Ouch.

For someone who isn't a very big cell phone person, or even a phone person, I sure go through a lot of them. I've been here only 8 months and already I'm on my 3rd one. After a good three hour session at one of the local cell phone companies, I finally decided to go ahead and get a new phone. Getting a new phone is a fairly straightforward process that involves filling out eight thousand forms-in triplicate. Thank God my roommate speaks japanese. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without him.

Anyways the silver lining is that I was able to get the phone that I've had my eye on for the past 2 months. It only cost me $200 bucks. 14,000 yen for the phone, 3,000 to cancel my old contract and 2,700 to start a new one. But I've got it all set up the way I want it with a Red Hot Chilli Peppers ringtone and an ICQ "uh-oh" for my email alerts and I've got it chained to my pants the way Phil Demerais used to chain his wallet-no seriously. I'm gonna start a new thing.

Speaking of starting a new thing, I bought a new purse today. No not actually a purse. More like one of those shoulder bag type things only a lot smaller. You can sling it around your shoulders or you can clip it onto one of your belt loops using a carabiner. It's pretty cool but I think any guy back home would take a lot of flak if he walked around with one of those things hanging off his belt. But one of great things about living in Japan is that you can go out and wear totally weird stuff that you would never wear back home and you'd probably still be the most normally dressed person out there.

I'm still hoping that someone turns in my old phone. I need to get my address book. We're so dependent on technology nowadays that we don't rely on our brains anymore. I don't know how many people I had in my phone-at least 20, but I didn't know a single telephone number or email address of any of them-including my own roommate!

My new 'purse'

Follow up....

One funny thing happened last night that I forgot to mention. We were out eating and drinking till just past twelve so I had to rush back to the train station to catch the last train back home. I got there just in time because there was only one train left. Concerned because I couldn't recognize the kanji for the final destination I decided to ask the train conductor where the train was headed to. He said that it was going to Hoya (one stop short of where I live-doh! gotta walk.) It wasn't until I had gotten on the train that I realized I had asked him "Where is this bike going?" (densha=train, jitensha=bike) A combination of too much alcohol and not enough studying I suppose.

Lost: One cellphone

I thought was going to be able to post tonight that I had performed the unheard of feat of going out two nights in a row. I almost did it too. The first night I was out to Ikebukero with some friends for an all you can eat all you can drink yakiniku meal. Tonight was supposed to be going out to a night of soccer but somewhere between the 7-Eleven and the station my cell phone fell out of my pocket. I went back to look for it and it wasn't there so I'm hoping that the famed honesty of the Japanese populace holds true for me tomorrow when I go to the local koban (police box.) Anyways at that point I wasn't in the mood to go play soccer any more so I went home. If I do lose the phone then at least I'll have an excuse to go out and buy the new one I've had my eye on for a while.

Another reason why I was not too enthusiastic about going to soccer is because it is freakin cold over here. At least it feels that way anyways. Our house is great but wayyyy to cold. Apparently it's 10 degrees celcius outside but it feels a lot colder. At least it's starting to feel a lot more Christmasy. Speaking of Christmas, if you want to see an amazing Christmas light show then check out this video. It is, in a word, fantabulistic.

http://members.cox.net/transam57/lights.wmv

Random Japanese Fact: At least 24 Tokyoites have fractured their skulls while bowing.

Attention women

It has been said that Japan is usually about one year ahead of the rest of the world on the fashion curve so I feel it's my duty to give all my friends a heads up on next years line of clothes.
For women the new big thing is shorts. Not cargo shorts or sports shorts but almost a dressy kind of shorts. They're tapered so that they almost reach the knee and they're fairly tight around the knee. It actually looks half decent in my opinion. It was a little strange at first but I'm starting to appreciate it more now. How in the world wearing shorts became a new trend in the months of October and November I'll never know. Nobody said Japanese women were smart. Also shorts can be complimented with some kind of cowboy-type boot-it's a fall/winter thing.

As for men, you will be wearing clothes that make you look like jackasses.

I will try to get you some pictures of the women assuming that I don't get beaten up or thrown in jail.

Interesting facts

So that my posts are not a complete waste of your time, I'm going to reinstate the interesting Japanese fact thingy that I had going before-only this time they're going to be real facts. To celebrate this grand event I'm going to start out with two or three.

