Brendan's Boring Blog

No more teachers, no more books!

2009-07-07T16:29:00.002+09:00

Woohoo last day of school! Actually yesterday was the last day but I had to go in today and finish up with the marking. Took me all morning! I really should have done some of it at home last night but I wanted to play videogames instead-man is Fallout 3 ever an amazing game!

So now I've got 2 weeks to sit on my hands. I guess I should use the time to pack. Of course I still have my private lessons to teach and I should try to get in a little sun tanning as well so I don't look too white when I come home.

I'm pondering whether or not to get a Blackberry. I love technology but I'm not really one of those people who goes out and buys something the second they see it. On the other hand, I am one of those people who get an idea in their head and then can think of nothing else until they go ahead and actually do it. The tech geek inside me is fighting the realist inside me. The tech geek loves the keyboard and the email anywhere while the realist is asking, just how much will it cost you to cancel if you ever decided to come home before the two year contract is up? I'm sure you can guess who is winning!

What is this-a new post?

2009-07-03T19:28:00.003+09:00

Just updating for the fun of it really. I can't believe it's been so long since the last post! I'm just waiting to head back to Canada right now. I've got one single day left of school and then 19 days until I depart.

I've started a new blog (mainly for my Japanese students) which will be detailing my summer vacation in Canada. If you're interested in seeing it then leave a comment. Otherwise I may email you with the link itself.

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

2007-12-03T14:40:00.001+09:00

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

2007-11-17T11:40:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-11-03T22:58:00.000+09:00

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

2007-11-03T22:32:00.000+09:00

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

2007-11-03T22:01:00.000+09:00

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!!

2007-10-27T20:57:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-10-18T00:02:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-10-13T23:57:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-10-11T00:13:00.000+09:00

...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.

2007-06-20T23:44:00.000+09:00

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

2007-06-15T08:46:00.001+09:00

The Unveiling

2007-06-09T22:49:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-06-07T23:57:00.000+09:00

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

2007-05-29T12:28:00.000+09:00

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

2007-05-09T13:37:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-05-07T21:41:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-04-15T23:13:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-04-13T08:33:00.000+09:00

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

2007-04-12T01:19:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-04-10T14:53:00.000+09:00

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

2007-04-10T14:40:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-04-10T00:41:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-04-06T12:02:00.000+09:00

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!

2007-04-05T10:26:00.000+09:00

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

2007-04-05T00:03:00.000+09:00

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).

2007-04-03T21:54:00.000+09:00

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

2007-03-27T17:50:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-03-26T08:41:00.000+09:00

...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...

2007-03-24T23:37:00.000+09:00

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

2007-03-23T22:09:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-03-22T12:30:00.000+09:00

...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

2007-03-19T12:15:00.000+09:00

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

2007-03-19T11:53:00.000+09:00

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

2007-03-13T22:28:00.000+09:00

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

2007-03-11T22:08:00.000+09:00

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)

2007-03-11T21:53:00.000+09:00

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!!

2007-02-20T19:00:00.000+09:00

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??

2007-02-09T00:05:00.000+09:00

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

2007-02-08T23:48:00.000+09:00

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?

2007-02-06T01:47:00.000+09:00

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

2007-02-04T22:03:00.000+09:00

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

2007-02-04T09:14:00.000+09:00

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

2007-02-04T09:06:00.000+09:00

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)

2007-02-04T08:23:00.000+09:00

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

2007-02-04T08:04:00.000+09:00

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.

Saipan pictures - snorkeling

2007-02-03T22:55:00.000+09:00

Ok snorkeling is basically the coolest thing I've ever done. So many amazing, colourful fish. On the surface all you see is blue water-poke your head under an inch and suddenly you see a complex, living biosphere.

Oh God, it's horrible! Horrible!

Saipan pictures cont'd

2007-02-03T22:42:00.000+09:00

Lots of palm trees.

Our rented car-a first for me.

Fumiko doing her best Indian impression.

A cutie flower girl!

Saipan pictures

2007-02-03T22:26:00.000+09:00

Ok here goes. These are the beach pictures. I won't put you through too many of them I promise. This is my first time to see white beaches and blue water in real life. I knew places like this had beautiful blue water, I just never knew how many shades of blue they have! It was ridiculous.
I like this picture-I'm not sure why.

It doesn't get much bluer or whiter than this.

I'm not actually sure if Fumiko can swim. I've never seen her close to water without her "inner tube".

