Ok this is the last update today. I was browsing Youtube and came a cross of video of a game that had this song playing in the background. I immediately fell in love it!
I think this is an indie Canadian band. The group name is Final Fantasy (no not the game) and the song name is, wait for it, This lamb sells condos
Give it a try
Browsing through my phone and I found a few more pictures:
Our loot.
Dinner. Fumiko made some great tasting gratin (pasta hot bake?) and I'm ashamed to say that I went to KFC and bought chicken. It's a Japan Christmas tradition for me to smugly ask my students if they're going to go to (horror upon horrors) Kentucky to buy some Christmas chicken. And there I was on Christmas Eve buying chicken myself.
And finally the Christmas cake. Christmas cake you say? Yes if there is one thing that can actually be called a Christmas tradition in Japan it's Christmas cake. It's completely ridiculous of course but it's Japan. I suppose the candles are for Jesus. We couldn't find room for the other 2001 candles on the cake.
Well I suppose that declaration is slightly premature-especially when you consider that I've spent the entire day surfing the net, playing videogames and watching Battlestar Galactica. Still I've made a start. On Christmas Eve Eve, Jared and his friend Ikue and Fumiko and myself all went to Shibuya to a restaurant called Outback. Some of you may know it-sort of an Australian themed restaurant. It was pretty good-I had a big steak for the first time in about two years! Fumiko was feeling a little bit sick unfortunately-we're not sure why. She had been out to an office party the night before and had drunk approximately a glass and a half of wine. She has absolutely no tolerance for alcohol! That makes us compatible since I usually have no taste for it. Unless of course it's a White Russian
Christmas Eve was spent with Fumiko again. I went to her place after work and we had a little Christmas dinner, opened presents and watched A Muppets Christmas Carol. She had actually managed to find it somewhere and bought it for me for Christmas. Here's a pic of our Christmas tree-a lot different from back home that's for sure.
Oops wait, that one's of my friend Pete. Looking very teacher-like in front of a NOVA arcade game we found at one of the huge arcades in Ikebukuro. Yes that's how we look in all our classes- "Mamiko, you said 'Yesterday I went to shopping.' Went to shopping??"
Lets see if I can get the right pic this time...
Yep there it is! Sort of cute and pathetic at the same time! Still there's an impressive number of presents under that tree! Here's a rundown of the Christmas l00t that we scored this year:
For me:
Some of you may have noticed that the layout of the blog has changed ever so slightly. If you did, congratulations on your cranial fortitude-you must be related to me. I've started adding labels to my posts so that you can simply click on a topic word on the right hand side of the page and immediately be taken to any posts that discusses that topic. It takes a while to go back and add labels to everything so it's something that I'll be slowly updating.
For those of you who had no idea; Tokyo has four seasons. Well now that you've recovered from your state of shock-wait you're not shocked? There's Spring, Summer, Fall and of course we can't forget Winter. And Japan is the only country in the world to actually have all four of these seasons. Or so we're constantly told. Well actually that's not true. But we are told the obvious so often that we can't help but wonder whether or not the Japanese might actually believe that they are the only country in the world with four seasons.
I am not amazed by Japan's possession of the Four Seasons. However I am constantly amazed by the capacity for rain here. Some times it rains extremely hard-not very often but sometimes. But what is really amazing is how it can just start raining one day and not let up until four days hence. My memories of home consist of 3 or 4 hour rains. It was raining when I woke up this morning and it still hasn't let up at 10pm. I expect it will still be raining tomorrow morning as well.
While the rain doesn't make for very Christmasy weather, it's impossible to feel letdown because you never had any expectations of a white Christmas anyways. It was actually very convenient because it allowed me to do exactly what I would have done anyways (sat on my butt all day and accomplished absolutely nothing) with no feelings of guilt whatsoever!
This post is being typed via PSP-yes I am a geek. It's also a pain in the butt so it will be short. I just want to leave you with a teaser-I will be a social butterfly this week.
Brendan: We must succeed
in Laundry
TOKYO (AP)-- As Brendan sat down for dinner last night, he warned that failure in household duties would be a calamity that would haunt the house for years. As if to underscore the eroding situation there, a report was issued that said that spotting's of unclean clothes had risen to the highest level in years.