#1)Metropolitan Tokyo consists of 12 million people, the population rises 2.5 million during the day.

#2)The population has fallen by 10% since the 1964 Olympics.

#3)The pachinko places in Japan pull in more cash than all the rest of the casinos in the world combined.

#4)The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Lost and Found centre receives more than 300,000 umbrellas every year, or more than 3,000 each time there is a heavy rain.

An update on my life

You may have noticed that I'm living in a new apartment. Perhaps you are curious as to how I ended up here. Even if you aren't then sit down and shut up because I'm going to tell you anyways. Nearing the end of September, I got a notice from Nova that our apartment was being closed down and I was getting kicked out again!! They gave us some options for some other NOVA apartments or I could simply move to the apartment next door (similar to what I had done the first time.) There was actually already a girl living in that apartment but she had also gotten an eviction notice. Both her and I got together because we wanted to stay in our town and we both started looking for apartments. Only problem was that it is very expensive and difficult for foreigners. Anyways it was getting close to our eviction date when my roommate suddenly decided that he wanted to get in with us on an apartment too. So now that we had three people we were able to go through a company that deals exclusively with foreigners and were able to get a house here in our town which is a lot cheaper than living with NOVA.

So anyways we have a fantastic house now but unfortunately like a lot of japanese houses it's bloody cold!! However it's awesome cause we got a great living room set up with cable and wireless internet.

By the way, it's official. I'm a groupie. A J-drama groupie that is. I'm so addicted to that highschool drama Nobuta o Producer that not only have I been downloading all the episodes and not only have I downloaded the subtitles but I've also been going into the text file for the subtitles and editing each hour long show so that the english is a little bit more natural. It usually takes me two or three hours to go through each file and switch things around. There's been 5 episodes shown so far and I've watched the first three about 5 times each. I also learned last night at dinner with one of my students that her son knows the girl who plays Nobuta and that she lives in the town two stations away from me!!!!!!!!!! Naturally I demanded an autograph.

And yes if you read the previous paragraph closely you'll see that I've been breaking the Commandments (the NOVA ones Mom!) Specifically the one that pertains to not giving your personal information to students. I was good for the first 6 months but I've broken that one Commandment multiple times since I last had a regular internet connection. It just goes to show you how computers and internet can help keep you out of trouble! I don't feel too bad as it really is an unjust rule and it is currently being challenged in Japanese courts.


Nobuta: She's so kawaii!!!

P.S. If you comment you may see that you have to type in some kind of word just to verify that you are indeed a real person. Sorry for the inconvenience-just trying to keep the spammers on their toes.

I'm famous!!

I felt like checking out my blog tonight so rather than type the link directly in I went to google and punched in Brendansboringblog. This site came up of course but so a few other links to my site from other webpages! This one for instance:

http://www.feitclub.com/2005/07/keeping-it-casual.html
I wasn't expecting any fame from my blog but I'll certainly take all that I can get!

I've never been a big fan of japanese tv but over the past couple of weeks I've been addicted to a couple of dramas. So much so that I've started downloading them so that I can watch with english subtitles! Both are highschool dramas and the storylines seem pretty shallow but it makes for real feelgood tv watching. I may be the only guy and the only person over 18 to watch it but what the hell! At least it's given me something to chat about with my shy highschool students. I've basically been asking every female student under the age of 30 if they watch it. If you want to see it and know how Bittorrent works then go to http://isohunt.com/ and type in the word "Nobuta" in the search engine. The show's name is Nobuta o Producer and I'm watching the 5th episode as I type. Definitely give it a try-I can hook you up with english subtitles if you want to know what's going on.





The storyline is this: Shuji is an amazingly popular guy at school-he has a hot girlfriend and everyone thinks he's the coolest. His main goal in life is to have fun and never be too serious. Then a couple of things happen at once: Akira, the most annoying guy in the whole school decides that they're going to be friends and Shuji cannot get rid of him; and a new girl arrives at the school. She has serious problems-she has no friends, she hates her life and she has no self-confidence. The mean girls at school pick on her and chase her and make her life miserable and she won't stick up for herself. The two "friends" find that there's something missing in their life and they need to do something amazing in order to find their youth again. So they decide that they're going to turn this new girl, Nobuko, into their project and make her the most popular girl at school. I'm not sure what's going to happen but I think Shuji is going to end up falling for Nobuko.