Ohh I look pretty white in this picture. Fortunately I don't look quite so fat as Fumiko tells me I am!

I'm back!!!!!

2007-02-03T21:54:00.000+09:00

Back from four glorious days and three glorious nights on a beautiful sun-filled island. I'm not sure where to start. Basically it was a fantastic vacation. The highlight was definitely going snorkeling for the first time. It's truly the closest thing to flying. I had all sorts of comments I was going to make but I can't really remember them right now so I'll just post some pictures. Perhaps later it will come to me.

Update on the Saipan update

2007-01-28T22:03:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-28T21:53:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-28T21:31:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-26T23:39:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-26T23:17:00.000+09:00

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)

2007-01-26T23:02:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-01-24T13:17:00.000+09:00

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

An ode to Japan

2007-01-24T13:02:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-19T22:56:00.000+09:00

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?

2007-01-19T22:40:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-18T23:28:00.000+09:00

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?

2007-01-18T23:06:00.000+09:00

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

2007-01-18T22:12:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-01-18T21:38:00.000+09:00

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.

One more!

2006-12-26T23:29:00.000+09:00

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

A few more Christmas pictures

2006-12-26T23:05:00.000+09:00

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.

I'm a socialite!

2006-12-26T22:26:00.000+09:00

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:

A sweater from Seibu.
A pair of pants from Seibu.
A Muppets Christmas Carol DVD.
WWII t-shirt from back home (and some cash that I haven't spent yet!)
A book from Emily. Hitching Rids With Buddha by Will Ferguson. I'm seven chapters in and so far it's a darn good read! Check it out if you can-his writing about Japan is much more interesting and funny than I can possibly produce.

From me:

A ring from Seibu. (pics to come).
A framed photo of us in Kyoto.
Some english books starting with some Peanuts for beginning readers, then a slightly harder Beauty and the Beast and then finally the Charlotte's Web novel.

Oh I got off on a bit of a tangent there. I was talking about my emergence as a socialite. Anyways, for the third night in a row (Christmas) I went out after work with Pete and his roomie Ross to an tabehodae (all you can eat) nomihodae (all you can drink) yakiniku restaurant. So we stuffed ourselves on meat that we cooked ourselves for two hours, and then after that we dropped into the arcade (see above) and then finally met up with a few of the school staff ladies who had just finished their own Christmas dinner and went out to The King George pub.

Stay tuned for more info regarding my upcoming travel horrors.

Blog update

2006-12-26T22:22:00.000+09:00

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.

Tokyo-now with 100% more rain

2006-12-26T22:05:00.000+09:00

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!

Brendan-now with100% more PSP

2006-12-21T03:37:00.000+09:00

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.

Direct from Associated Press

2006-12-20T20:53:00.000+09:00

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.

It's a wonderful winter wonderland-in my house!

2006-12-19T13:11:00.000+09:00

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.

Your transition to the Dark side is now complete

2006-12-18T01:33:00.000+09:00

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.

To South America! (or somewhere in the general hemisphere)

2006-12-18T01:06:00.000+09:00

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.

Christmas Grinch

2006-12-18T00:41:00.000+09:00

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.

Christmas shopping in Japan-I wish I were elsewhere

2006-12-11T00:15:00.000+09:00

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!

A few more pictures of Kyoto...

2006-12-10T23:57:00.000+09:00

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.

Monthly update (with Kyoto pics!)

2006-12-09T00:10:00.000+09:00

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!

By the way...

2006-11-13T00:26:00.000+09:00

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!)

Miscellanea

2006-11-12T23:39:00.000+09:00

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.

I could have had a Playstation 3!

2006-11-11T21:37:00.000+09:00

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.

Updates 3! I'm fat

2006-11-09T12:44:00.000+09:00

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.

Updates 2!

2006-11-08T21:11:00.000+09:00

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)

Updates!

2006-11-08T20:46:00.000+09:00

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!

Our new house update

2006-10-07T00:20:00.000+09:00

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 !

Further adventures of P-chan

2006-10-05T00:25:00.000+09:00

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.

Housing in Japan

2006-10-04T14:20:00.000+09:00

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!

Introducing P-chan

2006-09-25T01:50:00.000+09:00

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!

Go Honda Go!

2006-08-31T21:49:00.000+09:00

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.

Monthly post - come and get some

2006-08-16T12:01:00.000+09:00

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!

Bit late for the World Cup but...