In a news conference last evening, Brendan sketched out an agenda of reversing the upward spiral in Laundry, attending to the lack of clean shirts and pushing for the cleaner Bedroom that was a priority of his predecessor, 2006 Brendan.
Brendan said he intends to travel soon to the Bedroom to hear commanders assessments of the situation on the floor and to gain their advice-"unvarnished and straight from the shoulder"-about how to adjust the household cleaning strategy.
"All of us want to find a way to bring clean shirts and slacks back to the household agian," Brendan told a few hundred dust balls in the Maisonet Yuki living room.
At the Maisonet Yuki ceremony, Jared said he is confident Brendan, 27, will bring a fresh perspective to the laundry problem. "He knows the stakes in the War on Laundry," Jared said. "He recognizes this is a long struggle against an enemy unlike any we've faced before."
Brendan made no mention of his plan for changing the course in the laundry strategy, which he has said will be disclosed next month.
I've heard recently that people back home are amazed/appalled that it is the middle of December and it is ten degrees Celsius. Want to here something even more appalling? It is the middle of December and it is ten degrees in my house! That's right we're ten times more likely to see our own breath inside the house than we are outside. I would type more but my fingers are frozen and it hurts to hit the buttons on the keyboard.
I am officially a geek. I play videogames, read Archies, don't really like parties, don't drink much and sometimes play more videogames! Only one final thing was needed to fall into place and that was boardgames. Yes I am officially a boardgamer now. Oh sure, I played a few games of Monopoly or LIFE (the Japanese happen to love that game incidentally) when I was a kid but that's all it was. But in the past week I have played two games of RISK 2210. It takes a good 3 hours to play and lots of little men are moved around on a board and geekspeak is uttered, including the the odd quotation from the movie The Princess Bride (never get involved in a land war in Asia). It's quite fun! I've had a slight interest in boargames for a long time but never got into them because I didn't have any friends who were interested in gaming. I'm already looking to pick up my own game.
After my 3 day odyssey to Kyoto I thought I would retire from my traveling ways and settle down with a small patch of land and a plow and live out my days in peace and tranquility. If Fumiko has anything to do with it though it might not work out that way. Fumiko has what appears to be a decent job as a radiologist. Who knows what it pays but I think gets about 40 vacation days a year. The funny thing about being a Japanese working in Japan is that when you "get" 40 days vacation, you don't actually "get" 40 days vacation. You get approximately four and a half-rounded down. The idea is that you "get" the vacation days, you just can't "take" the vacation days. And the "taking" is really the most important part of the whole thing. I'm sure there's a Seinfeld comedy routine in there somewhere.
Anyways apparently there have been a boatload of new hirings at the hospital meaning that the more senior staff actually get to "take" some vacation days before they all disappear at the end of the hospital year in March some time. This little tidbit led to the following conversation (not verbatim for the sake of grammar and due to my poor memory):
"Ne ne, do you have any more vacation days?"
"Uhh...yes-why?"
"Because I can use my vacation days now-but didn't you use your vacation days for Canada?"
"No I mostly used swaps"
"Swaps??"
"When you work for someone else and then they work for you"
"??"
"Nevermind-where do you want to go?"
"Ano ne, I was thinking...South... South Ah..."
"South America!???"
"YES! I want to go to Cancun"
"Cancun's in Mexico"
At this point I am thinking, I did not come all the way to Japan just to go to Mexico. In fact, I didn't come to Japan to go anywhere! Where's my plow? I must have left it around here somewhere. Anyways, as unlikely as it is unfortunate, this situation is probably not going to go away. Stay tuned for future updates.
Well my Christmas shopping is finished. It was actually amazingly fast considering I only bought one gift. My wallet is certainly a lot lighter now. Actually, to be perfectly honest I think it was vaporized on impact. Actually I still have one more to get. Some kind of english books for beginners. My department store has a bunch of low level books (Snoopy books with sort of a story) that I'm thinking of picking up.
I'm hoping Christmas will be fun! We shall see. Too many traditions being broken. First and foremost, working on Christmas Day! I realize we're in a country that doesn't consider it to be an important occasion other than being an opportunity to be even more materialistic than normal but when 99% of your workforce is Christian then you think they'd give you the day off! Such is the power of unions or lack thereof I guess.
