Peppermint Tea

The day I started back at work after my Korea trip, I walked in the door to find everyone whispering quietly and unhappily where the boss couldn’t hear them. Apparently no one had been paid on the 15th like they were supposed to. This was nothing new—Nova was a few days late with salaries a couple times a year, it seemed, but this time everyone was seriously worried. Apparently rumor from higher up had it that the company was in bad shape.

We kept getting extremely apologetic letters from the president Saruhashi apologizing for the delay and promising the money would be in by the 21st… then the 25th… then the 31st… Finally, three weeks late, we were paid.

That is, the Western staff were paid. The Japanese staff weren’t. Saruhashi knew very well that his patient and longsuffering Japanese employees would put up with this sort of treatment from the company, whereas the Westerners were more particular about being paid on time and in full. The Japanese staff were never paid for August or any month following, as far as I know. My Japanese manager tried to keep smiling, but he always looked very stressed out. He had a family and children.

An alarming number of higher-ups in the company started quitting. My boss’s boss’s boss quit. My boss’s boss was in the hospital with unrelated medical problems, and his relief quit. Didn’t pass on the duties to someone else or anything; just told his coworkers he wasn’t coming to work the next day. Soon my boss did the same thing, as did dozens of teachers.

The poor Japanese staff, who still hadn’t been paid, now had to scramble to fill holes in the schedule left by absent teachers. The rest of us ended up working overtime, and still couldn’t meet demand. I felt so sorry for the manager, who was constantly calling students and apologizing for canceling the lesson at the last minute because the teacher had refused to come into work until he was paid.

When we weren’t paid on time the following month, October, everyone knew that was the end of the company. At least a third of teachers across the country either quit or went on strike. Everyone was looking for a new job, myself included.

The problem turned out to be Nova’s basic business model. Imagine a student (we’ll call him Mr. Tanaka) signed up for lessons with Nova. Mr. Tanaka paid for all his lessons in advance. Nova then used his payments to advertise for new students. The ads brought in another student, Mrs. Suzuki. Nova then used some of Mrs. Suzuki’s advance payments to pay for Mr. Tanaka’s lessons, and spent most of it advertising for new students. This system worked as long as more students were signing up or renewing their contracts than quitting. But the minute there was a lull in sales, the company went into the red. Nova had no savings—every cent it earned went to pay that month’s bills. If this model wasn’t a pyramid scheme, it was kissing cousins to it.

I was so blessed to find a job after only a few weeks of searching, but many of my coworkers were not so lucky. The job market was very quickly flooded with teachers, and those with little or no teaching experience couldn’t find jobs. One of my housemates had just come from America the week before the company closed its doors—apparently even until the bitter end Nova was still recruiting new teachers—and he eventually gave up on finding a teaching job and settled for work as a bartender in Shibuya.

Those without savings either went home over the next couple of months or lived off the dregs of their bank accounts until they could finally find another job. When Nova was bought out by G. Communications, the new company swore that any teachers that wanted work would be given their old jobs back, but this turned out to be a lie; about two-thirds of teachers that re-applied were turned down. One friend of mine who was very wasteful with money and had no savings ended up living off of one meal a day. Some former Nova students started offering meals to their old teachers in exchange for private English lessons.

It turns out Nova hadn’t been paying rent on employee’s apartments, either. Many teachers found themselves suddenly evicted from their homes with no notice. (I hear, however, that many landlords did not hold the teachers responsible for the overdue rent and generously allowed them a few weeks to find new housing.)

I quit just in time. A few days later, all teachers and students that went to Nova found a notice on the door saying Nova was ‘temporarily closed.’ Saruhashi had mysteriously disappeared and was voted out of office by the board of directors. By the end of the month, Nova was declared bankrupt.

So, in the end I got off much easier than many of my fellow teachers. To begin with, I had been very careful to save money, so I could survive a couple of months until my first paycheck from my new job. But most of all God blessed me with a new job very quickly—in fact, a better job than Nova.

Those teachers that had been working for Nova for more than 6 months qualified for certain unemployment benefits. The Japanese Department of Labor guaranteed 80% of their unpaid salaries. (Those that had been working for Nova for less than 6 months were sadly out seven weeks’ worth of salary.) It was a long and complicated process involving taking off work early and traveling across Kawasaki several times, but I eventually got my 80% six months later, which is what I would have gotten without my recent promotion anyway, so I ended up coming through the mess unscathed.

So, the moral of the story is, save money! Also, pyramid schemes are bad.
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Well, since Liz and I saw all Busan had to see on the first day, we left first thing the next morning for Gyeongju, which was much more interesting. It was apparently the capital of the ancient Silla Kingdom for several hundred years, and there were tombs and temples and fortresses everywhere. Silla tombs were pretty strange, though--they're basically giant (up to 30 feet tall!) mounds of dirt, with hollow stone caverns inside where the kings were interred. These little hills were all over Gyeongju; every block or so you'd turn a corner to see a couple of houses with a grass-covered mound in the backyard. Liz and I wandered through the parks at the center of the city, peeking into some of the tombs and snapping pictures of the ponds.

We also saw Cheomseongdae Observatory, apparently the oldest astronomical observatory in Asia. As far as heights are concerned it wasn't that impressed, but apparently it's built to reflect the cycles of nature: there are 365 stones in the tower, set in 13 rings like the 13 months of the Silla calendar, and so on. The sign went into great detail about how it was designed to symbolize all sorts of mathematical principles.

After that we wandered through Banwolseng Fortress, which was actually a big grassy field where you could occasionally see a row of stones that must have been a wall centuries ago. Nothing that interesting.

Anapji Pond was worth seeing. It was a giant manmade lake, surrounded by pagodas and pavilions, apparently the Silla emperor's pleasure gardens. Next was the Gyeongju National Museum, featuring the Divine Bell of King Seondeok, which was a couple of hours well-killed, a walk through the Hyanggyo Confucian Academy, and a peek into the house belonging to the foremost family in the area, the Cheos. For dinner we had samgaetang, which was a while chicken stuffed with spices and ginger in rice soup. It was good, if bland. For desert we finished off a box of Gyeongju's speciality barley anpan (basically, barley pancakes with red bean paste in the middle).

Wednesday we tried to squeeze in as much sightseeing as we could. We started at Bulguksa, which was a pretty amazing Buddhist temple (once again set much further up a mountain than I really cared to hike). Then we hopped on a bus to the peak of the mountain to see Seokgulam Grotto, a cave with a gigantic Buddha statue carved into the rock.

For lunch it was more mandoo guk (gyoza soup), then we headed to Golgulsa, which TOTALLY ROCKED. It was a Zen meditation center built into a cliff, where you could climb up narrow, steep, and precarious trails (sometimes pulling yourself up by ropes and nervous chuckles of "Gee, that's quite a drop") and peek into dozens of tiny little caves full of statues and candles. Apparently it's famous all over Southeast Asia as a martial arts training school, so if you ever decide to pulll a Bruce Wayne and sell all your possessions, bid farewell to your family and friends, and hide yourself away from the world to master the martial arts, I'd recommend Golgulsa.

We took the bus back to the city and wandered around Seongdong Market for dinner. There were hundreds of little street vendors selling just about everything you could imagine. We settled on some kind of pad-thai-like dish and little fried veggie dumplings to snack on while riding the bus to Seoul.

Friday as we were hunting about for breakfast we stumbled across a Dunkin Donuts. We immediately had to drop everything and run into the store to taste REAL DONUTS for the first time in months--Japan has donuts but they're not very sweet; they're more like thick dinner rolls with whipped cream filling than actually *donuts*. Mmm, real donuts... They tasted *so* *good*...

We spent most of the day wandering around at the Korean Folk Village, a recreation of a traditional Korean country town. It was really interesting; there were weaving and dyeing demonstrations, a jail with torture rooms, live animals, costumed actors, the whole nine yards. Unfortunately it was drizzling so they cancelled all the shows; we'd really wanted to see the traditional dances, too...

The heavens opened up and we took refuge in a small family-owned restaurant where I tried bibinbap, a bowl filled with rice and vegetables and eggs that's so hot that it cooks as you watch. It's called 'bibinga' in Japan, and I must say I like the Japanese version better, as it actually has some kind of seasoning other than sesame oil and spicy red sauce. I've seen the special pickled vegetables that go in bibinga at the grocery store near my apartment here in Tokyo, so maybe I'll try to cook it Japanese-style sometime.

Huddling together under a small umbrella in the torrential rain, we waded our way to Chongdong Theater, where we saw a touristy but entertaining demonstration of traditional Korean dances. It started with pansori, which was sort of like opera, with a man playing a banjo-thingy while a woman sang her fury at the man that broke her heart. There were some amazing female drummers, who jumped around 5 drums apiece, ducking and weaving and dancing in unison. I was also impressed with the fan dancers. The show ended with a male dance and drumming troop. Strangely, the men had hats with a sort of puffy white pom-pom-on-a-ribbon thing, and they rotated their heads so that the pom-poms swumg around rhythmically. Excuse me for being incredibly un-politically correct and disrespecting a foreign culture, but I have never seen a man do anything quite as ridiculous as prance around on stage with ribbons and fluff balls. I mean, it was really cool how they could dance and jump around and do flips and still keep the ribbon twirling in perfect patterns, but they were *grown men*. With *pom-poms*. It was a little ridiculous.

Saturday we toured Seodaemun Prison, which is where the Japanese held Korean political prisoners during the occupation. It was funny to compare the English signs with the Japanese signs--the Japanese ones were a *lot* more vague and diplomatic. The English signs looked like someone had a bad case of thesaurus addiction: I counted a couple dozen variations on 'courageous' or 'patriotic' to describe the Koreans imprisoned there, and was awed at the number of ways they found to say 'savage, murderous killers' to describe the Japanese. I mean, I know what the Japanese did to Korea during the occupation was wrong, but don't you think 'rapacious' and 'abominable' are going a bit far?