2006-07-21T01:14:00.000+09:00

These are some amazing foozball skills. Lets see if You Tube works on here.

By the way...

2006-07-20T01:13:00.000+09:00

For those of you in the Georgian Bay area, you'll be amazed (appalled?) to hear that at this very moment I am listening to AM 560 CFOS on my computer.

Post o' the month!

2006-07-19T23:51:00.000+09:00

That's what it seems I've been reduced to lately. Sorry bout that! It's not lack of time nor lack of whatever-just lack of motivation I suppose. Mom will be happy to hear that I actually did something 'Japanese' the other weekend. Saturday evening after work I came home and then with Jared and his 'friend' we went to the station to go to the phone store and meet Fumiko. Then we decided that we would have okonomiyaki. It's basically a big pancake with meat and cabbage and covered in mayonaise and fish...stuff.

It was a great time. We went to Seiyu and I bought a huge griddle for about $40 and we picked up some fireworks as well. Cooking the okonomiyaki was great fun. For the first 'pancake' the Japanese folks did their stuff and then the second time it was the North Americans' turn. The best part is trying to flip it because all the pressure is on you. Then after we had okonomiyaki, the Japanese cooked us yakisoba and then after that (about 10pm) we headed to the local park with an entire bag full of fireworks. We had all sorts of fun and didn't lose any fingers. I went to the 100yen store and bought 1000 yen more worth of fireworks so hopefully when this darn rainy season stops!

Finally here's a video of the fish stuff on top of the okonomiyaki. You can see how the heat makes the flakes move around as if it's alive.

Fil's pregnant!

2006-06-23T00:05:00.000+09:00

I'm not sure if I'm breaking the terms of any NDA but some of you might be interested to know that my good friend Phil from university (who also happens to go by a number of aliases on this blog such as Crazy Cooter) will be having a child sometime in October. How he managed to get himself in such a condition I'm not really sure! But congrats anyways. If you're considering any japanese names (of females at least) then feel free to hit me up for some advice! A couple that I like: Ai (love), Sakura (cherry blossoms), or Yuki (snow)

Would you like some wine with that couch?

2006-06-22T23:26:00.000+09:00

So I went furniture shopping with Fumiko last week. I've been assured that that is a sure sign of a completely domesticated boyfriend. All I can say in my defense is that I had no idea we were going in the first place-we were shopping in Shinjuku and since we just happened to be in the neighbourhood...
It actually turned out to be pretty interesting though so I would probably do over again.

I don't know for sure but I think I can say with a sense of confidence that you've never experienced furniture shopping like this. This is exactly how it goes:

you walk into an upscale building about 7 or 8 stories tall and go up to the front counter
they ask you for your membership card and fill out a short questionaire for you regarding the purpose of your visit
you are then led over and sat down (they pull out the chairs for you) at a table where you wait until a man (or woman) dressed up in a suit comes over and introduces themselves and hands you your business card
they then take any packages that you happen to be carrying and put them away in a safe place somewhere and give you a number so that you can get them back when you leave-who wants to shop while encumbered?
they then proceed to guide you around the entire store. That's right-there's no casual browsing here. For every customer in the store there is some guy in a suit giving the ins and outs of all the furniture
at the end of your excursion, should you decide to buy or at least reserve a piece of furniture, you are then led to yet another set of tables where they sit you down and a nice lady brings you a glass of tea or orange juice (your preference)
after all the neccessary documents or information has passed hands, your guide will fold up the receipt, put it in an envelope and hand it to you (with both hands of course,) whereupon you hand him your number and he goes and retrieves your packages
finally he walks you to the door, bids you goodbye and bows to you

And that's that! We got a couch (by "we" I mean that I followed Fumiko and the salesman around the store, uncomprehending of the strange language that was a fusion of japanese and "furniturese.") Lord knows you'd never catch me in a store like that on my own. I'm quite proud of the fact that we have two "pleather" couches from the recycle shop for a grand total of about 15,000 yen. Less than 1/10th of the new couch.

A virtual smorgasborg

2006-06-22T23:14:00.000+09:00

Not sure about the spelling in the title. Jeez it's been a long time since my last post. I gotta start posting more often so that I don't have to start off all the time by saying that. I suppose there comes a point where you just get used to living here and everything turns into status quo...or maybe not-this is Japan after all.

