for "radio head - creep" in desperation, a song I'd sung along to back in early high school.
The microphones are wireless and your voice is digitally filtered so it sounds considerably more impressive than it otherwise would. At first when I started singing I didn't recognise my own voice and assumed it was some generic backing singer!
My companions, being somewhat limited in the English department, had no idea what the song meant, and while shooting me encouraging smiles they also looked like they were thinking "what the..?"
After the song finished, they asked me what it meant, and I attempted an explanation with a few choice words from my vocabulary and lots of miming.
Next up was the girl who'd originally suggested karaoke. She was a really good singer, and the song she opted for is a pretty popular song in Japan right now - I've heard it playing in shops and stuff before. Her voice (combined with the digital enhancement) was very close to the original song. Impressive.
While walking from the yakitori bar to the karaoke place, we'd bumped into a Japanese guy who knew the girls I was with, and he'd come along with us. He was younger than the rest of them, and full of energy. He sang next.
At one point they chucked on a song which had a bunch of "English" interspersed with the Japanese. Such as:
"oly oly oly oh. yeli yeli yeli yeah. the up-town tokyo swinging night"
and
"won't be long ... won't be long".
(not tokyo, but I forget the original place)
Both the enthusiastic guy and the karaoke suggester joined in on this song, duoing the singing (there were two mikes). They got up and were dancing, too. They were really getting into it.
They asked me what the "won't be long" bit meant, after the song, and after bumbling about for a bit I was able to explain it to them. It turns out the Japanese words that follow the English mirror the English anyway!
When we eventually decided to wrap up, it was going on 3am. The lady who'd been sitting suggestively close to me apparently had to work at 6am that day. Ouch.
The other two people who worked at the yakitori bar had come and joined us shortly before we decided to finish, and they'd chucked on "dead or alive - you spin me right round". After a pretty decent rendition of the song by one of the new arrivals, we headed downstairs.
One of the yakitori workers informed me that the friendly bartender had given him money, in order that he could pay for my share of karaoke! I managed to slip a bit of money to the girl who was getting all the money together, but it probably wasn't enough.
The friendly bartender has now either directly or indirectly been
involved in my first karaoke, raw horse meat and fermented soy bean
experiencies. I think I'm going to pick him up a little present to say
thank you before I go to the bar next time.
I was taking some photos today, so I was wandering around the streets more than usual. A record attention tally today.
Things like a primary school kid on a passing bus waving to me. Or two guys who were acting like idiots trying to impress a pair of high school girls. One of them ushered at me as I walked past and said "uiuishi" - which apparently means "unsophisticated" or "innocent". Strange.
Then there were the two business men who were playing with what sounded like a board game near me. I sensed they were pretty close, but at first I assumed it was a mere coincidence. When I stopped at the lights waiting to cross the road, they came and stood next to me and continued to play with their game. I think they were hoping to get my attention but I continued to stare off into space, not really enthused at the thought of being approached by some weird game wielding people. Eventually they started pushing the game into my field of vision until I turned to them.
The men were pretty young, and dressed in nice suits. They looked pretty respectible. They were smiling happily and their faces were painted in an almost child-like enthusiasm - a look akin to "just wait until you see this!"
In their hands they held a plastic dart game, with a cartoon picture of a naked lady on it. Each of her breasts was in the form of a dart board, and when one of the "boards" was struck, a feminine voice uttered such insightful expressions as "ouch. that hurt" or "do it again, big boy".
Doing my best to avoid visibly rolling my eyes at this discovery, I looked at them. They asked me in Japanese what it meant, since the lady spoke in English. Not possesing the linguistic prowess to politely tell them what I thought of the game, I opted for the path of least resistance and uttered "itai", which is "ouch" in Japanese. They laughed. The second one I had no idea how to translate. They laughed again and thanked me, and I walked off.
On the way back across the road, I heard a hello. I looked up and there were three Japanese girls walking in the opposite direction and looking at me. I gave them a semi forced smile and one of them crowed with delight (or perhaps it was fright).
Normally I'm not terribly peturbed by the above - it's something I was prepared for before I came over. After having a really good time last night, however, today was a bit mediocre, on account of the small amount of sleep I got, and the fact that last night served as a heavy contrast to my usual study-or-explore-by-myself affair. I'd happily welcome some company, but not if it's only because my services are required to help translate silly toys.
But not to worry - I just need some sleep. And before I go to bed, I'm
going to finish the last 2 Japanese lessons of this series I'm on.
I've got 90 30-minute audio Japanese lessons, and once I finish these
two, I'll have finished the first 60. A good milestone to reach!
My nextdoor neighbour's alarm just went off for about the 10th time -
I can hear it get slightly louder as he picks it up, yawns, and
presses the snooze button. It's about 4pm. Must've been a big night
out.
I just felt my first earthquake. That or I need a cup of coffee. The
more I think about it, the more it seems like it could only be my
imagination. It was very light. I was leaning against the wall and I
got moved back and forth a little. Woah.
After a tentative plan to go to see "Troy" (the movie) fell through, the other teacher and I began meandering home from work. He suggested we go visit the bar his friend works at, which wouldn't be open yet, but at least I'd know where it was in the future. The friend in question happened to be downstairs at another bar and we ran into him as we were walking down the street. After a beer and a chat we wandered up to the other bar, played a brief bout of darts and had a seat.
After a little while other people started showing up. The bar is in a tiny room, so it didn't take long for the place to fill up. There were lots of foreigners there, and a fair number of Japanese people who could speak varying degrees of English, too. It's a known foreigner bar and some of the people come there for that reason.
I had a chat with an old Japanese man at one point (probably in his late 50s - 60s), but I was conscious he probably just wanted free English practice, rather than had any specific desire to hear what I had to say. After a little while I was happy to let the conversation trail off.
Met some interesting people in that bar, including a Kiwi who had been in Japan for 3 years but couldn't speak much Japanese at all - but then, she'd never had the ambition to, either. She was quite the footy fan and when I left the bar she was not in the best spirits because the Brumbies (Australian team) were beating the NZ team they were playing against.
There was also a nearly-bald british guy who was talkative and had adventures to tell of all the various countries he'd visited. And a person who owned their own language school and had been working in Japan for 19 years.
At one point a group of about 7 girls walked in, transforming the room from pretty full to very full. They struck up a conversation with the other teacher and I chatted to the British guy for a while. The girls ended up suggesting we go to another bar - one where the other teacher knows the owner. It was only a few minutes up the road, and sounded like a good idea.
The bar/club was interesting. It had a dirt floor (this was on the 8th floor of a building - the dirt floor would have required work to set up!), and was also about the size of a shoe-box. There was a DJ in the corner playing R&B music, and a few people sitting down or dancing. We drank and danced and whiled the night away for a while. The only downsides are the smoking and the dirt. A huge number of people in Japan smoke and thus clubs like that are like a dutch oven. The dirt on the floor, while perhaps a novel touch, resulted in really dirty shoes by the time we left.
Eventually the other teacher decided to go home as it was quite late
by then. I wasn't quite exhausted enough to want to go home, and we
went to yet another night club which was playing tunes like the
chemical brothers, fat boy slim, etc. Good music, but we were all
exhausted by then and they had the treble up too high. We sat down on
some couches in one corner of the room and wound down for a while.
Most of the members of our party looked exhausted by then and before
long we decided to go our separate ways, with the promise of meeting
up again some time.
I just checked the state of my coffers. I've got about 28,000yen at home, and 10,000yen in my Japanese bank account. This works out to about $450AUD in total.
Pay day is not for another 9 days, but in 3 days, ECC will pay me for my two weeks of training. This will more than tide me over, and provided I limit my amount of discretionary spending (as I've been doing), I should have a bit of money to spare at the end.
Note that when I say "discretionary", I'm not referring to internet access and take-out dinners - I factored these into the "essentials" part of my budget! After the first full pay day, I'll get a gas stove and start thinking about cooking my own meals. I'm not picking up expensive take-out foods, though, so it doesn't seem to be a screaming priority. I value my free time too much to cook every night.
The photo on the right is the name of a driving school (small photo, because it was taken on my mobile phone). The name is "terabaru", but for some reason when they converted it into English, they decided to call it "terrabul". Apparently they live up to their name.
In the past, Kumamoto's rainy season (about a month, from mid June) has meant close to 40 days of rain, with the occasional day where you can catch your breath. I'm told that the weather here has been a bit strange recently, and it's been raining earlier than it usually does. In the last week, it's rained 3 or 4 times.
My path to work is mainly under cover, and I only have to walk for about 5 minutes in the rain (complete with umbrella). The problem is my shoes.
I have an old, much-loved pair of dress shoes that are really comfortable, if a bit beaten up. As I've mentioned previously, the soles have become pourous with age, and when I walk in the rain it's as if I'm standing on sponges, which quickly soak up the water below. Yuck!
I have a newer pair of semi dress shoes, but there's two problems with them. The first is that there's a plastic-esque lining on the bottom of the shoe, which makes the shoe less sturdy on wet ground, and it also has a tendancy to squeak. The other problem is that the back of the shoe is made with a hard leather, which cuts up the back of my feet. I'm going to have to get used to wearing band-aids every day for the next few months, I think. Maybe the shoes will wear in with time.
This morning I work up, rolled over and looked at the time. In a semi-awake state I have this reoccurring fear that I'm late for work - even on days I'm not working. After thinking about it briefly, I realised I didn't have to work, and I could roll over and go back to bed.
Then I realised I had an appointment that morning, and I was already a few minutes late. Expletives followed.
After rummaging around for a meishi (business card) but not being able to find it, I finally grabbed the "Living information Kumamoto" book and flipped to the back, hoping for a contact telephone number. Great. There was one there.
I drowsily typed in the number, before realising I'd typed in the post-code number of the address. Whoops. Success on my second attempt.
A person at the other end picked up and answered in Japanese. I replied, "moshi moshi. uh...". In my haste to call I'd both forgotten the name of the person I wanted to speak to, and how to request to speak to them in Japanese. After a few seconds, my memory returned, and I enquired if the person was in. The person who'd answered the phone was the person in question. I hurriedly apologised for missing the appointment (which I'd completely forgotten about), and suggested I could be down there in about 30 minutes. My appointment partner didn't seem too peturbed by my tardiness and he said 30 minutes would be fine.
After getting off the phone, I kicked myself a bit more for my mistake, had a quick shower and a rice cracker, and put on my feet-murdering shoes as it was raining outside. After a brisque 15 minute walk, I arrived at the Kumamoto City International Center.
The KCIC is a government sponsored building to further interest in international communication, and serves as a hub for international affairs meetings, information on Kumamoto's sister cities, and more. The center has a second floor annex with a number of free facilities open to visitors, including TVs showing CNN and other news stations, and papers like the New York Times.
Recently (about a month before I arrived), the center had started providing free internet access on 3 computers. Previously the internet access had been available, but at a charge. I've visited the center a few times and there's often foreigners using the computers, but sometimes Japanese people use them too.
A very recent addition to the center's arsenal of services has been the introduction of what's called a "Flet's spot". This is run by NTT (think Telstra in Australia), and for a fee of about $15 a month, you can bring along your laptop and access wireless internet services.
Which is great for travelling professionals perhaps, but not so useful for international visitors - since you need to sign a contract and the setup process can take some weeks.
