Oh so that's what it feels like to take a test!

I had completely forgotten. It's been...what five years now, going on six since the last time I had to write an exam. You forget all about the night before nerves. Well my Japanese test is done and over with! I hope I pass! To pass you need to get a 60%. The first section (worth 25%) was a breeze. I can say with confidence that I think I got perfect on that. The second part was the listening (also worth 25%) was...not bad. I'm going to say I got 50% for sure and anything more than that is a bonus! The third part was grammar and reading (worth a big 50%). And ummm well I had more than a few guesses on that section! The reading section was a breeze but damn that grammar! I'm never certain which article to use with a certain word and whatnot. I'll let you know in February when I get the test results!

After the test I met Fumiko and we did some Christmas window shopping. Again she would like to just buy each other what we want and I tell her that she's crazy. I pointed out a whole lot of things and told her to buy some of what I liked. That way it's still kind of a surprise. We also bought a decent Christmas tree which was nice. Not a puny Japanese tree either! It's a full 150cm tall and it's Canadian! At least that's what it says on the outside of the box.

Pics to come later!

Your weekly udate

It's maybe been a bit over a week actually-sorry about that. We are getting thinner by the day. I may be forced to eat my English grammar texts lest I lose the energy to type. Actually things are going well! I've picked up some more privates so I'm working approximately 28 hours-a month! As it stands though that's more than enough pay for my rent and food and maybe a few luxuries so I'm really doing alright. If I had had the foresight to hand out my business cards to all my students before Nova went spiraling into the ground I would probably be working 28 hours a week instead and making more money than I ever did with Nova! You know what they say about hindsight though!

I'm trying to use my free time to study for the big Japanese test on December 2nd. You'd think that with a lot of free time you would have lots of free time to study but actually it means that you have lots of free time to waste. In fact I should be studying right now instead of posting this! But I'll get right to it after this I promise. I tried a listening practice test last night and was overjoyed to realize that I actually got most of it. My listening is my biggest weakness.

There are a couple of new members in our house that I have failed to mention so far. The first is an aquarium. I bought it a couple months ago actually, before things went horribly wrong with Nova. I've got four Zebra Danio fish in there and two Amano shrimps. The shrimps are a lot of fun to watch and real easy to take care of (I don't feed them they just eat stuff off the bottom) so I think today I'm going to go out and get a bunch more. Here's a video:



The second new family member, which I got just a couple of days ago is this:

Yes I know, Mom is probably cringing and saying what I silly boy I am! But I figured heck, if I'm going to have a lot of time off in the next couple of months then this is exactly what I need. And with my 18,000 yen worth of Bic Camera points and the high Cdn dollar, on my credit card it only came to about $180 which is a full $170 less than it cost me to buy a PS2 in 2003!

I'll have some more updates soon but now I gotta go do a little studying before my next private lesson at 3 o'clock!

One more thing...

I've got a private lesson tomorrow. I picked up a few more since Nova closed-all former Nova students. I'm sort of kicking myself for not giving out my contact information to all the students immediately after the money troubles first started. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess. I've since made up some business cards (designing business cards is really fun!) and whenever I see students I give them out. It happens more than you would think-especially when you live in the same place as you teach. I got one class that pays 2500 yen an hour and another one that pays 4000 yen an hour. That combined with my regular private class is enough to pay for my 40,000 yen rent which should help stem the money hemorrhaging until the unemployment cheques start pouring in. We're supposed to get 80% of our regular wage for 3 months which I plan on taking full advantage of-if it indeed comes to that.

Anyways I'm doing this one class for 2500 yen an hour because it is such a scam. The guy (a really decent chap) is into watching Seinfeld. He watches the show and then types up whatever he can understand from the script. Then we watch it together on his Ipod and I fill in the missing sections and correct any listening mistakes he's made. I can't imagine a better job than being paid $25 an hour to watch Seinfeld. Ok it isn't $25 anymore but it was before our cursed dollar decided to skyrocket. On the other hand it makes purchasing things over here seem really cheap (wow this $450 PS3 is actually only $320 over here!)
Anyways I gotta get to bed-I want to be well rested for my Seinfeld lesson tomorrow morning.

More pleasant updates

Well I went to Kyushu and survived. Barely. I went for a wedding and the trip went well except for the fact that I forgot one important thing. I won't tell you what, but here's an analogy-it was like going on a snowboarding trip and forgetting your snowboard. There I said it now lets never mention it again. Kyushu was nice. The wedding families paid for our hotel (and gave us 10,000 yen each to help pay for the trip). I had basically the most scenic view one could ever expect for a Sunday morning breakfast:
The wedding itself was interesting. Well actually it wasn't really. It was a Western wedding with a reverend and everything. He was of American background but born in Japan. The whole wedding was in Japanese. The wedding reception-now that was interesting. We got in there, found our tables and I found this sitting on my plate looking up at me:
Fortunately the food got more appetizing after that. We listened to about four boring speeches where half the people (at least 200 hundred in total) looked to be nodding off (including me). Then they broke out the alcohol which I think was what everyone was waiting for and then they started bringing out some different courses of food. Soon the equivalent of the best man and maids of honour (none of them actually participated in the wedding) got up to make their speeches. Only by that time, everybody was busy drinking and eating and talking and not a single soul stopped to listen except for the bride and the groom and myself-who couldn't understand a single word being said. The speakers literally faced the married couple and made their speech while being completely ignored (and drowned out) by the rest of the crowd. I was appalled.

