...and A Happy New Year!

Ah yes, one of my least favourite holidays approaches. I never got the big deal about New Years. Seems like a rather pointless day to me. Is there really that much difference between Dec. 31st and Jan 1st? Despite my dislike of the holiday, for once I will not be staying home on New Years Eve-curse my socially in demand self. New Years is actually the biggest holiday of the year here, but at least they know how to celebrate it properly by turning into a 3 or 4 day extended holiday.

Somehow I managed to spend almost as much money as I usually do around Christmas time, even though I actually had very few people (one not including myself) to buy presents for. The biggest purchase involved a videogame item. I won't tell you what I got, only that it's initials are PSP. That cost me about 19,000 yen and the very next day I changed my mind and decided to return it. The only hitch was that they wouldn't let me. Yes I had opened it but it was barely 24 hours later. I'm sure in Canada, Futureshop will take returns up to 30 days after purchase. Anyways that had me seething at the general Japanese populace for the next couple of days. It's their fault after all that that the store wouldn't allow me to return my purchase. It's their weak, aquiescing personality that allows things like this to happen. That's why my phone company is able to charge me an entire month for a phone that I only used for a week of that particular month. It's disgusting. No wonder this country isn't a world power.

Speaking of my phone bill, I think I must really be Turnin' Japanese (both the good along with the bad) because I never could be bothered to walk into the shop and give the staff a piece of my mind. The language barrier really is that-a barrier. If I was fluent then I would really let them have it. Then again maybe I wouldn't. They would probably just look at me and think "Ohh look at the funny talking monkey that actually has a spine-I've never seen one of those before." Don't get me wrong I still love Japan. It's just a lot of fun to curse the Japanese-something I seem to be doing with increasing frequency, whether it be the idiot pedestrians or the idiots on their bikes or that idiot girl in the store today who would not stop shouting in her highpitched nasal voice.

I'm not leaving Tokyo for the holidays (something that a lot of teachers do) but I am doing some sightseeing. Yesterday we went to an aquarium in Shinagawa which was really quite interesting. Here are a few pics:

I purposely made these pictures small for those who use 56k. If you want to see a much larger version then just click on the pictures! And also if you're interested, I have a short clip of Shibuya. This is a short clip of the Hachiko pedestrian crossing, the WORLD'S BUSIEST CROSSING. Basically all the traffic lights turn red and people cross the street from about 8 different directions. I would love to get up high to be able to see it. Anyways here it is.

http://www.geocities.com/brendansparling/Harajuku.wmv

And finally, to reward those people who actually read through the entire contents of the blog and not just look at the pictures (ANDREW!) here is a picture of a gender non-specific person called Fumiko.

*edit* My Geocities data transfer limit is very low so you might find that you get an error when you click on the links. The limit gets reset every hour so just keep trying!

Merry Christmas everyone

Well Christmas is over. It's hard to tell it was even here. Back home people say that we're always too early to put the Christmas decorations away after the holiday. Here however it's ridiculous. The ginormous Christmas tree that was sitting out in front of Parco for probably the past two months disappeared the day after Christmas and so did all the decorations inside the store. It's like it never happened. I worked on Christmas day for the first time in my life. And I worked on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day too. I wasn't too bitter towards my students though-that they could see. Certainly none of the teachers were happy with the students but I guess it's not their fault-it's not their holiday.

They don't seem to celebrate it in too big a way over here. I mean it's all over the stores but that's just for commercial reasons. I'm not even sure if it's a big gift buying occasion because most of the people I talked to didn't receive presents (of course they were the same idiots who came to school on Christmas Day.) Oh well! I had my own little Christmas tree, with my own little presents (thanks Emily and Laura!) so it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of the tree with the presents under it.

Christmas Eve, Fumiko came over and I made dinner (yes you read right-I made dinner.) Actually the rice was kind of a joint effort. I was making my signature dinner (which I named Chicken Carbonnara) and rather than be ghetto and just buy the precooked rice from the grocery store like I usually do, I thought it would be nicer to make homemade rice. The only problem with this was that I rarely cooked rice in Canada and every time I did I needed to read the directions that Mom had markered onto the jar-I also haven't cooked my own rice in the nine months I've been here (contrary to what you believe-rice is actually pretty expensive here.) Fumiko is Japanese of course, and I assumed that Japanese people were born with the innate ability to make rice. The truth of course is that probably nobody under the age of 40 knows how to cook rice without an actual rice cooker. The very idea of actually cooking rice in a pot is horrifying to them. Anyways to make a long story short, the rice turned out ok and it was a great Christmas Eve.

Christmas was also interesting as I had dinner with my private student. I went over after work and we had some kind of crab nabe. It's really hard to describe it-it's like meat that's been cooked in a soup right there on the table in front of you. Anyways it was my first time having crab and it was pretty good on the whole. I'll never understand the Japanese and their cameras though. At one point during the dinner, the woman I teach got up and started setting up a tripod! I thought that that was going a little far just to take a simple picture and then she took out a little video camera and started recording our dinner! Very strange. And then after dinner they put together a little cake. Then they insisted of taking pictures of it and us sitting behind it. And then they started taking pictures of the cake itself! Litterally standing over it and snapping pictures! All the time saying, "Chee-ZU!"

An anecdote

Something funny happened to me the other day. These things don't happen to me often so I have to relish it while I can. Yesterday when I got to work and took off my jacket, I noticed that I had forgotten to put my belt on before coming to work. I thought it looked a little funny to not be wearing a belt so I went down to the 3rd floor of Parco to the 100 yen store hoping to find a 100 yen belt (to go with my 100 yen ties-I LOVE the 100 yen store.) No such luck unfortunately. But as I was about to turn and go, this little old lady came up to me and said "Sleepers wa?" It took me a second to realize that she was talking to me, and when I finally did I was able to respond in perfect japanese, "Huh??" She said again, "Sleepers wa?" and at this point I realized that with my shirt and tie, she thought that I worked in the 100 yen store and she wanted to know where she could find "sleepers" whatever the heck those were. All I could say was "Wakarimasen" (I don't know) to which she probably wondered why the hell I was working there in the first place. God knows why she thought I worked there. I certainly don't look Japanese. Anyways just thinking about it makes me laugh out loud.