The person who looks after the internet access at the center (we'll call him Y) had sent an email to a mailing list I'm on - an English speaking mailing list for people in Kumamoto - advertising the availability of Flet's.. A few weeks ago, I sent a private reply to him, to point out the inaccessibility of a Flet's spot to foreigners, and to offer to assist if the center would be interested in offering free wireless access in the future. It would only cost them about $150 in parts, and I'd be willing to help them get it set up and working.
Y deliberated over this offer for a little while and suggested we have a meeting to go over some details, and a few weeks back I went to the center and met with him. He seemed to think the idea of pursuing it further was favourable, and we had arranged another meeting to give it a test run.
Which I completely forgot about. But thankfully Y didn't seem upset, and when I arrived (I'd brought my own router to demonstrate how it works to him), we gave it a test run and determined that we'd need two routers to offer the service on both floors - on account of the heavy concrete between floors blocking the signal. When I left he seemed happy with the results and we spoke of another meeting to get the service up and running.
On account of the numerous meetings, and the time spent waiting for approval of the "project", by the time the center starts offering wireless internet, I'll no longer have a need for it - as by then I should hopefully have the internet at home. But it's nice to know that visitors in the future may be able to make use of it.
On my way home from the center, I swung by Mos Burger - which I've mentioned before. Their burgers are about twice as expensive as, say, McDonalds, but the chicken burgers have real chicken in them, rather than bits of chicken and lots of cereal. They taste quite good.
So I ordered a burger from the lady at the counter. I was anticipating being asked if I wanted fries and a drink with it (which caused me to stumble and get flustered last time I ordered from there), and I was armed with the necessary Japanese this time to reply appropriately. Alas, I didn't get to show off my newly acquired vocabulary. The girl then stumbled a bit and managed to ask "eat .. here?" in English. I replied in Japanese that I'd like take away and she was noticably relieved that I hadn't replied in English.
I sat down at a table waiting for my burger to arrive, and the girl I
met on my first day in Kumamoto came and delivered it to me. She'd
done a year's exchange in Australia and was the girl with the
noticeable Australian accent. We had a little chat about how I was
finding Kumamoto. She said she hates it here because of the weather!
But it's not so bad. Or at least it won't be, once I do something
about my shoes.
A rainy day, and I felt like taking photos.
The food dish is what one company's take on "kimuchi" is - but it's not the one I buy, because it's too expensive there! The poster has instructions on how to put out the garbage.
The garbage system in Japan is a lot more complicated than back home. Items need to be sorted into about 6 different categories, and different days are used for different items. Everything is supposed to be placed in clear plastic bags in the designated area, so that the garbage collectors can pick up the right stuff. There's a little alcove for the garbage in our apartment block, but for some houses, their designated area is just the side of the street.
Some examples of the categories: "combustible" items - things like kitchen waste, plastic(!), wood, shoes, etc - are put out twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. Non-combustible goods like glass and cans get a different day.
But PET bottles are different again, and they need to be washed, the caps removed, and then left again in clear plastic bags on another day.
Then there's the bulky goods, which you need to ring ahead for. They'll pick up things like bookshelves from you (provided you're not moving out - then you're supposed to pay for it yourself!). And the recyclable goods days, where possibly working items can be put out. Some people have semi furnished their houses based on what they can find from other people on these days, but a lot of stuff goes to waste, too.
Finally there's the paper recycling. Books, newspaper and cardboard need to be separated into different piles, and bound using tape or rope.
I was delighted when I learnt the Kanji for the different days of
the week, because I now know where each of the different types of
garbage goes. Small pleasures.
My hands are sticky from the glue on the back of the gaffa tape, which melts under prolonged exposure to heat. My apartment has a faint smell of soldering iron acid. Bits of cable are scattered around the room. And it's going on 2:30. I should be asleep by now.
But I fixed it.
It's hard to explain how disabling losing access to my laptop would be. I have a bunch of Japanese lessons on there which I can't study without it, for instance. It also makes it much more cumbersome to write to friends, and renders my pending internet connection at home useless. Ditto my digital cameras. Not fun.
But I fixed it.
I'm pretty lucky, actually. Thankfully, the power-pack was well engineered - it detected a short-circuit and started flashing to indicate an error condition. Had it not noticed, it would have overheated and melted. I could have replaced it (much cheaper than replacing the laptop), but it would have been a pain to do.
Phew.
If at first you don't succeed...
Disheartened with my last attempt at Kimuchi from the supermarket, but not yet ready to chuck in the towel, I picked up a small container of Kimuchi proper. This actually contained the pickled cabbage (which is what Kimuchi is all about). I hoped this new attempt would more closely resemble what I've had from the bento place. I hoped it would be a far cry from the somewhat vile garlic-extract with a bit of red colouring masquerading as a chilli component. I hoped it would give me an excuse to stop going to the bento place every night.
Today was a short teaching day - I didn't start until late in the afternoon. First up I had two kids classes. The second went fine, but the first one was a bit troublesome. I mas meant to be teaching the names of the months, but the kids really seemed to be struggling to remember them - be it because there was too much to learn at once, the other students were distracting them, or they just weren't motivated - I don't know. In most of my classes the students are really well behaved (for which I'm very lucky), and the class I had today is perhaps the most challenging from a discipline level. I'm going to have to sit down sometime soon and think about what I can do to improve the situation. It needs a bit of work.
After classes finished, I recounted a tale to the other ECC staff about my experience at the bento place the other night. The kimuchi dish I really like is called "buta kimuchi don". The other night I'd said "buta kimuchi, (please)", and the lady at the counter said to the cook what sounded like "kimuchi cho". I noticed what she said was different to what I said, so I decided to ask her, when I collected my food, "which is better?". The other day I'd learnt a sentence pattern in Japanese about how to ask which was better, and this was an ideal time to practice it.
Note that there are two entries in the dictionary for "cho" - "work" or "be profitable". What I'd actually heard was "icchou", not "cho" - I heard the wrong word.
So after the lady gave me my kimuchi and a smile, I asked her something like: "buta kimuchi to kimuchi cho to dochira ga ii desu ka" - literally "which one is good?"
A blank look. I repeated my question and the cook came out from the back area to join the lady. Two blank looks. They started apologising and obviously had no idea what I was saying. I told them it was okay, thanked them, and left. Then returned a few minutes later, announcing "kasa .. wasureta". I'd forgotten my umbrella.
It turns out that the lady had said to the cook, what translates to "one order of kimuchi" - so it's not something I'd need to be able to say - what I said originally was better. But because I'd heard what she said wrong, when I tried to ask them, the pair of them had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. ".. kimuchi .. be profitable. which one is good?"
Anyway, after I got home tonight I decided I'd try my newly acquired supermarket kimuchi. Not that I'm embarassed to go back to the store - they seem like nice people and mistakes like that are part of the learning process. I'm just trying to economise a little - and hey, I bought a little sushi earlier anyway!
It's different to how it's prepared at the bento place, because I lack the facilites to fry it up, the meat to combine with it, or the rice to put it on top of. The vinegar taste from the pickling process is thus more evident and the garlic is a bit stronger - but nothing like the inedible concoction from the other day. I've got some strips of ham in the fridge - if I chop them up and throw them in I think it'd turn out pretty nice.
@(@%*&#(%*&#$%(*#$%
I just heard an arcing sound. The makeshift repairs I'd conducted on the back of my laptop have come loose and I've lost power. I've got an hour or two until the battery dies, and then the laptop will be useless unless I can repair it again.
Woe is me.
I spent the day alternating between study and mastication. It was raining for most of the day, so camping out in my apartment with my Japanese language course and snacks was a fun way to while away the hours.
I'm still experimenting with the food at the local supermarket. I've found some staple goods which I'm basically living off - ham, peanut butter, natto, bread, chilli sauce, vegetable juice, yoghurt, miso soup, and the obligatory instant noodles.
The yoghurt's curious - the small tubs come pre-sweetened, but the larger tubs (of the same type of yoghurt, from what I can tell), come with a separate bag of sugar, which you're supposed to mix in. That's okay with me, I'd rather it unsweetened.
There's a wealth of instant noodles to choose from, though sadly, I'm unable to find my much-prized "Mi Goreng". The more expensive noodle packs come with a variety of seasonings, including freeze-dried beef (oniku!) or bacon.
I've taken to picking up "buta kimuchi" (pork kimchee - a korean spicy pickled cabbage dish) in the evenings from the Bento place down the road - it's about $5, which is cheap enough to procrastinate the purchase of a gas stove - but not indefinitely.
I saw some kimuchi sauce at the supaa (supermarket) the other day, and figured hey, this might go well on some rice. Perhaps I can save some money! They had the choice of the whole kimuchi rigmarole (including the pickled cabbage), or just a red kimuchi sauce. I grabbed just the sauce, since I'm a big chilli fan.
Unfortunately after heaping some of the sauce on to some rice that evening, I realised that the central ingredient appeared to be ninniku - garlic. The sauce seems to be a garlic and chilli extract, which alone is pretty revolting! I tried to grin and bear it, but alas. It's back to the Bento place for now.
A mixed blessing in Kumamoto is the weather. I'm glad I won't be freezing my arse off come winter, but I've yet to endure the middle of summer - including the mid June-July period where it rains, and rains, and rains.
Kumamoto's weather can get quite humid, and this has manifested itself to me already, by way of the mold which has sprung up in the bathroom. When I arrived in my apartment it was spotless, but a few short weeks later the once-pristine walls have defiled themselves. When I get a spare moment I'm going to have to venture down to the 100yen store and pick up some cleaning materials.
Well, I'm getting hungry and I want to swing past the internet cafe
before picking up some buta kimuchi - so until next time, adieu!
The above is my ungrammatical attempt at "drunken old man". I was walking through a department store today, and I walked through a reasonably narrow passage-way between the escalator and a wall in order to get to the side that was going down. There was a man sitting on the chair and I gave him a faint nod as I walked past as a sort of unspoken "excuse me".
But I shouldn't have! I reached the escalator and the guy walked up behind me and muttered something a few times. I couldn't make out his Japanese, though after he repeated it about 10 times I realised he was saying "good evening" in a devilishly bad English accent.
The conversation proceeded partly in terrible English and partly in terrible Japanese (on my part). He stunk of alcohol and it was only 6pm, and I had no desire to continue talking to him, so I tried to lever my way out of the conversation without appearing rude. At one point he asked me in Japanese if I drank and he seemed to be trying to invite me out for a drink - to which I hastily replied "kyou wa chotto.." - today is a little... (difficult)
After a couple of uncomfortably long minutes, I managed to free myself from the weird old man's company, and I proceeded to Kinokuniya, which is a book shop company in Japan. The other teacher had pointed it out to me yesterday - they've got a selection of Japanese textbooks in English - it's the first place in Japan I've been able to find a textbook so far. Now I have more books to continue studying with!
Before running into the weird old man, I'd braved my first haircut. I was somewhat anxious about it, as I don't know many suitable words for communicating what I'm after in a cut - such as "this bit short", "this bit long", etc. The staff there were nice though and after bumbling about with "this place big, this place small, 1/3rd (miming a chop)", etc, I ended up pointing in a magazine to someone who had a similar haircut.
They'd given me a pair of magazines while I was waiting. The bulk of the magazines consisted of 4 faces per page, all with different haircuts. There were a veritible wealth of styles to choose from. Japanese men have a lot more variety when it comes to the way they style their hair.