Here's a link that you might be interested in checking out. I'm putting it up at the begining because I'm sure some of you have trouble making it to the end of my posts. Basically if you're interested in what people are wearing in Tokyo right now then this looks like the site to check out. They seem to take pictures of five different major areas in Tokyo every week so you can see exactly what the fashion is like. Some of it is quite nice and some of it is a little...Japanese. Anyways check it out: http://www.style-arena.jp/index_e.htm

Fumiko's birthday is coming up soon (July 1st so no excuse for forgetting) and I've been looking high and low for a nice penguin pendant necklace. Sometimes I call her penguin because of the cute way she (and I guess all Japanese) say it. Say it with me now: "pen-geeN." And that "gee" as in Guy the French guy from down the street not "gee I wish I hadn't forgotten to pay my electricity bill." Anyways you won't believe how hard it is to find a penguin pendant. Poor things just aren't very loveable I guess. I should have called her "dolphin" instead- I have to beat those pendants off me with a stick.

Guess who's a kool kid now!

2006-06-02T23:25:00.000+09:00

I bought my Birkenstocks today! They were at my local PARCO and apparently a lot cheaper than what they go for in Canada. Who knew that Japan could actually be more cheap sometimes!

I think I may be able to watch all of the Stanley Cup live games live-at least they're on one of the J-sports channels and I'm hoping that it's one of the ones that I get. I'll also be watching the World Cup so that's a lot of sports for the month of June! I don't particularly like the Japanese team (I hope a certain so and so isn't reading this!) but I have been told in no uncertain terms that I will be cheering for them-or else.

Tsk tsk...

2006-06-01T00:11:00.000+09:00

A mere 4 posts for the month of May! That certainly is pathetic! And it's not exactly like I've been leading an exciting life this month-wait maybe that's the problem. Things are starting to humidify here and before long I am going to have serious problems sleeping. I suppose I might have to start turning the air conditioner on-or maybe it would be better to just buy a dehumidifier.

I went into Ikebukuro for the first time in a while yesterday and made a purchase (also first time in a while.) I was actually planning on purchasing a pair of Birkenstocks, (after 26 years I've finally decided to be one of the 'cool' kids) but I couldn't find any that I particularly liked so instead I ended up coming home with a new pair of shades and a cowboy hat. Ok not exactly a cowboy hat. Think of maybe something that Brad Pitt might wear-in fact I even tried to convince Fumiko that I looked like Brad Pitt but she wasn't having any of that. Oh well-I suppose as long as I'm safe inside my little fantasy then that's all that matters! I'm sure I'll have a picture of it for you sometime.

I actually got a sunny day on my day off today (first time in a long time) so I managed to get out (after my private class and after the gym) and do a little sun-tanning. I didn't get out until 4 o'clock so I don't think I even singed the skin! At least when I'm tanning it gives me the opportunity to learn a little japanese. Today I reviewed my verb, noun and adjective conjugations. I even learned the definition of 'adjective.'

*edit* Ok since I'm bored I took a pic of both aforementioned articles until I can get one of the good looking guy that goes under them.

Bikurishita!!

2006-05-22T00:13:00.000+09:00

Wow 11 days and no posts!! Either nothing is going on on my life or...I don't know what! Maybe a combination of both. Just so you know, I am know a katakana master. I finally completed the transition tonight. All I had left was my r sounds and my y sounds but I really have been lazy for about a week. But I actually knew most of them already because I had been able to guess their sounds from reading katakana in the gym and whatnot. It really has opened up a whole new world for me in the gym-I can actually read some simple machine instructions and schedules. Here are some examples. See if you can translate them from katakana into normal english.

kwi-ku stah-to
sto-pu
te-nee-sue ko-ru-toh
she-toe (picture a weight machine instruction here)
cheh-su-to
sue-pee-do
sha-wah
roh-keh-ru

Ok those were all things from a weight gym context. You should probably be able to get most of them. If you're having trouble, then look at the sounds and then close your eyes and say it so that your eyes aren't tricking you.

Here are a few more that I'm getting from my kids book-they have nothing to do with the gym-I'll try to provide a little hint for each.

keh-key (a sweet desert)
meh-ro-N (a fruit)
rah-ee-oh-N (an animal)
new-doh-rue (another food)
mee-rue-ku (a drink)
nah-ee-fu (a tool maybe)
heh-ru-meh-to (for a hockey player maybe)
ah-ee-roh-N (keeps your shirts looking nice)

Ok that's all for not. Post your answers if you want. The winner gets my respect-don't cheat and look at other peoples' answers!!