That afternoon we wandered around downtown Seoul, strolling through Tapgol Park where the Korean independence movement began, meandering down Chonggye Stream at sunset, and poking through Namdaemun flea market. Downtown Seoul reminds me of Chicago, for some reason.

Liz had to catch a flight first thing in the morning on Sunday, but I had most of the day to wander around Seoul some more. I visited Changdeokgung Palace, then sat at a cafe in Insadong for an hour or so and had persimmon tea and a traditional Korean rice-puff desert. Insadong was a very fun neighborhood, full of quirky cafes and antique shops and great for people-watching. At the northern end was Jogye-sa, one of the founding temples of the Zen sect of Buddhism. (I got to hear another lecture about Japan, this time about how Korea's Zen sect is superior to Japan's Zen sect.) After that, it was time to catch the bus back to the airport and take the harrowing flight back to Narita.



To summarize, I had a lot of fun in Korea. I hadn't had a vacation in eight months, so I was SERIOUSLY overdue for some R&R. Everything was cheaper than Japan, and the countryside was beautiful. The Hangeul alphabet was also really easy to pick up--it's a very logical phonetic alphabet that took just a few days of halfhearted study to learn. It was fascinating comparing Korean and Japanese culture and seeing how the two had influenced each other.

On the other hand, Korea (as much as this will probably drive my Korean readers nuts) was basically Japan, just less interesting. I didn't care for the food, the temples were pretty but paled in comparison to Kyoto, the people were pushy and xenophobic and had no clue how to treat people from other cultures, and the subway and bus systems were crowded and smelly and difficult to use. I was happy to get back to Tokyo, where everything is spotlessly clean, the people are faultlessly polite, and I can live a blissfully kimchi-free life.

Anyway, thanks for sticking with this rambling rant for so long. I'll be putting up my pictures eventually for your viewing pleasure. Love you guys!
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I want somewhere other than Mac.com to post up my pictures, as the software's pretty basic and really obviously not intended to handle large amounts of pictures. Do you know any sites that let you put up pictures for everyone to download for free?

Thanks!

Oh, yeah, and you can always e-mail me and ask you to send you pictures through AIM. No P2P or BitTorrent, though, as they're blocked by my ISP here.
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Okay, sorry it took so long to put this up. But here's my summary of my trip to Korea:

So on Thursday I flew to Korea. Surprisingly, Asiana Air was pretty nice. Even though it was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight, they served us a meal. And apparently having an iPod makes all the difference when it comes to air travel: when I felt close to panicking, all I had to do was turn up the volume so that I couldn't hear the roar of the engines and I was much less nervous.

After that was a 6-hour bus ride from the airport at Seoul to Mokpo, the little fishing village where my friends Jens and Randi live. Outside of the cities Korea really is a beautiful country, miles and miles of emerald green rice fields and craggy, rock-covered mountains. The houses have bright green or red or blue roofs, so it's quite a change from the subdued Japanese aesthetic. In Korea the temples and houses and stores are all covered in bright red and green and blue paint and gold lacquer and neon signs. This is a stark contrast from Japan's preference for natural colors: dark green and brown and black and pale pink. Personally I prefer the Japanese style (I thought a lot of Korean temples were overdone and gaudy).

Jens and Randi welcomed me into their home. They were wonderful hosts and it was fun to hang out with them. On Friday, they had to work, so I wandered around town by myself, but that weekend they took me around the city and showed me the sites.

On Friday I started by taking a taxi to the bank. Amazingly, taxis were the cheapest form of transportation in Mokpo. It's such a small city that you and three friends could travel across town for less than 3 dollars. When Jens and Randi weren't available, I got around pretty much exclusively by taxi.

When Jens and Randi WERE around, though, I had a much better mode of transport: their scooter. Man, that thing was AWESOME. Why don't we have scooters in America? They're so much fun! I want to get one in Japan...

After the bank, I went to the museum district next. First was the Maritime Museum, which had the remains of various Korean, Chinese, and Japanese shipwrecks that had been dug up from the sea around Mokpo. It was really cool. One ship they'd even partially reconstructed, and you could stand inside it. Next was the Local Culture Museum, where I was clearly the most exciting thing that had happened in a very long time. One of the guards ran down to the local tourist office and got someone who spoke English and they gave me coffee and a guided tour of the rock sculpture collection. The museum was pretty much deserted; I imagine a foreigner stumbling in was the highlight of an otherwise very boring job.

Speaking of foreigners, Koreans aren't really sure how to cope with them. I mean, pick a random Japanese person on the street and they will speak enough basic traveler's English and you will speak enough basic traveler's Japanese to come to an agreement. You try speaking either English or Korean to a Korean person, though, and they will look at you like you're nuts. I dreaded getting lost in Korea because NO ONE spoke English or could decipher my Korean. I'd say a Korean word, they'd stare at me, I'd point to what I wanted, they'd go 'Oh!' and say *the exact same word I just said*. Clearly there was something wrong with my pronunciation but I can't for the life of me figure out what it was.

They also didn't seem to be able to wrap their heads around the concept of a person that doesn't speak Korean. If someone asked me a question, I'd shrug and look confused and say, "Sorry, I don't speak Korean." Now, an American or Japanese or *sane* person's response to this would be to use only one- or two-word phrases, speak very slowly, and gesture a lot. Not a Korean person, though. Instead, they'd just keep talking and talking happily, and I'd sit there and stare at them blankly. Pretty much every taxi driver insisted on giving me a verbal tour of the city, pointing at random buildings and commenting on them at length in Korean although it would have been obvious from the very beginning that I *didn't understand a word he was saying*. Jens and Randi say the phrases "Oh, really?" and "Is that so?" are essential to life in Korea, because people love to explain things to you, and don't seem to care too much if you understand as long as you make happy noises.

For dinner that night Jens and Randi took me to kalbi, which is a kind of Korean barebecue. The table has a charcoal grill set in the center and you're given thin strips of kalbi beef to grill as you like. Along with the beef are three or four side dishes that everyone shares. Helpful hint: don't ever go out to dinner with a sick friend in Korea, as everyone eats out of the same dishes.

One of the sides was ALWAYS kimchi, or spicy pickled cabbage. Korean people LOVE kimchi. They eat it with every meal. They swear it cures just about every disease. Jens actually had a Korean friend tell him that eating kimchi is the reason Korean people don't have AIDS. @.@ Korean people also like to push it on Jens because it is, and I quote, "Good for manpower."

Usually a second side dish was some other kind of pickled vegetable. My favorite was the daikon radish pickled in ginger. It was very sweet and just like pickles in Japan. And maybe the third side dish would be some kind of salad or soup or soybean-y something. The food was very healthy, if monotonous and spicy enough to burn off your tongue. They didn't seem to flavor food with anything but sesame oil and spicy red sauce, which meant that somehow it managed to be both too spicy and incredibly bland at the same time. I'll take Japanese food any day, although Jens and Randi say they've acquired a taste for it.

Saturday Randi took me shopping in downtown Mokpo. Mostly clothes cost the same as Japan, but every once in a while we stumbled across a store with a clearance sale with really cheap clothes. I got a pair of jeans for about $15 and a pretty green lacy shirt for about $6. For lunch we ate mandoo guk, which is basically gyoza in soup. It was quite tasty, if bland.

That evening they took me to P-Club, which is a bar with pool and darts and an egregious amount of red brocade. I had kiwi soju (Korean rice wine, like sake except it kinda sucks) and the Korean version of bar peanuts: freeze-dried squid strips. They were actually pretty good. A little salty, a little sweet, very chewy.

Sunday was a beautiful, clear day, so we spent the morning climbing Yudal-san, the small mountain to the north of Mokpo. From the top we could see a lovely view of Mokpo, the port, and the sea beyond. At the summit was a sculpture garden with bizarre but entertaining modern sculptures and a temple in the gaudy Korean style. For lunch we had duc kalbi, or Korean barbecue chicken. I thought it was way too spicy.

After that we rode the bus for about an hour to Wolchul-san, a tall mountain with excellent climbing and a new temple, Dogab-sa. The main temple building was still under construction, but the bell tower, monks' quarters, and archway were open. It was a wonderful climb.

We finished the day with chuk, which was absolutely wonderful, the one Korean recipe I want to try at home. It was rice porridge, to which you could add strips of meat or seafood or vegetables. The chicken chuk in particular was delicious. Then Jens and Randi showed me the city at night on their scooter. Mokpo really looked best at night, because the crags and islands were lit up with gold and green and blue lights.

The next morning, I bid Jens and Randi farewell and jumped in the bus to Busan, a famous spa resort town on the east coast that's very popular with Japanese tourists, where I would meet my friend Liz. I had high hopes for Busan but was mostly disappointed. Aside from the spas and one mountain with temples, there was NOTHING TO DO. Liz and I actually left Busan a day early to spend more time in Gyeongju, and we're happy we did so. If you ever go to Korea, forget about Busan and head straight for Seoul or Gyeongju.

I had a few hours to kill in Busan before I needed to meet Liz at the airport, so I walked along Haeundae Beach and watched the sunset. I had kimbap for dinner, which is basically the Korean equivalent of sushi rolls. It's little chucks of rice and vegetables and meat rolled up in seaweed. Kimbap was okay, but, as were so many aspects of Korean culture, I thought it was not as good as the Japanese version.

Having said that, I can only hope none of my Korean-American friends read this article, because Korean people are incredibly sensitive about Japan. I can understand why, because of the occupation and all, but I got a little sick of having to listen to "Why Japan is responsible for every problem faced by Korea today, chapter 3, article 5" every time I mentioned that I was living in Tokyo. Every time a Korean person encouraged me to try something new, they'd drop some comment like, "Well, they have something similar in Japan, but of course the Japanese simply stole it from Korea and the Japanese version is clearly a poor imitation."