Dangers of having a social life

I almost had my first life-endangering Christmas conflict today due to a confusion in my Christmas bookings. My private student had invited me over for Christmas dinner with her husband and a friend on Saturday. I said sure, since I wasn't doing anything much anyways. Then today I emailed a gender non-specific person and asked if they wanted to come over on Sunday. [Nichiyoubi ni, anata wa watashi no ie hoshi kimasuka?] (who knows if this is correct Japanese)

The response I got was: "Ehh!? Ehh!? Nichiyoubi!? Sun!? [at this point I realized I was in trouble] I was thinking that I can eat dinner with you tomorrow(Sat). You invited me to dinner when we went to the tower [Tokyo Tower], didn't you? [That was 3 weeks ago! Surely everybody knows that guys only have a 3 minute memory-we're like mice.]

Anyways, I had to frantically email my private student and ask if it wasn't too late or too inconvenient to switch the dinner party to Sunday night instead of Saturday night. Fortunately I didn't get in trouble for forgetting my promise. Because I wrote the original message in japanese, I was able to feign being an ignorant english person (which I actually am) rather than an ignorant person in general (which I might be) and just say that I accidently got the japanese Saturday (Douyobi) and Sunday (Nichiyoubi) confused.

All's well that ends well, as they say!

XBOX 360 anyone?

I hear these things can't be found over in North America. Not so over here. I could walk into any store and pick one up at will!

6 days till...you get the idea

I lost 500 yen playing poker today. I can't tell you where I was lest you lose faith in me as a teacher. It was supposed to be a one period seminar to polish up our skills but tomorrow is my superior's last day and he could care less about giving some cookie cutter seminar. So the three of us polished our bluffing skills in the voice room. Obviously mine need a lot of work. My first and probably last time playing-I just don't find it that entertaining.

Just so you know, I'm sitting here in our great (but freezing) living room, watching the Bremen-Hamburg soccer game, listening to Christmas carols by St James Choir of Angels and drinking ice coffee (pronounced EYE-SU KOH-HEE). Here's a picture of our Christmas tree.
Not too shabby, EH? And here's another pic I took today, just because it made me giggle a little.


Nothing funnier than seeing a whole row of bikes tipped over like dominoes. If only I had been there to see it in action.

Someone was asking me today how my Japanese is and I have to tell you that it is gosh darned terrible. I took a three month course before I came over here so I make fairly decently grammatically structured sentences but my vocabulary is so bloody low that it's frightening. It doesn't matter how good you are with structure and tenses if you don't know the words to fill up the sentences. Also my listening comprehension is atrocious. Unless someone is speaking purposely slowly I probably won't understand what they are saying.

I heard from someone that you will speak like the people that you hang around with (men and women have small things that they say differently depending on their gender.) If that is true then I must sound like a little kid when I speak because that's where I pick up a lot of my japanese. Today I learned how to play the japanese version of "Patty Cake Patty Cake" (the japanese version is more complicated and actually has a catchy tune.)

8 days till Kurisumasu

I'm really loving this "X days till Kurisumasu" thing. Sometimes I have so much trouble thinking of a good title that it completely demotivates me to write in this blog. I think after Christmas I will start an "X days till New Yearzu" and then an "X days till Gloundhogu Dayu" after that.

I have a reputation for being a cheapskate (insert your comment here Chad) but that isn't always fair. For example the other day I bought a $6 pencil. How many of you big spenders out there can lay claim to the fact that you own a $6 pencil? It's one of those mechanical pencils. I bought it after seeing a few highschool girls use them in class. I would literally stop the lesson and demand that they let me try it. Now maybe I'm a few years behind the pencil technology curve because I've never seen these things before. In the old days we used to have to click the eraser on our mechanical pencils if we wanted to get some lead. Now all you have to do is shake the pencil and the lead comes out by itself! It's quite a feather in my cap to own a pencil like that.

12 days till Kurisumasu!!!

I went out and bought a Christmas tree today and a few lights for it. I've even got a present under the tree already thanks to Laura.* It's better than Charlie Brown's Christmas tree but not by much. It's potted though so hopfefully it will last for quite a long while. I had to bring it home on the train and although it's only about 3 feet tall at the most, I don't think I could possibly have gotten more stares if I had dragged a 10 foot tree on in one hand and had an axe in another. I even had people pointing at me. Ok so they were only a couple of 10-year old girls, but even still.

It's been a while since I posted a picture, so here's a crumb to those of you who are literate challenged like Andrew.
This was on the packaging for my new boxer shorts. I don't know who comes up with this stuff but their prose is pure brilliance. Take a careful read through that-the more you read it the less it makes sense.

*If you want to make a contribution to the presents under my tree and make me have a Merry Christmas then please contact my parents for my address details. :)

Fuming in Tokyo

The truth about the Japanese is that they do a lot of things that seem stupid to us. It's best to laugh at it and not let it bother you. Usually that's what I do which is why I still love Japan despite all of the stupidity. Usually is the key word of course. Some things are just too much though. As most of you probably know. I just got a new cell phone because I lost the previous one. Anyways I just got the first bill for it. It was 4022 yen, a little higher than the old phone but still not too bad I thought, until I saw the billing date: Nov. 23rd-Nov.30th. Those...people at AU billed me for an entire month for a phone I used for a week of that month. Anyways they are going to hear about it tomorrow.

There are lots of annoying things like that in Japan and usually you just let it pass. For example, there's no such thing as buying in bulk here. I was at the pastery shop today and they had some type of pastry for 63 yen each. Or if you wanted, you could buy a bag of five for 315 yen each-exactly five times the price of the single ones. I felt like buying five individual ones just to make the lady go through the trouble of bagging them. Anyways that's my rant for this year. I think I cut those happy clappy jappy chappies quite a lot of slack considering how silly they can be sometimes.