Last night I went to see "Kill Bill 2" with the other ECC teacher. The movies here have this weird ticket system where a limited number of tickets are distributed to newsagency/stationary type shops. If you buy a ticket there, it's cheaper - we got an adult ticket for about $15 instead of the $22 or so we'd have had to pay in the movie cinemas.
After the movie we geeked it up at his house for a bit - he's got a very good widescreen HD-TV, digital PVR etc, and the picture quality is just stunning. Ah well. One day.
Post-geekage, we went to a Chinese restaurant and then on to an Irish
pub which had just opened up near my house about a month before I
arrived. We bumped into one of the hairdressers we'd met the other
night (birthday cake from that night attached), and I also met a
really happy, friendly waitress who the other teacher'd met before.
When she finished work she came and sat with us and we chatted until
the early hours of the morning, which gave me a chance to practice my
meagre Japanese.
Can't sleep - had a nap during the middle of the day yesterday and it meant I slept lightly last night. The sun's just come up here - though over the other side of the building. I toyed with the thought of wandering outside my aparto to take some photos, but I don't want to disturb the people around me who aren't awake yet.
So I turned on the TV, quizical about whether early morning TV in Japan is as crap as it is back home.
Pretty much. The only thing going for it is the novelty factor - various goods on the home shopping networks that you don't often see back home. Take for instance, the karaoke-box-in-a-microphone system. It looks like a cross between a microphone and a phone, and stores a bunch of songs in it. You can plug it into the TV, demonstrated by a family all singing together, and then on a separate occasion, a housewife doing the vacuuming while singing along by herself.
But it's portable, too! You can all sing along on a picnic, or on a car roadtrip. Sign me up!
The product on display at the moment is called "sweet sleeper", and to be honest it actually looks pretty attractive! It's a body-contour-following foam mattress and pillow that would probably be more comfortable than this thin futon I'm on - though it's a bit expensive. They show a segment where a guy drops a raw egg from 2 stories high, and it bounces off the mattress and doesn't crack. Cool.
Oh wait, they're back to the karaoke phone thing again.
I saw a pretty amusing shopping network show the other day, too. Sometimes they take American or Italian home shopping shows and overdub them in Japanase. In this particular show, a German guy (speaking English in a heavy accent) was demonstrating a set of cookware that his father purportedly makes. A Japanese lady was the co-host, and her job served to both translate for him and add all the usual "and it's only for this one low price! unbelievable value!" fluff that is a requisite on these shows. I've seen her advertising other products too - she's obviously a veteran of the genre.
The funny thing was that she was a little too good. She'd just keep talking and talking and the German dude was unable to get a word in edge-wise. He kept trying to interject with lines like "and I just want to show you this", which he'd have to repeat over and over before the lady would extricate herself from her interminable sales spiel. Half the time the guy just gave up and went back to cooking (showing off the cookware), for want of being able to get her to stop. When this lady talks, it really is like a machine gun going off.
I had the good fortune to catch a couple of English language shows the
other night. A lot of the English shows are overdubbed which limits my
ability to follow them. Sometimes it's not necessary - such as
National-Geographic-esque footage of Antartic researchers
(fascinating, the sort of fish that can live in that environment). But
after being able to only tenuously follow any media since I arrived,
it was nice to actually be able to watch a movie and catch every
nuance. It wasn't a terribly great movie ("Oxygen", if any of you have
seen it) - but hey, beggers can't be choosers.
I took another 2 hour walk today, exploring another corner of Kumamoto city. Came across a shrine on a hill with some beautiful vegitation surrounding it. It was closed - I think you have to pay an admission fee and it's only open on certain days - but even from afar it looked magnificent.
Passed by the 100 yen store on the way back - picked up some essentials I've been procrastinating on for a while, like a pair of butter knives (the tail end of a chopstick just doesn't cut it for spreading vegemite), and some spoons (again, chopsticks and yoghurt were not meant to be).
I also picked picked up a stickytape dispenser, which I later discovered had some great usage of the English language on it. Picture on the right.
The other photo is natto!
I was woken up this morning by the sound of my door buzzing. I haven't heard the sound before, and I wasn't sure if someone was outside or downstairs wanting to be let in. It was still reasonably early (~ 9 in the morning) and I rolled over and went back to bed, figuring if it was a bill collector they could come back another time.
After a minute or two, the buzzer rang again, further reducing my chances of going back to sleep. The futon I sleep on is a little thin, so I'm tossing and turning a bit during the night to keep comfortable. Consequently I'm probably not getting as sound a rest as I should be, and I'm sleeping longer. After pay day I can start thinking about some bedding with more padding!
Anyway, now awake, I lay staring at the ceiling wondering whether to get up and answer the door or just wait for them to go away. I didn't have to ponder long, because a moment later I heard a "woosh" like sound, and an "ohayou gozaimasu". The person at the door had let themselves in and announced "good morning".
I lock my door when I go out, but I've been a bit lax about it when I'm in the apartment, as you need a key to enter the building complex. I don't think I'll be so lax in the future.
So, I had some random stranger standing at my open door. I stuttered "wait a sec, please" in Japanese and threw on some pants and a shirt. Slightly dishevelled from sleep, I opened the door - which the guy had graciously closed when his curiosity unveiled the fact that I was getting dressed.
He said something in Japanese - the only bit I caught was a monetary figure of about $35 (in yen). He pointed to a bill that was in his hand. I scanned the bill briefly but couldn't make out what it was for. I asked him "electricity? or television? or .." in my meagre Japanese, and he replied that it was a gas bill.
Now I've been labouring under the illusion that my hot water is heated via electricity rather than gas, but this seems to not be the case. The actual heater is either downstairs or in one of my walls, but apparently, as I discovered today, it's actually based on gas.
I announced to the man that "I .. (pointing to the gas tap) have not begun". He replied, and though I've no idea what he said, it seemed to be indicating that indeed gas was being used. I continued in my terribly ungrammatical Japanese, something along the lines of "hot .. water ... by way of gas?" He responded affirmatively.
I was given a number to call to get the gas hooked up when I moved into my apartment, but because I had hot water already, I assumed it was based on electricity. I'd planned to get the gas hooked up later for cooking purposes - after I get paid.
So, faced with the revelation that my hot water was based on gas, I grabbed the money he wanted and handed it to him. Luckily I had the exact amount of change, save a few 1 yen coins, and I paid the man and he went on his way.
I spent the morning studying Japanese - for about 2 or 3 hours. My study recently has been very ad-hoc and brief, but I had a few hours before work, and a desire to catch up on the study I've missed. It felt good to be learning again - even though I'm still on the very first set of Kanji in my book, it feels enabling to be working towards an ability to interact in the society you're living in.
Eventually I wrapped up the study and went to have a shower and get ready for work. On Wednesdays I don't start until 4:45 - I only have a half day, and work until about 9pm. I wanted to get into work a bit early, though, in order to study for the next set of kids classes.
I cranked the water and stuck my hand in the stream. It usually takes a little while for the hot water to kick in, and I was waiting for the all-clear before directing said stream at the rest of me.
But the all-clear never came! So either my water heater doesn't function mid afternoon - or the man I just paid money to disconnected my gas!
I braced myself and eased into the cold water. It's not stinking hot in Kumamoto yet, but hot enough that not showering before work would be a bad idea. Unfortunately it's not hot enough either that a cold shower is a pleasant experience! After nearly fainting from the cold, my body acclimatised and I hurriedly refreshed.
I couldn't help but laugh at what had happened as I stepped out of the shower, though. I ran through the conversation in my head trying to think of any cues I might have given him to indicate I didn't want gas. Maybe he'd taken my "I haven't started yet" as a "I don't want to start"? It's a far leap, but the only other alternative I could think of is that he'd disconnected my gas in spite, on account of me making him wait at the door!
Very much awake and energetic now (somewhat begrudgingly), I walked briskly to work. I'd slightly underestimated the time required to get ready and when I got to work, I only had about 20 minutes to familiarise myself with the kids lessons before I had to start getting ready for them. I'd brought the gas bill with me to ask the staff, but I had to dash off to my kids lesson after a brief explanation of what happened.
In my rush to remember the material of the lesson, I picked up the wrong rollbook. I didn't think this'd be a problem, since I knew the names of the kids and I could fill in the rollbook later. The problem was I'd written down the wrong ending time on the board before I realised I had the wrong rollbook - and it didn't occur to me to change it when I realised.
So 10 minutes past the end of the lesson, the staff members waved and pointed to their watch. I suddenly realised what I'd done and hurriedly explained the homework and sent the students on their way. I didn't know until I got out of the class how late I'd been - I was worried I'd actually overlapped into the next lesson, but thankfully that wasn't the case.
When I finished my next class, the staff members explained that they'd phoned the gas company and found out what happened for me (the staff at my school continue to be very kind and helpful).
It turns out that the last person who lived in my apartment had told the gas company they were leaving today - rather than 2 weeks earlier when they actually did leave. So the guy at the door had come to collect the final payment, and he then turned off the gas, thinking I was departing that day.
The people at my school were a little suprised by the fact that the guy had let himself in without asking - so I don't want to paint a picture that everyone in Japan's like that. To the guy's credit, perhaps he assumed the previous tennant had already left and a package was awaiting him. But still. I think I'll keep my door locked from now on.
So it's been an interesting day! I'm not really bothered by it all - these things happen sometimes. Makes an interesting tale, at least.
I'm going to go finish my gyu-shuu (I finally remember the name! It's the meat on rice affair) and watch some terebi (tv).
Tomorrow is my day off, and a national holiday. I'm going into school at 6pm to meet with the other staff and teachers. We're going to an okonomiyaki restaurant and then going to play some pool - which they call billiards here.
Mata, ne (see you - lit. "again, yeah?")
Photos taken from outside my apartment (the skyline of my suburb - note the mountain on the right), and a traditional outside tea arrangement, in a house down below.
The other photos are from the crazy television shows I watched
yesterday - bending over backwards and a dung beetle pushing .. dung.
Last night I was exhausted after work, and I went to bed really early. As a result, I woke up early this morning. I put some washing on (so I could put it outside to dry), and had a shower (which in the morning is distinctly un-Japanese - the morning wake-up shower I'm not quite ready to give up yet).
After ten minutes staring at my map of Kumamoto, trying to decide which direction to wander in today, I opted for south-east. I wandered along a big road for just over an hour, and then doubled back on the other side. At one point I ran into a french-Canadian who said hello. He'd been working in Okinawa. Okinawa is a little island down the very bottom of Japan. There's a big US military presence there, and it's not somewhere I'd like to live - the military have a bad reputation there, and if you're a foreigner, a lot of people will take you for another military person - and thus you get unfriendly treatment.
The people in Okinawa also talk a very area-specific dialect version of Japanese. Some Okinawan pop music is actually made in two versions - the original Okinawan dialect, and a more standard Japanese dialect so the rest of Japan can understand it.
Anyway, so this guy I ran into asked me if I knew anyone that could sponsor him. To get an apartment in Japan you generally need a sponsor - a Japanese person with a steady job who will vouch for your ability to pay the rent. I didn't have to worry about this because my company sponsored me. But this guy had stopped working in Okinawa (on account of the unfriendliness!) and wanted to find a place to stay in Kumamoto before finding a new job.
I had no idea, and wasn't able to help him - though on retrospect, perhaps the guy who helped me moved in could have helped. I'm not sure how he'd feel about me giving out his name to strangers, however - so perhaps it was for the best.