Yes I know I've probably lost everyone's respect but that's what addictions do to you.

I'm baaaaaack!!!

Hey all, it's good to be back again! It's been so long since I last wrote that I can't really remember where I last left off!! I'll try to recap everything that's gone on in my life in the next few days but right now it's almost one am so this first post is going to be restricted to posting pictures of my new house.

The clean bedroom is mine and the dirty one is Jared's. I'm quite proud of our living room. It really kicks and I'm proud to say that I basically bought all the furniture for it and did the the furniture arrangement myself. Our kitchen/dining room isn't quite so clean but I don't really have as much control over that.

Oh God the pain!!

There's a huge hole in my life...a huge gaping void. It's exactly the type of hole that a laptop would fit perfectly. A couple of days ago my harddrive died-only temporarily. I thought I was pooched and had lost all the valuable stuff that the internet allows me to download for free. Anyways I came back from work that night and the computer was working fine again! I rejoiced-it was something like a 21st century ressurection. Anyways my happiness was shortlived because I downloaded some software from the harddrive company and after running it, it told me that my harddrive was mortally wounded and one day, would go to that big harddrive heaven in the sky. This was very disconcerting considering that i had only bought it 2 months ago. Remember I said I thought the HD was making a funny noise?? Never ignore your gut feeling folks. Anyways I took it back to the store and they honoured the warranty but then they told me it was going to take one month before I got my computer back. If it wasn't for the fact that they would have no idea what i was saying I would have blown my top! ONE MONTH! One month with no laptop. How long does it take to take the harddrive out and put a new one in? Anyways my biggest fear is that I'm going to get this computer back in a months time only to find that they just tried to "fix" it rather than replace it and I'm going to have to take it back again and wait a second month.

So anyways the long and the short of it is that I won't be around too too much! My roommate has a laptop himself so I'll be checking my email every once in a while but that's about it. I might even get a life-you never know. Probably not though. I hate to say it but there's going to be a lot of reading going on over the next month in this household.

Weather

It was very blustery all day today with a little rain in the morning but in the afternoon the sun started to shine. I went for a bike ride this afternoon and enjoyed the weather (even the wind) more than any other day in Japan so far. I think it was because it reminded me so much of Canada. Sunny, windy and no humidity whatsoever. Not much different than a late September day in Meaford! Now don't get me wrong-I'm not the type to get homesick but it certainly brought back memories. For some reason all I could think about was being 15 and heading out to soccer practice after school. That's exactly what today reminded me of. Bah! I'm too young to be thinking nostalgically about my school days! Ahh who am I kidding-that was 10 years ago. Going on 11 years ago-September 30th is swiftly approaching. I'm an old, old man.

So this is what a weekend feels like

Ahhh. Well it's over now-too bad the weather was crappy. After getting back from my trip to Mt Fuji I worked the following 19 days with only one day off. It's nice to finally get a proper weekend but unfortunately it rained most of the time. Anyways I haven't posted anything in a while and I'll use use the aforementioned reason as my excuse.

So what's new with me? Not too much-as usual! In terms of my health, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'm going to have pink eye until I come home to Canada. Yes you remember that problem from like three friggen months ago? Anyways the first batch of eye drops the doctor gave me didn't work. I couldn't be bothered to do anything more about it so I just left it. That was until someone asked me if I was tired. I can stand the odd irritation and I can stand having to wipe the crap out of my eyes in the morning and at night but if I actually look like I have a problem then that's a problem. So I went back to the eye doctor, paid basically the same amount of money and got the same stuff only this time I also got some stuff you smear on your eyelid twice a day. Anyways two weeks has past and I've run out of drugs again and the problem still isn't solved. I may or may not go back a third time-we'll see.

I spent the first day of my weekend in Ikebukero buying a new pair of headphones to replace the ones that got broken as a result of a completely unavoidable accident wherein I tried to beat a railway crossing barrier with my bike. I suppose I shouldn't say "tried" because that insinuates failure which isn't true. I succeeded-kind of. The barrier hit the bag on my back which somehow knocked my earphones out of my ears and one of them got caught in the spokes of my bike and was consequently chopped off. Anyways these things happen-there's really no way you can avoid situations like running railway barriers!

