Silver Week

Of all the things I love about Japan, National Holidays have to be my favorite. Silver Week (like Golden Week, only shorter) was from Sept. 20th-23rd. My friend Jenna from college has been teaching in Fukui prefecture (about 3 hours north of me on the Japan Sea side) since last August and we finally worked it so we could get together. We met in Osaka on the 21st and wandered the city a little. We went to the castle and walked around the park.

This was the biggest castle I've seen in Japan so far. There are golden tigers up near the top which is why Osaka's baseball team is the tigers.

We didn't actually go up in the castle, but we sat in the park catching up and people watching for quite a while. That's where we saw these poor dogs. Even the Japanese people were doing double takes to look at them. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but their hair is dyed that color.

It seemed like every one's idea of a good time for silver week was to go to Osaka. Several of my friends and many of Jenna's friends were also there. We met up with some friends and went to a really good Thai restaurant where there happened to be a wedding party going on on the first floor. It was pretty loud, and when I had to walk through to get to the bathroom I caught a glimpse of the bride and groom who were pretty normal, except for the giant, gold sequined bow-tie the groom was wearing.

The next day Jenna and I went shopping in Osaka, then came back to Nagoya for Indian food at my favorite restaurant here. Jenna is deprived of any kind of food besides Japanese food, she lives in a rural area of Japan, so she was pretty excited for a change of pace. The next day I showed her a little of the city, mostly from the TV tower (which I had never been in before).

Left is Sakae, the biggest downtown area of Nagoya. Right is Oasis 21, a bus station/shopping and dining area. That's a fountain in the oval on the top. I live about a 3 minute walk from there.

It was a pretty cloudy day so the Nagoya skyline isn't exactly radiant, but on the bottom left is a picture of the Nagoya Castle in the distance. On the right is my apartment building which you could barely make out from the vantage point of the tower. I live on the 7th floor of the side of the building you can sort of see.

It was a good vacation. Osaka was pretty fun and I'd really like to go again for a longer stay. Also now that Jenna has visited me I'm going to visit her as well. She has a car because she has to drive to some of her schools. She says that when she went home over summer vacation it was really disorienting to drive on the right again. I'm pretty excited for my next vacation.

Jenna and me on the observation deck of the TV Tower

Tanjobi (Birthday)

Since I don't normally live close enough to a beach to take advantage of my summer birthday my friends and I decided to have a beach party to celebrate the day. We went to Utsumi beach which is about an hour south of Nagoya by train. The beach was really nice, not too crowded, and the water was warm and clear.


We brought a cooler of libations and beach balls, bubbles, squirt guns, and other such fun beach items. Around 4:00 most of the Japanese beach goers start to pack it in and head home, but we were all excited to watch the sunset on the beach.


Vacation is over tomorrow and we wanted to make the best of our remaining free time. We stayed until it was dark (unsure of what time it was) and then found a little beach bar that had good food and more drinks. By the time we decided to head back to the station (which was about a 15 minute walk from the beach) it was a little after 10:00pm. No one thought to look at what time the last train left since we didn't think we'd be there for that long and usually the last trains leave around 11:30-12:30, depending on where you are. The last train from Utsumi left at 10:20. We arrived at the completely dark station at 10:26.

Doug, Takuya, Shannon, and Kate, dismayed at the train station.

We briefly considered taking some taxis but it would have been ludicrously expensive, so we opted for Mos Burger (the Japanese equivalent McDonald's) until it closed and then sleeping on the beach like bums until the sun came up/the trains started running again (which was around 5:30). It was definitely a memorable experience, and now I can cross "sleep outside like I'm homeless" off my "things to do in Japan" list.

On the train home I felt pretty out of place, considering my get up looked something like this (minus the hat)...

The other train passengers at that time of morning were all businessmen with their briefcases on their way to work. I hope I didn't get them sandy.