Secondly, Christmas is a time to stay home! If you aren't in church or in a skating rink on Christmas Eve then you should be at home getting cozy and decorating the tree-not at some restaurant somewhere.
Finally you shouldn't know exactly what your Christmas presents are going to be. I've received packages from the family and Emily and I have no idea what is in them so not all is lost!
I thrive on constancy so we'll have to see how I fare with all these blasphemies going on around me. If the going gets tough I still have my secret weapon-A Muppet's Christmas Carol.
I went Christmas shopping with Fumiko the other night. Obviously our ideas on how one should conduct Christmas shopping are diametrically opposed. I'm of the belief that gifts should be bought in secret. Sure the receiver is free to suggest ideas for gifts but that's as far as it goes. Fumiko on the other hand had the idea that I would pick out gifts for her to buy and then she would pick out a gift for me to buy.
Fumiko had already told me what she wanted-accessories (which is japanese for "jewelry.") I met her on Saturday night after work in Ikebukuro and we went shopping at Seibu (which is japanese for "most expensive department store in Japan.") I took one look at the prices for pants, shirts and jackets and thought 'thank God she wants jewelry and not clothes!" That of course was until we got to the 'accessories' floor, whereupon after glancing at the prices I thought "if only she wanted clothes!"
First we went shopping for me which was difficult because I didn't want to say 'I want this' but instead wanted to merely give hints or ideas. I also hate trying stuff on. I was liking one pair of pants until I saw that they cost $160. Fumiko said that was fine and I tried to explain to her that for $160 I would rather have two pairs of $80 pants than one pair of $160 pants. Heck truth be told, I would rather have four pairs of $40 pants! This of course was impossible for the other party to understand. She thought it was perfectly reasonable. After seeing the price of the ring she wants I'm starting to think it's perfectly reasonable too!
More Kyoto pics. I'll only describe a few of them. Red leaves don't need much of a description.
I took this one because the guy is sweeping the forest. Kyoto must hire hundreds or maybe thousands of people to sweep leaves off the forest floor.
This is the Nijo-jou castle inside Kyoto. I believe that it belonged to one of the Shogun's and was then given to the Emperor to live in before he was allowed to move to Tokyo.
Kyoto station. Some pretty amazing architecture going on in this building. Amazing.
This was the front of the Battleship Yamato. Not the real one of course but the size is 1:1. They used it in filming of the movie Yamato I believe.
Kyoto station again. The steps are pretty breathtaking. There's sort of an open air garden up on the roof.
The next pictures are all from Ginkaku-ji I believe. I really like the sunlight in the first one-it was exactly the effect I was going for.
Well I'm finally get some Kyoto pics put up. I still haven't printed any out yet. Well I printed one but that was for a Christmas present *wink*. I had a good time in Kyoto. It was what I imagined it would be-lots of temples and shrines. I don't really go crazy for these types of things but it was certainly interesting. And the famed kouyou (changing of the leaves) was nice but can't even begin to compare to looking out at Beaver Valley from Old Baldy in my honest opinion. The first two days were quite good and then on the third day I fell sick with food poisoning. I powered through the first two of three items on the itinerary but after that I couldn't go on and we changed our shinkansen tickets to an earlier time and came home.
I'm in a bit of a funk right now so getting a Christmas present from home this evening when I got home was certainly a welcome surprise! I won't open it till Christmas I promise. I don't remember missing last Christmas too much but this year is hitting home a little more hard. I'm listening to Christmas carols right now. All the good old fashioned stuff. O Holy Night, Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing etc. A shame kids can't grow up listening to it in schools these days. The Christmas assemblies must pale in comparison to the olden days.
I have to work on Christmas Eve again. And Christmas Day. Bleh. And the weather is cooold. It was a balmy 11 degrees Celcius in our house when I woke up this morning. No wonder I'm in a funk! Christmas/NOVA/weather is pulling a 1-2-3 punch on me!
Hopefully I'll be getting out some Christmas cards this year. I'm not sure if you can buy them by the box like you can at home. I don't have any addresses though so if you want a Christmas card from Japan then make sure you get your address to Mom! And if you don't know how to do that then you obviously don't know me well enough to get a Christmas card!
And now the moment you've all been waiting for! The pictures! I took these pictures BIG so you 56kers (the Sparling family) might be well advised to not click on any of them.