Went to an airshow today. It was interesting for me, not so much for Fumiko. She went home after about an hour. I certainly could have predicted that! I'm not sure why she wanted to come in the first place. I was a bit shocked to learn that she had no idea what "kamikaze" meant. We saw a picture of one in the pamphlet. It's a Japanese word for goodness sakes! She said when she was young the teachers never talked about any of that stuff. Here's a pic:

We are in desperate straits-please wire 100 million yen immediately

Well it's not quite as bad as all that yet although I'll be sure to let you know if I have to start teaching for food. As if foreigners don't have a hard enough time integrating in Japanese society and making a living. What's going to happen if the Japanese believe all they need to get an English lesson is a can of corn? For anybody who has been here for more than 6 months, there's no excuse for this nonsense. Have people not heard of saving for a rainy day? I consider myself quite fortunate compared to some of the people around me. I've got a house for a reasonable rent, a 3-year visa and a small war-chest thanks to some financial self-control-my good friend Chad fondly refers to me as a "cheap-ass".

One of my co-workers will be gone quite soon however. She had the bad luck of having her visa run out just as Nova shut down. We weren't paid this September so she and her boyfriend (who also worked for Nova) have no money to pay for their rent-or food for that matter. The Immigration office is no longer approving visas for employees of Nova which means that she has to be out of the country by the 22nd of November. It's really quite sad that this had to happen. What makes it even worse is that Nova seems to have been mismanaged into the ground and that the CEO was possibly (probably) involved in illegal financial activities to the detriment of the company for his own gain.

I'm not sure what Peter's plan is. He's definitely one of the luckier ones in this whole deal, ie. he has some money to live off of and he has an apartment that hasn't been defaulted on and he has a 3-year visa. However he doesn't seem to be basking in glow of unemployment the way I have been. He was always more of an idealist than me though. A real teacher's teacher. The very idea of just sitting around doing nothing just does not seem to appeal to him. I hope he can stick it out. Well that's all the complaining I have to do about Nova tonight. I'll make a nice new post of more pleasant material.

The God damned plane has crashed into the mountain!!

Das Nova ist kaputt!!

You heard it here first folks. Actually no you probably heard it first in the Toronto Star, right under the headline ESL teachers left in limbo in Japan. Things are not looking good right now. For Nova I mean-don't worry about me I'm fine. Basically it's the Enron of Japan. A private school with a mere 480,000 students was run into the ground by an incompetent owner. It's one of those things that in retrospect you could see coming and yet at the same time still not believe could be possible. We're talking about the school that controls 60% of the English conversation pie.

Let me reiterate that I am fine. In fact I am enjoying being able to not work on a Saturday or Sunday for the first time in two and a half years (of course there's a typhoon today-what are the odds?) On the other hand there are people in this country who are not fine. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that they are screwed. I know people who have barely been in the country for a month. They haven't even had time to adjust to a foreign country and all of a sudden they have no job, an apartment eviction and a months worth of work for which they might not ever see compensation. Oh and did I mention they probably have NO money? Fortunately for the Americans their government is willing to fly teachers home provided that they repay their goodwill once they get back to America. I don't know if everybody will get that opportunity though.

It's a bloody crime that Nova brought these people into the country when they knew full well that they were a sinking ship. It's criminal that they deducted money from teachers salaries to pay their rent and then never bothered to actually pay the rent.

The Nova boss has gone AWOL and I must say I can't blame him after all that's gone wrong. I'm sure most of the teachers are hoping that he has taken the honourable Japanese way out and saved the courts a whole lot of trouble.

I'll keep people posted!

Just call me Walter...

I picked up some new glasses yesterday. Two pairs actually. I lost the screw on my old pair so I decided that after four years I would finally go get a new pair. They were quite cheap-only about 80 bucks but I quite like them-mostly because they're a little risque. They also fixed my old pair of glasses which was nice of them. I found out that they in Japan they call the Philips and the flat-head screws "plus" and "minus". At first I found it a little quaint-oh those Japanese, bastardizing our language again-but then I realized what genius it was. Who hasn't had that moment where they need to get a Philips screwdriver for someone and thought, "What the heck is a Philips screwdriver anyways?" It's pure genius I tell ya!

I also picked up a new pair of sunglasses while I was there-more of an impulse buy than anything. I call them my "Walter Sobchak" glasses. If you've seen a certain movie about a carpet then you'll know what I'm talking about. I always wanted to get a pair but my head was never the right shape-no my head hasn't changed. These glasses seem to fit a lot better though-don't believe the poor photo.

I made one final purchase yesterday-a new suit for the wedding. Fumiko and I went together with two completely opposing views-price and style. I'm sure you can guess who was which. They have two types of suits at the place we went-$200 suits and $300 suits. I wasn't real keen about the $300 suit. Not only was it out of my price limit (not my range-my range would be much more but my limit is very low) but I wasn't so keen on the style. I guess in Japan it's stylish for Japanese men to wear really tight-fitting suits. I'm not sure if that's the style or not in Canada. We managed to come to a great compromise though. We bought the more expensive suit and I paid $200 and Fumiko paid $100. I got away not feeling that I had been robbed and Fumiko gets a decently dressed boyfriend that she can show off to her friends at her friend's wedding-we both came away very happy.