Getting to the airport was another miserable mess. It didn't mention in English at the bus station that Gimhae Airport and Gimhae the city are two very, very different places. When I got to Gimhae the city, the last buss to Gimhae Airport had already left for the night. I asked the clerk if she could show me a route that would get me to the airport or at least close enough to take a taxi the rest of the distance, and she basically said, "Not my problem. Next!" and ignored me. So I deciphered the Korean-only bus chart and made my way to a bus terminal near the airport, then took a nastily expensive taxi. When I got there, the airport had already closed and poor Liz had been kicked out of the building to stand on the sidewalk and wait for me to show up. Helpful hint: DON'T get caught out after the last bus in Korea. And by 'last bus' I mean try not to go anywhere after 7 PM, just in case. And I thought it was ridiculous that all the trains in Japan stopped before 1 in the morning...

Maybe I'm just used to Japanese ultra-politeness, but I found many Korean people were incredibly rude. You had to shove and push to reach the counter at stores, because everyone cut in line. If I was doing something wrong, a random stranger would start lecturing me in Korean, and if I didn't understand, they'd grab my hands or shoulders and force me to do it correctly. I was corrected on how to hold my chopsticks, how to buckle my seatbelt, and how to hail a taxi!

Not that everyone was rude. Sometimes the Koreans were incredibly generous. Like the museum guards who gave me coffe and a free grand tour. Or the woman on the bus ride to Busan who offered me half her sandwich when we stopped for a rest stop. And I guess the people that stopped me on the street and grabbed me were just trying to help, even if they were being very pushy about it.

Liz and I woke up bright and early on Tuesday to go to Beomeosa, a Buddhist temple in the northern suburbs of Busan. The temple itself was very pretty--check out my pictures. From there we climbed a little to a remote hut that seemed to be dedicated to women, as about 100 women or so were gathered to chant and burn incense. We could look off the edge of the cliff down into Busan, but as the city was buried under a perpetual cloud of smog we couldn't really see anything. Beomeosa is at the foot of a mountain that my Lonely Planet guidebook assured me had wonderful hiking, so Liz and I geared up and started climbing.

** WARNING!! ** Do not EVER believe what Lonely Planet tells you about a hike. Their 'moderately steep' climb turned out to be 2 hours uphill, jumping from giant rock to giant rock and occasionally stopping to wish we were dead.

When we stopped at the top a man very nicely offered us chocolate, then spoiled it by trying to get our phone numbers. Liz and I were hit on pretty much everywhere we went--apparently Korean men like Western women. It could be worse: some of Randi's friends say they've had taxi drivers proposition them in Korean, and when they weren't understood, said, "You, me, hotel, OK?" Eww.

So, after the Climb of Doom we reached the North Gate of Geumjeong Fortress, which is less of a fortress and more of a very long wall with periodic watchtowers that runs along the peak of Geumjeong. We walked along the wall for another couple hours, cursing Lonely Planet and stopping to take pictures of all the steep hills covered with dangerously loose gravel, aware that the only satisfaction we would get from the climb would be the photographic proof we could show off to our friends and family later.

Finally we reached the South Gate and the cable car that would carry us down the mountain. We stopped for a quick snack of pajeon, what the Japanese call 'chijimi,' a flat pancake filled with green onions and other vegetables and covered in the ubiquitous red sauce, then took the cable car down the mountain back to civilization.

Figuring that we well deserved it after 5 hours of mountain climbing, we treated ourselves to a few hours at a spa. Liz was a bit freaked out about the whole 'naked in a pool with a bunch of total strangers' bit, but I loved it. There were all kinds of pools: hot pools and cold pools and every other temperature in between, pools filled with rose water and apple water and jasmine water and just about any other plant you can imagine, exfoliating mud baths, saunas, relaxation rooms with TVs, infrared rooms, aromatherapy rooms, and even more. After a few hours there, I wasn't even sore anymore. I would definitely go back.

We woke up the next morning to realize we'd exhausted all the entertainment possibilities of Busan already. So we decided to hop on a bus to Gyeongju, which turned out to be the best part of the trip. I'll continue with Gyeongju later, though, because right now my fingers hurt and I'm hungry.

Love you all!
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Yes, I am still alive. And I come bearing pictures!

Start here and keep clicking through the links at the top of the page to see everything I've uploaded. Actually, that's only about half of the pictures I have to upload, but it's a start, I guess.

Also, I'm running out of space on the website, so I'll need to delete some pictures before I can add more. PLEASE download any of the old pictures you want in the next couple of weeks. Either that, or drop me a line and I'll send you a torrent for high-quality versions of them. Starting with 'Akihabara' I will be deleting pictures album by album as needed.

I love you guys!
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Still alive here, I promise. Just been a little busy lately. First I had to spend a weekend being trained to teach 2-3-year-olds. Then my boss went out of town and I had to work her shift one day. Then I caught the cold everyone in the entire country caught, and after that I had a busy weekend with my private students. But the cold's gone now, and this past weekend was AWESOME.

My private students Teruko and Yoriko were going to kabuki with some friends, and when one came down with the nasty cold at the last minute they offered her ticket to me. So Thursday I got to see kabuki at the National Theater! It was unbelievable! I loved every minute. Kabuki's not really all that different from Western theater. Some of the older pieces are all dancing and music, no words, but this one did have dialogue. All the roles are played by men--unlike Western theater the Japanese never opened up kabuki to female actresses. The music was on traditional Japanese instruments, which I love but might sound a bit strange to first-timers. Other than that, it was pretty accessible to a Western audience. They had earphones that translated all the dialogue into modern English, so I think I understood more of the dialogue than many of the Japanese audience struggling through the ancient Japanese. :P

The men that play female roles are called 'oyama.' The main female character of this play was played by Tamasaburou, who is apparently the most famous oyama in Japan. Teruko and Yoriko said there was no way they'd have been able to get tickets to see a Tamasaburou play except their friend's husband is the producer of the play and he pulled strings for them. I must admit, it was amazing how perfectly Tamasaburou could mimic a woman's mannerisms. He even somehow managed to *blink* in a female way, although I'm not sure how to describe the exact difference between a male and a female blink. I must say, though, his falsetto voice sounded like an enraged parrot.

After the play they took me to dinner. Teruko and Yoriko raved about how small and dainty Tamasaburou's face was, how elegant and petite his hands were, how feminine his bone structure was, how lovely his voice was, and on and on. I must say I didn't quite get it (especially the voice bit. Seriously, enraged parrot.) But as I reflected back on the play, I realized about 4/5ths of the audience had been female. Apparently Tamasaburou has quite the female fan club. I guess it's not any weirder than little old American ladies gushing over Chuck Norris or MacGuyver... okay, it IS quite a bit weirder. At least Chuck Norris didn't wear makeup and prance around stage in kimono. I guess it goes to show that the Japanese fondness for pretty boys has been around for a couple of centuries at least.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see kabuki, you should. It was an amazing experience.

We had traditional Japanese food for dinner. There were a couple of plates of sushi, one of tempura, a bowl of some kind of egg drop soup with rice and seaweed, boiled cabbage covered in flakes of dried fish, and steamed beef and vegetables. All really very good, although I could hardly walk afterwards. And for dessert we had green tea ice cream and orange tart. The piece de resistance, though, was 'basushi'. For those that aren't up on their Japanese, it was slices of raw, chilled horse meat, dipped in soy sauce, green onion, and ginger. Yeah, horse meat. And actually, while there was one horrible, nauseous moment where I realized I was chewing on Black Beauty, it actually tasted really good. Horse meat apparently has a lot more flavor than most meats. Two thumbs up.


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Funny student stories:

You know how I wrote earlier that all the salarymen like to complain to me about their wives? Last week, in a lesson about pets: "I'd like a dog because they're cute and friendly... unlike my wife." Hooboy.

There's one little kid that clearly watches too many American movies. He's the nice kid, never causes any trouble, picks up on the lesson real quick--a favorite with the teachers. But every time he makes a mistake he shouts, "Oh my God!" at the top of his voice. We're trying to figure out how to get him to stop.

Everyone's heard the jokes about Japanese people that can't distinguish the difference between Ls and Rs, but a bigger problem in many of my classes is the difference between 'see' and 'she'. Really, you should stay away from words like 'sit' and 'city' unless you can tell an S sound from an SH sound.


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Other than that, nothing much is happening. I finished my first book in Japanese. Like, no pictures or anything--a full-on Japanese novel. I was so excited!

Apparently some Nova teachers were caught in Roppongi with cocaine. All the branches got stern letters from the head office saying that we were in no circumstances to break the law by doing drugs. Apparently, since they were only in the country because they had work visas from Nova, it reflected really badly on the company. Sales have dropped all over the country. Of course, Nova's still the biggest English conversation school in Japan, but we teachers have been pushed to sell the program and encourage the students to renew their contracts. Idiots.

I was ecstatic last week to catch a cold. I know it sounds strange--who wants a cold? But I was worried it was allergies. Japan is apparently where good little allergens go to die. Something about Japanese cedar and cyprus trees doesn't mix well with human sinuses. Two-thirds of my students are sniffling and wearing the little face masks. Half the teachers say they never had allergy problems until they came to Japan, and now they're up to the eyelids in anti-histamines. So when I developed a fever and realized it was the cold bug that's going around and not allergies, I was so relieved. Hey, a cold will go away! I REFUSE to spend years studying Japanese and move across the planet to get here, only to find I'm allergic to Japan. No measly little trees will get in my way!

Not much else to report. Sorry, Mrs. Anderson, I don't know the answers to most of your questions. I have been lucky enough to not need the services of the Japanese health system, although it is fairly socialized by all accounts. I'm not sure about charities.

