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.

Apparently rain is wet

I'm soaked. At least I was soaked. I got to experience my first torrential downpour today. Unfortunately I was coming home from work. I suppose if I had've been home at the time I probably wouldn't have experienced it. The rain started about a half hour before my last class ended. I was teaching a student and cursing in my head at the same time-which is fine as long as you don't mix them up!

I didn't think it would rain so of course I didn't bring an umbrella-and to make matters worse I had my bike with me. So I ran across the street to the local Seiyu (Walmart) and bought a ginormous umbrella for about three dollars. Hah let see you get me now Mother Nature, I thought. Which of course she then proceeded to do on my way home. I haven't gotten that soaked since I was up north treeplanting. My ginormous umbrella stopped my head from getting wet and that's basically all. For all the good it was doing I might have well just tried to bike home with a gigantic lightning rod in my hand.

I spent the last 5 minutes of my trip biking upriver. No not biking upstream-biking upriver. There must have been a good 5 inches of water rushing down the incline I was biking up. I couldn't understand how this was possible. I knew it was pouring hard but it had only been raining for about half an hour. How could my bike and myself possibly be in danger of being swept away by the current flowing down the road? Then I realized that this is what happens when you pave over your entire city and have very poor sewer systems. The entire place becomes a big swimming pool. I think that the road I was travelling on was acting as a re...resid..what the heck is that word for a river that takes the runoff from all the other rivers?
Anyways I wanted to get a picture of it but didn't because it was too dark and I didn't want to risk dropping my phone or getting swamped by the current. Because as we all know the good Captain has to go down with the bike.

Apparently there's a Japan outside of Tokyo...

So I'm off on a little expedition tomorrow. Probably a good idea since I've been in Japan for 4 1/2 months and I've yet to leave Tokyo. I won't say much about it now except that I'll be crossing something else off my 'to-do' list.


I'm still alive despite the best attempts of my bike. Actually I haven't really had many close calls since I got it-my biking skill must be improving. In fact I even text messaged while biking down a street the other day-these Japanese really are a bad influence on me.

Anyways I'm off for a couple of days. I'll be back in a couple of days hopefully with lots of pics and both my lungs.

My new ride...

So I bought a new bike yesterday. I consider myself pretty fortunate to be able to live and work in the same place but the 15 minute walk to work every day was starting to gnaw at me a little. It's amazing the freedom that a bicycle can give you. Today I biked two stations over to go watch Star Wars again. It took about 20 minutes-walking probably would have been an hour and 20.

I probably would have bought a bike a long time ago but I was hesitant because I thought coming from a different country I wouldn't really know the proper Japanese bike etiquette. It turns out that I worried for nothing because the Japanese don't have a clue what the proper bike etiquette is. They ride on the left side of the street, the right side of the street, the wrong side of the street. Basically if there is a free space in the street somewhere they are going to fill it. They ride on sidewalks, they double up and in one case quadrupled up (a mother, kid on the front, kid on the back and kid on her back.)

They ride with umbrellas in their hands, they ride while texting on their phone, they ride with umbrellas in their hand AND texting on their phone. I even saw one kid biking down the street with his head buried in a manga comic book. Helmet usage stands at approximately 0% (1 in 10 babies in the baby seat might have a helmet.) Streets combined with bikers is the definition of the word chaos and yet for all that I haven't actually seen an accident yet-between Japanese that is. I on the other hand, lack the intuitive biking skills that these people seem to possess. For example I can barely text message sitting down on a couch never mind while riding a bike. And I also lack the ability to squeeze the 35 cm handlebars through a 36 cm space between a truck and a telephone pole. Then there's the fact that my brakes seem to be reversed and every time I try to stop quickly I almost go flying over the handlebars.

Oh well-it's better than trudging along I suppose. I'm still trying to think of a good name for her.

I'm sorry could you repeat that? I don't speak Engrish.

It's amazing what you can see on TV if you stay up late enough. Here it is 2:00 am and I'm watching the World Championships in Helinski. It's pretty awesome stuff to watch but by far the most interesting moment so far came after one of the long distance track competitions when a female Japanese reporter tried to interview the winner from Kenya in English-talk about a comedy of errors. The poor guy has just finished running 10,000 metres and his english comprehension is probably poor at the best of times. The reporter, who I'm sure was doing the best she could, was speaking in a strange language that only an experienced english teacher would be able to comprehend. Unfortunately I have my grandmother's memory or else I'd post a transcript of the conversation. The questions were mainly variations of "Who do you want to tell your medal?" followed by a confused stare from the poor Kenyan along with an answer that had nothing to do with the question at all. I suppose I shouldn't be too critical-that's the kind of thing that hockey players do all the time.

Picture bonanza!

My apologies to everyone with dial-up. I went out last weekend on a boat tour down the main river in Tokyo and since it was sunny, I walked through central Tokyo. These are some snaps that I managed to take. If you want to and your internet connection can handle it, you can click on the pictures for a (much) larger version.

I bet you wouldn't expect Tokyo Station to look like this!



Most of these are of the area immediately outside the Imperial Gardens in central Tokyo.










I thought this picture was funny-who in their right mind would set up a tent on a 3-foot wide strip of grass with a busy highway on one side and a 10-foot drop to the moat below on the other?



Fairly typical Japanese highschool. This one is the newest I've seen though. Most of them look like they've been converted from WWII-era factories. And the playgrounds are almost always crushed stone rather than concrete. It's summer vacation but it looks like the highschool baseball team is still practicing hard.



















I thought this sign was funny. It's posted at a corner in a tunnel where there obviously must be a lot of collisions. They seem to be worried about the potential for people "clashing."













The homeless have some pretty impressive housing around here. It wouldn't suprise me if they had their own mayors. Ever see the movie Tokyo Godfathers (you should-it's great anime)? It's pretty much like the movie says it is.




Anyways that's it for now. Sorry about the huge backlog of pictures. I'll try to intersperse it a little so there's always a few pictures here and there rather than a ridiculous amount in one go.

let me get to sleep