My private students gave me a nabe pot for my birthday so we had a little welcoming party for Peter when he moved in. Nothing big-just four of is. It was quite a lot of fun though and very tasty (and pretty darned healthy as well I think). Here are some pics of the event (none of me though-I'm the photographer).

Big day tomorrow!

The new roommate moves in officially. It will be strange to have three people in the house again. Our rent will drop from 61,500 yen to 41,000 yen per month so I've got no complaints in that department! We were planning on having a nabe party tonight but it got postponed till Monday night after work. My private students gave me a big donnabe for my birthday (basically a big earthenware pot) so hopefully I'll be able to put it to good use over the winter time (that's when you eat nabe, silly!)

Next weekend I'll be heading away from Tokyo for the southern shores of Japan...for a wedding. Yech. Oh well, it can only be better than I expect! I've never been to that part of Japan before so it will be interesting to see what it's like. Immediately after that weekend I begin taking my holidays. Gotta get those things used up while they're still good! I'm adding two days to each of my weekends so it will make for a nice relaxing month and half. Four days is more than enough time to go anywhere in Japan so perhaps I'll do a few trips.

More daily details of my life: I came back to my illegally parked in front of McDonalds bike this afternoon and found that someone had the nerve to tape a threatening letter to it. Actually not "someone"-it was McDonalds themselves. They even signed it-MaKUdonaRUdo. Basically it says if I park my bicycle there again without buying something they're going to send the yakuza after me. Of all the nerve. I've eaten there many times and never used their lot-they owe me at least 10 bicycle parkings!

Don't look now...

...but it appears that someone is posting on this blog again. June 20th. No posts since June 20th. Absolutely despicable. Atrocious. Embarrassing. What's even worse is that I spelled all three of those words incorrectly (four including "spelt"). My oh my. Anyways I think I'm back. We'll see. The reason why I stopped was because I was trying to concentrate on my studying and looking for ways to create time for that. Unfortunately 24 hours is just not nearly enough time in a day.

The blog was considered expendable by the big guys at the top so it was axed to save time. I think now I could probably spend a few minutes every couple of days posting a little something though so keep checking and I'll try not to disappoint.

What's happened since June 20th? Well a lot and not much I guess. I survived two birthdays (Fumiko's and my own). Applied to take a Japanese test. Bought a printer to help study for said test. Quit the gym (conscious decision). Quit reading (not a conscious decision). Went on strike for a couple of days (well actually only one) and almost flew head first off the front of my bike. Not all in that order of course. Oh we're also getting a new roommate on Saturday.

Here's an article I got from my Aunt Grainne about...hmm not sure how to describe it. Isolationism of the Japanese I suppose. Basically they have an island full of Japanese people and they want it to stay that way. There's a lot of latent racism in this country-I'm not sure if it's as bad as the article makes out but it's certainly a lot different from countries such as Canada. Anyways it's a great read so check it out.

Globe and Mail:Racism in Japan

I know some of you want to hear the boring details of my everyday life in Japan so here we go (and it even has relevance to the above link!):

My co-worker Peter (a really decent Scot) is moving in with us on Saturday. Today I helped him move a small piano (not really a piano but whatever those portable things are). Today happened to be a special garbage pick up day for all the garbage that doesn't usually get picked up (broken glass, umbrellas, etc). Anyways we're walking down the street, carrying Pete's piano and we come up to one of the garbage pick up spots. Next to the pick up spot are two large Jerry gas cans in black garbage bags and an old man. He comes up to us and using the universal symbol of crossed arms says, "Kore wa dame dayo!", which in Japanese means, "What the hell are you doing? You can't put those things here!" I was a little bit shocked. I can't understand how anybody could connect two foreigners carrying a piano down the street with "criminals" who don't put out their garbage properly. I can only assume that he assumed that since we were foreigners, we were the ones who had left the gas cans there. Quite a ridiculous situation but not too surprising-especially coming from an elderly man (or woman for that matter). They all seem close-minded, suspicious and cranky (even more so than old people usually are!)

Well that's it for today! Oh and my new favourite idiom:

"We've always been at war with EastAsia."

Any idea where that's from? Bonus points for anybody who doesn't have to Google it.

So anyways yeah I'm back in Japan. Flight was uneventful. They had a new (to me anyways) Boeing 777 which has TV's in the back over every chair. Touch screen too-I watched at least three movies and one tv show. There was a heck of a lot of Brazilians on the flight over. They were all wearing the same shirts so they must have been part of some kind of special group of some sort. I looked at them smugly as I passed them while they stood in front of pictures of Mt Fuji at the airport and took pictures of each other. "Tourists!" I thought to myself.

New blog is going well! Are you checking it out? Unfortunately I haven't discovered any Cucumber Pepsi's around, despite searching every convenience store in a one block radius (25). We'll see how much posting on my blog I do-not much would be the answer so far! I've solved the riddle of how to do everything I want to do in one day simply by cramming it all into one day. I have several things that I don't want to give up - I don't want to stop going to the gym, reading books, studying Japanese or playing videogames. I also have to fit the internet in there somewhere. Not to mention soccer and Fumiko. Basically I've been trying to limit myself to 30 minutes of computer a day to give my studying chances a boost. I have a stopwatch and everything! You wouldn't believe how fast 30 minutes can go buy. You can probably understand that that doesn't leave much time for posting on blogs!

