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!
