approaching one year in japan. talking to myself less. and i guess that's a good thing, though i think it might just be because i've become more anti-social. so far it's been quiet. need another big adventure. i'm almost hoping for some trauma................................................................................. something new................... here we are now.............

february 24, 2003

snowboarding weekend nagano was fun. 14 hours in a car, two trips to the onsen, no broken bones, few bruises and a couple of blisters equal a successful ski trip.
japanese teacher is making a joke in the office right now.. seems terribly excited and animated about something. must be funny.. wish i could understand it.

february 13, 2003

happy new year i guess. new mac powerbook. 12 inches. aluminium. tasty.

november 24, 2002

i find myself again in tokyo in the internet cafe listening to music videos and updating the homepage. life can be lonely in japan. mind numbingly lonely. i understand personal ads, blind dates and singles bars now. it's all clear now. spent two days at the mid year seminar. drank, joked, mingled like never before. especially after two days with seemingly no human contact other than my co-workers.

november 14, 2002

10:51 am: Mitsukaido West Junior High School - faculty computer lab
yesterday was ibaraki day. spent mid morning to afternoon practising my club juggling. club'd myself in the head a few times - but got it going a few times. now if only i could master unicycling, i would have a income earner for life.

it's getting quite cold here. and there's no real insulation or central heating in the apartments. a kerosene heater (retail value 9800 yen) does a pretty good job for a cheap price, but there's always the tiny chance of carbon dioxide (monoxide?) poisoning. kotatsu's are nifty japanese inventions as well. low tables that you can drape a futon over to keep your legs warm while watching tv or having dinner. might bring it back to canada with me.

spent monday (mitsukaido nishi chugakko's birthday) climbing mt. tsukuba. it's strangely similar to the grouse grind back home. about an hour's worth of straight climbing and a mountain tram ride back (the tram ride is on rails though). good exercise. i might try to make it a monthly thing.

november 4, 2002

3:15 am tokyo time. spending the night in tokyo. was going to head to a sento (public bath house) to crash the night but decided to try something different and pass the night at an internet cafe. (surprisingly it works out ot be about half the price). the chairs are mildly comfortable and they do recline quite a bit. i guess other people had the same idea as many are off dozing in front of their computer cubicles... some others are less concerned with creating the illusion of using the internet cafe as a place to crash the night, and proceed to start sleeping without even turning on the computer.
spent the earlier part of the day meeting some new people at a going away party for another person i didn't know. it was the first time i wasn't terribly excited to meet more new people that i'd probably never see again... being asked where you are from and what you do in japan has completely lost all its novelty. next time i think i'll make up something interest. i think it'll be in both parties interests if i do.

september 18, 2002

when you're living in another country, i find it easy to get accustommed to the small stuff pretty quickly. The big story in the news for the past two weeks or so has been about Tamu-chan the wayward beared seal who seems to be popping in and around the tokyo river systems... lord knows why he wants to stay in such polluted areas, but he's got quite a loyal legion of toyko-ers following his movements. The big sumo wrestling tournament has been on tv for the past week as well. two big dudes slapping each other silly makes for good tv.

went out to a darts bar in iwai the other day. never played darts before, but it's really quite fantastic. managed to break the 400 mark and get my photo on the wall.. but then, so has everyone else - so my achievement feels a little less of one.

september 11, 2002

today is the anniversary of the terrorist attacks around the world trade center. eerie, it's pretty much life as usual here.

went to my first inkai a couple of days ago. nothing like getting drunk with your co-workers to get to know them better. it was quite relaxing though. most of them were pretty chatty and i think my japanese got progressively better the more beers i had.

went out to mito the other day for the jet meeting. more or less just an excuse to get a day off from classes and chat about how everything is going. i realized with a few exceptions i really not a huge fan of the canadian contingent out here. perhaps because they're all from out east. whatever. sometimes the click just isn't there.

september 6, 2002

working on a saturday. can you believe it? though if i play my cards right i might just be able to translate this into an extra day off. since there was a pretty good chance at rain, the sports day was postphoned until the following week. instead, i had my first day of classes with the students. wow. it's always fun when you're standing in a room full of students who probably only understand half of what you're saying. Hopefully it's the good half though. The first class didn't start off too well. Started with my introduction in japanese - it gets worse and worse each time i say it i think, and then had the kids come up and introduce themselves to me to kill off the rest of the class. it's bad when you run out of things to say 10 minutes into a class and the other 40 minutes were just about the longest of my life. my second class went a lot better though. there was another new teacher at the school. ms. semeya. only 22 years old. can`t believe that there's anyone younger than me right now. so she got the class going. i did a little disco dance during the introduction that seemed to get the kids stirring a bit. finished off the class with some group questions - one of which was "do you like ms. semeya." ahhh.. kids will be kids. third class of the day was with wada-sensei. really great guy. i think the girls love him. he was telling me that this will probably be his last year here at nishi junior high. too bad, he was a really great and enthusiastic teacher. he'd been here for 9 years now. did my little introduction (no dance sadly) and then went around to all the kids and introduced myself to them. i could see myself doing teaching for a while. kids are so genki. and cute. then again, after africa, i thought i'd spend my life in international development. puck me.