I try to read an hour a night and I've been trying to get to bed by 12am. That means that I've got to read 60 minutes worth in the next 5 minutes. I've also been drinking a glass of red wine most nights with my dinner! Jared just said that he was finally able to put his finger on what's different about me since I got back. He says, "You got old."

Dinner and a movie

The Unveiling

Well it's up-my new blog. When I went home, the big news that was circulating about Japan was the man who dropped his 3-year old child off at the baby drop of centre. Weird, right? Well that's not even scratching the surface! There's no end to strange events coming out of Japan. Most of them you'll probably never hear about in Canada. Therefore I will be skimming the national news and try to filter out all the boring old stuff leaving you the reader with only the juiciest tidbits of information. Sometimes it will be comical, sometimes gruesome (think of boy who walks around with his mother's head in his bag), sometimes quirky, sometimes interesting, sometimes informational and possibly occasionally boring if there's ever an off day. One thing is certain-it will probably be updated more regularly than this blog. First, crazy stuff happens every day and secondly it's easy on the creative side of my brain-this stuff writes itself!

Anyways enough-check it out and see what you think:

notablenipponnews.blogspot.com

I'm back!

I had a great vacation in Canada and I returned to Japan safely and a little less white than when I left. Let me tell you, not having to suffer through 28.8kbps internet is just amazing. I'll have some pics up soon-it takes a while to get all unpacked and back into a normal way of life.

In other news, a bit of a teaser here, stay tuned for an altogether new blog by yours truly. This one has the potential to be a lot better than it's predecessor for the simple reason that it's not about me! Give me a week to get the kinks ironed out and get a bit of content on there and then it should be fit for release to general public consumption.

Back in God's Country

I wasn't planning on doing an update (and with this 28kbps internet I don't plan on doing another) but I was checking an email from my girlfriend and she said that she was watching the news and that two bad things had happened in Japan that day and she wanted to know if I could check from Canada. So I go onto the Japan Today website and these are the top headlines for today:

• Parents held for abuse in 2 cases
• Agriculture minister commits suicide
• Blair asked to help in Hawker case
• JR trains to have SOS stickers
• POWs want to meet emperor in UK
• Newborn baby found in garbage bag
• 2 girls arrested for abandoning baby
• Australia whale-watchers protest
• Bank worker held for sex assault
• 2-year-old girl stabbed in mall

I'm not sure which two bad things I'm supposed to be looking for. Actually today appears to be a good day-no parents killed their children and no children killed their parents! This is why I love Japan-it's such a happy happy place.

My new look

By the way I'm planning on growing a beard during my vacation so I apologize in advance for my scruffy, unkempt look. It's one of those things all teachers end up doing eventually.

Sorry!

Been quite a while I know. No excuses-I've just been lazy. The phone is great! I've updated my Books Read 2007 page. You might be surprised to see what I'm reading now! Just for anybody who doesn't yet know, I'll be coming home from May 15th to June 6th.

I finally did it!

I managed to kick the wanting to buy a cellphone obsession/habit. And I did it by buying a cellphone. Now if this sounds like an alcoholic kicking his need for alcohol by downing a bottle of vodka then you just aren't looking at it the right way. Anyways, I was able to satisfy my materialist needs for at least another year at least. I'm not sure just how advanced Japanese phones are over their North American cousins or if that is even the case at all. A quick glance at the Futureshop website shows that most cellphones now have Bluetooth (most of ours don't) but they also cost approximately $400 dollars. They all seem to be stuck at 1.3 megapixels for a camera as well. Well mine doesn't have Bluetooth but it only cost 80 bucks, comes with a enormous screen, has a 4 megapixel camera and has video calling (what a ridiculous feature). It's probably a year old as well. Most new cameras over here can play TV and it's all free. The phones just pick up the signal and you don't have to pay a darned thing.


Hopefully I'll be able to put some music on mine once I get the darned Japanese software sorted out. Do people text in Canada? I know I never did when I was home. We Canadians prefer to talk on the phone I think. Texting is huge over here. Actually it's emailing not texting. They've really got it down to an art. Before I used to just send regular text messages-now I send messages that blink, that go by on a ticker, that swing back and forth. Who knew it could be so fun!

U-RA-WA RED-ZU! We Love You!

I went to a soccer game with my friend Peter on Wednesday night. A team from my area (sort of) is playing in the Asian Champions League, a tournament sort of like the regular Champions League but without the pedigree. The game itself wasn't that great. Our team (Urawa Red Diamonds) were playing a team from Shanghai and neither team was all that impressive. And it was raining. Fortunately our seats were covered but it was still a little nippy. The fans, on the other hand, were absolutely fantastic. There was only a crowd of about 28,000 at the game (less than half of capacity) but I think about half of them were sitting behind the Urawa goal and were chanting ALL game long. It was amazing how one little area could fill the entire stadium with noise. And boy was it noisy-loudest thing I've ever heard in my life. Behind the goals is uncovered so you know those fans are hardcore, standing in the rain all game. Here are a few videos I took-unfortunately it was just with my camera so the sound doesn't really come through all that great.

Straight from the horses hoof

Here's some of the kanji that I've been learning . This has been written by myself and I did it on the pain program so it does look a little chicken scratchy. The first kanji picture means "friday" and the other one means "go", "come", "see" and "book".

Oops again!

Thanks to Crazy Conrad for letting me know about the problem with computers not being able to recognize asian languages and displaying only question marks instead. I'm afraid I have to apologize. I'm sorry to tell you that most of your computers are complete ignoramuses!! They know even less kanji than I do and let me tell you, that is pathetic! All joking aside, if I ever post any more kanji I'll try to post a picture of it or something that North American computers should have no problems displaying.