After bidding farewell to this guy, I continued walking down the big street I was on. I found a sushi-train restaurant at one point, though it's a fair trek from my house, unfortunately. I also came across what looked like a high-school. It was huge, compared to the size of most places in Japan - but probably smaller than the high school I went to, now that I think about it.
I stopped by the supermarket on the way home, as the house was devoid of food. I picked up some more natto, fruit juice, etc. I managed to catch more of the meat song, too!
oniku suki suki oniku suki suki ... otousan, okaasan, oniisan, oneesan mo suki suki suki
Niku is the Japanese word for meat. When you add "o" to the start, it makes it more honourable - a more polite or honorific way of saying meat. The titles for father, mother etc. are also honourable. So in English:
honourable meat, like like honourable meat, like like ... father, mother, brother and sister too like like like
After I went grocery shopping, I came home, had a nap, and then went down to the internet cafe to check my email and bank account in Australia.
Walking home from the internet cafe, I stopped by "hokka hokka" - the place that makes take-away bentos I've mentioned previously. They have fried meat & onion on rice for about 390 yen (~ $4.50), which is about the cheapest proper dinner I've found so far, and it's pretty yummy. I eat the meat and some of the rice, and leave the rest of the rice for the next morning. I've taken to eating rice and natto in the morning! There's also cold octopus balls & omlette from the supermarket for a similar price, but then I have no rice for the next morning. I think it's about time I buy a rice maker and get the gas connected.
After dinner, I picked up my little LCD TV and plugged it in. I'd bought a fancy aerial for it because the reception is terrible here - and after spending about $45 on it, I realised that the cable TV socket in my wall rebroadcasts free to air television. Shimata! (damn!)
Have I mentioned that everything here has a jingle? Like the meat section of the supermarket, the bento section, and just about every company that advertises on TV. Even if it's only a 2 or 3 second jingle at the end of the ad, they manage to squeeze it in. Sometimes it's just the name of the company said at varying pitches.
I saw the tail end of that Eddie Murphy movie the other day, where he plays all the different characters. I can't remember the full name, but the subtitle of the movie was "The Mumps" - or something similar. All the foreign movies tend to be overdubbed here (subtitling is rare). It's amusing to watch Eddie Murphy speak excitedly in Japanese.
Anyway, one thing that's mildly disappointed me about Japanese television is that there aren't many of those crazy shows I've heard about, where contestants dive into snow naked or eat 20m of sushi in one go. Maybe the shows are mostly on cable television, or maybe the state of TV has changed in the last 5-10 years.
So today I got a pleasant suprise when I discovered two interesting shows on at once! One of them was a show about strange animals - seagulls that'll incubate everything from apples to chicken wings - when they see it in their nesting spot, they sit on it. Or the crabs that'll cover themselves in whatever's around, in order to camouflage themselves - even sequins or little metal springs.
The other show was a "world records" show - people come on the show and perform amazing feats, such as running across a tightrope as fast as they can.
One of the feats involved a bunch of gymnasts who could bend over
backwards. One girl was able to bend around and hold a bow and arrow
with her feet, and shoot it like that. In another section, they had
to bend 180 degrees and pick up glasses with their feet. Photos
attached!
Basashi, natto and friendly bartenders
Yesterday was a long day at work - 8 adult lessons and a kids lesson. I finished at about the same time as the other teacher and we'd organised to go out to a restaurant, along with some of the other teacher's friends.
After about 5 minutes walk we arrived at an izakaya that seems to specialise on "meat on a stick". I've had yakitori before (fried bird) and fried meat before, but I can't remember the name of a restraunt that serves both.
We'd met another one of my fellow teacher's friends outside the school, and another was inside the restaurant with some friendly Japanese hairdressers he knows. They'd been there for an hour and a bit already.
We sat down and joined the others. They were drinking shouchu (made from potatoes - tastes like vodka). It's pretty cheap over here, and you can buy it by the bottle. The bartender gives you a black marker and you write your name on the bottle - then the next time you come in you can pick up your bottle and continue without having to pay anything more.
One of our party was a vegetarian, and they brought out a few interesting vegetables on a stick as well - some type of Japanese vegetable, along with mini capsicums, leeks, etc. There were also a variety of meats on a stick with various toppings - wasabi, umiboshi (sour plum, in a sauce) and another that is based on orange peel and chilli.
The conversation was mostly in Japanese, because the others all speak Japanese quite well. I followed along as best I could (I can still only catch the occasional word, really), but sometimes when questions were directed at me I had enough to be able to answer. The bartender who was serving us was really friendly and at one point he asked me what I think of "natto" - fermented beans - which have a reputation for repulsing the bulk of westerners. With the help of the other teacher I explained that I hadn't tried them, and then out of the blue the bartender shows up with a bowl of natto and puts it in front of me, announcing "challenge!"
There was another party sitting at the table next to us and this caught their attention as well. So with all eyes gazing at me in anticipation of the foreigner's reaction to natto for the first time, I took a bite.
There's two reasons why natto could be off-putting. The first is that it smells pretty bad, like something's gone off. The second is that the residue around the beans goes all sticky, kind of like stringy cheese on a pizza, but much more stringy. It's an art to be able to sever the string from your mouth to your bowl with your chopsticks.
After actually taking a bite, it wasn't so bad. It's not that it was unpleasant, but it was a bit strong and the Japanese usually eat it on noodles, rice, etc - not plain. Chewing away, a few of our party enquired "oishii?" - does it taste good? I thought for a sec and replied "omoshiroi" - interesting. They all started laughing.
Not long after, the bartender asked me what else I'd like to try. I replied basashi - raw horse - since it's quite famous in Kumamoto. Opinion is divided on basashi - people who come from Kumamoto generally seem to like it (except those that think horses are too cute to eat), but people who grew up elsewhere and moved to Kumamoto find the idea harder to stomach.
Before long the bartender showed up with a plate of basashi (which nobody expected), announcing that it was free in honour of my coming to Kumamoto. The other teacher said that it was really good basashi and that it must have been expensive. The bartender had also donated a bottle of shouchu to me earlier as well! I can't believe how kind he was.
The basashi was interesting. You get a little bit of ginger, chives, onion and optionally garlic (which the bartender suggested we avoid for fear of having bad breath for the rest of the night), and put it on a strip of basashi (which looks much like sushi, apart from the fat). You then curl it up with your chopsticks, dip it in shouyu (soy sauce) and enjoy. There were three different cuts on the plate - a reasonably fatty cut, some cut that was really tender, and one which looks like lard. It's not actually lard, but cartilage from underneath the horse's mane. It's very chewy and is in some ways similar to raw squid.
The verdict? It was really good!
At about 1:30 in the morning we decided to call it a night and wander back home. One of the girls had actually had her birthday that night, and we'd brought out a cake and dimmed the lights and sung happy birthday. She headed off with one of the other teacher's friends and the rest of us wandered back through the city. The other teacher and I live really close, and so does one of the girls in the party. We had a haphazard conversation in Japanese as we were walking - do you have a bicycle, what do you like? etc. She also taught me the difference between yasai (vegetables) and yasui (cheap), since I kept mixing them up!
Eventually I got back to my apartment and fell asleep. When I woke up I'd been dreaming about teaching people. Sometimes when I'm worried about waking up for work in time I have these dreams where I'm working already. It's strange.
Of course, I also dreamt I was in outer space in a space suit
fighting some sort of alien force. I have no idea why.
First up we have the leaving Osaka / moving in shots - an empty apartment (main room and entry way), the sunset from my hotel in Osaka, and some dried chilli squid.
Next up is the view from my apartment (complete with telephone/electricity poles), my apartment once some bookshelves are in place and things are looking a bit tidier, and the bathroom and toilet facilities - note the tap on the top of the toilet - the water comes out there and you can wash your hands, then it flows into the cistern of the toilet.
Takoyaki ga dekimashita! (fried octopus (balls) - able to do!)
That takoyaki store which gave me the dame symbol the other day ("no/no good") seemed to be open today (I even asked them!) and I got some takoyaki for the first time since in Osaka. Yay! I like takoyaki. And it's a tad cheaper than in Osaka, too.
This morning I got up relatively early and headed into work. I'd left my schedule at work so I wasn't sure what time I started. Turns out it wasn't until 1 so I had a few hours to kill, where I wrote a bit of an email and then continued studying for my classes that day.
Today's classes went pretty well. I got a bit muddled in one of them
(misunderstanding what the lesson's target structure was), but no
major erors, and I'm getting a bit smoother and more relaxed than when
I started. I saw a few students that I'd seen previously, and had a
few kids classes as well. I could go into the sordid details of the
individual classes, but I'll spare you - suffice to say I'm getting
into the swing of things. It's not a big school so I have a lot of
classes with 1 or 2 people, and see the same people each week. It's a
nice kind of atomosphere, as you can build up an ongoing rapport with
your students.
I'm just going to upload the last bunch of blog entries and shoot off
a few quick email replies. I'll be in touch!
My second day was less stressful. I only had about 4 hours worth of classes compared to 7 or so yesterday. I was also over the first-day nerves, which makes things a bit easier.
Before my shift started, I slept in and then made my way to the "Kumamoto International Center". Here I bought an updated version of "Living information Kumamoto" for a pittance (~ $2.40) and, and got a free English map of Kumamoto. I also took advantage of their free internet terminals to check my email. I didn't have enough time to reply to anyone since I wanted to go into the office and start studying for the day's lessons. So soon I departed in the direction of ECC.
I stopped by a convenience store to pick up some bandaids. Basically my favourite dress shoes have become pourous in old age, and when I walk in wet weather my socks get wet. I have another pair of dress shoes but I haven't really worn them in, and they're murder on my heels.
So I picked up some bandaids and attended to my assulted feet, then headed out of the convenience store - then back in again because I'd left Mike's umbrella there. I wanted to explain to the lady at the counter that I'd forgotten something, and out popped "wasureta", which means "forgot". I only know this because one of the lessons we teach involves a dialog with questions like "how do you say 'forgot' in Japanese". Hooray for osmotic learning!
I arrived at the office close to 2 hours early. I'm not paid for the extra hours I put in, but if I don't spend enough time preparing, I'll flounder in the lesson. The adult lessons don't need preparation - you can walk in with no preparation (other than learning the structure they take), and just start teaching. But the kids lessons have different activities for different days, and it can be hard to remember everything you need to teach. You can use the whiteboard as a prompt, but there's only so much of the lesson plan you can write down there.
I'm not too worried about the extra time I put in, though. I'm sure with experience the preparation time will go down.
Anyway, so I studied for the two kids lessons and rushed around trying to get all the materials together. The other teacher had to give a demonstration lesson to a new student while I was busy doing this preparation. The poor guy. The student was there with their mother and they wouldn't let go of her. I think eventually he stopped crying, but he was too scared to leave his mother's arms. This made for a pretty difficult lesson.
I had two kids classes today, and they both went pretty well. The first one had five kids in it, ranging from quite shy to boisterous and loud. I had to ask them to speak quietly or to stop jumping about a few times, but it could have been much worse. The lesson went by pretty quickly and we didn't get to complete everything in the lesson.
The next kids lesson was 2 kids - twin sisters, in fact. This was easy to manage and they were fairly willing to participate. That was the easiest kids lesson I've taught so far.