And yeah, they're HUGE into the socialist thing over here. Every time I have an upper-level lesson where we debate the causes and solutions to social problems, the students just say, "Oh, the government should take care of that." "The government should open more homeless shelters and give homeless people jobs." "The government should stop bullying in schools." Of course, it's not my place to say, but sometimes I just want to ask, "And HOW is the government supposed to accomplish this? It's made up of people just like you--if you don't have a solution, how can you expect them to? The government is not a magic wand you can wave at every problem and make it disappear." You'd think, with the population rapidly aging and a looming social security crisis that makes America's seem like pocket change, they'd be trying to wean themselves off government assistance, not grow more dependent on it.

And there are certain class issues. Apparently unemployment's a big problem. You see a lot of homeless people in the big parks, and unlike America, they're mostly well-educated middle-class salarymen that lost their jobs. In the past, once you got a job with a company you would stay with the company for the rest of your life, but now it's getting more and more common for people to be let go. So formerly well-employed men find themselves with no job, and they kind of give up, throw in the towel, and take up residence along the Tama River. Either that, or live in their parents' basement for the next fifty years. They're called NEETs (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) and they're one of the more intractable social problems in Japan.

It's strange how wealthy many Japanese people look. I've talked with the Japanese staff at my school, and they work cruddy hours for peanuts. In order to attract foreigners, Nova's really paying its teachers much more than native Japanese. But to look at Japanese people, you wouldn't think so. Here you HAVE to wear the latest designer-brand everything. I learned my first week here that 'casual' to a Japanese person means a nice blouse and skirt and leather boots and Louis Vuitton bag. I'm not really sure where all the money comes from.

One of the junior high school girls has a crush on one of our (much too old for her) male teachers. When he asked the Japanese staff for advice, their response was something along the lines of, "Yeah, she's cute, isn't she? You two would make a cute couple!" @.@ So, this is just between you, me, and the teachers, but the latest theory is that the Loius Vuitton bags come from middle-aged sugar-daddies. You certainly see enough teenage girls walking around town dressed to the nines with men you HOPE and PRAY are their fathers.

Wow, this post ended up kinda negative. But I'm still loving it here, bizarre as it may be. Kabuki! 100 yen sushi! Bookstores stuffed to the brink with Japanese comics! Cherry blossoms! The 24-hour anime channel on the TV! Tiny, adorable little Japanese kids that shout "Oh my God!" all the time! What more could a girl ask for?
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High up on the list of advantages offered by this new apartment is the oven. Of course, it's not an oven by American standards--it's a standalone appliance a little larger than a toaster oven--but it BAKES things. I have gained a whole new appreciation for simple baked potatoes and casseroles after being unable to cook them for 4 months. Yesterday I made moussaka, and today I baked vegetables to add into my spaghetti. It was WONDERFUL. Like discovering pasta for the first time.

Next weekend I may (*gasp!*) experiment with cookies. Mmm, I can smell the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies already...


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All right, time for funny student stories.

My AT-boss-roommate-friend-person, Becky, says all her housewife students like to pass class time complaining about their husbands. For some reason, the housewives don't confide stuff like that to me. (Well, except for this one woman that spends half her classes describing her attempts to force her son to get married, because she wants grandchildren.) Instead, all the salarymen like to pass my class time complaining about their wives.

Quote of the week: "I like small dogs rather than larger ones because they're convenient to keep in a small apartment, and cute. Unlike my wife."

Me: "Uh, okay... Let's move on..."

I guess it doesn't rate as high on the list as "I don't like my newborn grandson because he looks like a monkey," but sheesh.




Rumor has is that one student, M, sneaks into her husband's medication. If she were high, it would actually explain a lot about her behavior in class. She's generally staring blankly off into space and not following the flow of conversation very well. Recently I taught a mid-level class on interests. You know, stuff like, "So how long have you been into _____?" "How did you get into _____?" When it came to be her turn to talk about her interests, she thought for a couple of seconds, and finally said,

"Lately I'm really into food."

A long, pregnant silence.

"I like rice."

An even longer, more pregnant silence.

The next time it was her turn, she said, "Lately I've been really into books about spirituality."

No one was touching THAT one with a ten-foot pole.


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I just got back from a karaoke party with my coworkers to welcome our new manager. It was TONS of fun. Seriously, you guys don't know what you're missing back home. You haven't experienced a real party until you've played Telephone passing messages down a table full of drunk people in at least two languages. Here some things I learned tonight:

1. It's really fun to get a couple of beers into the Japanese staff then try to teach them tongue-twisters.

2. It's even more fun when the teacher from New Zealand sings "Surfin' USA" while all the American and Japanese women provide background music and the Twist.

3. Australians have really, really strange drinking songs. The one that stands out most vividly in my mind went something like, "Tie me kangaroo down, sport" and "Mind me platypus duck, Chuck" and ended with the narrator describing how he skinned his friend alive and left his body hanging up in the barn. @.@

If you've never been to karaoke, you're missing out on a great time. It's really amazingly fun. And apparently if you go during the daytime it costs about $1.50 an hour. Becky and I are going to practice sometime this week!
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I've only been in the apartment for a day and already I've managed to lock myself out of my room. It'll probably take a week or two before it feels natural to grab my keys before I go to the bathroom or kitchen.

But, on the plus side, NEW APARTMENT! Yay! So far, I'm really liking it. My room is a little smaller than my other one--but still more space than I need. It's also got actual *furniture* (a metal frame so I have a 'futon bed', a desk, and a full-length mirror). So I've definitely moved up in the world. No more lining my books along the wall or covering my computer box with a picnic blanket to use as a table! It's got tatami floors and easily twice the closet space as my old room. And I'm just one flight of stairs away from some fun friends.

There are some negatives: As previous mentioned, I have to take my keys with me everywhere. It's REALLY cold out in the hallways and the bathroom sinks don't have hot water. Everything in the room matches... except for the curtains. So far I'm not too enthused about the co-ed showers, either. But saving about $200 a month is quickly reconciling me the idea. Plus, hey!, free cable and Internet--which I can actually USE in my room because it's not in the middle of a dead zone into which cell phone, Internet, and TV signals enter at their peril.

So if you want to Skype me, or chat on AIM, or e-mail, or anything like that, please feel free! My webcam is up and open for business!


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It didn't take me long after I got here to discover that the Japanese don't always deserve their reputation for tidiness and cleanliness. Note to anyone planning a trip to Japan: bring baby wipes, small bottles of soap, and handkerchiefs, because most public bathrooms don't have soap or towels. @.@ Now you know why Japanese people don't shake hands!

Also, anyone who feels like sending me a small bottle of hand sanitizer will have my eternal gratitude.


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Japanese fashion is... interesting. There, I've said it. Someone call Guiness Book of World Records, because that is the single most understated understatement in the history of the world.

I've never understood how the same people that created the kimono--which probably ranks near the top of the list of the most beautiful, elegant, classy, and feminine garments of all time--could dress the way they do. The big thing right now is boots. Hey, I like boots. I have nothing against boots in the slightest. I just don't think they look good with shorts. Yes, that's right, everyone here is wearing shorts. With boots.

In the middle of February.

Once I saw a girl wearing a black jacket, brown wool shorts, navy blue knee socks, and black heels. Yes, all at the same time. I think she wins the award for Most Fashion Rules Broken Concurrently.

And it's not that the individual items of clothing are all that unattractive (well, usually). I look around Japanese department stores and see hundreds of absolutely *adorable* coats and skirts and lacy blouses and cute little matching purses. I LOVE the department stores. It's just that Japanese women combine these items in ways they have no business being combined. For example, I once saw a girl in a lovely (really, it was beautiful) lacy cream dress with black velvet ribbons. It looked fantastic on her. It was a cold night, so over that she'd thrown... a white sweater. Okay, I'm not so sure about the cream-white combination, but I'm willing to let it pass. What killed me was the NAVY BLUE COWBOY BOOTS. Why, oh why, was that necessary?



So the most stylish girls right now have their hair done up (and by 'up' I mean sticking out of their heads at angles that MUST have required hours of careful and painstaking styling, so the girl manages to perfectly replicate the 'Just Attacked by a Band of Marauding Pigeons' look); ten layers of makeup on (Seriously, they're Japanese women. Men all over the world would start wars to date them. Why do they need makeup?); five layers of shirts, none of which match; wool shorts; knee socks or tights; and huge boots. They also deliberately walk pigeon-toed--the pigeon-toed look is supposedly coy and alluring in Japan. Then they crook their arms up and hang their purses and bags from the crook of their elbows.

Nova teachers call them 'Dinosaur Girls.' And they do bear more than a passing resemblance to T-Rexes bent on foraging for sustenance (or good sales) at the local mall.


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Now it's time for some funny student stories:


One student told me he didn't like his newborn grandson because he "looks like a monkey."

I had to have an emergency meeting with my boss last week to decide what to do when a student decides to confess to a fairly major crime in the middle of a lesson.

The students are all flabbergasted to hear that both boys and girls give chocolate on Valentine's Day. In Japan, the girls confess their feelings to their secret crushes by giving them Valentine's Day chocolate. The boys have a chance to respond on White Day in March, where they can return the chocolate three-fold if they return the girls' feelings. Also, on Valentine's Day many women are expected to give 'obligation chocolate' to every man in their office. Those men then ask their wives to buy the return chocolate on White Day. Can you imagine your husband asking you to buy chocolate and wrap it up in nice, heart-covered wrapping paper, so he can give it to another woman?


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Oh, yeah, before I forget: I finally figured out how to fix my computer, so it's working fine now. Yay! But part of the repair process included wiping the hard drive. I backed up my address book and mailboxes before the wipe, but I'm still missing a lot of e-mails and e-mail addresses. So if you've been expecting an e-mail from me for over a month, well, it probably wouldn't hurt to send me a new e-mail, just in case.

Love you guys!
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The Internet`s out at my apartment, for reasons which I will go into when I`m not being charged by the hour for a connection. So there will probably not be any updates here for a couple of weeks, and it may take a while for e-mails to get replies. Sorry!
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I got back from Osaka in one piece. And, wow, was that an amazing trip!