My hat

Yes I have an interesting hat. A couple of them actually. I'm only writing about them because of some inflammatory comments written by a sibling on my new addiction-Facebook. It's like MySpace I suppose. I honestly have no idea as I've never ever checked out MySpace before. Anyways back to fashion in Japan. One of the great things about living in Japan is that you never have to worry about feeling self-conscious. It's has a little to do with the fact that Tokyo has 15 million people that you'll never see twice and a lot to do with the fact that you can dress up as ridiculously as you want and walk out your front door perfectly confident that you'll be the least ridiculous looking person out there. This is a country where men think it's cool to dress in feminine fashions for God sakes. No amount of ridiculous hats will ever top that.

New kanji!

I've been browsing through my new kanji books and I think they've been a success already. I haven't actually learned that much from them but they have changed my attitude from 'kanji is stupid' to 'kanji is cool-sort of'. The neat thing about it is how it combines different kanji to form new words and sometimes gives a lot of insight into Japanese culture.

Take this is an example- the kanji for marriage 姻, is a combination of 女(woman) and 因(depend). I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Here's another one: the kanji for noisy or immoral is 姦, that is, three kanji of woman. And lastly, the kanji for strong or manly is 壮, the left-hand kanji being 'big' and the right-hand kanji being 'samurai'. Interesting as heck, I tell ya.

My own personal kanji has improved slightly. I now know (wait let me try and write it just to make sure I'm not lying).........Yep I remember! Here it is!

日　sun
月 moon
火 fire
水 water
木 wood
金 gold
土 earth
曜日 add this kanji to the above to make the days of the week
川 river

It's still fairly easy, straightforward stuff but it's a little more difficult than the numbers at least! It's interesting to see that some of the Japanese days of the week are similar to our own. For example, 日曜日 (sun+day) is the same as our Sunday and 月曜日 (moon+day) is the same as our Monday.

Oops...

Now I remember why none of my five pairs of work/casual shoes have laces in them. Oh well.
I have been learning Japanese by the way, I just have more trouble doing it on a regular basis than I do reading or playing videogames! But I'm coming along now. I was supposed to get some Kanji books today that I ordered from Amazon but I waited for them until 10:15 this morning and then took a quick trip to the grocery store. Upon my return, I realized that someone had called at approximately 10:17. Whoever it was didn't leave a message but if they had it would probably go something like 'Sorry we couldn't deliver your package today. We'll come again tomorrow morning two minutes after you leave for work.' Gah.

I am learning though. Just yesterday I learned to write my first kanji. Up till now I've taken the stance that I would rather be ignorant than learn that stupid picture language. Now I've had a complete reversal of attitude-I'm gonna learn that stupid picture language but I'm not going to enjoy it.

My first kanji was just the numbers 1-10 and actually it's ridiculously easy compared to some of the stuff out there. Let me see if I can do it for you:

一 1
二 2
三 3
四 4
五 5
六 6
七 7
八 8
九 9
十 10

See that was easy wasn't it! I've decided not to learn 0 partly because it actually isn't really used very often (for example 40 isn't 4-0 but rather 4-10 四十）and mostly because it looks like this: 零

New boots!

Came in the mail this morning. Interesting way of shopping that-I'm not sure if it's done back home or not. "Sorry we don't have any boots in that size right now. If you want to purchase them we can ship you a pair from one of our other stores in less than two days time."
Whaddaya think Emily? They're pretty cool eh? Maybe I'm ahead of the fashion curve instead of behind it!

The new organized me

You may remember last week I mentioned that I had purchased a new organizer/schedule book. Well here it is. As you can see, April is pathetically bare. I guess I'm not the social butterfly you thought I was. The truth is, ever since Grade 9 at least, I've been one huge pathetic failure at keeping a schedule book. Every year, at the beginning of the year, they would hand out a free schedule book and I was would use it and stick to it for about 2 days-maybe 3 days max. I never had one in university and last year I bought a nice Tintin one from Tokyu Hands which I think I got maybe 3 months use of before I completely forgot.

This time I'm determined to keep it going. My strategy is two-pronged. First, I bought one that is small enough to fit in my pocket. Anything bigger is too inconvenient to haul around. This way I can just whip it out of my pocket when I need to and scribble something down. Secondly, I use it as a backup wallet and carry about $80 cash around in it which ensures that I'm not going to just leave it in the bottom of my desk drawer.

Buying a schedule book at a hobby store is actually quite fun. There's a huge selection and then once you've picked out what you want they have all these things that you can buy to put in it, ie. train map, extra pages, calendar, ruler , pens, plastic inserts etc. It's quite fun actually. It's sort of like buying a stock car and then souping (sp?) it up with custom parts. I think the planner itself cost me close to 4000 yen and then I ended up spending another 2000 yen just on supplementary materials!

Still, when you have as spartan a life as mine, it's difficult to find the material to write in your schedule book. I almost cried this morning when my private class told me that there would be no class due to Golden Week on May 2nd because it gave me something to write in my book. Perhaps I should add it to my list of New Years Resolutions-all of which I'm keeping up with by the way (well except for that darned Japanese one).