16 days till Christmas

I haven't bought a tree yet but I'm planning to go to Kiyose, a couple stations over, to buy a small potted one. Apparently they only cost about 2000 yen each. I will probably eventually download some Christmas music to play on the computer as the time gets a little closer. I've already downloaded A Muppets Christmas Carol and Charlie Brown's Christmas and burnt them to CD so I can watch them on TV. I went to Odaiba with Fumiko on the weekend and every store had "Merry Christmas" plastered everywhere! God bless their little heathen hearts!

I taught my first private this morning. What a scam! 2500 yen just to sit there for an hour and listen to this lady talk! Actually it was more like an hour and a half. She was just so talkative and fascinated with foreigners! I'll have to be a little more strict next time. And she has a friend who wants to learn english too. And her husband is also interested. So I'm going to try and see if I can get them to all do it at once if I reduce my price a little. I'm really jealous of her apartment. It has a nice big balcony and it faces south so the bright sun made it nice and hot even though she had the balcony door wide open.

Our house, on the other hand, is still a freezer. I'm not sure if I related this little anecdote to ya'll before so I'll do it again. One night I went out to the grocery store and bought a nice chicken breast. Upon coming home, I have no idea what I did. Anyways, the next day I went off to work and on the way home that day all I could think about was the fantastic chicken I was going to cook. I opened the fridge and there it wasn't!! Then I saw it sitting on the shelf. It had been sitting out for a full 24 hours uncooked. Was I ever angry at myself! To make a boring story short, I cooked it anyways and I was fine. That's how cold our bottom floor is.

Adventures in spending

I bought an $80 pair of pants the other day. That might not seem like much in of itself but when you consider the fact that I've probably never spent more than $40 on a pair of pants before in my life then you can see the significance. I know Chad likes to refer fondly to me as "cheapass." When I told him the news this morning he, the very astute person that he is commented, 'What's her name?'

Adventures in cooking

I commented earlier that my cooking has improved significantly since my roommate arrived and it has-sort of. My repetoire is still a little bare but I can cook a mean chickenbreast now. I'm a perfectly humble person but I have no problem saying that my chicken cooking is amazing. Tonight I had...I have no idea what. I cut up a boneless chickenbreast, threw it into with the pan with some oil and let cook on a small flame. Then when it was close to being pretty well cooked I threw in some chopped up green beans along with some garlic powder and some kind of special pepper that Jared got his dad to send him. Then when that was done I added some kind of "carbonara" sauce, let it soak up in the chicken for a couple minutes and then poured it onto a bowl of rice. "OISHII!!!" as the Japanese would say. Yummy. Along with a garlic bread picked up from the pastry shop, I thought it made a pretty good meal!

Unheard of..!

If i go out to soccer tomorrow night then that'll mean that in the past 3 weeks I will have gone out on 5 of the possible 6 weekend nights. That must be some kind of record. I gotta slow down a little before I make myself sick.

Let's talk about privates

No not that kind! Come on people. I'm talking about private lessons. Apparently I just got my first student practically by accident. Before I came here I had the idea in my head that I would be teaching tons of privates in my free time and I would come back to Canada super-rich. Well reality bites as they say. Actually it's neither good nor bad. Believe it or not, the Japanese aren't falling over each other to get you to teach them privately. Apparently that boat sailed a long time ago. But it doesn't really matter because I've found that after teaching students all day, the last thing I want to do is sit down with some more students in my free time. Life is too short to be teaching all the time.

Anyways I just happened be buying groceries at the grocery store one night. I paid for my food and then went over to the counter to bag it. A lady packing her own groceries across from me noticed that I had a little maple leaf pin on my lapel and she commented on it and asked me if I was Canadian. So anyways I talked to her for about 5 minutes and then she said that she wanted to learn english and she wanted me to teach her. So I gave her my email and we had our first meeting the other day just to get the details figured out. So I should end up doing my first private next week sometime. I'll let you know how it goes!

How much is that 950 yen hamburger in the window??

On the upside, I no longer need a calculator to do my currency conversions in a the grocery store. That 180 yen chicken breast is now worth $1.80 Cdn. That 178 yen litre of milk is now worth $1.78 Cdn. That 350 yen apple is still worth a $&%#*!~ fortune.

Ouch redux

When I came to Japan eight months ago, the Canadian dollar was worth 86 yen. Today it's worth 103 yen. Looks like someone chose the wrong time to come to Japan. I won't convert my nestegg to Canadian dollars until the dollar drops back to 86 yen so it looks like I might be in Japan for a long, long time. I suppose there's always hope that the seperatists will somehow win a majority and tear the country apart in January, causing the dollar to plummet.

My social calendar...or lack thereof

It's minus-352 degrees celcius tonight. Actually it's 10 but it feels a lot colder. It's ok during the day but on the bike ride home I freeze my BUTT off! Which officially makes me the world's biggest jackass for buying a $400 leather jacket one year and then leaving at home in Canada when I left for Japan the next

One person commented to me the other day how much they enjoyed my blog, to which I flabbergastedly (is that a word?) replied, "Really!!??" Apparently I have good writing skills or something. I admit that this blog has potential but it's severely handicapped by the fact that, to be perfectly honest, I am quite a boring person. My idea of a good time is staying home. If videogames were interesting then I would be on the front pages of all the tabloids. Actually that's not quite true-I don't even play games that much anymore which is really sad because I've lost my only passion-such as it was.

As a result of this social inactivity, I've found it really hard to keep a schedule book. They always told us to do this in school and I would faithfully fill it out for the first couple of days of school and then never look at it again. The fact of the matter is, I just don't need one. There's so much empty space in my social calender that you could park a big Mack truck in there. Despite my flaws, I recently bought a new scheduler and I am determined to be one of those people who carry it around everywhere and always need to consult it. The reason why I bought one was because the kids in the tv drama "Nobuta o Producer" all had one and I was inspired to get one myself. Anyways I went to this amazing store called Tokyu Hands (it's got EVERYTHING!) to look at schedulers and this is what I came out with:


Isn't it kawaii???? It's Tintin! Can you believe it, it's my childhood comic hero! In Japan of all places. Anyways I'm gonna make a go of this scheduler thing so we'll see how it works out. It would probably help more if I did more stuff. I have dates this Saturday and Wednesday so we'll see if that helps fill up the space (how was the bolding on that Andrew? Now you can just skim through and look for the interesting words.)