First one is me with an actor in a sort of action samurai drama we went to. He sort of walked out into the audience and started talking to them and then he started talking to me! In English! And of course I like to blend in with the crowd so I almost died. He got me up and Fumiko to a picture with him.
I'm afraid I can't tell you the name of this place. It had lots of really red leaves though.
This is the same place.
This is called ginkakuji (I assume the Silver Pavillion). It's walls used to be coated in silver. A very beautiful place.
And this is its more beautiful sister kinkakuji (the Golden Pavillion). It's walls are STILL covered in gold!
This is obviously a very old train. Kind of cool to ride on.
I'll try posting a few more pictures later!
You might not have noticed it but I've actually switched to the new Blog now, the one that's owned by Google. I don't think anything has really changed much for the readers-just for the people doing the blogging (oops I almost called it writing!)
I'm kind of kicking myself for not buying a PS3. I could have at least resold it on Ebay for twice the cost. Oh well, sometimes having too much common sense can be a disadvantage.
Fumiko just returned today from Kyoto where she attended her brother's wedding. That brought up a couple of (possibly cultural?) incongruities. For one, Fumiko had never even met her brother's wife until she arrived in Kyoto. In fact I don't think she even knew her name until she heard that they were getting married. And then when I asked if I was invited to the wedding, she looked at me as if I had two heads. I thought it was only natural that you would take your boyfriend of approximately eight or nine months (at that time) to a wedding with you. But perhaps not. I was happy to not have to pay the $250 train ticket to Kyoto.
I managed to get hold of a poppy at the Canadian Embassy before Remembrance Day. I wore it a couple of days to work. I was a little worried whether I might stir up some controversy (it really shouldn't-the poppy after all is from the First World War) but shockingly enough in my classes nobody even mentioned it. I was a little upset actually. I mean, I had a freakin flower on my chest and yet nobody could be bothered to be curious as to why.
They were released in Japan this morning. And about 10 minutes after that they all disappeared. I actually got a chance to play one yesterday for the first time. They had a booth set up in the Toys R Us store and it was merely a matter of picking up the little kid in front of me by the scruff of the neck and throwing him out of the way. I went to the Toys R Us during my lunchbreak to play it. Apparently they're going to be impossible to find when they're released in North America when they come out in December. And to think if only I had a little patience, a warm jacket and 60,000 yen in my pocket then I could have had one too! At five o'clock in the afternoon there was one guy in line sitting outside of the store. When I left work at 9pm that evening there were a grand total of three people in line. So I suppose if I had have sat my but down at that time and waited I could now be bragging about being the first Canadian to own a PS3. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be plenty more available in three years time when the price has dropped off enough to something I'm willing to pay.
Well I don't think so but when your girlfriend says you're fat then you're fat-it's official. Fumiko, Jared and I had just finished watching a movie (Sweet November, terrible movie-don't watch it) when Fumiko reached over, patted my stomach and said, "Do you have a baby?" This of course was a great source of amusement to Fumiko and Jared, who grabbed the big pincers that you use to hang out your futon and used them as giant forceps. True I haven't been working out much lately or playing soccer because of a two week period where I was feeling a little sick-but I'm not at all fat! Anyways, soccer seems to have started up again and I'm trying to go to the gym more often so I'm going to nip that little thing in the bud! Last Saturday I played my first soccer game in a good month and I sent an email to Fumiko:
Brendan: I played soccer tonight so no more fat!
Fumiko: I will check your stomack!! おやすみ ハニー
Well that might be you guys fully updated. I'm gonna try to get a new routine going which involves more posting, more studying, more gym and less internet! We'll see how it goes.
That was Tuesday! I had one busy weekend-for me at least. Unfortunately Peter and I left a little bit late (around 10am) so we weren't able to see everything that we had been planning on seeing.
We had to wait for almost an hour in Asakusa (which is fortunately a great place for tourists). Then we took a two and a half hour train ride north, through mostly small farms and rice fields upon where I made the astute observation that whoever names the train stations are not very creative. It's not uncommon to see a station called, for example "Name" and then go through the next station "Shin-Name"(New-Name) followed by "Higashi-Name" (East-Name). I suppose when you have a lot of train stations you run out of good names pretty quickly!