I put up pictures from my summer vacation in Nagano on Flickr (www.flickr.com). Search for me under people. The pictures from the trip are titled Summer Vacation. The short of it is My friend Kate and I went to Nagano prefecture for about 5 days from Aug. 10th-14th. We took the train to Matsumoto, stayed there overnight, then took a bus to Kamikochi (a national park of sorts). We camped for two nights with hiking and other such activities. Then we took the bus back to Matsumoto and went sightseeing around the city. The last day we went to a hot springs and then took the train back to Nagoya. It was pretty great and relaxing and everything a summer vacation should be.

Marine Day

July 20th was a national holiday (Marine Day) so I had three days off work in a row. Huzzah! There was a pretty spectacular fireworks display down at the Nagoya port. All of my students told me they weren't going because it would be really crowded. They weren't wrong. Some friends and I went and even though it looked as if it would start raining again at any second, there were thousands of people down by the water.



The show started around 7:30 and lasted a good hour. The fireworks were pretty great, as was the crowd reaction. They don't literally "ooo" and "ahh", but it's pretty darn close. I must admit I got a little carried with the fireworks setting I recently discovered was on my camera. I'd never tried it out before, and some of them came out pretty well.


We found a place sort of behind a tree (which you can make out in the pictures) so by the end my pictures started looking more like forest fires. Especially with how smokey the finale was. They were pretty spectacular. It seems like in the summer here someone is setting off fireworks practically every weekend.

Work is going pretty well, summer vacation is just around the corner. Hurray!

It's been a while again. The month of June was brutal with it's lack of national holidays. The weekend of the 4th of July I took a day off and went to Tokyo to see Elliott before he left Japan. We went to Odaiba, some man-made islands near the bay. Sights there were a mini statue of liberty (left) and a giant robot (right).














I particularly like how the robot looks like it's going to start terrorizing the populace at any moment. Allegedly its head moves sometimes, and its eyes possibly light up, but we didn't get to see that happen.

Odiba also had a lot of places to shop, a strange looking building which I think was Tokyo TV station (pictured below) and a large Hello Kitty ferris wheel. There were also some museums. Elliott and I went to a robotics museum. The robot dog and the video of a 4-robot Japanese idol group were the best things there.

This picture is a view from the Kitty Wheel at night. The blurry orange and white thing in the distance left of middle is the Tokyo TV tower.


Tokyo was more fun this time as it didn't rain on us. Sunday we had lunch together and said our farewells, then I shinkansened back to Nagoya.

Nagashima Spaland

This week on my day off my friends and I went to Nagashima Spaland which is an amusement park about an hour drive outside Nagoya. For unknown reasons Peter Rabbit is the mascot of Nagashima Spaland. In the summer it also has a water park and there's a public bath which we didn't go to, so I'm sure we'll go back sometime in the summer when it gets ridiculously hot. I went with two of my fellow ECC teachers and three Japanese friends. My friend Yu has a van so he drove us all there. Below most of the group is pictured in our sweet ride (Kate and I were in the back so we're not visible). In the middle seat are Takuya and Shannon, and in the front are the Yu's (it's confusing enough having one person named Yu when you're speaking in English, much less two, but we managed it somehow).

I went on a Japanese highway for the first time. We went over this really huge bridge, and our Japanese friends mocked us for getting excited about the highway. Since we went on Tuesday it was pretty empty so we didn't have to wait for rides at all. As we were wandering around we stumbled across these performers. They juggled flaming torches for a while and for their grand finale they balanced on boards on top of cylinders on top of boards on glasses. It was quite intricate. Oh, and they were wearing flaming hats too. The one that's facing the camera's hat said "fire ok" on it. It was pretty impressive, they juggled the torches back and forth.

The roller coaster below is the Steel Dragon 2000. Apparently it's the longest roller coaster in the world.

We rode this one twice. There was also this ride that was kind of like a luge that was pretty fun. Nagashima also has a big outlet mall so after we just couldn't stand to ride rides anymore we got some food and went shopping. We split up in the outlet mall and the girls and I ended up in the lego outlet building a house at the lego station. This is the finished product.

All and all I'd say it was a spectacular day off, even though personnel tried to ruin it for me by offering me some overtime on my day off.

Golden Week 2009!

