Update on the Saipan update

We've received conflicting weather reports from other reputable websites that the weather will actually be sunny and pleasant next week. I suppose there's nothing to be done except go and hope for the best! Please be sunny! I promise to stop being such a travel Scrooge if I relax on a white sandy beach and go snorkeling in blue water!

An observation

The problem with living in a country for an extended period of time where nobody speaks your language (at a glance) is that you start to develop of very bad habit of saying what you are thinking. If one were not careful, one might be apt to get in trouble.

Countdown to Saipan

Only a day and a half until it's time to head off to Saipan. Of course I was overjoyed to check out the weather website tonight and find out that the forecast for our vacation is: cloudy/sun, showers, partly cloudy, showers. See this is why I don't travel. Or this is why I don't plan travel anyways. You can't control the weather. Why would I want to spend $750 to experience rainy weather in Saipan for four days when I can do it perfectly adequately from my own house for free? Bah. Hopefully the weather forecasters will be wrong.

Statistically speaking

I just want to reaffirm to everybody that I am relatively safe in Japan. Japan is not a dangerous country. You are more likely to be scammed than you are to be mugged. In fact, judging from the newspaper that I read every day, the only way you are likely to encounter any sort of violence is if you:

• are a high school student
• are a high school principal
• are living with your family
• are living within a 50-kilometer radius of your family

If you are a high school student then you may suffer from bullying. I don't suspect there is much physical violence involved but it probably has something to do with the self-inflicted violence students put themselves through as student suicides skyrocket in Japan.

If you are a high school principal then you might also be inclined to take matters into your own hands if a) one of your students commits suicide and it was found that the school should have been able to prevent it or b) the school curriculum was screwed up and now all the students in the graduating class can't get into university because they didn't take the appropriate courses.

If you live with your family then you will be killed. I'm not sure which is more frightening-the number of parents who kill their children, or the number of children who kill their parents. It is an extremely rare day when I open the newspaper up to page two (National section) and I don't see some story (written in brief of course) about some family member killing some other family member.

Since I don't fit into any of those categories I tend to feel very safe in my environment. Of course having to bike on a 1.5 lane street everyday doesn't help. It's a little frightening. Traffic can sometimes be ridiculous. Everyday I average approximately 3.2 near misses and statistically speaking, I have a 6% chance of being run over just getting out of bed.

Social life updates

On Tuesday I went to dinner with Fumiko at the house of the woman who introduced the two of us over a year ago. It was quite strange actually. Strange for me anyways. Going for dinner with your girlfriend at another couple's house. Very adult-like. A first for me! Anyways we had quite a good time. These are the highlights:

• they were impressed with my chopstick skills (I hope so after two years!)
• they were impressed with my sashimi eating skills (raw fish is not my fav)
• they were impressed by how much I was drinking (what? they were drinking more than me!)
• they were impressed with my knowledge of japanese (oh come on! now you're just insulting my intelligence. Let's be realistic with the compliments please).
• they have a $2500 "massage chair" in their living room

One other observation. Fumiko does not react well to situations where she can't participate in the conversation due to language ability constraints. Actually it would probably be more accurate to say that she's traumatized by it. I thought she did a fantastic job when she went to Canada but she swears she won't go back until her english improves. I, on the other hand, am perfectly happy to sit at the table in complete ignorance, totally oblivious to the conversation that is going on around me. Throw me a bone every 10-15 minutes and then go back to your conversation. I'll go back to nibbling on food and telling the dog to suwatte nasai or dame whenever it jumps up around the table.

Back on the wagon (the studying one that is)

I'm happy to say that so far, my resolution to study (or was it to learn?) more Japanese is going great. I'm studying everyday. So far it's mostly just review but I hope to start diving into my textbooks soon enough. My other resolutions are going well too-whatever they were. I think one of them had something to do with reading more. If you've been following along in my Books Read 2007 tab, you'll see that I'm currently reading three books right now. What that means is that I'm actually only reading two books and I stare at the other one in frustration and bewilderment. I'll give you one guess which one that is.

I might not update the list for a while because my reading time is sort of broken up. I read the speech book at work during my lunchbreak and the Civil War book at night when I go to bed for about an hour. For the other 'book' (it's actually a comic) I spend far more time with my nose stuck in the dictionary than I do actually reading. In fact I think that book will soon be coming down off the list. I've leveled myself down and bought a 'Naruto' book instead. Some of you may have heard of the Naruto anime. Anyways I'm starting to wonder if that might be too difficult to start with and am considering leveling down again and purchasing a Doraemon comic. Soon I'll be down to simply looking a children's picture books. Bah, I'll catch on eventually I think. At the very least, at least I'll be able to practice my hirigana and katakana reading skills which are, at the moment, ridiculously slow.