The roommate.

My roommate is Jared. Well more of a housemate actually but roommate seems more natural to say. He's one of two that I have. I suppose I might talk about the other one some other time-if I get around to it. If you're one of those people like Andrew who can't read more than three consecuetive sentences without a picture then I'll give you a 5 word synopsis. He's a really good guy. There ya go. If you want to find out more than read now.

I suppose it only seems fitting to tell you now that at this very moment, my roommate is puking in the bathroom and talking to himself. Actually that's an even more comprehensive synopsis of my roommate than the first one. He is basically completely different from me. He is American and I am Canadian. He is black and I am white. He is loud and brash, I am quiet and polite. He has no shame and I have no pride. He always has something to say and I am often quiet. He's a smoker and I am not. He is straightforward and to the point and I avoid any kind of conflict. He is practically an alcoholic and I am practically a tea-granny. He is gay and I am straight. Yes you read right. Actually, maybe you didn't so I'll repeat that just in case there's any confusion. HE is gay and I am straight. I still love the ladies although I will admit my cooking has improved wonderfully. My personal fashion style still leaves something to be desired though. So I guess he's out of the closet now. Actually he always has been, but now he's out of my closet (don't worry there's nothing else in there.)

My roommate is now lying in bed and talking to himself. That's better than when he's singing (screaming) in the shower at least. I've never met anyone before who could entertain themselves so thoroughly. My roommate is now giggling at something he said to himself. The scary thing is that he does this when he's sober as well. Now he's talking to himself in japanese. He will probably soon shout through the wall, telling me to kill him with a frying pan.

As I said before, we get on wonderfully. I probably haven't had this good of a friend since Phil and Chad and Andre in university. We're totally different but we've got a pretty good connection. The only similarity between us is that we both would rather stay at home than go out and neither of us cares what anyone thinks about that. We always have good laughs. He will sometimes use the F-word (no not that one, the OTHER one) and then he'll look at me and say 'Don't YOU say that!" and we'll both burst out laughing. And we can always laugh at the terrible pronunciations of old japanese ladies and make fun of japanese food.

The man really has no shame. Tonight he went to karaoke by himself (he loves karaoke) and got drunk. He then came home, and went over to our neighbors (foreigners too) and demanded to know why he wasn't invited to their Thanksgiving party. If he has a problem he will come straight out and say it. No beating around the bush or anything like that. If anyone asks me what he's like I usually say "typical American" but that might be an injustice to Americans-or at the very least an inaccurate statement. He is all in all a really decent guy though, despite all his flaws. He's a psychology major so he's happy to give me advice when I want it (or, as is usually the case, don't) and he's very honest which is why I had no qualms about lending him 150,000 yen (about $1500) when we moved in. He's paying it back now slowly but surely. It's hard to save much money when you're practically an alcoholic and drink every night.

And as for the gay thing, that's cool. It's usually very funny. He likes to watch Sailor Moon and often he calls himself "Mummy" (often when saying "Make Mummy a martini" or "Mommy needs a pick-me-up") I just have to watch myself because when I think something's stupid I often say "that's gay." It's just something that's ingrained into what I do. I'm careful not to do it now although sometimes it comes out. I don't think he would really mind now, but I still try to avoid doing it, you know, because I'm not brash like he is.

Anyways I'd like to say that that's a full synopsis of my roommate but that would probably be impossible because he's such a complicated character. There are so many layers. I believe he has finally passed out in his room.

Be prepared...

Ok be on the lookout for a big post about one of my roommates tomorrow. How's that for a hook?

I went out bowling tonight and I got 4 strikes in a row! I could have kept on going but for some reason they turned on the lights and threw my game off.

Wouldn't wanna be ya...

Taking advantage of the beautiful thing called the Internets, I've been perusing the weather back home in Canada. I notice that Toronto has a low of -10 with snow and a windchill of -22. Jeez that certainly makes me feel better when I go outside in our 12 degree celcius and sunny weather! I don't know how long that's going to last but I'm certainly going to enjoy it while I can! Yesterday my housemate Jared worked at my branch, so that was pretty fun. Mom always wants to hear about my roommates so maybe I'll right a bit on him tonight when I get home-or then again maybe I'll sit down and play some Civilization 4. If I was a betting man, I know where I would put my money.

Someone recently asked me when I'm coming home and I told them I would come home when the stores started displaying "Merry Christmas" again instead of "Happy Holidays." So that answer could possibly mean 'never' I suppose. Like any other country, Christmas started the day after Halloween here and it's just as annoying as it is back home. And while this country may be full of heathen dogs (tongue firmly in cheek) at least they don't have any problems acknowledging a holiday for what it is the way our supposedly "Christian" country does.
I read an article on the Star not to long ago where Martin was criticizing the opposition for threatenting a Christmas election campaign because not only was it during the Christmas holiday season but also several other important holidays. I wanted to wretch. I felt like yelling at him for being so redundant. We know there are other holidays, but do you really have to name them all? Isn't Christmas a good enough reason? The PC that comes out of that mans mouth is just disgusting.

Anyways, I've had my rant for today. I don't have any interesting facts right now so how about a Japanese vocab lesson instead. Your first word will be:

KAWAII: [kah-why-eee] This means "cute" and if you're a girl under the age of 20, you'll probably say it at least 15 times per day.

Ouch.

For someone who isn't a very big cell phone person, or even a phone person, I sure go through a lot of them. I've been here only 8 months and already I'm on my 3rd one. After a good three hour session at one of the local cell phone companies, I finally decided to go ahead and get a new phone. Getting a new phone is a fairly straightforward process that involves filling out eight thousand forms-in triplicate. Thank God my roommate speaks japanese. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without him.

Anyways the silver lining is that I was able to get the phone that I've had my eye on for the past 2 months. It only cost me $200 bucks. 14,000 yen for the phone, 3,000 to cancel my old contract and 2,700 to start a new one. But I've got it all set up the way I want it with a Red Hot Chilli Peppers ringtone and an ICQ "uh-oh" for my email alerts and I've got it chained to my pants the way Phil Demerais used to chain his wallet-no seriously. I'm gonna start a new thing.