The last big news of the day is that I'm getting a new housemate tomorrow. I've actually known about this for a couple weeks now. He's from the States, North Carolina specifically, and seems pretty friendly. I've been chatting with him on MSN. He says he's actually pretty half decent at speaking Japanese and seems to be one of those people who are crazy for all things Japanese. You know the type. Actually he'll probably be the first person here that I meet who is like that. Most people I've worked with enjoy living here but they have no special love or fascination for Japan. They're probably sticking around because they have nothing for them back at home. In terms of a work future I mean. It's easier to work here and avoid reality!

let me get to sleep

Beer!!

Yes more pictures of beer cans. I know some of you have trouble reading any of my posts that are longer than one paragraph so I thought I'd give you a treat. No, that is not a 'beer display.' Yes, I arranged them that way. Yes, I have far too much time on my hands. Yes, my business no longer welcome at that grocery store. Now I know what you're probably saying-'Brendan you're in Japan, don't you have something more interesting that you could be doing?' and the answer is 'probably.' Simple things amuse simple minds I suppose. But how can you look at this picture and not be fascinated? Look at how small the small beer can is! And look at how big the big beer can is! (For the record, the normal can is third from the left.) I even added my very own Bic pen for scale.

I've managed to go five months (to the day by the way) without talking about how fascinating some mundane little thing might be and I can't stand it any longer! I have to get it out of my system. I've got to tell you about hand dryers.

Yes, hand dryers. Actually in Japan you should consider yourself lucky if you can walk out of a Japanese washroom without wet hands, but in some washrooms they have these amazing hand dryers. Now the North American version of the hand dryer is totally lame. You have to stand there for like 5 minutes rubbing your hands and waiting for the water to evaporate. In Japan they have these hand dryers that are like F-16 jet engines. You just hold your hands in vertically and then just pull them up through the blast of air and in three seconds it has blown every molecule of water right off the tips of your fingers. Genius.

Then there's the highschool boys. Not only do they have no shame in that they ride around on these old granny bikes, but they all have the seat so low that their knees are pratically up around their chins. They look ridiculous. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that they were also taught as children that they must be able to touch the ground with their feet.

Then there's the highschool girls. A dispropotionately high amount of these girls treat their shoes like slippers. They walk around in them without putting their heels into the shoe. They just step on the back of them ruining the heel. It isn't so strange when you did it as a 4-year old but seeing all the 15-year olds do it is really odd.

Well now, I feel better after getting that off my chest.

let me get to sleep

Suicide and Japan

I've been doing a lot of research on suicide tonight. Don't worry, I'm of perfectly sound mind although back when I had my horrible Saturday kids it seemed like a pleasant option! The reason for my morbid curiousity is because we had a 'jumper' today. Now don't worry all of my students are alive and well...I think. When I say 'we' I mean my station. I was biking to work today and as I approached the station I was met by a ridiculously long line up of cars. My first thought was that these idiot Japanese had finally managed to get themselves into an unmanageable gridlock on the one and a half lane streets. Being on a bike, I was able to weave my way through the cars and head towards the tracks. Just as I rounded the corner towards the tracks the gates lifted and about eighty hundred million kajillion people started to cross. It was obvious that they had been closed for a while and on the other side there were three fire trucks with their lights flashing.
Anyways I didn't see anything but one of my fellow teachers said she saw blood on the train platform when she got off the train.

It's one of those subjects that's both horrible and fascinating at the same time. The train was nowhere to be seen. It was long gone I guess. A fellow teacher who has been here for a couple of years says that they don't bother to stop. For one thing it would be impossible to stop in time and for another it would jeapordize the safety of the people on board the train. It doesn't matter if you've got blood all over the windshield, you just keep on going.

Anyways I wanted to learn more and find out some statistics (because train jumpings seem to be endemic) so I went online and did some research and found some interesting facts. First of all I have to apologize to all Japanese for thinking that they were horribly, horribly vain for having mirrors posted all over the train station. It turns out that the mirrors aren't for ladies to apply their makeup at all (although they do serve in this well as a secondary function.) There main purpose is actually to help prevent suicides. Apparently people are less likely to kill themselves if they can see their reflections in the mirror.