After that I had two adult lessons, both with the same lady. She was lovely. She's been studying for about 20 years now, but English no longer seems to be the career path for her that it was originally intended to be. The lessons went pretty quickly and before long it was time to go home!
On the way home I wandered past a takoyaki stand for 100yen. This was a delightful occurrence, because it was (a) cheaper than in Osaka and (b) unexpected in Kumamoto. I walked up to them but one of the guys behind the stand crossed his hands which is the Japanese signal for "no" or "no good". I nodded and walked on, not really sure of the reason why "no". I guess they were closing. I wish I'd asked (I don't know how to ask if they're closed, but I know how to ask if they're open!).
I stopped by the nearby supermarket on the way home. It was expensive and I just picked up some vegetable juice and a sandwich. When I was almost home I noticed a store that sells bentos - basically various lunches/dinners in rectangular plastic containers, with little sections for various food. I pointed to one, asked "this please" and was soon on my way. I didn't really need the extra food (the sandwich is now in the fridge), but it's hard to resist the temptation to explore new things.
When I got home I dug into the bento. There were quite a few new experiences in that rectangular piece of plastic!
The first was sour plum (dried plum is "umeboshi" - I'm not sure if that's different). Sour plum is basically a wrinkly plum that's been soaked in something sour (suprise!). It was a little too sour for my tastes.
There was also about 3 different types of tofu, and one dotty gelatinous substance which I have no idea about. Perhaps it's tofu-esque. It was also in the udon I ordered the other night. I'll ask the other teacher about it.
Then there were these beans, that taste a bit liked baked beans, but
they're a bit sweeter, and not in a sauce as such. There was
something resembling a thickly cut cucumber with the seeds punched
out, that was pretty bland but not bad. There was also a piece of deep
fried chicken which far exceeded the amount of fat you'd get in
chicken at KFC (yuck!) and a piece of salmon (unboned - yuck again!).
Finally there was lettuce, rice, and some sort of meat and onion
affair. Most of it I'd eat again! The only real sticking points were
the oily chicken and bony fish. The plums - I'll give them another go.
When I walked out of my last lesson yesterday, the remaining staff, the other teacher and some visitors were crowded around a laptop. On the laptop was playing a Japanese video show, and the other teacher was on the show! Apparently he'd been asked to teach a girl some English for a song she had to sing, and it resulted in a television appearance for him (and great advertising for ECC)
I'm really happy with my office. My coworkers (dou-ryou) are really happy, friendly people. I'm also delighted to find out I can speak Japanese to the other staff members. In some schools, there's a totalitarian "no Japanese in the building" policy, and there are grave consequences if you're caught uttering anything which would shatter the illusion of a western-only teacher. Not that I can speak much Japanese, but it's nice to be able to use it when I know the right words.
After I finished work, the other teacher and I wandered back to his place. Our apartments are only a few minutes walk away from each other as it turns out. He invited me in and he grabbed a spare umbrella for me (it was raining), and we had a brief chat about apartment sizes and the available alternatives for internet access. He's been in Japan for a number of years and his Japanese is really good. He's also a really nice fellow and I'm happy to be working with him.
After that he come around to my place to see how it rates up in
comparison to his (a bigger "main" room, but he has an extra room
which makes up for it). We compared digital cameras and I showed him
Linux (he's also into computers) and then he headed back to his
place. After briefly jotting down some of the day I crawled into bed
and was out like a light.
I don't remember being this exhausted in a long time.
Today was my first day of teaching. I was pretty anxious about it, wanting to do well and not mess up in front of the students. At my last job I'd forgotten what it felt like to be new.
I arrived at the office about 1 1/2 hours early for work, in order to finish studying the general format of the upcoming lessons, prepare for the various classes, etc. Three of the staff members were there (two other staff members and the other teacher were yet to arrive). I had brief conversations with two of them. They all seem like lovely people. In fact, it's a lovely office, and I get along well with everyone. I'm really lucky to be in such a friendly school.
My very first lesson started about midday. The girl I had then was happy and friendly and the lesson went pretty well, even though we didn't get quite as much done as we should have. She'd actually booked two consecutive lessons, so after a 10 minute respite, I taught her again. All up I had 4 classes in a row, each with 1 or 2 people, and then had about an hour to prepare for a kids' class. 40 mins of that time was technically break time but I didn't have time, so I just studied the kids lesson to review what was involved. It was all a bit rushed and I had only just finished preparing (albiet in a less than thorough fashion) as the kids started to line up outside the door.
The kids class was interesting. 3 girls and 1 guy - in this lesson there are meant to be 2 guys, but one was missing today. I'd been told they were quite an obedient class and that was true. While a bit hesitant about the new teacher or confused about what I wanted, all in all the lesson went well. It could have been better, but they didn't know what to expect of me - and I didn't know what to expect of them. And it could have been much worse.
Having finished the kids class, I had a few minutes to compose myself
before the next regular lesson. That one went okay - the student was
nice even if the lesson was not perfect. My next lesson was
thankfully turned into a break as the student I was going to teach
didn't show up. I then had another lesson break where nobody had
booked in, where I finally got some breakfast/lunch/dinner, and then
I taught a final lesson before it was time to go home.
A quick entry before I return to my study - I need to refresh the last two weeks of training before my first lesson tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous about it all. I've got the bulk of the knowledge in my head, but combining it all at once for the first time in a live environment will be a challenge. I don't think the students get any sort of discount for being in the first class taught by a new teacher, so I want to make it a decent lesson. Wish me luck!
Anyway, I just wanted to jot down a quick account of the day before I return to the study. Otherwise I'll forget about it.
My first mission for the day was to find city hall and submit myself for what they call "alien registration". This involves giving your passport, a set of photos and signatures, and completing a form with details such as your date of birth. At the end of the process (in a week or two), I'll get what's called a "gaijin card" - a foreigner's card. I have to carry it with me at all times, and I risk arrest if I forget to. In the interim I need my passport with me.
You get 90 days from arrival to register as an alien, though you're meant to do it ASAP. This suits me fine, because I can't do much until I receive this card. I won't be able to open a bank account, sign up for a phone line, etc. The alien registration is the first step on my long and arduous quest to reacquire internet access, and was hence my first task for the day.
After incorrectly recalling where city hall was, I ended up walking around the other side of the city. Realising I was going in the wrong direction, I turned up a side street in an attempt to double-back in a round-about fashion. The round-about way back involved a walk through a nature strip. It's not really a park, more a thin and long path with a little grass and trees on one side, maybe 10m wide. It backs onto a waterway. The water isn't terribly appealing, but it makes a nice change from the buildings at least. There were places to sit and I stumbled across a tiny shrine at one point, with some momentos locked away in the shrine. A businessman was drinking some bottled drink and looking out over the water on one of the benches.
After a short walk I veered right, attempting to once again narrow in on the target. A lot of the paths in Kumamoto have stippled plastic strips running along them, dividing the path up into 1/3 and 2/3rd portions. I was told by one of the guys from ECC that people walk on the right, and cycle on the left, but I haven't worked out what the division on the path is useful for. I figure one of the divisions may be reserved for bicycles, but I haven't figured out which, and the Japanese citizens don't seem to be demonstrating any sort of consistent behaviour in which I can follow.
I found the big shopping strip of the city again after a small walk. I read somewhere today that apparently it's the longest shopping strip in western Japan, and the backbone of Kumamoto's economy. It's quite long, though not a tiring walk from one side to the other. The school I teach at is located at one point on the strip, and I walk along the strip in order to get home. It's basically the middle of the city.
Having found the big shopping strip again, I decided to venture into "Computown", which looked to be a computer/eletronics store. Having been spoilt by "Denden town" (Nipponbashi - the huge electronics district of Osaka), I was skeptical about there being anything of interest in Kumamoto. But Computown was at least 5 levels high and had a fair bit of stuff to check out. I explored their wireless goods section (in preparation for getting the internet hooked up - can you tell I'm anxious?), and then meandered back outside in search of city hall.
Finding city hall wasn't difficult this time around. I'd had the
right street before, I was just up the wrong side of it. After
stopping for a bottled green tea from a convenience store (I was
parched), I found city hall and walked in. It wasn't hard to find
relevant place to go to and after about 25 minutes I had everything
sorted and was on my way. I asked where I could find the English
publication about living in Kumamoto (well, I asked if I could have a
copy), and the guy at the counter explained I had to go to
The International Center is a big investment by the Kumamoto government in order to further international awareness and be a helpful place for international visitors. It has free cable TV which you can watch, broadcasting CNN, etc, and free internet access. They're also the ones responsible for publishing the guide I was after. I didn't know where to find them and I was just going to wander aimlessly in search of them, so having a map was handy.
When I got there, they were closed for some reason. Oh well. At least I know where to go next time.
I wandered back into the center of the city, swerving through back streets in the interests of exploration. I was keeping an eye out for a book store with English books (I want more Japanese language study books), but I didn't stumble upon it. Oh well.
Reorienting myself on the long shopping strip, I ran across a Daiei - a chain of department stores in Japan. I wandered in and past the requisite make-up and fashion accessories, and took the first escalator I found, in search of an iron.
Instead, I stumbled into what seemed like a supermarket! The department store I explored in Osaka had a food section, but the food seemed to cater for more up-market tastes - exotic and expensive foods a-plenty. But at the bottom of Daiei seemed to rest something more akin to a Woolworths back home. A quick check of some of the prices indicated they were competitive with the A-Plus I found yesterday. And this place was bigger and much closer, too. Great!
I wandered around for a bit trying to process the assault on my senses and all the new types of food to see. At one point a very short, annoying jingle was playing on repeat, sung by a cute-sounding Japanese girl - all I heard was "suki suki, suki suki suki". Bemused, I wandered on by.
(later returning to this section, I heard the full jingle - well, all I caught was "niku ... suki suki, suki suki suki ...". Which basically translates to "meat. like like like like like". This was in the meat section)
After exploring for a while, I realised leaving empty-handed would seem a bit bizarre, and regardless, there were essentials there which I would do well to pick up, such as bread, vegetable juice and these awesome rice snacks I've been looking for since I arrived. I filled my basket with some familiars and interesting looking new finds, and headed for the checkout.
Checkouts in Japan are different to back home. Some of them place the items in plastic bags for you, but others expect you to do it yourself. I copied the person in front of me and started unpacking items from my basket onto the counter. For some reason the man at the counter thought I wanted some stuff purchased separate from the rest, and put through only a few items. I was confused and tried gesturing to indicate I wanted it all as one. Eventually he asked "isshou ni?" - "together", which I understood, and agreed to. Then kicked myself for not thinking of saying that phrase earlier rather than gesturing like an idiot, since I knew it already.
Eventually I got everything checked and paid for, and ventured over to the nearby tables to pack my stuff into bags. I'd wanted to go upstairs to look for an iron, but I had heavy bags to carry now so I ventured home instead.
After getting home and eating the sushi I'd picked up (which was a bit cheaper than at the other supermarket, and had some fish I hadn't tried before, and fish roe), I ventured out again, this time in search of an internet cafe, so I could locate the phone company's English phone number. I asked if they could do wireless (I brought my laptop), but the girl looked confused and so I opted for an "opun busu" - open booth - instead, and sat down at a computer terminal. After flipping through the mountains of spam in my email box, I searched for NTT's English phonenumber, then wrapped up, paid the bill, and headed back home.