Greetings. Golden week is sadly over. I can't express how much I didn't want to return to work this week. Elliott came to Nagoya on the 1st and I showed him around town. We had some ramen for lunch and then drank in a park with some of my fellow teachers. God bless Japan and it's lack of open container laws. The next day Elliott and I went to Kyoto with only minor set backs. We were tired and uncertain of where we were supposed to change trains, so we spent about 30 minutes at a tiny station in the countryside of Japan waiting for a local train to come by and watching the shinkansen (bullet train) whiz past us (clearly it was mocking us). Other than that the trip was relatively uneventful. We stayed in a ryokan (traditional Japanese guesthouse).

It even had the kind of closet people always live in in anime shows, although if you're taller than me you won't fit. I could have lived there quite comfortably. On the right is our room. They had a basket in the corner with 2 yukatas so Elliott and I had no choice but to put them on. Then we got some dinner and walked around these 2 temples that were on either side of the place we were staying.

The next day we took a bus to a large temple up on a hill called Kiyomizu (pictured below). It was pretty big and had a good view of the city. Then we walked back down and did basically a large walking circle of Kyoto. We stopped in at any temple or shrine we passed (which were numerous). We hit up Heian Jingu shrine which was pretty huge. Then we saw the old imperial palace (or the wall that surrounds it, since you're not actually allowed inside). It's in a big park in the middle of the city. Then we went to the castle (Nijo-jo). It had a fabulous garden and squeaky floor boards so intruders wouldn't be able to sneak up on the residents. Then it was back to Nagoya for us to stay in my apartment for free.

The next morning we went to Tokyo on the shinkansen. It was ridiculously fast. It took less than 2 hours to get from Nagoya to Tokyo. The first day I saw Elliott's school and where he lives and whatnot. Day two we discovered that I wasn't actually allowed to stay in his dorm, so we went downtown, found a locker to store my bag in, and spent the rest of the day walking the rainy streets of Tokyo. We went to Shibuya, Harajuku and Shinjuku. That probably doesn't mean much to anyone, but they're three big areas in Tokyo. Shinjuku is mostly a business district. There's an observation floor in the Tokyo Municipal Building (in Shinjuku) that we went to. It rained the whole day so I couldn't actually see how ridiculously huge Tokyo is, but apparently on a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji from there.

We went to a club, stayed out all night, and I caught the first shinkansen back to Nagoya, which is at 6:00 am if anyone is wondering. I wish every week was golden week.

I have been duly chastised about my lack of posting. I've been pretty busy with work and such. The cherry blossoms have come and gone, they didn't last very long, but they were beautiful while they were blooming. I went to Okazaki, a town about 40 minutes south of Nagoya that is famous for it's cherry blossoms. One of my fellow teachers lives there so she showed us around a little. We got there in the afternoon and walked along the river until we came across this...

We were walking and noticed that a lot of people were all wearing matching costumes, and there were lots of different costumes as well. As we were pondering what exactly that meant, this video happened and semi-answered our question. Apparently there was some sort of dance concert/competition going on. After we had our fill we wandered to the other side of the river where there were lots of festival stalls and bought some food and booze, laid out a picnic blanket, and got to it. I didn't take a picture of any of the food I ate, but I wish I had. One thing I ate was especially delicious and I keep trying to ask my students what it's called, but first I have to describe it to them. They keep telling me okonomiyaki, but I'm pretty sure that's something different. So, here are some pictures from my cherry blossom viewing (hanami in Japanese).

These are pictures of the trees along the river, the castle, and the festival stalls at night. They hang lanterns in the trees and light them up when it gets dark so it's really beautiful at night too.

Golden Week is coming up really soon (hooray!). Golden Week is 5 national holidays all in a row, so the whole country goes on vacation. Elliott is coming to Nagoya and then we're traveling together. I'm pretty excited about not having to go to work for a week.

Cell Phones

Today was the last day of going to the schools I will be teaching at for my new schedule and it was possibly the worst. It took me and hour and 40 minutes to get there from my apartment. The directions they gave us were hardly adequate. Luckily for myself I decided to leave 2 hours in advance in case I got lost. Little did I know it would just take me that long to get there normally.