The Chuo line is where most people choose to go to meet their own end of the line. There are many reasons for this. One being that it is a very long straight track, one of the few in Tokyo and trains can barrel through the stations at super fast speeds. The straight tracks also give the jumpers a good view of the oncoming trains and allow them to time their jumps better. Lastly, if you commit suicide by train then your family can be billed for the expenses. The Chuo line happens to be the cheapest option to potential jumpers as they charge the least out of all the train lines. And then of course once this trend is noticed, the media reports on it so more jumpers go there and then you get a viscious cycle. Chuo's nickname is the Chuo-cide Line.

Another suicide hotspot is at the bottom of Mt Fuji. There is a forest called Aokigahara forest the iron ores of Mt Fuji disrupt compasses and cell phone signals so every year people just wander in there and 'get lost.' I read one article dated 1998 that stated that the police went in there and in one of their sweeps were able to recover 75 bodies. Their patrols also pick up an average of one person per day who is looking to commit suicide in the forest. A good warning sign is usually the fact that they're out in the relative wilderness and wearing a suit.
Apparently on many of the trails you can see signs like this:

Suicide Sign

Translation "Life is a precious present from your parents, think quietly about your parents, brothers and sisters and children. Do not agonize alone, please consult us first." Followed by a telephone number for the local police precinct.

Crazy stuff. I checked Statistics Canada and the suicide rate for Canadians in 1997 was about 12 per 100,000. Here in Japan it's sitting at about 27. Quite a large difference. Anyways I could go on but tonight's blog is depressing enough!

let me get to sleep

A flash of insight

Steep mountain way
into a sea of clouds
ere the rising Sun

Much thanks to Andrew the blog usurper for inspiring my first Haiku since grade 6 english class. What was the name of the teacher? Mrs Crenshaw?

Warning: Our product may kill you

I finally went out and got myself an MP3 player as a reward for climbing Mt Fuji. Actually that's a complete load of crap-I just needed an excuse to spend some money. I thought as long as I'm living in the land of futuristic technology then I really should impart some of that technology upon myself. So I went out and bought the new Sony NW-HD5 MP3 player. It's 20 gigs, small, sexy and allows me to feel superior to all the Ipod sheep...err people who want to be cool.

My only complaint is that it comes with a ridiculously crappy pair of headphones. I remember the days when Sony had the decency to provide you a pair of headphones that came with a remote control when you dished out $300 for one of their products. Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to go out and spend another 6000 yen for a pair of decent headphones and then download a couple of Sony games to balance the ledger.

After buying a couple of Japanese products I'm starting to notice a trend when it comes to the manuals. The manuals for both my bike and my MP3 player seem to devote an exhorbitant amount of space for pages filled with cute little drawings describing how their product could potentially maim or kill you. It's quite humourous to see how you could be minding your own business one moment, only to be tackled by a murderous, bloodthirsty bicycle the next.

If you look at the top lefthand corner of the bike manual you will see a happy-clappy Jappy chappy riding home quite drunk. I seriously doubt any bicycle manuals from North America warn you against riding while inebriated but when it comes to drinking in Japan you can't take anything for granted. Actually Japanese attitues towards drink are quite interesting. It really is a more relaxed atmosphere compared to North America. In fact, I see now that drinking in N.A. is actually rather taboo.

That may be hard to believe when every other commercial is a beer commercial but it's true. We like to drink but we don't like to admit it (I'm talking about the collective "we" here-I detest drinking.) I doubt that anyone over the age of thirty, when asked, would say "Oh I went out drinking last night," even if they did. They would probably say 'I went out' or 'I saw my friends' or 'I went to a party.' Yet if you ask a random Japanese person what they did last night, they will say "I went drinking." In fact I've gotten so used to the casualness of it all that I will often ask students that I've just met if they went out drinking last night. Even if they're 35 or 40 years old. No one is afraid to admit it and no one is offended by your query. It's certainly quite refreshing-too bad I don't really take advantage of it.

My visit to Fuji-san

A couple of days ago I hinted that I was heading off somewhere to a different part of Japan. Well I have returned and I am surprisingly healthy considering everything. I decided some time ago to visit Mt Fuji before the climbing season ended and when my friend Melissa found this out, she decided that she was going with me. Anyways we ended up going with someone that Melissa had met at her gym. It was a fairly hard climb and it took us about eight hours. We stopped approximately half way up and slept in a "hotel" for approximately four or five hours. I use the term hotel lightly of course. It's more of a shack and you sleep in communal bunks with approximately 20 other people. Not much but it beats sleeping outside on a rock.