Osaka is a very unique and vibrant city, and it was wonderful to experience the Osaka spirit firsthand. And yay! Osaka accents! I LOVE Osaka accents--I think they're *hilarious*. It's no wonder that most Japanese comedians come from Osaka. Compared to most Japanese accents, the Osaka accent is very loud, colorful, and casual (and some would say 'annoying'). If you've never heard it, get Brett to give you an imitation. I want to learn how to speak with an Osaka accent!

The city of Osaka itself is also bright, colorful, and loud. The main streets are dazzlingly bright, and every flat surface is covered with neon lights. Restaurants have huge animatronic animals looming over the entrance to illustrate what kind of food they serve. Apparently that's one of the reasons people travel to Osaka: food. I have never eaten so well in my life! I had to try the local specialties (takoyaki (balls of dough with octopus inside), okonomiyaki (a sort of pancake, generally mixed with cabbage, soba noodles, wasabi, and some kind of meat in Osaka), okonomiyaki-flavored sembei (flat rice crackers)), and I also tried nabe (you sit at a table with a hotpot and cook up whatever vegetables, tofu, noodles, and meat you like), kitsune udon (udon soup with fried tofu cakes on top), and Japan's most famous ramen restaurant. Ramen in Japan is NOTHING like ramen back in the US. Of course, at the 100 yen store they have the usual packets of instant cardboard, but if you get ramen in a restaurant, you'll probably get a HUGE bowl of noddles with cabbage and green onion and strips of pork, sometimes with a softboiled egg or kimchi or shrimp. Beats American ramen hands-down.

Osaka is also a great city for shopping, and this was the best time to do it. Apparently New Year's is Japan's version of Black Friday: EVERYBODY goes shopping, and stuff is usually discounted 30-60% off. The streets were packed with people wherever we went. The temples were also crowded because a lot of people were doing their annual 'hatsumode'--visiting the temple on New Year's Day or soon after to pray for good luck.

Here's a little summary of what I did:

First, I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning (BOO!) and get down to Yokohama to catch the shinkansen. It was my first time on the shinkansen, and I was definitely impressed. That thing is FAST! And amazingly smooth. Why did I choose a shinkansen trip at 6 in the morning? Because we rode past Mt. Fuji right at dawn, and it looked AMAZING. I'd never seen Mt. Fuji before.

Once I got to Osaka, I left my bags at the hotel and wandered around the neighborhood for a few hours. There were a couple of temples near the hotel, but nothing really special. One had a lovely statue of an Edo-period husband and wife. There was also a park nearby where I sat and ate lunch.

Then I met my friend Kei at the hotel and we headed out to Osaka Castle, which looked lovely from the outside but was unfortunately closed. We snacked on Osakan takoyaki, and Kei explained to me in great detail exactly why Osakan cuisine is in every respect superior to Tokyo cuisine. Something about how the flavors were more subtle and the texture of the food is softer and chewier. I personally couldn't see much of a difference. :P For dinner we ate okonomiyaki, which I actually didn't like. I think the okonomiyaki I make at home is better. This one was absolutely drenched in okonomiyaki sauce and hot mustard, and for some reason they also put wasabi in it. But at least now I can say I have eaten Osakan okonomiyaki. Afterwards, Kei showed me around the streets of Osaka. Like I said, there were millions of people around, and the streets were full of neon and pop music and shouting and flashing lights. It was a bit overwhelming.

The next day we started at Namba Parks, which is just your average mall, except for the architecture. The building is terraced, and there's a lovely garden on the roofs that you can walk through. I made the mistake of letting Kei see the video game arcade, so he dragged me in and made me play racing and shooting games for a while.

After that, we rode around to different shrines and temples. First was Imamiya Ebisu Jinja Shrine, dedicated to the Shinto god of prosperity in trade and business. The entrance to the main shrine was covered by a giant red paper umbrella, presumably the stage for the New Year festivities. I hope my pictures of it turn out well, because it was gorgeous.

Next was the Abe no Seimei Jinja Shrine, devoted to Abe no Seimei, the most famous onmyouji in Japanese history. (An onmyouji is a sort of yin-yang priest, tasked with maintaining the balance between good and evil in the universe. In Abe no Seimei's day, they generally served as personal fortune tellers to the Emperor, reading the stars and deciding which days were auspicious or unlucky for travel, business, etc. Basically, their practices were a uniquely Japanese blend of Buddhism, Shintoism, and folk legend.) Supposedly he had 12 shikigami--Chinese gods that he bound to his service, sort of like familiars in the West. He was born in 944, and the shrine itself was built after his death, so it's almost 1000 years old. It's not that impressive as far as shrines go, but I begged Kei to let us visit it because I'm currently watching an anime, Shounen Onmyouji, where he's one of the main characters.

Which, if you think about it, is a fairly strange subject for a TV series. Imagine the reactions of people in the West if Warner Brothers came out with a cartoon starring a superhero Jesus, who can shoot lighting bolts out of his hands and fights together with his twelve disciples to destroy evil monsters intent on destroying New York City. Just think how insulted people would be (and rightly so) to see a precious religious figure abused in the name of popular entertainment. Actually, forget the West--imagine how people in the Middle East would react if someone made a cartoon about a crime-fighting Mohammed. But in Japan? Well, that sort of thing isn't worth the even a raised eyebrow. It's par for the course with Saturday morning entertainment.

Anyway, I had fun learning the true story behind the cartoon characters I've been watching. The Abe no Seimei Jinja, combined with Osaka Castle, made me wish I remembered more Japanese history. I need to find another book about it and read up on it again, because it's really fascinating.

Next we stopped by Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine just after sunset. Out of all the places we visited in Osaka, Sumiyoshi Taisha at night was probably the most beautiful. (We later went back during the day, but by daylight it's just another temple.) Everyone was setting up tents for the New Year celebrations. The main draw of the temple is a giant red bridge over the stream that flows through the temple grounds. Standing on the bridge, I felt like I was alone in a great, vast dark place. But off in the distance I could see the red and yellow and green lights of the tents reflected on the water, and hear people talking and laughing. I hope my pictures turn out, because it was a beautiful moment.

For dinner we had nabe, which was amazing. I wonder how much the little Bunsen burner things cost, because it seems like a very easy, affordable, and quick meal. According to Kei, it's the comfort food of choice among the Japanese at wintertime, because it's very warm and filling and gives the entire family the chance to sit around the table and talk as they're cooking. We had chanko nabe, a special kind of nabe invented for sumo wrestlers. It has sixteen ingredients: shrimp, two kinds of tofu, two kinds of fish, fish balls, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, onions, oysters, udon noodles, and some others I can't remember at the moment. Anyway, it was GOOD.

After that, I made a huge mistake. Kei and I were trying to decide where to go for the New Year's celebrations. He wanted to go back to Sumiyoshi Taisha, but I said there was no point in going back to a place we'd already been when there were so many other temples and shrines to see. I said I wanted to go to Shitennouji Temple, the oldest and most famous Buddhist temple in Japan. Of course, I should have known better than to argue with a Japanese person about a Japanese holiday. It turns out that there's a HUGE difference between Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples on New Year's Day. New Year's is the biggest holiday in Shintoism, and all the fun parties and festivals are at Shinto shrines. To Buddhists, however, New Year's is a fairly minor affair. Kei, because he is too nice and needs to learn to tell me when I'm being an idiot, agreed to go to Shitennouji Temple, where not much was happening.

So when we got to Shitennouji, we saw a very long line of people waiting outsite one of the smaller buildings. Kei asked a priest what was going on, and explained to me that that building was a very famous ancient bell tower, and every year at midnight the bell is rung 108 times to ward off the 108 kinds of demons Buddhists believe in. Since Shitennouji is the oldest and most famous Buddhist temple in Japan, there was a camera crew from NHK filming the ringing of the bells. People were lining up to get the chance to ring the bell once. Because we'd come a little late, we were about number 150, so we couldn't ring the 'Joya no Kane'. Instead, we were allowed to ring the 'Joukou no Kane,' or 'The Bell to Bless with Happiness.' Then all the participants were given a certificate showing they had rung the bell and a small cup of amazake, or sweet sake made by mixing sake with rice milk. After standing out in the freezing cold in the middle of the night for an hour and a half, nothing had every tasted quite as good as a steaming hot cup of sweet sake. Kei bought an omikuji or fortune, and was pleased to read that he would have the best type of luck in 2007. This sparked up a debate over whether luck exists or not, that lasted for a couple of hours and ended up ranging across religion, politics, and everything else under the sun.

So my New Year probably could have been more exciting, but I still had a wonderful time. And how many people can say they've rung the Joukou no Kane and drunk amazake at the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan on New Year's Eve?

The next day we went to Nara, which is about 45 minutes away from Osaka by train. Nara was the capital of Japan in the 8th century, so it's full of 1300-year-old temples and shrines. Of course, the first stop for any tourist in Nara is Toudaiji Temple, famous for its giant statue of Buddha. Every time I go to an old Japanese temple I'm amazed at the skill of the ancient Japanese, because those things are huge (sometimes several hundred feet tall) and incredibly imposing, and many of them are built entirely out of wood, without a single nail. My pictures won't do Toudaiji justice, I'm sure, as in person it has an incredible presence that can't be captured by a photograph. To the right of the main building is Nigatsudou, another unbelievably large building on top of a hill overlooking Nara. If you stand on the balcony you can see all of Nara stretched out before you for miles. About half a mile away from Toudaiji is Kasuga Taisha, the personal shrine of the Fujiwara family that ruled Japan in the Nara period. Its notable feature is the wild deer that run loose, which are incredibly gentle and tame and will let you pet them, especially if you have food. They were so cute! I wanted to take one home with me!