So that's my little rant. Now I want to show you what cell phones are like in Japan. (Not all of them, but some...)


So, we have cake cell phone and bedazzled skull cell phone. I haven't actually seen any one's phone look like the cake one on the left, but this was in the display case of Bic Camera (a large electronics store near on the of the schools I work at) so I have to assume some girls somewhere have cell phones that look like pieces of cake. I have seen many bedazzled cell phones though.

My cell phone looks like this...

It has skeleton stickers on the back because one of the days that I had nothing to do at work (no lessons to teach) a teacher had an entire sheet of skeleton stickers that her kids classes didn't want, so we decorated my phone with them. Everyone has baubles on their cell phones here. I think two has to be my maximum. As far as I can tell they all have bells attached to them so they jingle everywhere. I saw one guy's phone with about 80 baubles attached. I don't know how he could stand to carry it around with so many cutesy things hanging off the side of it. Mine are the traditional good luck cat in Japan (not sure what it's called) and a little jug I got from the Hounen Festival that has a surprise inside. It's a tiny golden member. It was the most tasteful souvenir I could find there.

Meieiki Party

Last Saturday one of the schools I've been to a couple times had a party for staff, English teachers and students (who are old enough to drink of course). We met outside the school at 7:30 and then followed the school director to a secret location. It was just an izukaya (traditional Japanese style restaurant) down the street and around the corner, but no one knew where we were going until we got there. Then we had nomihoudai (all you can drink) for 2 hours and the beverage just started flowing. Every time we were in danger of running out, a staff member would appear from no where with another giant bottle of beer.

This photo was taken at the party. On the left is Kate (who I met on the plane to Japan), Yumi giving the double "v" for victory (she works at Meieiki and was supplying everyone with booze), and I guess you the the character on the right.

A few things about partying with the Japanese: At work they are always very businesslike and serious, but when it's time for the work party they really let loose (an izukaya seems to be the only place it's acceptable to be as loud as foreigners). It takes only about 2 drinks to make most of them really drunk. In short, they work hard, they play hard. After the izukaya students and teachers alike stumbled down the street to a bar across the street from the school. It was a little weird to be encouraged to drink with people who are supposed to think of you as a teacher, but apparently that's how work parties go down in Japan.

In other news, this week will not be fun for me. We have entered the gap schedule which means that I won't be a sub everyday anymore which is great, but because of when my old day off and my new day off are I don't get a day off at all this week. We have about a week and a half until the new schedule starts so they fill the in between time with Free Time Lessons (which are 40 minutes and students just come in a sign up for them whenever they want). At least in my new schedule I only have one sub shift day now (Mondays). That's all for now.

Inuyama

Last Friday for my day off I went with a friend to Inuyama, a little town about 35 minutes train ride north of Nagoya. I taught at the school in Inuyama as a sub earlier this week. The school is literally in the station. When we got there we didn't have much of a plan. Sadly we were woefully unprepared, neither of us brought our Japan guide books and we didn't have a map or anything, so when we got off the train we wandered until we found a little international center. We then found a guide book with a tiny map in it in the library section, found what direction the castle was and discovered that it was near the river. The castle there is original, unlike Nagoya castle which got bombed during the war so had to be rebuilt (now it has an elevator in it apparently). We then started wandering the streets of Inuyama (which means dog mountain, in case you wanted to know). We found the river after about 30 minutes of walking and saw the castle in the distance on a hill not long after. The castle is kind of small, but there was a pretty killer view from the top. To go in was only 500 yen. Since it's an original you have to take off your shoes before entering and carry them in a plastic sack. The "stairs" in there were really steep, so steep in fact they border on wooden ladder. But, all the little old Japanese ladies there were climbing them like champs. There were 5 levels.





Left: Inuyama Castle

Right: View from the top.





After the castle we wandered in search of food and ended up at this traditional restaurant with no English menu or pictures. When we came in we were greeted by four business men who were boozing and watching sumo wrestling on the tv. I pointed to something on the menu, said "This please" and asked for 2. It turned out to be a pretty spectacular success.