I got back home and started trying to study my lesson notes again, but I was exhausted. So time for another trip, this time just down to the nearby convenience store, for a coffee. I picked up some bottled coffee, fumbled about with my change (much to the pain of the person behind the counter), and finally concluded the transaction. He asked me, in Japanese, if I was a teacher, and I replied that I was. He didn't seem terribly enthused during our brief conversation and I left feeling like he'd rather I was back in Australia. Oh well.
I got back to my apartment building and some couple had just pulled
into the carpark, in their car. They were evidently visiting friends
and I helped them get into the lift area, which you need a key to
enter. They were appreciative, and this pleasant interaction seemed to
balance the one with the convenience store guy. I got back inside,
caffeinated, and dug into my books.
When I was in Osaka, I was a bit frustrated because I couldn't buy food to cook, things to furnish my house, etc. I was in a hotel and wanted to be in the place I was going to live.
Now I'm in the place I'm going to live, and I feel like I'm in a hotel. Every now and then I get the feeling like I'll be moving again soon. My body seems to have acclimatised to the concept of a 2 week stay. I have to remind myself that I'll be living in this apartment for a long time to come!
Not that it's a bad thing. It's quite a nice apartment - small by Australian standards, but a pretty good find in Japan. It's also clean, very close to the middle of the city, and the neighbours are pretty quiet. It's not that I don't want to live here for a long time - it just doesn't feel like I will be. I guess it'll just take some time.
I'm glad ECC found me a nice apartment!
This morning I begrudgingly crawled out of bed at about 9. Even though it gets quite hot here during the day, the mornings and evening get cold. I was barely warm enough in bed, and the thought of a cold shower was, as you can imagine, unappealing. Resigned to my fate, I eventually got up and started the shower. Pointing the shower head near my foot (almost all showers here are the type where you can hold the head), I grimaced and stuck my foot in.
And it was hot! The ECC guy had told me that the hot water would depend on the gas being hooked up - which is probably the case in the vast majority of apartments. But what a relief. It would have taken days to get the gas started.
After a hot shower and a breakfast snack (the sole food I had in the house - "jalapeno pretzels", biscuits and bottled green tea), I read through the rest of "Living information Kumamoto", which is a bilingual production of the Kumamoto government. It contains information on things such as what taxes there are, how the garbage system works (a story for another day), and how to get the gas connected.
After that, I suddenly remembered hearing a beep very early in the morning (like 4am). I went over to my newly acquired washing machine to find out what had happened. It was on (but not running), and full of water. I thought I had turned it off, but I must have accidently set it to timer mode, or something. During the night it had filled with water and beeped at me when it was full.
So I tried to drain the water. One of the buttons on the washing machine read "do ra i". It looked like "do ra i n" (drain), so I selected that one. The machine just started beeping at me. After closing the lid, the beeping stopped, and a faint grunting sound started coming out of it at intervals. It sounded like it was trying to do something but it couldn't. Oh no. Perhaps my drain function is broken!
Five minutes of fiddling later, I finally discovered that "dorai" means "dry" and is on a different set of switches to the "stage of wash" section. With glee, I managed to get it to drain the water, and I made sure to switch off the machine afterwards so no further phantom fills happen in my absence.
Next on the agenda was to unpack the rest of my stuff, which was scattered in my suitcase and across the floor. The book shelves I'd acquired from the girl who was leaving were a godsend, as I'd have no room for half this stuff otherwise. After about an hour I managed to get things to a pretty tidy state, and I took some photos of the now liveable room in celebration. I'll upload them when I get internet access again.
After doing a bit of reading, I decided it was time to go explore, and see if I could find washing powder for the machine, and other essentials. There's a small supermarket near my house, but there's basically just food there - no washing powder. After living out of my suitcase for two weeks up in Osaka, I really needed to wash some clothes.
I left my apartment, and walked for a few minutes until I hit a big looking road. There was a particular supermarket somewhere around Kumamoto that I'd seen as the pastor drove me around yesterday. I had no idea where it was, really, so I was just keeping an eye out for anything familiar. I kept following the big road for about 15-20 minutes. I passed by Kumamoto puppy school and Kumamoto diving school, and a KFC, McDonalds, Mos Burger (a bit like a Japanese Burger King), and various restaurants, office buildings and houses.
I'd actually tried Mos Burger for the first time yesterday. I was starving after having finished with the introductions and contract signing at ECC, since I hadn't had any breakfast before jumping on the plane. So I wandered into a Mos Burger in the city, flustered due to the lack of food, the heat (I was still wearing a suit) and the early start. I managed to communicate to the girl behind the counter which burger I wanted, but then she asked whether I wanted a combo or not. I had no idea how to communicate this to her, and after bumbling about for a bit, another girl stepped up behind the first attendant and asked me "Excuse me, do you speak English?". She sounded just like an Aussie. She told me she'd stayed in Melbourne for a year, studying, and that's why she had the accent. Successfully communicating my desire for no fries or drink, I finally took a seat and had the first thing to eat all day. And it's pretty good!
Anyway, back to my walk today. One thing I noticed as I was walking is that the mountains surrounding the city could be seen when there weren't any tall buildings nearby. And they're actually within walking distance (maybe an hour's walk to some of them). I'm going to try make it up the top of one of them one day and take some photos. It's quite a hike, apparently. Maybe I'll wait until I get my sneakers shipped over first. My feet are already sore from just today's walk.
After about 20 minutes, I finally found an "A+ Supermarket" - they're a chain around here. It was a bit further from my apartment than I would have liked, but it looked like a reasonable size, and I stepped in for fear that I wouldn't stumble across another for ages.
After acquiring my prized washing machine powder, along with a hodge-podge of miscellanea (such as 100 sets of wooden chopsticks, "extra hot" American chips (they're not), some instant ramen (noodles), wasabi (Japanese horseradish), and some fruit&vegetable juice), I proceeded to the checkout. The lady asked me if I had a point card - I didn't understand, so she just added "Cardo?" Okay, I understood that. I got through the rest of the transaction with no major disasters, and was even able to explain to the man who picked up my groceries that I was walking (he was going to take them to my car). Every conversation with a shop attendant where I'm able to explain what I want is like a small victory.
I walked back along the big street, mildly uncomfortable with the heavy groceries, but reassured that at least it's good exercise. I made it back home, took off my shoes (no shoes inside the apartment!) and collapsed momentarily on the futon.
After a brief respite, I headed back out again. My next target was a kettle for tea, and an iron, for my work clothes. I wanted to go back to "Hard off", the used-goods store where I got my fridge and washing machine. I took a stab at the direction it might be in, and started walking. After about 15 minutes of not recognising anything, I stumbled across a road that looked familiar. Oops. I was back in the city again. I must have doubled back somehow.
I decided to see if there were any interesting stores in the city area near my house. It wasn't long before I ran into a hyaku-en (100 yen) store. Almost everything there is 100 yen (about $1.25AUD, when you factor in sales tax as well, which is 5%). We have similar stores back home ($2 shops), but there's a much bigger variety of stuff in the 100 yen stores. Some people have apparently almost completely outfitted their homes with stuff from there.
I grabbed a pair of plates, bowls, cups, and a strainer for a teapot,
and some baskets to more neatly place stuff on the bookshelves.
Satisfied, I departed and headed back in the direction of home,
keeping an eye out for any used goods stores. Alas, nothing of the
kettle or iron variety. I might have to buy them new tomorrow.
It's been a really long day. I got up at about 5:30am in order to check out of the hotel and catch a bus to the airport. The flight to Kumamoto from Osaka was short and uneventful, apart from getting profiled at the security section of the airport on the way out. Two xrays and a full unpack and repack of my bag later, I was finally on my way.
A regional manager from ECC met me at the airport and we jumped on the bus to head to the real-estate agent to pick up my key. The airport's on the fringes of the city and so there's lots of rice paddies and not much in the way of buildings. I worried for a while that this was what all of Kumamoto would be like. Contrast Osaka city, where when the plane took off and accelerated towards the heavens, the vast expanse of skyscrapers seemed never ending. Osaka is one huge city.
As the bus drew closer to the city, my fears that I'd landed in the middle of nowhere diminished. The middle of Kumamoto city is quite bustling and there looks to be plenty to keep me occupied. Great.
It's nothing like Osaka. But that's nice, in a way. There are mountains surrounding the city. There's trees. And it feels more like "real" Japan - less internationalised, fewer foreigners.
Which is both good and bad. I feel a bit anxious at the moment, partly because of sleep deprevation and partly because I had the security blanket of a bunch of other trainees back when I was in Osaka. I also have responsibilities to organise that I didn't have to deal with in Osaka, such as getting the gas set up, a fridge, etc. Since the gas isn't enabled yet, there's no hot water, and I'll need to make a trip down to the public baths tomorrow if I want to have a warm shower. This wouldn't be such a big task if it weren't for the fact that I can't speak much Japanese, and here they're unlikely to have employees who can speak English. I wish my Japanese was better!
I'm sure I'll feel settled within a day or two, though. And today has been successful - I now have a semi furnished apartment. I bought a bunch of stuff such as bookcases and a tea set from a lady who was leaving Japan - she had a "sayonara" (goodbye) sale, and I asked her to put away some stuff for me.
And a pastor from a church over here helped me out with moving this girl's stuff to my house, and also picking up a washing machine, fridge and a futon to sleep on. This was a tremendous help. We'd organised this over the internet prior to my arrival (we're both on the same mailing list about Kumamoto). But I'm still amazed at the trouble he went to. Apparently he's helped about 50 people move house in his 9 years here.
At some point during the day I also got a chance to meet the people
I'll be working with for the next year or more. The staff members seem
really nice, and the school has an easy-going atmosphere. Some young
kids (2-4 years old!) arrived for "orientation" and I popped my head
into the class at one point to wave to them and say hello, and greet
the parents who accompany them. I'll have my first class with them
next Saturday.
Tonight's my last night in Osaka, as I fly down to Kumamoto early tomorrow morning. Osaka is an interesting place and it's a shame I didn't get time to explore it more. Oh well - I can always come back and visit, and some of the other trainees have volunteered a couch if I need a place to crash for the night.
I haven't written for a while, as training has been keeping me busy, with teaching demonstrations to prepare each day. The last week has concentrated on teaching kids, which received a mixed reception. Some of the trainees looked a bit uncomfortable with the singing, dancing etc that's required. I don't mind. I think it'll be fun. "Our hands say thank you with a clap, clap, clap". It was also interesting to get a bit more insight on what kids are like at various ages, in terms of attachment to parents, shyness, etc.
I don't really have time to write now, as I need to pack my suitcase again and get ready to go before I fall asleep. It might take me a while to write the next update, since I won't have internet at home for a while once I arrive in Kumamoto.
To friends, family, and casual readers - I hope you're all doing well.
After having to sleep in a different hotel room the other day while they carried out "construction work" (fixing a washer in the basin in my bathroom), I didn't think much of the requirement that I be out of the room for the day. The shower knob still isn't working properly so I assumed that'd probably be it.
Today's training was good. We moved on to the start of the training which deals with kids lessons. I'm really looking forward to teaching kids, because the lessons are more lively and less methodical. Our trainer for the day was very enthusiastic and it was obvious he'd be a great teacher. My technique's still a bit shaky due to uncertainty about the steps I need to follow, but with practice I'd like to become like this guy. He's pretty inspiring.