This is just a test...

Part of our ongoing efforts here to make things as enjoyable as possible for you, the reader.

An ode to Japan

I wish your smile is
shining.
So, you can feel the
private dining we make
the comfortable space.
It's good for the heart.
Relaxible Harmony
ITALIAN TOMATO Cafe' Jr.
will can be grand

relaxible cafe.

I need to write this stuff down

I had planned a lot more posts, but knowing that I can sometimes be a little unreliable with posting in general, I thought maybe I should try to space things out a little. The only problem with this idea is that I can't remember for the life of me all the brilliant stuff I was going to foist upon you. So instead I'll just post this Fumiko skating. I was standing taking the picture, Fumiko was standing skating and we were surrounded my 354 other Japanese people simultaneously falling on their buttocks.

Strangest advice you've ever given?

I had an interesting class tonight. My student is sort of a legend around our school. He's been coming for at least the past two years that I've been working here and he's a bit of an oddball. Not quite as socially adept as most people. He's got quite a good vocabulary but unfortunately he can't create an english sentence to save his life.

Anyways we were practicing dealing with advice tactfully and one of the topics of advice dealt with parenting. He suggested that "don't be violence to your baby" which I then converted to english "you shouldn't hit your child." I then realized that he was saying that you shouldn't use physical means to punish your children so I changed the word to "spank". Anyways he thought this was funny and told me that sometimes he 'spanked' his cats when they got into the dry food bags. This would probably be another example of using improper words in his sentences.

Anyways, it allowed me to say to him as an example, "Akihiro, do you mind if I make a suggestion? Maybe you shouldn't spank your cat!" I'm happy to say that I said this loudly enough to cause the teacher in the adjoining room to lose her train of thought in the middle of her lesson.

Books Read 2007

Read (out of 5 stars)
Hitching Rides With Buddha by Will Ferguson (****)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (*****)
An American Dream by Norman Mailer (***)
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (*****)
Great American Speeches by Gregory Suriano (***)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (****)
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carre (****)
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud (*****)
The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud (*****)

Reading
The Cambridge History of Warfare by Geoffery Parker
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix

Queued
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

What's your New Years resolution?

I've actually got two this year. I'm not a big believer in self-improvement (how do you improve on perfection?) but this year I decided that I wanted to change a couple of things. First I decided that, as an english teacher, it's sort of an abomination that I don't really read any more. So I resolved to read more than I did last year. So far, I've already read two books which is one more than I read last year so I can quit which is great because I like accomplishing easily achievable goals.
My second resolution was to study (and therefore learn,) more Japanese. The only problem I have with studying Japanese is that it's written in a foreign language and that tends to dissuade me a little. However I just bought two new textbooks yesterday, to go along with the two that I bought previously and the two that I inherited from other people after they've moved or gone home. This should lead you to one of two conclusions-either:
Wow, Brendan sure is serious about learning Japanese!
or
Brendan must think that if he keeps buying textbooks at the current rate, eventually the information held within will be too much for the bookshelf to bear and will diffuse across the bedroom and into his ear while he sleeps.

Either of those could be true-we'll just have to wait and see which one it is.

Travel update

I'm going to Saipan. That's all I know right now. I know the date (end of January) but that's about it. I'm great at going places, just not so good at planning to go to places. Saipan is a small, paradise island in the Pacific ocean surrounded by white sand and light blue water. At least that's what I'm hoping. I admit that it's not an educated guess but it's certainly a lot better than the last time I heard about Saipan, when my ex-roommate told me she was going and I replied, "You're going to China!??"

I actually know a bit more about Saipan than that. It's better known among the war-geeks as being the site of a fairly major WWII battle, after which the losing Japanese side did their best lemming impressions and we "Allied" children would forevermore shout "Banzai" whenever we jumped into the swimming pool.

Oops I did it again...

Looks like I pulled one of my disappearing acts again. I knew it was a bad idea to make all of those posts on one night and shoot my bolt. Actually I have a perfectly good (sort of) excuse this time. Right after Christmas, things got pretty busy with New Years and I spent several years (oops I mean days) with Fumiko, going to Yokahama (a first), and going shopping and going ice skating (also a first).

Then after that, just as my holiday was ending (around January 3rd) I managed to get sick with one of those colds I seem to get once every three months. The problem is that they tend to be monster colds and I get a feeling that it's actually the same cold and it merely goes into hibernation for a quarter of a year and then it rears its ugly head again.

So after at least a good week of being sick (which I spent either working or being in hibernation myself) followed by a few days of 'nothingness', all of a sudden it's January 18th and I've missed my sister's birthday by nine days (Happy Birthday, Laura!). Anyways I'm back and I'm better (other than this cough that won't go away.)
Stay tuned for future updates.