Looks pretty tasty right? The fried stuff on the left was shrimp, eggplant, fish(?), and a leaf, not sure what kind but I ate it anyway. There was a soft boiled egg and various vegetables in the noodles.

There's also a pretty great museum in Inuyama, but we didn't have time to get there. Maybe next time. That's all for now!

Vernal Equinox

Today was a holiday in Japan. Everyone had off work for the vernal equinox. I have Fridays off anyway, so it wasn't that exciting for me, but the weather was great today (unlike my last day off when it rained the entire day). I signed up for internet, so I should have a real connection in 2-3 weeks. I accidentally and miraculously found a new place in my room where I'm getting a signal right now. I rearranged my furniture and now the internet has deigned to give me a connection while sitting on my couch. Back to the matter at hand, I signed up for internet and had to speak in Japanese a little to them, but only to say "excuse me, internet?" and "English please". Then they scoured the store looking for the employee that spoke the best English. After that we had a little picnic in a park downtown. Then we shopped around in the shopping center attached to that shrine (Osu). This was the most alarming thing I saw there today.

I thought the largest picture size was necessary so you can see the entire scene. Apparently Yoda is putting the moves on Darth Vadar, much to C3PO's dismay. This was the manikin display outside one of the shops in Osu. Disturbing.

After that we found a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It's pretty much just like it sounds and really popular here. You sit down at a table and there's a big conveyor belt that runs throughout the restaurant with sushi and other assorted goodies on it. I'm not big on sushi, but it was definitely an experience. Then they count up how many plates you have at the end and you pay accordingly.

So, on the left we have the strangest dish of the evening (sushi hotdogs?), they won out over Hello Kitty juice boxes. On the right we have the aftermath.





The video is perhaps a little too long, but it gets the job done. It's better than pictures.

You just grab what you want. Ingenious.

Hounen Festival

Last weekend a whole herd of ECC teachers went to a festival in a town about a 30 min. train ride away. The weather was lovely and the shrine was crowded. It was a fertility festival, so there was a parade with a giant effigy of male genitalia. I would post a picture of it, but it might up the maturity level on my blog, then you'd have to sign in saying you're 18 if you want to read it and no one wants to go down that road. Just use your imagination. It was certainly something I will never see anywhere else. There were also traditional Japanese festival things to do, like eat lots of food and catch goldfish. I tried okinomiyaki which was delicious. It's made of cabbage mostly, and has egg and a strip of pork and other tasty things like that. Usually they put mayonnaise on top, but I asked them not to. I didn't try to catch any goldfish because I was afraid they would perish under my care.

This is the man that was making the okinomiyaki.

After the parade people threw mochi (compact rice balls) from the roof of the shrine into the crowd. We were standing pretty far back and a few even came out our way. The mochi is really hard, and there have been more than a few injuries in past years. I got one though because one of my friends (who is over 6 ft. tall, so I think he had an unfair advantage over the Japanese) caught 7 of them. He gave me one.

Supposedly you can eat them. The instructions I got were to rinse it off, microwave it (to make it puff up) and then cook it in butter and soy sauce. Maybe my next day off. I don't think they go bad...

The day was a success, we ended it by eating at Coco Curry house, a Japanese curry chain restaurant. One of our group decided to get the number 10 spicy level. I got the normal amount of hotness (about a 3) and mine was spicy. He was feeling that spiciness for days.

Hello people. There is a marathon going on in the street in front of my apartment this afternoon. People are lined up and cheering. Last night my friends and I went out near Nagoya station (the train/subway station). It was an interesting night. We ended it with karaoke which is completely crazy here. They give you light up tambourines, maracas and a room for 3 hours with two echo microphones. The places are all open 24 hours too so it's easy to stay out really late in here. The karaoke places all have a lot of American music.

Last Friday (my day off) I walked around the city. This is a pretty big shrine just in the middle of the city.

It's also practically attached to a giant shopping area. That place was kind of overwhelming. Also the Japanese are really into flannel plaid right now. I'm not sure about this fashion choice, but my theory is they think westerners wear it all the time so they think it's cool. The stores that have the most plaid are all named things like "western style" or something like that.