Speaking of starting a new thing, I bought a new purse today. No not actually a purse. More like one of those shoulder bag type things only a lot smaller. You can sling it around your shoulders or you can clip it onto one of your belt loops using a carabiner. It's pretty cool but I think any guy back home would take a lot of flak if he walked around with one of those things hanging off his belt. But one of great things about living in Japan is that you can go out and wear totally weird stuff that you would never wear back home and you'd probably still be the most normally dressed person out there.

I'm still hoping that someone turns in my old phone. I need to get my address book. We're so dependent on technology nowadays that we don't rely on our brains anymore. I don't know how many people I had in my phone-at least 20, but I didn't know a single telephone number or email address of any of them-including my own roommate!

My new 'purse'

Follow up....

One funny thing happened last night that I forgot to mention. We were out eating and drinking till just past twelve so I had to rush back to the train station to catch the last train back home. I got there just in time because there was only one train left. Concerned because I couldn't recognize the kanji for the final destination I decided to ask the train conductor where the train was headed to. He said that it was going to Hoya (one stop short of where I live-doh! gotta walk.) It wasn't until I had gotten on the train that I realized I had asked him "Where is this bike going?" (densha=train, jitensha=bike) A combination of too much alcohol and not enough studying I suppose.

Lost: One cellphone

I thought was going to be able to post tonight that I had performed the unheard of feat of going out two nights in a row. I almost did it too. The first night I was out to Ikebukero with some friends for an all you can eat all you can drink yakiniku meal. Tonight was supposed to be going out to a night of soccer but somewhere between the 7-Eleven and the station my cell phone fell out of my pocket. I went back to look for it and it wasn't there so I'm hoping that the famed honesty of the Japanese populace holds true for me tomorrow when I go to the local koban (police box.) Anyways at that point I wasn't in the mood to go play soccer any more so I went home. If I do lose the phone then at least I'll have an excuse to go out and buy the new one I've had my eye on for a while.

Another reason why I was not too enthusiastic about going to soccer is because it is freakin cold over here. At least it feels that way anyways. Our house is great but wayyyy to cold. Apparently it's 10 degrees celcius outside but it feels a lot colder. At least it's starting to feel a lot more Christmasy. Speaking of Christmas, if you want to see an amazing Christmas light show then check out this video. It is, in a word, fantabulistic.

http://members.cox.net/transam57/lights.wmv

Random Japanese Fact: At least 24 Tokyoites have fractured their skulls while bowing.

Attention women

It has been said that Japan is usually about one year ahead of the rest of the world on the fashion curve so I feel it's my duty to give all my friends a heads up on next years line of clothes.
For women the new big thing is shorts. Not cargo shorts or sports shorts but almost a dressy kind of shorts. They're tapered so that they almost reach the knee and they're fairly tight around the knee. It actually looks half decent in my opinion. It was a little strange at first but I'm starting to appreciate it more now. How in the world wearing shorts became a new trend in the months of October and November I'll never know. Nobody said Japanese women were smart. Also shorts can be complimented with some kind of cowboy-type boot-it's a fall/winter thing.

As for men, you will be wearing clothes that make you look like jackasses.

I will try to get you some pictures of the women assuming that I don't get beaten up or thrown in jail.

Interesting facts

So that my posts are not a complete waste of your time, I'm going to reinstate the interesting Japanese fact thingy that I had going before-only this time they're going to be real facts. To celebrate this grand event I'm going to start out with two or three.

#1)Metropolitan Tokyo consists of 12 million people, the population rises 2.5 million during the day.

#2)The population has fallen by 10% since the 1964 Olympics.

#3)The pachinko places in Japan pull in more cash than all the rest of the casinos in the world combined.

#4)The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Lost and Found centre receives more than 300,000 umbrellas every year, or more than 3,000 each time there is a heavy rain.

An update on my life

You may have noticed that I'm living in a new apartment. Perhaps you are curious as to how I ended up here. Even if you aren't then sit down and shut up because I'm going to tell you anyways. Nearing the end of September, I got a notice from Nova that our apartment was being closed down and I was getting kicked out again!! They gave us some options for some other NOVA apartments or I could simply move to the apartment next door (similar to what I had done the first time.) There was actually already a girl living in that apartment but she had also gotten an eviction notice. Both her and I got together because we wanted to stay in our town and we both started looking for apartments. Only problem was that it is very expensive and difficult for foreigners. Anyways it was getting close to our eviction date when my roommate suddenly decided that he wanted to get in with us on an apartment too. So now that we had three people we were able to go through a company that deals exclusively with foreigners and were able to get a house here in our town which is a lot cheaper than living with NOVA.

So anyways we have a fantastic house now but unfortunately like a lot of japanese houses it's bloody cold!! However it's awesome cause we got a great living room set up with cable and wireless internet.

By the way, it's official. I'm a groupie. A J-drama groupie that is. I'm so addicted to that highschool drama Nobuta o Producer that not only have I been downloading all the episodes and not only have I downloaded the subtitles but I've also been going into the text file for the subtitles and editing each hour long show so that the english is a little bit more natural. It usually takes me two or three hours to go through each file and switch things around. There's been 5 episodes shown so far and I've watched the first three about 5 times each. I also learned last night at dinner with one of my students that her son knows the girl who plays Nobuta and that she lives in the town two stations away from me!!!!!!!!!! Naturally I demanded an autograph.

And yes if you read the previous paragraph closely you'll see that I've been breaking the Commandments (the NOVA ones Mom!) Specifically the one that pertains to not giving your personal information to students. I was good for the first 6 months but I've broken that one Commandment multiple times since I last had a regular internet connection. It just goes to show you how computers and internet can help keep you out of trouble! I don't feel too bad as it really is an unjust rule and it is currently being challenged in Japanese courts.


Nobuta: She's so kawaii!!!

P.S. If you comment you may see that you have to type in some kind of word just to verify that you are indeed a real person. Sorry for the inconvenience-just trying to keep the spammers on their toes.

I'm famous!!