september 4, 2002

at the school again. the kids are rehearsing for their sports day on saturday. i was expecting the kids to be knocking around the soccer ball, or shooting hoops, but instead they`ve been outside practicing their opening ceremonies for the past two hours or so. alan believes that there`s something a little draconian about marching practice... i`m inclined to agree.

the afternoon practices seemed to go a little smoother - more typical kids games involving popping balloons, three legged races and people in burlap sacs of some sort. kids seemed a little more outgoing when they`re having fun. terribly kawaii. must bring camera with me on saturday.

september 3, 2002

well i guess this is my new life in japan. it`s been almost a month here already and vancouver seems oh so far away sometimes. vague recollections of tall beautiful evergreens, the sea wall, the north shore mountains, and evenings that lasted longer than a beer. and so sometimes i`ll wonder why i left at all. and as quickly as i think it, it always dawns on me again, i couldn`t find a job to save my life, i was broke and i needed something different.

japan, though, does have many similar charms. the absurd friendliness of the japanese people. the rolling rice fields, the narrow streets and the archaic trash disposal system. welcome to my sleepy japnese town of mitsukaido - population 40,000 (with the feeling that the population level has just about peaked) and located about an hour and a half from central tokyo. this is inaka (the countryside), although the little patches of rice fields could hardly rival the wheatfields of the canadian praries.

first impressions

the japanese people
at the risk of stereotyping an entire nation into one collective description, i would have to say that the majority of japanese that i have met have gone out of their way to make me feel comfortable here.

driving in japan
being one of the few lucky JETs to get a car here - driving has proved to be much easier than i had expected. narrow roads lead to occassional games of chicken (with one car being forced to back into a driveway to let the other pass), a simple nod is usually enough to communicate `you go first` or `thanks` or `yes, i see you, i had the right of way, you punk`. green lights mean go, yellow lights mean go faster and red lights mean nothing apparently.

life in a japanese apartment
i`ve got a great apartment. i love it to death actually. 2 rooms, a toilet, a shower, a washing machine, and a kitchen. there are sliding doors between most of the rooms - though if you open up all the windows and the doors - there`s this beautiful breeze that passes through the house. two of the rooms are tatami rooms - i believe that they are really an awful remmnant from traditional days. they must be cleaned occassionally, can be home to little bugs (tatami bugs - none yet, but i`m told that if you have them. you will KNOW soon enough), and like the little mogwai, tatami mats should not get wet. the air conditioning is a life saver, and throughout most of august, you`re sealed inside the one tatami room with the airconditioner, attempting to make one trip to go to the bathroom, take a shower, do your laundry, and make lunch in order to stay out of the heat.

japanese neighbours
no idea. haven`t talked to mine yet, might never talk to them. they have popped into my apartment though, when my carbon monoxide detector got wet, sending off an ear piercing dog deafening sound across the neighbourhood. i was in the neighbouring city at the time, and the landlord had to be called to get access to the apartment to pull the batteries out of the demonic contraption. this, coupled with the fact that i`m probably playing my music too loudly means i not at the top of their favorite peoples list.

the japanese workplace
i`ve found that work is more about the time spent working than about the work itself. if you have nothing to do at work - read a book, hammer away on the computer, study some japanese, read a newspaper, but the important thing apparently is to show up for work. so far, i really haven`t questioned it. but i don`t see why no one else hasn`t.

most memmorable memories of my first month here:

• getting drunk at the mito party and passing out on the table at the drunken duck `reggae` bar, then waking up and getting sick on the table.
• meeting up with kumiko and yuko (my NUS friends!) in tokyo
• partying in iwai with anna, rob, greg, and david
• anna getting sick in the car on the day of the mt. fuji climb with frank sinatra`s i`ve got you under my skin blaring out of the radio - then throwing the bag out the window of the car.
• the mount fuji climb. raced to the top with gavin. it was cold. oh so cold up there. at the top a bunch of up made a human dog pile to keep warm.
• visiting a sento for the first time in tokyo.
• greg almost getting into a fight a club with a japanese guy who thought his rollie was a joint.
• trying to catch a coachroach, and then almost having a heartattack at it scurries out of the box i trapped it in.
• first day at nishi junior high making a speech in front of the 700 kids who all applauded afterwards.