Anyway, after training wrapped up at about 7pm, a few of us went wandering in search of cheap eats. We stumbled across a curry house that looked similar to one we'd eaten in previously, and decided to give this place a shot. They didn't have a colourful menu like the previous place, so we pointed to one of the few illustrated menu items and ordered that for everyone. It's a bowl of rice with strips of meat (pork, perhaps?) on top. Cheap, but filling and reasonably healthy.
We sat around for a bit and and chatted about life in Japan. We also teased one of the other trainees. He'd brought his desktop computer over to Japan as carry-on luggage. Having built it about a month before heading over, he decided there was no way he was going to leave it back home. So he'd packed up the case (a tower case - they're pretty tall) and carried it on to the plane. Customs were bemused by what it could be and he was stopped twice while exiting America and asked to identify what it was. Eventually though he made it through okay.
The people from America and Canada seem to get about twice the weight limit we do in Australia. I really struggled to bring over my stuff, and had to jetison a considerable amount of things from my suitcase before coming over in order to make the 20kg weight limit. Carrying a desktop machine on the plane from Australia would pretty much have been an impossibility.
Anyway, after some dinner we wandered back towards my hotel, since the others planned to head home and the train station they need to go to is just past the hotel. We stood around for a while talking about the hotel's policy of not allowing visitors (it's against the rules for me to bring any friends up to the hotel room) and other miscellanea, then bid our farewells and went our separate ways.
They seem to be big on rules and precautions here. Through the wonders of technology, the television they provide is able to detect when you turn it off in the late evening. If you turn it off during the day it displays a brief message - "Thank you for staying us. Have a nice day" (sic). But when you turn it off late, it tells you "Be careful of fire. Good night." The docs provided on the desk reiterate this concern - "please do not smoke in bed as it may cause fire."
When I got back into my hotel room, I couldn't help but laughing. Curious about the construction work, I'd poked my head into the bathroom to see if there was a new showerhead or something. Not quite.
I now have an electric toilet.
It has some sort of pressure sensor which detects when you sit down. And there are buttons on the wall to shoot heated water at you at your discretion.
There's also big safety warnings plastered around it detailing what not to press and how you shouldn't direct water at the toilet for fear of it short circuiting. Which seems pretty silly to me, because the entire bathroom is like a hard plastic bubble, designed so that water can be splashed about the bathroom without getting the rest of the hotel room wet. This is because Japanese people shower outside the bath if they're planning to have a bath - they use a shower to clean, and the bath to soak. The electric "toiru" seems like an electric chair in waiting.
Ah, Japan.
Training has ramped up and it's left us all feeling pretty tired - there's a lot to get through in a short time. I'm looking forward to getting it finished and starting to actually teach, but at the same time I realise this has to be done. I'm certainly glad I get a reasonable amount of training - some of the other schools throw you in the deep end after only a few days.
The pictures on the right:
Yesterday was the first real day of training. Here we moved on from company policy and on to teaching. It was a long day, at about 6.5 hours not including breaks.
The training was pretty good, and although it was tiring I already would feel more comfortable standing in front of a class. It was also a chance to get to know the other trainees better, and after the training was complete we decided to go out for some dinner and a beer.
One of the fellow trainees was brave enough to go ask some Japanese people where "ii biiru" is - good beer. After some not so productive hand gestures, they walked us up the road to a nice place, which was a bit too full. The guy behind the counter knew a very small amount of English but was able to communicate to us that they have another store down the road, and that it's not full. We headed for it.
It was quite a nice place. A more traditional Japanese setting, with a recessed table and lockers for you shoes. We ordered "ooki biiru" - big beers. They had a big colourful menu and we wondered what some of the items were.
One of the guys in our training group had never tried raw fish before, or sushi. Feeling adventurous, he tried a bit of sashimi for the first time, and started eliciting sounds resembling an orgasm. "Oh, it melts in your mouth! Oh, it's so good. I love Japanese food!". It was funny to watch, and his enthusiasm, while perhaps a little overboard for the situation, was welcomed none the less.
At about 11pm we settled the tab (working out to about $20 per person for two "big" beers and some snacks like sashimi, cooked octopus and a little pizza), and headed back to the station so people could catch the trains on time. My hotel's just around the corner so I wandered back inside.
When I got inside, the two people behind the counter tried to explain
to me that I had to sleep in another room tonight, because they have
to do more construction work on my room. This took about 5 minutes as
I tried to ask whether I should get a shirt that night or the next
morning. I think I knew more Japanese than they knew English for
once, which was reassuring - though I still didn't know enough to
really facilitate the conversation. I went up to my old room, grabbed
my stuff, and headed down to my room for the night. I was asleep soon
after.
The next day I slept in a bit and then ventured out to explore the shops again. By about 6pm I came back to the hotel and was ready to spend a quiet night in front of the TV, and maybe do another Japanese lesson. But then L called and suggested we go to a friend's place for dinner in Sannomiya, which is basically Kobe. Having never seen Kobe before, this sounded like a good plan!
By the time we'd stopped to purchase some drinks as an arrival gift, and caught the two trains to Kobe, met the others at the station, and walked through Sannomiya city area to the (slightly) residential area they live in, it was getting pretty late. Some of the gang cooked some dinner and others headed off in search of tonic for the gin, and a movie. By the time they got back, we had less than an hour before L and I had to go.
We sat around having a drink and eating the dinner, complementing the chef on his prowess. I tried a bit of plum wine which was pretty good. The discussion topic for the most part revolved around a guy who'd been in the last training group who sounded a bit maladjusted. Whether he would be offered a contract seemed to be up in the air.
L opted to spend the night there rather than try and make the last train. I wanted to get back because "construction work" had to be done on my hotel room the next day - a leaking tap or something - and so I couldn't go in there during the day. Since the first real day of training started the next day, I wanted to ensure I had a good rest beforehand.
After missing the rapid train I wanted to get on from Kobe, after a group conference with some of the others who walked me back, I went with another type of train instead, which makes more stops. We reasoned I'd probably arrive there faster than waiting for the next rapid train, anyway. Which was true.
On the train trip back from Kobe, a slightly dishevelled man in his 30s struck up a conversation with me. He was a foreigner who had been in Japan for 18 years. He asked me why I'd come to Japan, whether I could use chopsticks, etc. He had a Japanese companion with him at one point and he'd launch into Japanese from time to time. I caught bits and pieces of it which seemed to surprise him, but I couldn't follow it all.
I arrived in Umeda just as they were starting to pull down the metal gates on the station. I rushed around trying to find the last train back to Namba but after about 5 minutes realised I was too late. Umeda's not too far from Namba (much, much closer compared to the trip from Umeda to Sannomiya), so it wasn't the end of the world. I could have caught a taxi but they're expensive and I decided to risk walking it. If I got lost I could always hail a cab. There were plenty around.
I'd been studying Japanese a bit before I left for Japan. Some of the phrases they teach seem like they'll never have a use, but one of those turned out to be useful that night - "Namba e iku michi wa dore desu ka?" - which way is the way to Namba?
Well, useful in that I was able to communicate my point across. However the few people I asked had no idea - only the first person knew, but I had to ask again when the road forked.
Okay, I'll have to figure it out myself then.
I found a sign indicating the railway line which I wanted to take (most big signs in Osaka are jointly labelled in Japanese and English). Having found the railway line, I just started following it. After about 15 minutes walking the railway line disappeared, but suddenly Namba started showing up on the signs above the road offering directions to the drivers. Good. I wasn't lost.
I got propositioned on the way home. Some girl came up and started saying something to me in Japanese. I told her "sorry, I don't understand" in Japanese, and suddenly she switched into English. "It's only 3000yen" ($30). "It's very comfortable". Realising, I put up my hands saying "no, I'm fine" in Japanese and hurried away.
There were quite a few businessmen and people around on the streets
at that time, and it didn't feel unsafe. I eventually made my way
back to the hotel after about an hour's walk, and crawled into bed,
satisfied I'd managed to make it home again.
Saturday was the first day of training. It only ran for a few hours, and was basically just a chance to learn a bit more about the company and fill out some of the paperwork which is required. For most of us, it was also our first chance to meet the other people who'll be working around this area.
We were given the option of borrowing a mobile phone from the company and getting a prepaid plan, but the call rates are very expensive - in the order of 3 times what you'd get on a monthly plan. The problem is that obtaining a phone without a gaijin card (foreigner's card) - something that takes weeks to get - can be very difficult. During the orientation, one of the fellow trainees tipped us off about a store in Umeda which will accept a credit card as a means of identification, rather than a gaijin card. After the training finished, a bunch of us set off for Umeda to check out the phone situation.
Umeda is home of Osaka station, and is one of the most bustling parts of Osaka from what I can tell. When we got there we were all in awe of the number of people moving about - stuff we'd only seen in Tokyo on TV before. Huge wide street crossings full of people moving about. The department store with the phones was no less breathtaking, towering above the other buildings in the area. And being a Saturday, there were people everywhere.
We eventually managed to find a sales attendant with enough English ability to be able to communicate to us the various terms of the contract. We were so grateful to him by the end of it - there's no way we could have hand-waved our way through the application form by ourselves.
There's been a considerable intake of couples into our teaching group - something in the order of 5 couples who've all come to Japan to teach English together (though not necessarily in the same place). They all opted for a "family plan" which offers a discounted rate to the second person.
The phone I got was amazing. It cost me 1yen (approx 1c) with a 1 year commitment. It's tiny, has email sending & receiving ability, and a little camera on it. It was so cheap because newer models have come out since it was released.
By the time we'd got the phone sorted out and hunted around for a bit to eat, night had fallen, so we decided to head back to our respective homes. We bid our farewell to some of the members of our mobile phone hunting party (who are lovely people, by the way), and jumped on the train back to Namba, where my hotel is, and where one of the girls had to change trains to get home.
L, the girl staying two rooms down from me in the hotel, mentioned that the previous batch of trainees had just finished their 2 weeks of training, and were going out to celebrate. We freshened up a bit and walked down the block a bit to meet up with the rest of them. They'd spent the last few hours at a ramen shop, eating noodles and drinking beer. The next destination, upon the advice of one of the trainers, was a little bar in the next suburb, which has a heavy bar / nightclub presence.
It sure was little. About the size of a shoebox. We walked in and the lady behind the bar gasped "sugoi" - amazing. Our party of about 22 people had almost filled the bar already.
The bar was unlike anything I've seen back home. It had a hip-hop theme, and there was a DJ playing some records tucked into one corner of the room. Two Japanese girls decked up in hip-hop outfits, including a yellow hat-on-backwards each, were dancing around in front of the DJ. Most of our party, having been drinking for the last few hours already and only mildly sobered by the long walk to find the place, headed for the portion of the shoebox which seemed to be the dancefloor. Soon the size of the place faded from memory and it became just cosy.
The bar staff (there were 2 of them) were friendly and really seemed to enjoy their job. At one point one of the waitresses starts dancing on the dance floor, and the other gets up behind the bar and starts pole dancing! One of the Japanese guys in the room seemed to be trying to persuade the other waitress to also pole dance, but she shrugged off his request.
He was an interesting character, too - resembling someone out of a 70s porn movie, with the big 70s sunglasses and long flowing hair. He was also a bit drunk and seemed to be amused by all the foreigners dancing around.
Someone had a birthday that night, too. They handed around those confetti-popping things to us and on the count of three we let them fly. I have no idea who's birthday it was, but we cheered along anyway.