Anyways we got to Nikko (oh yes, that's where we went by the way) at 2:30 and were told that the shrine their closes at 3:30 (doh!). So we rushed there and saw what we could before it closed. There was a lot we couldn't see because we only had about 20 minutes before it closed and we decided it wasn't worth the 1300 yen for 20 minutes. We also wanted to go see some beautiful waterfalls about 50 minutes by bus outside of town but we decided to forego that because of how ungodly early it gets dark in this country! We did however manage to see the Sacred Bridge (pics to follow)
First in a multi-part series. Last Tuesday, Fumiko and I went to Disney Sea to visit Mickey Mouse. I'm not sure which I like better-Disney Sea or Disneyland. Disneyland has definitely got the childhood nostalgia factor but Disney Sea has got some more interesting rides and is a bit more adult oriented. In fact, Disney Sea doesn't have much of Disney in it at all actually! We had a great day-it was fun and definitely the $60 ticket-but I hate the 'fakeness' of these places. Several times during the day Fumiko mentioned how she wanted to stay at one of the Disney hotels on site. My official response was "Uhh yeah...I guess sometime...", but inside I was thinking "Oh Hell no! We only live a measly one hour train ride away from this overpriced place!"
I have to be careful not to say an outright "no". The far safer course is to give a neutral answer and then pray that it is never mentioned again!
Here are a coupla more pics. Jeez these Japanese can work fast! No picture from today because it's been raining too much. In fact I dont think they even worked today. You can see that they've got the second floor finished and are working on the second floor walls. When I came back from work last night the second floor walls were up and so was the frame of the roof and then had put a blue tarping all around the metal structure you see up around the house. The when I took those first pictures they had stopped by lunch time and didn't work on it in the afternoon. So they basically framed an entire house in a day and a half.
Here's a cellphone update from Fumiko. Apparently we've found a driver who can take us to Kyoto in November:
Fumiko: p-chan passed! ('-^*)
ok p-chan can drive a car !
P-chan is popping up again. I got it for Fumiko on her birthday (yes it was on time) but only recently has P-chan been doing anything remotely postworthy. Let me give you a little background. P-chan is a stuffed penguin. So of course, to any normal Japanese girl, it is a cute, living creature whose opinion is requested and respected more often than my own. If I'm in a competition with P-chan, I am likely going to be the loser. Anyways P-chan has been doing some cute things lately which have been caught on camera-cellphone camera anyways. About a month ago I received an email from Fumiko:
Fumiko: ハローハニー (Hello honey)
Brendan: hello!
Fumiko: only it!? p-chan angry!
This is followed by an attachment for the following picture. Just the thought of P-chan glaring into the phone at me was too much! I'd never seen a stuffed penguin glare before.
Then tonight P-chan was caught on camera again. Fumiko has her final driving test tomorrow-a written test only and she was supposed to study for it:
Brendan: finished studying?
Fumiko: p-chan is studying!
Brendan: かわいい!! あした p-chanは テストを かきますか? (cute!! Is p-chan going to write the test tomorrow?)
Fumiko: of course! p-chan is smart!
I apologize for anybody who vomited on their keyboard.
A house is being built right next to us so I thought I'd use the opportunity to show how the housing is in Japan. Unfortunatley I've started a little bit late and I missed some of the earlier stages. Anyways the first stage is to tear down the previous house. A high-hoe (sp?) comes in with a claw instrument and tears the house down. It takes more than one day and free space is at a premium so what do they do? Well they just drive it right up and park it inside the house of course! I wish I had have taken a picture of that! All the debris is taken away in these miniature dumptrucks. The roads are quite small here so you can't have any big dumptrucks in Japan. Everything is carted away right down to the bare earth and then they start building again. First some foundations are poured. And this is where my pictures start (pretty much).
Not sure if you can tell from the pictures but the foundation is about two or three feet tall and they build the floor on top. So there's lots of airspace between the ground and the first floor. I'm pretty sure that basements are illegal in Japan. Something to do with the humidity and mould and whatnot.
Japanese always seem to throw the buildings up so darn fast and I think I've finally figured out why. If you look at all the wood, you can see that it's been pre-cut and formed so that the whole house goes together like one big Lego project. Of course there's not exactly a lot of room in which to work so you pretty much need to build from within the house!