I wasn't too well prepared and I went on the trip without a jacket and had to do with wearing two longsleeved shirts which wasn't nearly enough. By the time 4:30 rolled around, I couldn't care less whether I made it to the top in time to see the sunrise-I just wanted the sun to rise period. It turns out that I did make it up for the sunrise but I thought I was going to be stuck on the side of the mountain because the last leg of the journey was like being in a traffic jam-a human traffic jam that is. It gets quite steep and the trail narrows significantly.

Anyways we all made it up but I think that by the time we reached the top we were more concerned with getting off the mountain than anything else. It was a memorable experience if not neccessarily an enjoyable one. Like the saying goes, "A wise man climbs Mt Fuji once, a fool climbs it twice."

Click on the pictures for a larger version!


Here is a picture of my crew. My Trinidadian friend Melissa, the Malaysian girl on the left is called Wong and the lady on the right is Melissa's new friend that she met at the gym. Her name is Chieka (or something like that I can never remember.) The guy taking the photograph is called Kelvin. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him. He is also Malaysian. Both of them are doing post-grad studies in Japan and I am quite jealous of them because they seem to be able to speak Japanese fluently (along with of course Malaysian, English and apparently Chinese.)





These three are pictures of the mountain. As you can see it's a little foggy/misty. This was disappointing because we should have been able to see way down to the bottom but we couldn't see anything because of the fog. We were also unable to see Mt Fuji itself on the approach because of the clouds. Apparently the only good time to go see Mt Fuji (if you want to climb it) is right after a typhoon because all the clouds have been blown away.



My friend Melissa and myself on the way up. We had our picture taken by some random lady on the way up. Melissa has a great souvenir in her hand. It's a hiking stick that you buy at the bottom of the hill for about 1000 yen and you can get it branded at each station for 200 yen. Much more personal and meaningful than some silly souvenir you buy in a store. Lots of people also had little Japanese flag attachments for them.



More pictures of Mt Fuji. Very scare vegetation which gets even scarcer as you go up. The top has no vegetation at all.




More pictures of the very fascinating fog.






These pictures are all taken relatively close to our stopping for camp. We got lucky in terms of weather but when the sun goes down Mt Fuji gets very cold. I was told it was approximately 5-6 degrees Celcius at night.


Mt Fuji at sunrise. Very beautiful. The sun rose from a sea of clouds. Of course when this happened all the Japanese uttered cries of awe and did what Japanese do best. I suppose I can't talk much-I took pictures too. But at least I used a camera instead of my cell phone.



Me with a stick. Behind me is a very big hole. That's right, just take a couple more steps back, couple more, almost.....perfect.






More pictures of a big hole. Pretty self-explanatory. We were thinking about walking around it but it wasn't a flat circle. It's a lot higher on the other side and we were tired of walking up.



Some more fauna. This is the only thing that grows high up on the mountain.

This picture looks a lot funnier in real life. Picture it with mostly blue sky behind it. I know the Japanese have a propensity for the obvious but this sign just seemed ridiculous.

Me pondering just how in the heck I'm going to get off this bloody mountain.




Mt Fuji on the way back down. Don't be fooled by the beautiful blue sky. It was extremely cloudy only we are actually above cloud level in this picture. Going down was pretty cool because we got to experience about four different weather climates as our altitude decreased. I unfortunately got sunburned on my neck and face-I was wearing a cap but I think the sun must reflect up off all the volcanic rock. Going down was actually worse than going up because it was wayyyy harder on the legs. Too much pressure on the old knees. Anyways we were glad we had climbed it and even more glad that we were off it. It'll be a nice story to tell every one.
In terms of longterm injuries I feel great. I thought my knees were going to be permanently blown but they feel fine. Melissa on the other hand was limping to all her classes today. Guess she needed to spend a little more time in the army or planting trees before attempting Mt Fuji.

Apparently rain is wet

I'm soaked. At least I was soaked. I got to experience my first torrential downpour today. Unfortunately I was coming home from work. I suppose if I had've been home at the time I probably wouldn't have experienced it. The rain started about a half hour before my last class ended. I was teaching a student and cursing in my head at the same time-which is fine as long as you don't mix them up!