In the early hours of the morning we left the club and ventured into a cafe to grab a snack before heading off our different ways. The train lines stop at midnight over here, so people were organising to sleep at each other's houses until they could get home the next day. I ordered "meto boru" - meat balls. Tiny little balls of meat in some sort of cheese sauce. They looked bigger on the menu!
Oh, and I saw guinness on tap advertised for 900yen a pint. $10+ for a pint of guinness. What have I done!
L and I started to head back to the hotel, accompanied by M, one of
the trainees who I got along with better. He was less - vivacious -
than most of them, but that was a good thing. He ended up sleeping on
the floor of my hotel room for a few hours until the trains started
again the next day.
I'd originally planned to jump on a train this morning, and go explore Umeda - one of the bustling parts of Osaka, with lots of underground shopping centres. But when browsing the map which the hotel staff had given me, I noticed "Denden town - Nipponbashi". "Den" is Japanese for electricity, and Nipponbashi is basically a suburb full of electrical goods - from PCs to power tools to soldering irons. This rekindled my hopes of finding an adaptor for my laptop, and so I decided to leave the train travel to another day, and to venture to Nipponbashi instead. Besides, I felt like walking, and it was only one suburb away.
I'd actually stumbled across it yesterday, but due to my sense of direction being scrambled at the time, I only managed to walk through a small corner of it. Today I followed the railway line to orient myself, and managed to explore much more.
I was perplexed by this chain of stores called "Joshin". They seem like an electrical department store, with a few spin-off branches that specialise in CDs/DVDs, and kids toys. But the bizarre thing was that I ran across no less than three of the standard multi-level Joshin stores. Each store stocked the same gear.
After a fruitless search for an AC adaptor for my laptop (the only store which stocked them had run out), I decided I'd modify my existing cable instead - so I went in search of tools like electrical tape and a soldering iron. While hunting I came across a supermarket - the first I've seen here. The frozen / chilled fish they had on offer was very cheap. There were many products I didn't recognise, and I left with a 2L bottle of cold green tea, a bottle of vegetable juice akin to "V8" back home, and some instant miso soup. Though now that I think about it, I have no bowl in which to prepare it. Perhaps the complimentary cup they provide for tea will suffice.
I came across a takoyaki store out on the street. I pointed to the sign and asked "tako?" since I couldn't read the kanji, but it confused the girl and she went to fetch an older man out the back to deal with the crazy foreigner. Takoyaki is basically little bits of octopus cut up and fried with batter into little dumplings. The batter on the inside doesn't get cooked long enough to harden (at least in the ones I got!), and so they're gooey on the inside. It was yum. I walked past the store after having eaten on a side road, and told them it was yummy and thanks. The guy paused for a second expecting to have to decode English, but then grasped my feeble Japanese and nodded happily. The girl, who was standing behind, looked like she was still thinking "crazy foreigner".
Last night the girl from two doors down gave me a call and suggested dinner, with a preference towards yakitori (fried chicken) as she had a meat craving. I welcomed the company and the chance to explore another part of my new home, and accepted despite the fact that I'd eaten 100yen ($1) okonomiyaki earlier. Upon her suggestion, we ventured into a previously unexplored back-alley, and quickly came across a small yakitori shop. Inside was small and homely, with about 10 chairs, a cook behind the stove and a lady who served us. She was patient with our very limited Japanese, and we eventually managed to order following a broken conversation and a lot of gestures (such as flapping arms to indicate chicken wings). We tried a few dishes - the first two being chicken (the second we presume was chicken), chopped up into little pieces and fried. Then my companion ordered some chicken wings and I went with the heart - which she couldn't stand the thought of. But it tasted good!
We stayed there chatting for a few hours over the meal and a beer. The people running the store were really accommodating and despite the language barrier, it was a really nice evening. Having felt silly earlier in the day from the jagged conversations with shop attendants, the evening rekindled my hope that I'd be able to function over here while my Japanese abilities are still quite limited.
Oh, and over the dinner the topic of 1L cans of beer came up. My
companion admitted to having not come across them before. One of my
discoveries today was a vending machine with 1L beer cans. Viva Japan!
I went hunting for a computer cord or adaptor today, so that I can continue to use my laptop. It's got about 10 minutes of battery left at the moment.
But alas. While I found whole streets lined with electronics and computers, it all seemed to cater to peripherals and desktop machines.
I spent a fair few hours today wandering around various shops. I went out twice, in fact - the second time was the adaptor mission, the first was just a chance to check out what's around me. The wealth of shops just in this little area is amazing. I picked up some sushi for breakfast which was much better and varied than what we get back in Canberra - and it was cheaper, too.
After the battery on this laptop runs out I think I'm going to hit the books and study. It's a very strange feeling being unable to conduct basic conversations with shop attendants - though I did manage to decode "to have here?" with one lady. My Japanese really has to improve if I want to avoid feeling like an invalid for the rest of my time here. At least I know how to say "one please", now! I said "hitotsu wo kudasai" and the guy gave me a funny look, stuck up a finger and said "ichimae?" Something for next time.
Well, my battery's running out, so I'd better go. After I get all my documents filled out in preparation for the start of training on Saturday, I think I'll venture out in search again.
Peace and happiness from Japan.
I woke up to the sound of an ambulance, which was speeding through the city. Which was funny, because the last thing I remember hearing last night as I fell asleep was the sound of an ambulance. The ambulance soon soon faded away and the sound was replaced with bongos - someone in an "aparto" nearby must be practising. Now I can just hear construction sounds - jack hammers, drills.
Yesterday was a long day. It started at 5:30am, waking up in a hotel in Sydney. The night before, we had eaten a delicious Kangaroo fillet for dinner - the best Kangaroo I've ever had - and had gone to bed content. I slept a bit restlessly though, awaiting what was to come.
After waiting in the airport for 3 hours or so (delayed flight, customs procedures, etc), I was finally on the way to Cairns from Sydney. The flight took about 2 1/2 hours, which was shorter than they'd estimated.
When I got to Cairns international airport, I was a bit dazzled. The majority of the flights going out that day were to Japan, and it felt like I'd landed in Japan already. There was a sushi place prominently placed to capitalise on the race ratios, and the "everything Australia" store was accepting Japanese yen and giving back Australian change. I picked up two mini tubs of vegemite, which I'd forgotten to do earlier - eyed the crocodile jerky but decided to pass - and sat in my chair waiting another hour for the next flight.
The flight to Osaka from Cairns was pretty decent, though 8 hours is a long time to fly. They had a couple of movies screening - one I'd seen before, the other looked uninteresting. I just read my book and took photos of the cool cloud formations outside, instead.
Unfortunately it was dark by the time we were flying into Osaka, meaning I couldn't get a good feel for the city. The advantage of having arrived at this time, however, was the fact that there weren't so many people around. Being in Japan was dazzling enough without having to endure rush hour as well.
We shuffled out of the plane and I followed the people ahead of me in the hope of heading in the right direction. I was prepared for mass confusion of the procedures required, but almost all the signs were in both Japanese and English. There was a train waiting for us to take us from the arrival gate to the next building. And after we walked through quarantine (which seems to work on a voluntary basis unless you look deathly ill), I arrived in a huge room entitled "immigration". Here we were divided up into return natives, and "foreigners". I had to fill out a "disembarktion" card on the plane describing my primary purpose for coming to Japan, but having handed them this and my passport, the process was over after some rubber stamping and computer checks. I headed for my baggage.
After securing my baggage (my boss was later suprised by how small it was - yet even with my suitcase and backpack I'd exceeded the weight limit for the plane!), I headed out a door which looked like it lead out on to the street - but no, it lead into the main domestic airport terminal. Which was also huge.
I walked back and forth for a bit, trying to figure out what to do. I had to call my boss to pick me up, which meant figuring out the phones. This generally means buying a phone card, as phones which accept coins are pretty rare. The first phone card machine kept on spitting out my notes - perhaps it was empty or something. Slightly disheartened, I found another machine and this one was kind enough to give me a card.
I knew I had to find the "Nankai Namba" train line, and get a ticket. I wandered outside to where the trains were, doubling back once or twice after going the wrong way (and feeling like a stupid foreigner). Finally I found the Namba station, and a nearby denwa (phone). I called my boss, and he said to get the "rapido" (rapid) train to Namba. I managed to acquire a ticket with a broken Japanese conversation with an attendant "ah - tsugi no rapido wo kudasai .. soushite .. receito" "aa, reshito?"
The train ride took about 30 minutes. The rapido trains work on a reserved seat basis, and are thus a bit more expensive than the alternatives. There weren't many people on the train and it felt like riding on one at home - apart from the plush furnishings, fold out drink holders (some salary man was drinking a bunch of beer cans on the train, as well), on-board telephones and LCD screens displaying news and stop information. I saw a few trains shoot past in the opposite direction which didn't work on a reserved seat basis - everyone was standing up and looked like they'd been packed into the train with force. I'll have to get used to it.
It was amazing gazing out of the train window as it sped along. It was dark, so I couldn't see the city properly - but there were plenty of neon lights to keep me entertained. The city is huge. In Sydney, you catch a train away from the city and the high rise buildings become smaller and look more like suburbia. On this train ride the high buildings didn't stop. I must be 40kms or so away from the airport now, and here it's built up just the same as it was there.
My boss met me at the airport and pointed to a few points of interest
as we walked to my hotel. In the hotel was a girl, who transferred
over from another English company recently and was undergoing
retraining. My boss bid his farewell and went home. I agreed to meet
up with the girl after a brief chance to get settled in, and later
that night we went out to an izakaya - a tavern/restaurant.
In 4 days, I'll be standing in Osaka, Japan - Japan's third largest city. In one week, teacher training starts. In 20 days, I fly to Kumamoto, where I'll be living. And soon I'll be up the front of a classroom, teaching people how to speak English.
I've had a while to prepare for this. I put in a job application in mid December. I had an interview in early February, and found out less than two days later that I got the job. I was told that it would take a few months to organise a work visa and a position, so I assumed it would be about May by the time I depart. However, a job came up earlier and I was offered a position starting on the 27th March - about 30 days from the time I was notified.
I was initially a little reluctant to accept the position, because the placement was in a city called Kumamoto - a place I'd never heard of before. I had asked to be placed in Nagoya. Nagoya is a big city in the middle of Japan, and living there would have meant easy access to lots of shops, and short travel times to the various parts of Japan. Centrally located, it would have been ideal.
I was conscious that turning down the offer would make my employer less likely to offer again, though. I did a little reading about Kumamoto and it didn't seem too bad. I accepted the position.
Now I'm really glad I did. From what I've read, Kumamoto is a really nice place to live. My apartment there is only 15 minutes walk from the city, and is relatively inexpensive - 54,000yen, or about $600AUD a month. The weather is similar to that of my home town, Canberra. And because it's not the hugely popular tourist destination that the major cities are, it's a little less westernised than somewhere like Tokyo.
I've done lots of reading on what to expect - but despite all that preparation, it still feels a little surreal that I'll be leaving the country so soon. I don't think it will really sink in until I hop on the plane. Then I can really start to brace myself for the sensory overload that is Kansai International Airport, Osaka.
This website below has some photos from Kumamoto. The website's name means "Kumamoto dialect" - its primary purpose is to teach people about the ways the language varies in Kumamoto. Sometimes it can be hard for people from the different prefectures in Japan to understand each other, due to these variations.