After that Kei wanted to visit his own personal favorite shrine, Kashihara Jingu. Personally, I wasn't as impressed as he was--it looked just like any other shrine to me. But he says it's very famous and respected among the Japanese, although he couldn't remember why.

Our final day, we went back to see if Osaka Castle was open and were pleasantly surprised to find that it was. It has a very well-known history concerning many of the most reknowned names in Japanese history. The story starts with Oda Nobunaga, a fierce 16th-century warrior who tried to unify the multiple tribes of Japan into one large, national government. He came fairly close, but was eventually assassinated by one of his samurai. His successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, built Osaka Castle as a symbol of his power, and continued Nobunaga's quest to unite the country. Another powerful warrior, Tokugawa Ieyasu, besieged Osaka Castle, but eventually Hideyoshi won the battle and forced Tokugawa into his service. Hideyoshi came even closer than Nobunaga to fully uniting Japan, but eventually he, too, died before finishing his task. He declared his son Hideyori his heir (and killed off most of his other male heirs and their heirs to make sure of it), but Tokugawa Ieyasu rebelled and had Hideyori killed, assuming Hideyoshi's title as the ruler of most of Japan. Tokugawa finished the conquest of Japan and became the first Shogun, or military dictator, in the early 17th century. Osaka Castle was one of his major bases of operations.

The outside of the castle is preserved exactly the way it looked in the 16th century. Unforunately, the inside has been completely renovated and stairs and elevators and electricity added, so it's mostly concrete and electronics. But they had a very cool museum about Hideyoshi, and from the top floor of the castle you could look out and see a wonderful panoramic view of Osaka.

After that, we went back to Sumiyoshi Taisha, so we could see what it looked like in the daylight. After all while a lot of shrines and temples in Japan all start to look the same, so it was interesting to see that at Sumiyoshi an older and more traditional style of Japanese architecture has been preserved. The roofs of the main temple buildings were made of thatch instead of clay tiles, and in other subtle ways Sumiyoshi had its own unique style.

After that Kei introduced me to the joys of Japanese ramen, and we wandered around the stores for a bit trying to kill an hour and a half before we needed to be at the train station. Then it was time to say goodbye and take the long, cold trip back home. I got in about 1 o'clock and discovered that there are few things more miserable than having to carry a heavy suitcase up a steep hill in the freezing cold at 1 in the morning. Brrrr.

Anyway, I'm home, I had a great time, and I've managed to get my computer working again! Yay! Happy New Year, everyone!
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Something's wrong with my computer, and it's only getting worse. First, it started randomly crashing every couple of days. Then, my address book stopped working. Fortunately, my address book information is still intact--I can still access it in Mail or iChat--but the address book program itself won't open. My Mail program stopped working yesterday, too, but deleting the preference file fixed it. Now the crashes are getting worse and worse. Every couple of hours the screen goes grey and a message pops up saying "You need to restart your computer now." The strange thing is, I'm not DOING anything. Half the time I just have music playing while I'm doing chores or reading. There's no one within 10 feet of the computer, so I don't know why it suddenly freaks out.

I wonder if my computer's just not happy with the power supply here. It's built for 120 V and it's only getting 110 V. Or maybe it was somehow damaged in the trip across the Pacific Ocean. Whatever it is, I don't have the money for a new computer, but I don't know that I want to keep using this old one and risk ruining all my data. I can't even reinstall the OS, because I let Brett have the newest version of OS X and all I brought with me is the original OS 10.1 disks that came with the computer four years ago. So I guess until I figure out what's going on, or find a cheap used Mac, weekly backups will be a fact of life.



Sorry it's been a while since I updated. Life's been pretty busy. First, I learned a valuable lesson: if you only get paid on the 15th of every month, you have to budget for the things you want to buy one month (like, say, Christmas presents) the month BEFORE. ::gulp:: So I sincerely apologize to those of you whose Christmas presents will be 2-3 weeks late. I'm sorry! I've learned my lesson! I won't do it again!

Last Friday Miyoko invited a bunch of neighbors over to show them what a traditional American Christmas is like. She cooked everything anyone could possibly want for Christmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, etc. A lot of the Japanese had never eaten turkey before, as it's not a very common meat in Japan. Then one of the Southern Baptist journeywomen gave a presentation of the Christmas story, and I taught them some Christmas carols: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," "Oh Holy Night," and so on. We had a white elephant gift exchange after that. I was very proud of myself, because I could understand 90% of what people were saying, even though I couldn't speak enough Japanese to contribute much to the conversation myself.

After that I rushed back to Mukougaokayuen for my Japanese class's bounenkai, or year-forgetting party. We had a big potluck dinner (not that I could eat much after Miyoko's Christmas feast) and sang Japanese New Year's songs, and played the Japanese version of Simon Says. This one Japanese guy asked for my phone number, and I kinda panicked. You know, we spend a lot of time in Japanese class talking about grammar and vocabulary, but no one's ever taught me how to politely turn a guy down in Japanese. So I just pretended I didn't understand what he was saying. Which was a little rude, I guess, but I didn't really know what else to do.

I had to work over Christmas, but it really wasn't that bad. I mean, I probably didn't need to be sitting at home in the apartment doing nothing, because that would have just made me feel bored and homesick. And all of the students really got into the holiday spirit, helping us put up Christmas decorations and asking us to teach them Christmas songs. Then Christmas night Katherine (the girl upstairs who's giving me her private students) threw a big party for all the Nova teachers in Ikuta. She spent the entire day cooking, so we ate baked chicken and fried chicken and bacon-wrapped lamp and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes and three kinds of salad and garlic bread with cheese and shrimp cooked into it and pizza and homemade cheesecake and chocolate mousse and Australian Christmas pudding (which is kind of like fruitcake, except it actually tastes good, especially when drizzled with rum butter). I really like all my neighbors, and we had a wonderful time.

Unfortunately, Katherine left the next day to move back to Australia. I'll really miss her. She was kind of the heart of the Ikuta Nova community: she was always inviting us over for breakfast or helping the newcomers get settled in. It definitely won't be the same around here with out her (or her food!).

So, just in case you were worried, I haven't missed out on Christmas. It's not the same as being at home with my family, of course, but I am having a lot of fun. I haven't even really had time to feel lonely or homesick.



I'm pretty tired right now, because of course the roommies decided to use the holidays as an excuse to have wild parties until early in the morning three days in a row. But they left for Hokkaido last night, so I have the apartment to myself for four whole days. Words cannot express how exciting this is to me. :P The first thing I had to do, of course, was clean up all their junk: I picked the magazines and hangers and old candy wrappers off the floor, wrapped up their food and put it in the fridge and pantry, swept, vaccuumed, and wiped down the tables and floors. Next up: the kitchen, which is a disaster of staggering proportions.

After I finish scrubbing the place down, I may take pictures and post them up here so you can see what the apartment looks like. People have been asking for them, but until now this place has always been too embarrassing to show to anyone. Maybe without the roommies around to clutter it up I can make it presentable enough to show to the general public.

Today is turning out to be a wonderful day. Firstly, because it's amazing how well you can sleep when drunk people aren't staggering into the bathroom across the hall every 20 minutes. Secondly, because I can listen to my music whenever I want, or read a book in perfect peace and quiet, or sing and dance around with the vaccuum cleaner like an idiot. :P I really love living alone.

The weather is simply sublime today, too. As I'm typing this, I'm sitting next to an open window, basking in the sunlight, listening to birds chirping in counterpoint to my classical music. The sun is shining brightly, there isn't a cloud in the glorious blue sky, and there's a gentle breeze blowing through the apartment. It has to be in the 60s here, if not the low 70s. The perfect day for cleaning out the house, running errands, and curling up with a book.

I'm really starting to like the weather here in Tokyo. It's actually very similar to Dallas, especially in its variability. You know, one day everyone's wearing scarves and earmuffs and shivering in the cutting wind, and the next we're in T-shirts. It does rain a lot more here at home, but Japanese rain is infinitely better than English rain. The clouds come, rain falls in torrents, the rain stops, the clouds go away, and you're in for 2-3 days of perfectly sunny, warm, beautiful weather. I don't even mind having to wade up the small river running down the hill, because I know to look forward to basking in sunlight the next day.

Of course, it gets so wet on those rainy days that water starts puddling up on the windowsills, so every week or so I have to scrub black mold off the windows with a toothbrush. And I hear it's murderously humid in the summer. But so far Tokyo weather and I are getting along just fine.

I may run upstairs and ask Katherine's roommates, Bonnie and Cheryl, if they want to walk to the park with me. It's so clear now that I bet we could see Mt. Fuji from the observation tower. I need to talk with them anyway. Last time we were chatting, I made a joke about moving into Katherine's old room, and they took me seriously and said, "Sure, if you want to." They're really nice and clean and quiet and don't have wild parties at the house, so I may ask if they were seriously offering to let me move in. It wouldn't take much effort at all to move one floor up, and then I could actually get some sleep, and I'd have Internet access in my room. It seems like an ideal solution.

I could also look into getting my own private apartment, I guess. Nova charges insane amounts of money for their apartments, and I hear from other teachers in private accomodation that I could get a one-room apartment for about what I'm paying for sharing this three-room apartment right now. The problem with moving in Japan is that you have to pay 2-3 months' worth of rent to move in, plus the landlord will expect several hundred dollars' worth of 'key money' as a gift. Then you have to buy small presents for all your neighbors. Not to mention, when Japanese people say an apartment is 'unfurnished,' they mean UNFURNISHED--there isn't even a fridge or light fixtures or washing machine or anything. So it would take at least $3000 to move out of Nova--that's why Nova gets away with charging their teachers such exhorbitant fees. If I decide to stay in Japan for more than a year, it's really worth it to spend the $3000, because I'll save so much more in rent in the long run. But until I know that I'm going to be here for a while, it's really more cost-effective to just stay in Nova housing.