I felt like checking out my blog tonight so rather than type the link directly in I went to google and punched in Brendansboringblog. This site came up of course but so a few other links to my site from other webpages! This one for instance:

http://www.feitclub.com/2005/07/keeping-it-casual.html
I wasn't expecting any fame from my blog but I'll certainly take all that I can get!

I've never been a big fan of japanese tv but over the past couple of weeks I've been addicted to a couple of dramas. So much so that I've started downloading them so that I can watch with english subtitles! Both are highschool dramas and the storylines seem pretty shallow but it makes for real feelgood tv watching. I may be the only guy and the only person over 18 to watch it but what the hell! At least it's given me something to chat about with my shy highschool students. I've basically been asking every female student under the age of 30 if they watch it. If you want to see it and know how Bittorrent works then go to http://isohunt.com/ and type in the word "Nobuta" in the search engine. The show's name is Nobuta o Producer and I'm watching the 5th episode as I type. Definitely give it a try-I can hook you up with english subtitles if you want to know what's going on.





The storyline is this: Shuji is an amazingly popular guy at school-he has a hot girlfriend and everyone thinks he's the coolest. His main goal in life is to have fun and never be too serious. Then a couple of things happen at once: Akira, the most annoying guy in the whole school decides that they're going to be friends and Shuji cannot get rid of him; and a new girl arrives at the school. She has serious problems-she has no friends, she hates her life and she has no self-confidence. The mean girls at school pick on her and chase her and make her life miserable and she won't stick up for herself. The two "friends" find that there's something missing in their life and they need to do something amazing in order to find their youth again. So they decide that they're going to turn this new girl, Nobuko, into their project and make her the most popular girl at school. I'm not sure what's going to happen but I think Shuji is going to end up falling for Nobuko.

Yes I know I've probably lost everyone's respect but that's what addictions do to you.

I'm baaaaaack!!!

Hey all, it's good to be back again! It's been so long since I last wrote that I can't really remember where I last left off!! I'll try to recap everything that's gone on in my life in the next few days but right now it's almost one am so this first post is going to be restricted to posting pictures of my new house.

The clean bedroom is mine and the dirty one is Jared's. I'm quite proud of our living room. It really kicks and I'm proud to say that I basically bought all the furniture for it and did the the furniture arrangement myself. Our kitchen/dining room isn't quite so clean but I don't really have as much control over that.

Oh God the pain!!

There's a huge hole in my life...a huge gaping void. It's exactly the type of hole that a laptop would fit perfectly. A couple of days ago my harddrive died-only temporarily. I thought I was pooched and had lost all the valuable stuff that the internet allows me to download for free. Anyways I came back from work that night and the computer was working fine again! I rejoiced-it was something like a 21st century ressurection. Anyways my happiness was shortlived because I downloaded some software from the harddrive company and after running it, it told me that my harddrive was mortally wounded and one day, would go to that big harddrive heaven in the sky. This was very disconcerting considering that i had only bought it 2 months ago. Remember I said I thought the HD was making a funny noise?? Never ignore your gut feeling folks. Anyways I took it back to the store and they honoured the warranty but then they told me it was going to take one month before I got my computer back. If it wasn't for the fact that they would have no idea what i was saying I would have blown my top! ONE MONTH! One month with no laptop. How long does it take to take the harddrive out and put a new one in? Anyways my biggest fear is that I'm going to get this computer back in a months time only to find that they just tried to "fix" it rather than replace it and I'm going to have to take it back again and wait a second month.

So anyways the long and the short of it is that I won't be around too too much! My roommate has a laptop himself so I'll be checking my email every once in a while but that's about it. I might even get a life-you never know. Probably not though. I hate to say it but there's going to be a lot of reading going on over the next month in this household.

Weather

It was very blustery all day today with a little rain in the morning but in the afternoon the sun started to shine. I went for a bike ride this afternoon and enjoyed the weather (even the wind) more than any other day in Japan so far. I think it was because it reminded me so much of Canada. Sunny, windy and no humidity whatsoever. Not much different than a late September day in Meaford! Now don't get me wrong-I'm not the type to get homesick but it certainly brought back memories. For some reason all I could think about was being 15 and heading out to soccer practice after school. That's exactly what today reminded me of. Bah! I'm too young to be thinking nostalgically about my school days! Ahh who am I kidding-that was 10 years ago. Going on 11 years ago-September 30th is swiftly approaching. I'm an old, old man.

So this is what a weekend feels like

Ahhh. Well it's over now-too bad the weather was crappy. After getting back from my trip to Mt Fuji I worked the following 19 days with only one day off. It's nice to finally get a proper weekend but unfortunately it rained most of the time. Anyways I haven't posted anything in a while and I'll use use the aforementioned reason as my excuse.

So what's new with me? Not too much-as usual! In terms of my health, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'm going to have pink eye until I come home to Canada. Yes you remember that problem from like three friggen months ago? Anyways the first batch of eye drops the doctor gave me didn't work. I couldn't be bothered to do anything more about it so I just left it. That was until someone asked me if I was tired. I can stand the odd irritation and I can stand having to wipe the crap out of my eyes in the morning and at night but if I actually look like I have a problem then that's a problem. So I went back to the eye doctor, paid basically the same amount of money and got the same stuff only this time I also got some stuff you smear on your eyelid twice a day. Anyways two weeks has past and I've run out of drugs again and the problem still isn't solved. I may or may not go back a third time-we'll see.

I spent the first day of my weekend in Ikebukero buying a new pair of headphones to replace the ones that got broken as a result of a completely unavoidable accident wherein I tried to beat a railway crossing barrier with my bike. I suppose I shouldn't say "tried" because that insinuates failure which isn't true. I succeeded-kind of. The barrier hit the bag on my back which somehow knocked my earphones out of my ears and one of them got caught in the spokes of my bike and was consequently chopped off. Anyways these things happen-there's really no way you can avoid situations like running railway barriers!