I didn't think it would rain so of course I didn't bring an umbrella-and to make matters worse I had my bike with me. So I ran across the street to the local Seiyu (Walmart) and bought a ginormous umbrella for about three dollars. Hah let see you get me now Mother Nature, I thought. Which of course she then proceeded to do on my way home. I haven't gotten that soaked since I was up north treeplanting. My ginormous umbrella stopped my head from getting wet and that's basically all. For all the good it was doing I might have well just tried to bike home with a gigantic lightning rod in my hand.

I spent the last 5 minutes of my trip biking upriver. No not biking upstream-biking upriver. There must have been a good 5 inches of water rushing down the incline I was biking up. I couldn't understand how this was possible. I knew it was pouring hard but it had only been raining for about half an hour. How could my bike and myself possibly be in danger of being swept away by the current flowing down the road? Then I realized that this is what happens when you pave over your entire city and have very poor sewer systems. The entire place becomes a big swimming pool. I think that the road I was travelling on was acting as a re...resid..what the heck is that word for a river that takes the runoff from all the other rivers?
Anyways I wanted to get a picture of it but didn't because it was too dark and I didn't want to risk dropping my phone or getting swamped by the current. Because as we all know the good Captain has to go down with the bike.

Apparently there's a Japan outside of Tokyo...

So I'm off on a little expedition tomorrow. Probably a good idea since I've been in Japan for 4 1/2 months and I've yet to leave Tokyo. I won't say much about it now except that I'll be crossing something else off my 'to-do' list.


I'm still alive despite the best attempts of my bike. Actually I haven't really had many close calls since I got it-my biking skill must be improving. In fact I even text messaged while biking down a street the other day-these Japanese really are a bad influence on me.

Anyways I'm off for a couple of days. I'll be back in a couple of days hopefully with lots of pics and both my lungs.

My new ride...

So I bought a new bike yesterday. I consider myself pretty fortunate to be able to live and work in the same place but the 15 minute walk to work every day was starting to gnaw at me a little. It's amazing the freedom that a bicycle can give you. Today I biked two stations over to go watch Star Wars again. It took about 20 minutes-walking probably would have been an hour and 20.

I probably would have bought a bike a long time ago but I was hesitant because I thought coming from a different country I wouldn't really know the proper Japanese bike etiquette. It turns out that I worried for nothing because the Japanese don't have a clue what the proper bike etiquette is. They ride on the left side of the street, the right side of the street, the wrong side of the street. Basically if there is a free space in the street somewhere they are going to fill it. They ride on sidewalks, they double up and in one case quadrupled up (a mother, kid on the front, kid on the back and kid on her back.)

They ride with umbrellas in their hands, they ride while texting on their phone, they ride with umbrellas in their hand AND texting on their phone. I even saw one kid biking down the street with his head buried in a manga comic book. Helmet usage stands at approximately 0% (1 in 10 babies in the baby seat might have a helmet.) Streets combined with bikers is the definition of the word chaos and yet for all that I haven't actually seen an accident yet-between Japanese that is. I on the other hand, lack the intuitive biking skills that these people seem to possess. For example I can barely text message sitting down on a couch never mind while riding a bike. And I also lack the ability to squeeze the 35 cm handlebars through a 36 cm space between a truck and a telephone pole. Then there's the fact that my brakes seem to be reversed and every time I try to stop quickly I almost go flying over the handlebars.

Oh well-it's better than trudging along I suppose. I'm still trying to think of a good name for her.

I'm sorry could you repeat that? I don't speak Engrish.

It's amazing what you can see on TV if you stay up late enough. Here it is 2:00 am and I'm watching the World Championships in Helinski. It's pretty awesome stuff to watch but by far the most interesting moment so far came after one of the long distance track competitions when a female Japanese reporter tried to interview the winner from Kenya in English-talk about a comedy of errors. The poor guy has just finished running 10,000 metres and his english comprehension is probably poor at the best of times. The reporter, who I'm sure was doing the best she could, was speaking in a strange language that only an experienced english teacher would be able to comprehend. Unfortunately I have my grandmother's memory or else I'd post a transcript of the conversation. The questions were mainly variations of "Who do you want to tell your medal?" followed by a confused stare from the poor Kenyan along with an answer that had nothing to do with the question at all. I suppose I shouldn't be too critical-that's the kind of thing that hockey players do all the time.