Almost time for my monthly post! I could have sworn that i posted something since my last Honda video. I just can't remember for the life of me what I wrote. Anyways. I'm going to bed so here's a quick pic of P-chan, one of my birthday presents to Fumiko-chan. The "P" as you can probably guess stands for "penguin" or "PEN-GehN" or "PEN-GEEN" as we like to say on this side of the world. The photo editing has been done with a cellphone-amazing what you can do with cell phones over here!
Well now I'm posting bi-monthly. That's a little bit better! I'll see if I can get it back to weekly and then who knows-maybe even...bi-weekly?
Had a bit of an interesting day with my private class on Wednesday. Went to teach them at 10 o'clock and then they took me out to lunch afterwards. Then a couple of us (one of them the organizer of the class) went to the local Honda factory (her husband works for Honda) to board a bus and head into Tokyo to go see a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. And not just any game either. None other than Team Honda was playing!! I remember when I played on the Bank of Montreal softball team. We played in some ratty park in Etobicoke somewhere. Team Honda on the other hand gets to play in the freakin Tokyo Dome!
Anyways I sorta got roped into it somehow (it's very un-Brendan like of me to do something like this) and I guess since our family recently made the switch from domestic vehicles to Nippon then I really ought to go and show my loyalties. Well believe it or not it turned out to be a fantastic time!!! I actually only saw a few minutes of the game and I was there the whole time. And it wasn't entirely because of the five different cheerleading teams either!
The atmosphere there was absolutely crazy. Basically what it is is a big tournament between all the different big companies in Japan. I know Honda has two teams in the tournament and JR train lines has about four teams and I'm sure Mitsubishi and Toyota must also have teams. The difference between these teams and our teams at Bank of Montreal is that these teams are good. That and they're playing actual hardball instead of self-pitch. The entire team is made up of employees and so are the bands and the male cheerleaders. The female cheerleaders come from different universities around Tokyo I think. And the fans are absolutely great! They almost all have some relation to Honda in one way or another. Maybe they work for Honda or have a friend or family member who works there or something.
Anyways I don't know about the rest of you but I tend to get the impression of Japanese people as a very reserved bunch-quiet people who work hard but may be a bit awkward in expressing themselves in public situations. Wow did that game ever prove me wrong! They cheered for literally the entire game. They were cheering their pitcher after basically every pitch and when their team was up to bat they cheered for literally the entire inning!! Some of those innings were over 20 minutes long too and they didn't stop for one second!! They had about five teams of cheerleaders (four girl teams and one guy team) that they kept rotating so nobody got to tired and the fans just chanted the entire time. I got a video of it which really doesn't do it justice because a)I was in the front row almost just behind the band so you can't see to many people, b)because the sound isn't as loud as it really sounds being recorded by my digital camera, and c) my 32 mb digital card ran out of memory after only a minute of recording time when I probably could have kept on going for another good 15 minutes at least. They clap fans together (special Honda fans) and my eyes were tearing up because of all the airflow.
It was fun as heck and if Honda makes it to the finals on Sept 5th then I'm definitely going to have to go again but first I'll have to have a little something to drink so I can be almost as crazy as those crazy Japanese!
I uploaded my video to YouTube if you want to check it out.
As some of you may have noticed, the number of postings on here has been extremely anemic of late. I'm not sure what to say about that-it could be that for all intents and purposes the blog is good and dead. We'll have to see what the future holds. All I can say is that it might be pushing it a little to get more than a good year's worth of writing about my life! What I mean is that it's not exactly likely that someone will write a book about my life. Anyways I'll do my best to throw something your way when I can-either that or I'll have to resort to mass emails.
Here are some pics for your enjoying pleasure. Last weekend we went to Odaiba (a small, I think artificial island in the Tokyo bay) for fireworks. It was pretty nice. There are after all 12 million people in the Tokyo area so you have to show up early to get a good seat. And that's what people did-they showed up in the early afternoon, measured off a section of beach or grass for themselves, set up their tarp to sit on, weighted it down and then left to go shopping for 6 hours or so. The fireworks were pretty good-over one hour long!! Anyways here are the pics. I am confounded as to how in the hell Fumiko can look so damn photogenic in all her pics and I always look so terrible!