The last big news of the day is that I'm getting a new housemate tomorrow. I've actually known about this for a couple weeks now. He's from the States, North Carolina specifically, and seems pretty friendly. I've been chatting with him on MSN. He says he's actually pretty half decent at speaking Japanese and seems to be one of those people who are crazy for all things Japanese. You know the type. Actually he'll probably be the first person here that I meet who is like that. Most people I've worked with enjoy living here but they have no special love or fascination for Japan. They're probably sticking around because they have nothing for them back at home. In terms of a work future I mean. It's easier to work here and avoid reality!

let me get to sleep

Beer!!

Yes more pictures of beer cans. I know some of you have trouble reading any of my posts that are longer than one paragraph so I thought I'd give you a treat. No, that is not a 'beer display.' Yes, I arranged them that way. Yes, I have far too much time on my hands. Yes, my business no longer welcome at that grocery store. Now I know what you're probably saying-'Brendan you're in Japan, don't you have something more interesting that you could be doing?' and the answer is 'probably.' Simple things amuse simple minds I suppose. But how can you look at this picture and not be fascinated? Look at how small the small beer can is! And look at how big the big beer can is! (For the record, the normal can is third from the left.) I even added my very own Bic pen for scale.

I've managed to go five months (to the day by the way) without talking about how fascinating some mundane little thing might be and I can't stand it any longer! I have to get it out of my system. I've got to tell you about hand dryers.

Yes, hand dryers. Actually in Japan you should consider yourself lucky if you can walk out of a Japanese washroom without wet hands, but in some washrooms they have these amazing hand dryers. Now the North American version of the hand dryer is totally lame. You have to stand there for like 5 minutes rubbing your hands and waiting for the water to evaporate. In Japan they have these hand dryers that are like F-16 jet engines. You just hold your hands in vertically and then just pull them up through the blast of air and in three seconds it has blown every molecule of water right off the tips of your fingers. Genius.

Then there's the highschool boys. Not only do they have no shame in that they ride around on these old granny bikes, but they all have the seat so low that their knees are pratically up around their chins. They look ridiculous. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that they were also taught as children that they must be able to touch the ground with their feet.

Then there's the highschool girls. A dispropotionately high amount of these girls treat their shoes like slippers. They walk around in them without putting their heels into the shoe. They just step on the back of them ruining the heel. It isn't so strange when you did it as a 4-year old but seeing all the 15-year olds do it is really odd.

Well now, I feel better after getting that off my chest.

let me get to sleep

Suicide and Japan

I've been doing a lot of research on suicide tonight. Don't worry, I'm of perfectly sound mind although back when I had my horrible Saturday kids it seemed like a pleasant option! The reason for my morbid curiousity is because we had a 'jumper' today. Now don't worry all of my students are alive and well...I think. When I say 'we' I mean my station. I was biking to work today and as I approached the station I was met by a ridiculously long line up of cars. My first thought was that these idiot Japanese had finally managed to get themselves into an unmanageable gridlock on the one and a half lane streets. Being on a bike, I was able to weave my way through the cars and head towards the tracks. Just as I rounded the corner towards the tracks the gates lifted and about eighty hundred million kajillion people started to cross. It was obvious that they had been closed for a while and on the other side there were three fire trucks with their lights flashing.
Anyways I didn't see anything but one of my fellow teachers said she saw blood on the train platform when she got off the train.

It's one of those subjects that's both horrible and fascinating at the same time. The train was nowhere to be seen. It was long gone I guess. A fellow teacher who has been here for a couple of years says that they don't bother to stop. For one thing it would be impossible to stop in time and for another it would jeapordize the safety of the people on board the train. It doesn't matter if you've got blood all over the windshield, you just keep on going.

Anyways I wanted to learn more and find out some statistics (because train jumpings seem to be endemic) so I went online and did some research and found some interesting facts. First of all I have to apologize to all Japanese for thinking that they were horribly, horribly vain for having mirrors posted all over the train station. It turns out that the mirrors aren't for ladies to apply their makeup at all (although they do serve in this well as a secondary function.) There main purpose is actually to help prevent suicides. Apparently people are less likely to kill themselves if they can see their reflections in the mirror.

The Chuo line is where most people choose to go to meet their own end of the line. There are many reasons for this. One being that it is a very long straight track, one of the few in Tokyo and trains can barrel through the stations at super fast speeds. The straight tracks also give the jumpers a good view of the oncoming trains and allow them to time their jumps better. Lastly, if you commit suicide by train then your family can be billed for the expenses. The Chuo line happens to be the cheapest option to potential jumpers as they charge the least out of all the train lines. And then of course once this trend is noticed, the media reports on it so more jumpers go there and then you get a viscious cycle. Chuo's nickname is the Chuo-cide Line.

Another suicide hotspot is at the bottom of Mt Fuji. There is a forest called Aokigahara forest the iron ores of Mt Fuji disrupt compasses and cell phone signals so every year people just wander in there and 'get lost.' I read one article dated 1998 that stated that the police went in there and in one of their sweeps were able to recover 75 bodies. Their patrols also pick up an average of one person per day who is looking to commit suicide in the forest. A good warning sign is usually the fact that they're out in the relative wilderness and wearing a suit.
Apparently on many of the trails you can see signs like this:

Suicide Sign

Translation "Life is a precious present from your parents, think quietly about your parents, brothers and sisters and children. Do not agonize alone, please consult us first." Followed by a telephone number for the local police precinct.

Crazy stuff. I checked Statistics Canada and the suicide rate for Canadians in 1997 was about 12 per 100,000. Here in Japan it's sitting at about 27. Quite a large difference. Anyways I could go on but tonight's blog is depressing enough!

let me get to sleep

A flash of insight

Steep mountain way
into a sea of clouds
ere the rising Sun

Much thanks to Andrew the blog usurper for inspiring my first Haiku since grade 6 english class. What was the name of the teacher? Mrs Crenshaw?

Warning: Our product may kill you

I finally went out and got myself an MP3 player as a reward for climbing Mt Fuji. Actually that's a complete load of crap-I just needed an excuse to spend some money. I thought as long as I'm living in the land of futuristic technology then I really should impart some of that technology upon myself. So I went out and bought the new Sony NW-HD5 MP3 player. It's 20 gigs, small, sexy and allows me to feel superior to all the Ipod sheep...err people who want to be cool.