All I can say is that God does not want me to get a DoCoMo phone. After being confounded twice before, I felt sure that maybe today was the day. To make a long story short, it turned out not to be. Last week they were on for 1 yen and today when I went with a fairly bi-lingual friend, there were none left at the store. Apparently the store in Shibuya had some but I wasn't going to go all that way. Anyways I suppose I should just take the hint and give up.

I did however manage to spend $170 on a new pair of Doc Martin boots! Wow that number looks a lot more shocking in dollars than it does in yen. 17,000 yen. Hmm, that doesn't look much better. Perhaps I was just in denial about spending more than $60 on a pair of boots.

My computer almost died the other day-it's working now but the future doesn't look good. Basically my computer works fine as long as I never turn it off. So basically it's going to stay on for the next year. But it's going to have to be turned off eventually which could cause problems.

Today was a fine day

Everything went right today except for the weather. That is to be expected since I am ame otoko (AH-MAY OH-TOE-KO-rain boy). It is natural for the weather to be cloudy on my day off, especially when the day before (my Friday) is absolutely glorious. That's just the way things are-I don't question it anymore. Besides, I don't feel guilty when I stay at home for most of the day.

My main goal for today was to go to the immigration office and pick up my new visa. I had applied for it a couple weeks before and now was the time to go get it. Things started off on the wrong foot when my internet train finder lied to me and told me that the train heading towards Ikebukuro was leaving at 8:14am when it was actually leaving at 8:12am. That meant of course that I had to wait for the 8:17, which meant I missed my connection for the rapid train at Ikebukuro which meant that I arrived at the immigration office almost 30 minutes after it opened. This may not seem like a big deal but anybody who's visited a place like this knows that at 9:04am the office will still be relatively calm and sparsely populated while at 9:28 it will be bureaucratic hell.

So I wasn't in a great mood until I got my passport back and the office worker pointed out that it was san nen-3 years. You can either get a one year visa or a three year visa and everybody knows that a three year visa is basically like hitting the jackpot-they don't hand those out very often. I was pondering coming home after this next contract and I'm probably still leaning that way but still, it's like a weight lifted that I don't need to depend on NOVA resigning me in order to stay in Japan longer.

Then coming home on the train, I almost lost my cell phone. I'm not sure if it fell out of my pocket or what happened but I was transferring to a more rapid train when this gorgeous Japanese girl came chasing after me and tapped me on the back and handed me my phone-I was touched by the gesture. Many people might not have risked missing their own train in order to give some dolt a cell phone he can't keep track of.

Then I stopped back at Ikebukuro and went into the local Matsuya (sort of a fast food restaurant for Japanese food) and found out that not only is their chicken curry meal 50 yen cheaper than it used to be, it also has actual stuff in it now. You know like potatoes, and onions and even some meat.

Finally, since I was having such a good day, I decided that I deserved a little present. I stopped into Tokyu Hands to browse. First I looked at some really cool alarm clocks that tell you the temperature and the humidity level and even had barometers but in the end I settled on picking up a small schedule book-small enough to put in my pocket.

Don't worry...

...I'm still alive! I was not the one person killed in the big earthquake on the weekend. It was actually on the opposite side of Japan and I didn't even feel it. In fact, I can't really remember the last time I felt a relatively big one.

I'm working on this little Powerpoint presentation and darn these things take a lot of time! Now I know why I never did one in university. Anyways I'm working on the fashion section right now. I've already found a picture of young Japanese men's fashion and put a big slash through it:

But now I need to find some pictures of what normal high school kids wear for casual clothes in Canada. The only problem is that I can't find anything! So if you know where I can find some pictures of whatever is trendy in Canada right now please email me some or put some links in the comment section.

The things I get myself into...

I'm making a Powerpoint presentation for one of my students who is going to Canada for three years for highschool. This has created somewhat of a conundrum for me for two reasons; A) I have no idea how to make a Powerpoint presentation, and B) I usually don't do stuff.

I really like the kid and I'm sure it would help him out a lot to have a bit of background on the place he's going to (Vancouver.) So I'll do my best to come with something professional. I've spent the night downloading pictures I can use and researching stuff and darn I've forgotten how much work doing research is!

A suggestion

As some of you know, I'm not exactly the most reliable poster. It comes and goes. I've been scratching my head for a while trying to come up with a way for you lovely people to check for new posts without actually having to come to my page to check for new posts. I think I have finally found a solution-sort of.

This will only work if you use Google as your homepage. If you don't already use Google as your homepage then what the heck is wrong with you? Google could come out with a pet rock and I would fully expect it to be able to do great things. Anyways, if you have regular Google as a homepage then what you have to do is change it from Classic Home to Personalized Home. If you click on the picture that I've added, you can see that I've added lots of websites that I regularly peruse, such as the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, CBC, my email account, and some other games related pages. So basically I can look at all my favourite pages without ever having to leave my homepage-isn't that great? Bring on that pet rock Google! If only I had enough money to purchase a piece of your stock! If you look at the bottom right-hand side, you can see my blog! With all my latest posts. Right on the homepage! And if you see that I've updated my blog, you can just click on that link or click on my blog name and it should take you directly to my blog.



Convinced? If so, read on and I'll provide some more details. If not, go back to what you were doing and wait in anticipation of my next update!

Ok, it's too late to turn back now! Here we go...


First, go to regular Google and click on Personalized Home in the top right hand side of the page.