In other news I just got my new schedule for the year. I have two substitute days which is fine, but unfortunately one is Saturday. That's kind of annoying because I'll never know what time I have to be up and out on Saturdays. It'll depend on if I have to sub for someone, which will happen much more frequently when we start the new schedules since there won't be so many subs. I have 4 kids classes and 2 junior high classes. The rest are mostly 40 min. free time lessons which is what I mostly teach now. The other day a middle aged fireman in my class gave me a CD after class. It was a little surprising, and the music was bad British pop. I don't know where he got his hands on it. My favorite student so far has been the little old man who used to be a professional magician. He shows me magic tricks every time we see each other. He's really good at them too. In my new schedule I have Tuesdays off which is pretty exciting. National holidays fall on Mondays here so when that happens I'll have Sun. Mon. and Tues. off all in a row. Also my best friend here has the same days off as me so we'll probably get to travel together on our long weekends.

A lot of people I've met here are interested in going to China since we're so close (relatively speaking) so they all get excited that I can speak a little Chinese (emphasis on the little). So maybe I'll get to go back to China while I'm here. I'd like to go to Shanghai and Hong Kong. I didn't get there while I was studying abroad.

I'm afraid my computer may be about to die the death. It has weird lines all through the screen and nothing I've tried to do to fix it has worked. Hopefully it will think about its actions and decide to work properly again.

Food

Sumimasen, it's been a while.

Connie asked me to put up pictures of what I've been eating. This is what I made tonight.


It was a minor disaster. I'm still not used to a gas burner so I burnt the broccoli and it wasn't cooked through either. So it was like eating burnt, raw broccoli. The rice was also less than perfect. I don't have a rice cooker yet (it's on my list of things to buy when I finally get some money) so it was kind of hard and a little burnt at the bottom. Other than that it was pretty good. I mean the pork was good, and now I have leftovers.

Yesterday I was feeling too tired to cook when I got home so I ran next door to the "Daily Yamazaki" (a convenience store chain) and bought some instant food.

These are the 3 stages of my instant ramen. This wasn't the best one I've had, but they're cheap and you just have to add hot water.

Work is going pretty well so far. I have Friday and Sunday off. I'm doing substitute shifts and haven't actually been sent as a sub yet, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually. If no one needs a sub we go to a base school and teach free-time lessons (they're 40 min. long) or do whatever they have for us to do there. The only bad part about starting work at 3:30 is that you don't get home till 10, and I'm usually really hungry by that time and kind of tired.

I'm looking forward to when it gets a little warmer.

Apparently Takeshi Kitano is a big supporter of ECC (the company I work for). There are posters of him everywhere in Nagoya supporting ECC. You might know him from MXC (he was Vic Ramano when he was younger) or any of the weird and usually depressing movies he's made.

He's really big over here. I get about 10 channels on the TV they gave me (all in Japanese of course) and he's on one of the channels pretty much every night. It seems to be kind of a big deal that he supports my company. One of my trainers was told he was going to be in a commercial with him if he traveled up north. When he got there they kept them in separate rooms the whole time and it turned out to be a photo shoot for a poster, not a commercial. He never ended up meeting Beat Takeshi and instead had to stand on a box next to two little Japanese girls and look "cool". I'm not sure why they put him on a box, he's already over 6 feet tall. I haven't seen this poster around yet, but some of my friends have and they say he (my trainer) looks like a robot. He was somewhat less than pleased.

Last night we made some Japanese friends. It's hard to say if we'll ever talk to them again, their English wasn't that good and my Japanese is non existent. One of them is going to study abroad in California in March so my fellow trainee from California taught him dude, bitchin', and cowabunga. I told him that no one really says cowabunga, or bitchin' for that matter. Maybe in the 80s. Hopefully he didn't take his advice to heart. Baseball was the longest conversation we had. But it just consisted of them listing Japanese baseball players in America and us saying we'll support the Nagoya Dragons (who according to them may be the best in Japan). Baseball is big here.

That's all for now.