Anyhoo, that's my life at the moment. I'm leaving on the 30th to meet my friend Kei in Osaka for four days, which I'm really looking forward to. Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy new year! Love you all!
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I am basking in repletion as I sit a my computer, because I just got back from an absolutely delicious dinner. One of the girls upstairs, Kathryn, is moving back home at the end of the month, so she's passing on her private students to me. They are two absolutely lovely women who just want someone to speak English with once a week, and they're willing to pay me a good salary, and buy me a very nice dinner to boot. They own a cram school, so I'll also be teaching one class a month at the school. I have to prepare a lesson, but for a two-hour class they'll pay me about $70, so I'm certainly not complaining!

Technically Nova teachers aren't supposed to moonlight, but I think those rules are just on the books to keep teachers from stealing students away from Nova schools. Everyone I know that's been here more than four months has a private student or two, and they all openly talk about them at work. I was very startled the first time my boss said, "Well, I have to run out in a hurry now. My private students are waiting." I'm told as long as a student doesn't tell Nova they're quitting for private lessons with me, I'll be fine.

Apparently that's quite the thing to do: work part-time for Nova and part-time as a freelance tutor. It's hard to find enough students to freelance full-time, but the private students pay MUCH more than Nova does, so everyone tries to set it up so they do half-and-half. That's the nice thing about Nova: they don't pay much, relative to other schools, but the work load isn't heavy at all, so I have plenty of time to take up outside work.

I love Japan: the land where I can get paid in excess of $70 just to sit and chat with people for a couple of hours. I am going to be the QUEEN of chitchat by the time I come home.



As I said, Kathryn's leaving. Darren, who lives down the hall, left today. My two roommates haven't really settled into the community here, and they're already talking about leaving in February or March and moving to England together. One thing that kinda sucks about working for Nova is that you cycle through an entirely new set of friends about three times a year. The minute you get to know someone here, they move back home. Which is why it's important to get involved in the Japanese community, I guess, or else you get stuck perpetuating the vicious cycle: you end up moving home yourself because you're sick of not having any good friends, which makes others want to move home too, etc...

Things are starting to get a little strained between me and my roommates. I don't think Sara likes me very much. She has parties all the time, and doesn't invite me. I didn't even know until after the fact that she'd had a birthday party a few weeks ago. I guess we don't really have anything in common, because she's a bit of a party girl and the highlight of my week is Bible study.

But I am getting a little sick of her friends always hanging out at our house. I mean, it's one thing to have a couple of friends over for dinner, and quite another entirely to stay up drinking and shouting until 3 or 4 in the morning. Sometimes they'll do that twice a week! Last week they had a bunch of people over and were banging around in the kitchen at 3:30, and I had to work at 10 the next morning. I've asked Leslie twice to kick people out at a decent time, but to no avail. I'm not really sure what I should do in this situation, because it's not like in college where I can ask the RA to speak to them. There are no rules on the lease against having parties, and all the rooms around us are either full of Nova teachers or empty, so unfortunately none of the neighbors will call the police and make them quiet down.

I guess the only option is to try asking them again to not to have people over. If that doesn't work, all I can do is ask Nova to reassign me, or move out into a private apartment. That's only a last resort, though. I really like this apartment--it's MUCH nicer than some of the other Nova accomodations--and it's wonderful only being one train stop away from work. When I'm alone with either Sara or Leslie, they're perfectly nice girls. I just like being able to get to sleep at a decent hour, especially if I have to work the next day.



Miyoko lent me a book last week that attempts to prove that the ancient Chinese were familiar with the story of Genesis. It's really an interesting theory, although I think sometimes the author stretches the parallels past the point of credulity. The theory goes something like this: the religions we think of as 'Chinese' -- Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc. -- are actually fairly recent innovations, at least in Chinese terms. 2500 years ago the Chinese were actually monotheists, and they believed a religion that was startlingly similar to Judaism. Most of what we know about the religion we know by studying Chinese characters, which pre-date Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and thus provide clues about what the Chinese originally believed.

So the author takes apart the Chinese characters and breaks them down into their constituent parts, or 'radicals.' All the radicals, combined together, tell a story that add up to a single word or character. The character for 'tempt,' for example, is made up of the radicals for 'devil,' 'cover,' and two 'trees.' Thus


tempt = devil under two trees


Likewise, the character for 'create' is made up of the radicals 'living,' 'breathing,' 'walking,' 'dust,' and 'man.' Thus


create = man is living, breathing, walking dust


The character for 'boat' is made of the radicals for 'vessel,' 'eight,' and 'people.'


boat = a vessel with eight people on it


And there were eight people on Noah's arc. And so on. He analyzes several dozen characters, attempting to prove that the ancient Chinese believed something very similar to the book of Genesis. Like I said, I think he has a strong case with some of the characters, especially 'tempt' and 'create,' but other arguments are a little weak. And even if he establishes that the Chinese knew the story of Genesis and based some of their characters off of it, that only proves that they had contact with the ancient Hebrews through trade on the Silk Road, not that there is a clean line of descent from the diaspora at the Tower of Babel all the way to ancient Chinese monotheism. But I think it can definitely be argued that at least some of the ancient Chinese knew and made reference to stories from Genesis in their daily lives.

What do you think?
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Yup, still alive.

Nothing eventful happening lately. Just work, hanging out, Japanese class, and church. I've also been told by an all-so-cheerful friend that, "No, the heater doesn't use much electricity! Why, I had it turned on 2 or 3 hours a day with no problems at all!" That thud you just heard was the sound of me falling off my chair. My roommates are never cold, so they don't mind only using the heater a few hours a day, and I don't want to drag their utility bills up by using the heat as much as I want. Nova gave us all space heaters, but they just aren't strong enough to beat the winter chill. So it's looking to be a very cold winter. Blah.



J watched "The Devil Wears Prada" a couple of weeks ago, and was highly impressed. Now, every time there's a new female student in Voice he asks her her opinion of high heels and designer brand goods. He demanded to know our exact reasons for wearing or not wearing high heels, and simply could not believe that some women don't want to wear tall heels because they don't want to be taller than their boyfriends/husbands. If he were a woman, he'd "want to be a model and walk down the catwalk," he said, as he flounced across the room in his best model imitation.

Today we were talking about middle names, and I asked the students what middle name they'd want if they had a middle name. J decided on Bond, because then he could write his name J. Bond.

I'm enjoying most of my kids' classes. Even the really rambunctious kids are really cute, just incapable of sitting still for more than thirty seconds. Sometimes the class turns into more of a wrestling game than an English lesson. I always win, of course, because I'm three times their size, I'm taller than them, and I'm not ticklish. It's relatively easy to hold the vocab cards above their heads and wait until they tire of trying to climb me like a tree.

Note to everyone who pushed Naruto on me: do you realize what unspeakable horror that anime has unleashed upon the world? Forget global warming, forget illegal immigration, forget third-world poverty: the greatest menace to the future of this planet is the great and awful kancho. To those of you that are fortunate enough to have never seen Naruto and been exposed to the kancho, it consists of these three steps:

1. Clasp your hands together.
2. Stick out your two pointer fingers.
3. Poke your fingers where the sun don't shine, all as a friendly gesture of affection, of course.

I'm so not making this up. This is how the Japanese version of folding little paper footballs and trying to score field goals through your friend's fingers--just an ordinary, hum-drum way of passing classtime when you're bored. Except it involves poking your friends, the teacher, and any innocent bystanders within range, in the unmentionable bits.

No, seriously.

I'm not making this up.

Ask any other English teacher in Japan--they'll have their own horror stories.

We can't WAIT for Naruto to finish airing over here, because maybe this stupid little game will die a quick death and be consigned to the dustbin of freakish trends that didn't pass fast enough, where it belongs.

Well, it only took two weeks of kids' lessons for my first kancho attempt. Fortunately, I've managed to hide from the kids that I can speak Japanese (my secret weapon!) and the kid was stupid enough to brag to his friends in Japanese about what he was about to do, so it was easy enough to fend him off.

Hey, at least it means my students like me...
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Did everyone have a wonderful Thanksgiving? Leave a comment and we'll decide who ate the most pieces of pie. :P

You know how I said I didn't have any plans for Thanksgiving? At the last minute I managed to hook up with a group of Americans from my church for Thanksgiving dinner. Two American missionaries, Rob and Joanne, were having a celebration with several of their Japanese friends, and they managed to find a spot at the table for one more. It wasn't *exactly* like Thanksgiving at home--we had this sweet yellowish satsumo imo instead of sweet potatoes, and mandarin oranges with dessert--but it was much, much closer than I was expecting. There was turkey and pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce and everything! It was everything a Thanksgiving should be: coming in from the cold and entering a warm, cozy house, eating until you can't stand up, chatting for hours about life, the universe, and everything...

So, Rob and Joanne, if you're reading this, thank you SO much! And God bless you!

Friday my new Bible study leader, Miyoko, invited me over to her house to help her set up her Christmas tree. We had a wonderful time listening to carols and chatting and putting up ornaments. I adore Miyoko to pieces. She married an American and lived in Alabama for a couple of decades, so she speaks flawless English. I have trouble understanding her sometimes, not because of her Japanese accent, but because of her Southern accent! If you can imagine this adorable little Japanese woman with a thick Alabama twang... It's the funniest thing ever.

Now that I've found a church and a Bible study, I feel so much more settled into the community, like I'm beginning to make a place for myself here. And it's wonderful to have someone to have those deep, meaning-of-life conversations with again. I really like my roommates, but they don't want to debate pre- versus post-millenialism with me for two hours!




Yesterday was my probational observation. If I passed, I'll be off probation, which means a fairly significant payraise and no need to watch my every move at work. I'll have a lot more freedom to make my own lessons, I'll be able to swap shifts with other teachers to get three-day weekends, I'll be able to level students up, etc. So any prayers that I'll pass probation would be greatly appreciated! I thought my observed lesson went really well, though: I stuck exactly to the lesson plan, the students were laughing and telling stories, they all passed the lesson with flying colors, etc. I won't know until the end of December if I passed, although I've been told that no news is good news.