Then, click on the button that says Show my Page on the right hand side. Before you do this, you can check or uncheck some options if you want to personalize your page.
Then, once you have your personalized page, click Add More on the right hand side of the page.

You should see lots of things that you can add. To add my blog, you need to go up to the text entry box and click on Add by URL beside it.

You should see this pop up underneath it:

In that text box, enter this address: http://brendansboringblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

That should be all it takes! Let me know if you have any problems.

The problem...

...with a hobby like botany/horticulture is that it is just so darned slow. I believe I first started this hobby on Monday morning and I've yet to receive a single return on my investment in the form of a new shoot coming through the ground. Maybe in the next couple of days something will show up. In the meantime, Jared has been psycho-analyzing me (he's got a bachelors in psychology which he is constantly using in the name of evil) and he says it's obvious that I want to have children. I'm not really sure that is correct although I have to admit I never really thought about it before-I just thought it would be fun to grow some plants. If I were to psycho-analyze myself I would say that I secretly want to have a garden.

Books and White Day

First of all, I managed to survive White Day perfectly well-whew! I dodged a bullet this year!! I was sick on Valentines Day and Fumiko had bad hay fever on White Day-so in other words it was a perfect year! I picked out some Godiva chocolates for Fumiko, along with some strawberry smelling stuff from The Body Shop and and Nintendo DS game-Sudoku.

I'm loving Amazon. For ￥２６００ (about $25) I picked up a good one foot worth of books. If you pay more than 1500 yen then shipping is free. They delivered in two days! Unbelievable. I'm still reading and although February was a slow month, I think I've read more books this year than I have in the past two years. Anyways, I picked up War and Peace (ouch), The Count of Monte Cristo (ouch ouch) and the first couple books of a new series by Jonathan Stroung (or something like that-check Books Read 2007 on the right-hand side for details and links). So far I'm only 90 pages in but I'm loving it. If you're a big fan of the Harry Potter series and you've read all the books so far then I would definitely recommend giving this trilogy a go. It's a bit more advanced than Harry Potter but younger fans (high school age) should have no problem with it. The author's "thing" is that his books have lots of footnotes. Unlike most footnotes, these are actually funny and interesting to read. I think I picked up the first two books for only about 600 yen each and so far it gets a big two thumbs up from me.

My Green Thumb

In an effort to become even more well-rounded than I already am (cough), I've decided that I'm going to take up horticulture-or botany or whatever you call that thing where you put seeds in dirt. We live in a ridiculously cold house but one nice thing about it is that on the second floor it has a ridiculously huge window that gets sun for most of the day (and makes a wonderful viewing area for the neigbours to observe foreigners in their natural habitat, lounging around in nothing but their underwear during the hot summer months). I've decided to take advantage of that fact this spring and actually give this house a little domesticalization.

I've spent the past week looking at different planting pots in different stores which are quite cheap but I decided to start simple and just put the seeds in plastic cups first and then transmit them to bigger planters once they've grown a little. I have no idea if this is the right way to go about doing it or not. So far I've planted four different kinds of plants: cosmos, morning glory (they're actually soaking in water right now), zinnias and dwarf (I hope!) sunflowers. As you can see in the pictures I've got a whole little greenhouse going! I wasn't too impressed with the soil I bought so I'm probably going to by a different bag tonight and mix up another batch. I'll let you know how the progress grows.

White Day again

Otherwise known as "Empty your wallet" Day. Hopefully things go well!

I've updated my Books Read 2007 page. I just went on a spending spree on Amazon.jp!

Random Saipan musings

One thing I discovered while in Saipan is that the Japanese obviously have not yet invented the pedestrian crossing button. You know that button you push if you want to cross the road at the traffic lights. There was one such crossing next to the duty free shopping mall in the main shopping area of Saipan. The Japanese would just stand there, not noticing the button on the pole, and the light would absolutely not change for them. Out of mercy, I would push the button for them as I walked by and instantaneously the light changed to a 'walk' signal!

I'm back!! (again)

Another 20 day absence. I got sick again-or rather my second sickness took a turn for the worse. Anyways I'm better now but I think I missed most of the month of February and the beginning of March. Most of my New Year's resolutions have gone down the drain. I haven't studied Japanese in a month, I haven't been to the gym in a month, I've only just started reading again.
Anyways hopefully tomorrow will be the first day in the beginning of a new era. If things go well I'll have done some studying, gone to the gym and gotten my moptop cut-it's been over a good two months since I went to the barbershop and it's starting to get out of control. You know it's time for a cut when your co-workers start making fun of your hair.

Might be a busy weekend for me this weekend-I've just signed a new contract (most likely my last one) and I need to go and get a new visa from the immigration office. Wednesday is White Day, ie. Valentines Day for women so I've got that horror show to go through-I only hope I survive in one piece.

I'm back!!

You guys are getting spoiled if you think an 11 day absence is a long time! Jeez, back in the good ol' days I sometimes went months without posting! The reason for my absence is a bad cold, my second in two months. I can't wait for the 'cold' season to be over. I've had it for over a week now and it's caused me to stop posting and stop doing lots of other things!

Speaking of the cold season being over, is there something wrong with my computer because it just told me that the temperature for the next few days for Toronto is supposed to be something ridiculous like 22, 23 and 24 degrees Celcius!

It's February-do you know where your New Year's resolutions are??