My only complaint is that it comes with a ridiculously crappy pair of headphones. I remember the days when Sony had the decency to provide you a pair of headphones that came with a remote control when you dished out $300 for one of their products. Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to go out and spend another 6000 yen for a pair of decent headphones and then download a couple of Sony games to balance the ledger.

After buying a couple of Japanese products I'm starting to notice a trend when it comes to the manuals. The manuals for both my bike and my MP3 player seem to devote an exhorbitant amount of space for pages filled with cute little drawings describing how their product could potentially maim or kill you. It's quite humourous to see how you could be minding your own business one moment, only to be tackled by a murderous, bloodthirsty bicycle the next.

If you look at the top lefthand corner of the bike manual you will see a happy-clappy Jappy chappy riding home quite drunk. I seriously doubt any bicycle manuals from North America warn you against riding while inebriated but when it comes to drinking in Japan you can't take anything for granted. Actually Japanese attitues towards drink are quite interesting. It really is a more relaxed atmosphere compared to North America. In fact, I see now that drinking in N.A. is actually rather taboo.

That may be hard to believe when every other commercial is a beer commercial but it's true. We like to drink but we don't like to admit it (I'm talking about the collective "we" here-I detest drinking.) I doubt that anyone over the age of thirty, when asked, would say "Oh I went out drinking last night," even if they did. They would probably say 'I went out' or 'I saw my friends' or 'I went to a party.' Yet if you ask a random Japanese person what they did last night, they will say "I went drinking." In fact I've gotten so used to the casualness of it all that I will often ask students that I've just met if they went out drinking last night. Even if they're 35 or 40 years old. No one is afraid to admit it and no one is offended by your query. It's certainly quite refreshing-too bad I don't really take advantage of it.

My visit to Fuji-san

A couple of days ago I hinted that I was heading off somewhere to a different part of Japan. Well I have returned and I am surprisingly healthy considering everything. I decided some time ago to visit Mt Fuji before the climbing season ended and when my friend Melissa found this out, she decided that she was going with me. Anyways we ended up going with someone that Melissa had met at her gym. It was a fairly hard climb and it took us about eight hours. We stopped approximately half way up and slept in a "hotel" for approximately four or five hours. I use the term hotel lightly of course. It's more of a shack and you sleep in communal bunks with approximately 20 other people. Not much but it beats sleeping outside on a rock.

I wasn't too well prepared and I went on the trip without a jacket and had to do with wearing two longsleeved shirts which wasn't nearly enough. By the time 4:30 rolled around, I couldn't care less whether I made it to the top in time to see the sunrise-I just wanted the sun to rise period. It turns out that I did make it up for the sunrise but I thought I was going to be stuck on the side of the mountain because the last leg of the journey was like being in a traffic jam-a human traffic jam that is. It gets quite steep and the trail narrows significantly.

Anyways we all made it up but I think that by the time we reached the top we were more concerned with getting off the mountain than anything else. It was a memorable experience if not neccessarily an enjoyable one. Like the saying goes, "A wise man climbs Mt Fuji once, a fool climbs it twice."

Click on the pictures for a larger version!


Here is a picture of my crew. My Trinidadian friend Melissa, the Malaysian girl on the left is called Wong and the lady on the right is Melissa's new friend that she met at the gym. Her name is Chieka (or something like that I can never remember.) The guy taking the photograph is called Kelvin. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him. He is also Malaysian. Both of them are doing post-grad studies in Japan and I am quite jealous of them because they seem to be able to speak Japanese fluently (along with of course Malaysian, English and apparently Chinese.)





These three are pictures of the mountain. As you can see it's a little foggy/misty. This was disappointing because we should have been able to see way down to the bottom but we couldn't see anything because of the fog. We were also unable to see Mt Fuji itself on the approach because of the clouds. Apparently the only good time to go see Mt Fuji (if you want to climb it) is right after a typhoon because all the clouds have been blown away.



My friend Melissa and myself on the way up. We had our picture taken by some random lady on the way up. Melissa has a great souvenir in her hand. It's a hiking stick that you buy at the bottom of the hill for about 1000 yen and you can get it branded at each station for 200 yen. Much more personal and meaningful than some silly souvenir you buy in a store. Lots of people also had little Japanese flag attachments for them.



More pictures of Mt Fuji. Very scare vegetation which gets even scarcer as you go up. The top has no vegetation at all.




More pictures of the very fascinating fog.






These pictures are all taken relatively close to our stopping for camp. We got lucky in terms of weather but when the sun goes down Mt Fuji gets very cold. I was told it was approximately 5-6 degrees Celcius at night.


Mt Fuji at sunrise. Very beautiful. The sun rose from a sea of clouds. Of course when this happened all the Japanese uttered cries of awe and did what Japanese do best. I suppose I can't talk much-I took pictures too. But at least I used a camera instead of my cell phone.



Me with a stick. Behind me is a very big hole. That's right, just take a couple more steps back, couple more, almost.....perfect.






More pictures of a big hole. Pretty self-explanatory. We were thinking about walking around it but it wasn't a flat circle. It's a lot higher on the other side and we were tired of walking up.



Some more fauna. This is the only thing that grows high up on the mountain.

This picture looks a lot funnier in real life. Picture it with mostly blue sky behind it. I know the Japanese have a propensity for the obvious but this sign just seemed ridiculous.

Me pondering just how in the heck I'm going to get off this bloody mountain.




Mt Fuji on the way back down. Don't be fooled by the beautiful blue sky. It was extremely cloudy only we are actually above cloud level in this picture. Going down was pretty cool because we got to experience about four different weather climates as our altitude decreased. I unfortunately got sunburned on my neck and face-I was wearing a cap but I think the sun must reflect up off all the volcanic rock. Going down was actually worse than going up because it was wayyyy harder on the legs. Too much pressure on the old knees. Anyways we were glad we had climbed it and even more glad that we were off it. It'll be a nice story to tell every one.
In terms of longterm injuries I feel great. I thought my knees were going to be permanently blown but they feel fine. Melissa on the other hand was limping to all her classes today. Guess she needed to spend a little more time in the army or planting trees before attempting Mt Fuji.