I'm a grammar Nazi, I've worked as a writing tutor, I edit my friends' papers for fun--I thought I was good at grammar until I got this job. But students ask the most *impossible* questions sometimes. For example, I was teaching a lesson on describing animals (words like 'climate' and 'carnivorous' and 'nocturnal') and one student said, "The lion is a carnivorous animal."

The others all jumped in and corrected, "No, you're making a statement about ALL lions, so it should be plural: lions are carnivorous."

I was all, "Uh... actually... if you watch a TV program or read a magazine about animals, they'll probably use the singular there: The lion is a carnivorous animal."

"Why?"

...

.....

........

I polled all the other teachers afterward, and no one really knew why. Just that it's something scientists will do when discussing their subjects. I told the students not to worry about using that structure themselves; they'll be fine as long as they can understand it when they read it in National Geographic or whatever.




The other day a beginner student didn't know the word 'want'. Think for a second what you would do in this situation. This is a total beginner to English, someone who doesn't even know how to say "I want pizza." How can you define the word 'want' using only very, very basic English or stick figures? It's not possible, is it? Eventually one of the other students leaned over and whispered the Japanese word in her ear, which they aren't technically allowed to do, but it saved us from another 5 minutes of blank incomprehension.




You know the one student I mentioned a few weeks ago, the one who didn't know the difference between "She's foxy" and "She's as wily as a fox?" (We'll call him J.) Well, the unintentional hilarity strikes again. Last week, the moment I walked in the door, J asks, "Am I a playboy?"

::blink:: "Where did you learn that word?"

"[The last teacher] said I was a playboy. Am I?"

I reassured him he wasn't, and he shouldn't listen to anything [the last teacher] says, because [tlt] is just teasing him. But then, as the lesson progressed, I realized J really, truly is a playboy. He's the sweetest, kindest guy, and the women, especially the older women, LOVE him. They spent the entire lesson asking him questions like, "Do you work out?" and hanging off of his every word.

The teachers all adore J, too, because he always has something to talk about. You never need to worry that conversation will run dry when J's in the room--he'll always come up with some totally random question like, "What kind of pie do you eat for Christmas in America?" or "How do you feel about Baroque architecture?"

Then there are the other students, like K or M, who either:

A. refuse to talk about anything but Tokyo Disneyland, or
B. randomly change the subject to something no one else is interested in, talk over and interrupt the others, and take 5 minutes to spit out a single sentence which doesn't make any sense.

But one J makes up for a whole lot of Ks and Ms.



One of the perks of the job is trying to teach the students colloquialisms and idioms. Earlier this week one of my students mentioned that she had once been stung by a jellyfish. The others oohed and aahed, very impressed, especially when she said she hadn't even gone to a doctor afterwards. "Sure, it hurt," she said, "but it wasn't really that bad."

The first thing that pops into my head is, "It's just a flesh wound!" I can't help but laugh, and then they want to know why I'm laughing, and then I have to try to explain Monty Python and the Black Knight and the whole mess. I don't know how much of it they understood--I've discovered that Monty Python just doesn't translate very well into Japanese--but if you ever hear some random Japanese person saying "It's just a flesh wound!" that's entirely my fault.

One of the teachers at my branch (we'll call him M) really gets into teaching the students funny slang. He's got all the students (even the businessmen and little old housewives) saying things like "How's it hanging?" and "See you later, alligator!" Today he decided to take it to the next level in his lesson on customer service. It's pretty basic customer service vocab: "The picture's fuzzy, it won't turn on, the software doesn't install correctly." But once the students got the vocab down, he decided to mix it up a bit. "Okay, you bought a parrot at the pet shop yesterday, but now the parrot's dead. Please go back to the store and complain about your dead parrot." The students stared at him very, very strangely, especially when he cracked up laughing. A bunch of us teachers were in the break room one room over at the time, and we nearly DIED laughing. Of course, these being Japanese people, there was no shouting of "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!," just a bunch of apologizing: "I'm very, very sorry. I'll order a new parrot for you free of charge." Somehow, that made it even funnier.
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The Japanese are Trash Nazis. Seriously. Here's a brief summary of the garbage regulations in Kawasaki: garbage must be carefully divided into burnable, recyclable, glass, bulk, and used battery piles. The burnable garbage can only be disposed of before 8 AM on every weekday but Wednesday. You have to carefully bag it up, take it to the garbage dumping area, and cover it with plastic netting. Recyclable garbage must be rinsed out and taken out before 8 AM on Wednesdays. Glass must be wrapped in small, clear plastic bags labelled 'Hazardous!' in Japanese, and it can only be put out on Wednesdays too. Used batteries must be put in small, clear plastic bags labelled 'Hazardous!' and can only be put out on Wednesdays. If you have bulk garbage (anything bigger than, say, a cereal box) you have to call a Japanese-only phone number and arrange for a special pickup on the first or third Fridays of the month.

Confused yet? It gets worse. Because if you slip up and put something recyclable in the burnable bag, your neighbors will literally DIG THROUGH YOUR TRASH to find proof and REPORT YOU TO THE POLICE. I've met several Nova teachers who have gotten stern warnings from the city because a neighbor complained about improper trash disposal. Neighborhood Watches in America have NOTHING on bored Japanese housewives. How bored would YOU have to be to dig through your neighbor's garbage to prove they aren't recycling? But it's a perfectly everyday occurence around here.

One of my favorite lessons in on daily routines. Basically, I'm trying to teach the students to say, "Every day I wake up at 8, get ready, eat breakfast, and go to work. After work ends at 6, I run some errands. Then I go home, eat dinner, and watch TV." Stuff like that. But it's fun to teach the lessons to housewives because their daily routines go something like this: "I wake at 7 and cook breakfast for my family. Once the kids have left for school and my husband's left for work I spend a couple of hours watching TV or studying English. Then I eat lunch and shop at Shimokitazawa for a few hours. After that, I go to Nova or meet a friend at the public baths. Then I go home and cook dinner for my family and tuck the kids into bed."

The mind boggles.

Taking care of this apartment is totally different from caring for a dorm back home. First, if you don't regularly air out the rooms and bleach it from top to bottom twice a month, black mold starts growing everywhere. To keep mold and various nasty creepy-crawlies from taking up residence in your bed you have to take the futon outside and beat it with a plastic wand at least once a week. (This is actually rather fun, and great for relieving stress.) I'm not sure where it comes from, but all sort of random hair and fuzz collects on the floor. At home, I could go months without vacuuming and you couldn't tell the difference, but here if you don't vacuum once a week the stuff's EVERYWHERE. Maybe the humidity leads to static buildup in the carpet, which attracts random lint? At any rate, I've cleaned more in the past month here in Tokyo than I did any four back home.

So, Things I've Learned So Far in Japan:

1. My new ambition in life is to be a Japanese housewife.

2. NEVER forget to put the trash out by Friday. Because otherwise it will be stinking up your kitchen until the next pickup day, i.e. Monday.

3. Bleach is your FRIEND.



I'm on the weirdest eating schedule lately, maybe because my work schedule changes from day to day. Usually I eat breakfast about 9-11, lunch around 1-2, dinner around 5-6, and a second dinner around 10-11. I've actually been good about cooking meals at home and carrying my lunches to work with me, so despite the four square meals a day I haven't gained any weight, but even with the ten million stairs between my apartment and the train station it's all I can do to maintan my current weight. On the plus side, I now have Calves of Titanium!

I need suggestions for things to do with cabbage, because I've had about all the yakisoba and okonomiyaki a person can stand, and every other green vegetable costs an arm and a leg. Well, every other green vegetable that I recognize. There's all sorts of strange Asian cabbage-y sort of things in the grocery store; feel free to let me know what those are and what you do with them, because they're pretty cheap.

I also haven't bought fresh fruit once since I got here. It's 100 yen for a single orange or apple, and those are the older, picked-over ones at the 100 yen store. At the regular grocery store it's not uncommon for them to cost $150 apiece. So I stick to dried fruit: I eat raisins and banana chips on my cereal in the mornings or in trail mix between classes. Once I splurged and got jello with mandarin oranges in it, which was simply the single most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life. All in all, though, I'm not really missing fruit. I've always been rather particular about fruit--I'd rather go without fruit entirely than eat one I'm not in the mood for--so I'm quite happy just upping my vegetable intake. They have wonderful carrots here, and more varieties of mushrooms than I ever imagined was possible.



Is it just me, or is downloading a file very similar to Zeno's Paradox? The closer you get to a completed file, the slower it downloads. The countdown says 1 hour remaining, but when you come back in an hour it still has 30 minutes to go. 30 minutes later it has 15 minutes to go. No matter how long you wait--no matter how long the percentage completed hovers about 98%--the file never finishes.

Oh, yeah, and I need to take a minute to plug Death Note for all my anime-watching friends. Death Note is the new huge thing right now--the train stations are plastered floor to ceiling with advertisements, the fifty-foot-tall TV screens in Shibuya are always showing the previews, and if you walk down a busy street for more than 30 minutes a truck will inevitably drive along blaring the theme song. There's a reason it's so popular, too:

It is INSANELY good.

I've seen the first episode about 4 times and it still sends chills down my spine.

The basic premise: Imagine you had the power to kill anyone simply by writing down their names. Imagine that all you had to do was write a name, and the worst dictators and serial killers and murderers and rapists in the world would drop dead, quickly and painlessly. As you would never actually meet these people face-to-face, there would be no evidence tying you to their deaths, and you could kill them with impunity. Would you do it?

The story's brilliant, the characters are just as intelligent as the author claims they are, the music's gorgeous, and the animation's unparalleled. Seven episodes in and I don't have a single complaint, except that I hate having to wait a week between airdates.

So, why are you still reading this? Go download! Shoo!

Oh, yeah, and Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
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