I'm happy to say that it's eight days into February and I'm still following up on my New Year's resolutions. I'm still reading quite regularly, I'm still studying Japanese, I'm still staying away (as much as possible) from the computer in the mornings and I'm not sure if this was one of my original resolutions but so far this year I've been very successful at it so I'm going to add it henceforth:going to the gym four days a week. That is all.

An ode to my T-shirt

WORLD
SOUND
of the live with a
certain hall completely

Liveliness

IN A MORNING TO HULL. MY PEACH AND HULL HAVE
DRESSED UP. ONLY I AM JEANS. THE INTERVIEW
FINISHED, AND BOILED RICE WAS EATEN AND IT RETURNED!!


In the cold smell of winter,
a child feels growing up certainly slowly
and becomes a feeling
solitary without knowing why.
It goes to studio from daytime.
It is sound adjustment
of DVD in the after studio.
It is a word about my first DVD
work. This document
movie looked
at the form where it seemed
to be best at last,
through trial
and error and the
idea of various edits.
It is the method of
carrying out
full inclusion

Am I so fat?

I was showing my vacation pictures to some of the students at my school and one of the older gentlemen commented that I was a little fat. I know he was joking-sort of. This is a country where being skinny is a must. In North America, the perfect form for a guy is to be big and well muscled. Here, it's to be a skinny shrimp. I play indoor soccer with guys who are in perfect shape, no fat on their body whatsoever and they play in these tight nylon pants that no Canadian guy would be caught dead in. Why? I asked. Weight down they replied. Sheesh! I've been in better shape I admit, but I've also been in worse.

Fortunately, Fumiko wasn't nearly as critical of my body as she usually is. During our vacation she called me fat or tried to grab a handful of my waist ohh only about...136 times.

Nova in the news

6 English-language teachers at Nova held for alleged drug possession

TOKYO — Six teachers of English at Nova Co's language schools in Saitama Prefecture were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of possessing cocaine and cannabis. According to the police, Errin Valentine, 32, another teacher at Nova and an American, who was arrested last November for possessing cocaine in Tokyo, has told investigators he bought the drug at his colleagues' request, leading to the arrest of the six.

Adam Renwick, a 36-year-old Australian living in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, and five other foreign nationals are suspected of possessing some 1.5 grams of cocaine and some 8.2 grams of cannabis on Nov. 19 in Tokyo's Roppongi area, the police said. The six were teaching English at six branch schools of Nova in Saitama Prefecture. Valentine, who is charged with drug control law violations, had been soliciting others for drug purchases through emails sent over cell phones, the police said.

Wow! Six Nova teachers charged for drug possession and I am very happy to say that none of them are me! You don't need to worry too much about me. I'm so far removed from the drug scene that my lack of 'drug knowledge' is embarrassing. I don't even know what 1.5 grams of cocaine or marijuana would even look like!

Couple of interesting things of note. If you are a criminal in Japan then you should be very afraid of the Japanese justice system. Rights are a foreign concept apparently. You'll notice that the main guy was arrested back in November. It is now January. That means that he had been rotting away in a Japanese cell for a good three months before he caved and snitched on his friends. I suppose now they'll give him a better sentence.

Secondly, the other six teachers have been arrested for suspicion of possession of drugs on Nov. 19-is that an actual crime? Being suspected of possessing a small amount of drugs on a certain date three months ago? How in the world could then even prove such a charge?

A few panoramas

A few panoramas from Saipan. They're pretty big so only click on them if you and your internet connection are brave.

First up is a view of Saipan from the beach of Manigaha island.
Secondly is a look at Suicide cliff. Unfortunately it's difficult to get a good sense of scale with this picture-that cliff is HUGE.

Lastly, we have a view of the old Japanese airport as seen from the top of Suicide Cliff and looking out onto Banzai Cliff. It's sad that there's two of them, within only about a kilometer of each other. I've heard of the military strategy of defence in depth, but suicide in depth? That's just ridiculous.

Saipan pictures - snorkeling/war related

Now tell me this isn't the life. Combining a new love (snorkeling) with an old love (looking at blown up stuff) and what you get is pure heaven. From our hotel you can see two Sherman tanks sitting in the water from over 60 years ago. I was determined from the beginning that I would not be leaving Saipan until I had a gander at at least one of them and on the last day I swam out (it's pretty far!) It makes a great home for tropical fish now.

Saipan pictures-war related (cont'd)

More Battle of Saipan pictures. The first two describe how the Japanese planned to rebuff the invasion and how it actually went down.



Suicide Cliff overlooking the Last Command Post. It must have been well protected from any American artillery.


Next, a hodgepodge of Japanese military equipment. Mostly anti-aircraft guns I suspect.





Side view of the last command post. I hope that large hole didn't suddenly appear during the battle-that would have been painful.

Saipan pictures-war related

There's a crapload of war-related material left on the island but it's not well documented. Obviously someone decided that the beach would be a bigger draw for tourists than learning about history. The following three pictures are a collection Japanese armaments collected together at the base of Suicide Cliff right next to the last command post at the northern end of the island.


Japanese T-95 light tank. Surely even the Sherman would have made short work of these little Matchbox toys.

Me again, this time with a better sense of scale. It's slightly sunk into the ground but you get the idea.

I'm not sure what kind of gun this is. If anybody knows the answer then please let me know.


These next two are pictures of what I assume must be naval guns that are parked on Maneegaha island (a small island just off the coast of Saipan where I took all the snorkeling pictures. One has been dragged out into the open and a second one still sits in its destroyed bunker.