Peppermint Tea

So after the Nova… shall we say, ‘incident?’ I found myself a job teaching English in public junior high schools in Yokohama. I can only say that God blessed me in an amazing way, because with thousands of Nova employees suddenly out of a job, the English teaching market in Japan was flooded, and I was lucky to get a job at all, much less a better job than the one I started with. It helped that I speak some Japanese and am ‘genki’ (a Japanese word that kinda encompasses being upbeat, cheerful, energetic, lively, positive, optimistic, bouncy and quite a few other words. They get a lot of use out of it.) Anyway, I was brought in to replace a teacher who’d suddenly quit. They didn’t have time to train me they were so rushed to fill the position; instead they just sent me to work with a trainer the first two day. Nothing like being thrown into the deep end on your first day.

My average daily schedule would go something like this:

Ride the train an hour to work. Which actually isn’t as bad as it sounds. If I got around by car, an hour-long commute would be killer. But an hour on the train is an hour of prime reading and Japanese-studying time. I got a LOT of reading done.

When I get to the school I have to change into my school shoes. I don’t quite understand the shoe rules at school, but here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

1. Bring a special pair of school-only shoes that you never wear outside.
2. If you want to go out during the day, for example to the tennis court or baseball field, that requires a separate pair of outdoor shoes—different from the ones you wore when you walked to school that morning.
3. If you go into the gym you need another pair of gym-only shoes.
4. For the music room, kendo dojo, and the like, go in your sock-feet.
5. Change into the special toilet slippers to use the restroom.

In other words, everyone has up to four pairs of shoes at school! I couldn’t be bothered to buy that many shoes, especially since I am teaching at two schools and would need twice that amount, so I generally just stick to my outside shoes and my inside shoes. Strangely enough, the school shoes end up filthy anyway, so I’m not sure what the purpose is.

I wander in the door about 7:45, leaving enough time to settle in, say hello to the other teachers, and eat a pastry and drink a cup of green tea for breakfast before the teacher’s meeting started.

Then I maybe have 2 classes a day to teach, and the rest of the day I sit at the desk looking busy. On a busy day I teach five, and during exam week I teach none. If you’re thinking that it sounds rather boring… well, generally it is. Once again, though, I get a lot of Japanese studying done.

One of the reasons I have so much free time is that Japanese students generally only study English three times a week. Unlike American schools, where you take the same 7 classes every day (or maybe have a block schedule where you alternate 8 classes every two days) the Japanese school system only has 5 periods a day and the schedule is different every day.

Here’s how I determined where I was going to be teaching:

1. Look up at the front of the teacher’s room. On the blackboard with the schedule for the day it should have something like J1, J2, J3, J4, J4 written on it. That means first period is J1, second period is J2, etc.
2. Pull out my little schedule chart, with teacher’s names along the sides and letters and numbers along the top.
3. Find the J column.
4. Find the teacher I would be teaching with.
5. Look to see where he was teaching at J1.

If you think this sounds horribly, ridiculously over-complicated… I agree one hundred percent. You wouldn’t believe how confused and lost I got trying to figure out where I was supposed to be, when. When we did the lesson about the differences between Japanese and American schools and I taught the kids that the schedule is the same every day in America they all nearly died of jealousy.

Before I came to Japan, I had this image of Japanese schools as extremely difficult and challenging academically. Boy was I surprised to discover kids don’t do anything at school. First they only have five classes day—on a long day. About once a week, though, there’s some kind of ceremony or PTA meeting or whatever and the afternoon’s classes are all cut. So it’s not unusual for kids to have only three classes a day. In fact, the first four days of school there were no classes at all, just tons of ceremonies and picture-taking and study hall.

Second, the kids study Japanese, social studies, math, science, English, home ec., shop, P.E., music, computer, an one elective. So if there’s five periods a day, maybe three of them are something academic like science or English, and the other two are fluff courses like P.E. and music. The kids may only study seriously for two hours a day!

The reason Japanese kids are so stressed out has nothing to do with academics and everything to do with the fact that their schedules are crammed full with ridiculous wastes of time. Generally clubs meet three hours a day. THREE HOURS. A DAY. Saturdays, too, and sometimes Sundays. I ask kids what they’re doing for spring break and they tell me they’re coming up to school for badminton practice. I asked my Japanese friend why kids spent so much time at clubs and she said, “Well, if they’re running around at school they’ll be too exhausted to get into much trouble.” That’s true, but…

After an entire day spent learning how to play the recorder and three hours of basketball, of course, the kids have to go to a cram school to make up for not accomplishing anything useful with their day. So hours of cramming later they stumble home in time to eat a little dinner and go to bed, some of them getting by on as little as three hours of sleep a night.

Because the kids are under incredible pressure to score well on their high school entrance exams, I’ve been told not to push too much in classes. If the kid doesn’t want to participate in the activities, leave him be. He can sleep or text-message friends on his cell phone or do homework for other classes, whatever he wants, as long as he’s not bothering anyone. In every class there’s one or two kids that stumble in the door, put their heads down on their desks, and snooze through the entire lesson. I don’t blame them, poor things. I probably would too.

I don’t mean to portray the Japanese kids as poorly behaved, because they’re not. The worst a rebellious teenager gets is bleaching his hair and listening to rap music. Maybe if he’s a real trouble-maker he’ll smoke a cigarette or call the other kids names. To give you an idea of how perfectly behaved the children are, two weeks ago the police came to school to give a lecture on bike safety and how dangerous it was to ride a bike while you’re talking on your cell phone. BIKE SAFETY. Not pregnancy, not drugs, not STDs—just reminders to regularly check and make sure your bicycle’s brakes work properly.

Because I’m the only white person at school (some of the students, the English teacher’s the only white person they’ve ever talked to in their lives) I’m automatically The Coolest Person in the Universe. When they see me coming the kids run down the hall to hug me, screaming, “KACIE-SENSEI!” They all want to touch my hair or ask me if I have a boyfriend. They all have bright smiles and pigtails and big, brown eyes. Japanese kids really are the cutest things in the universe. Some of the little first-graders are small enough to fit in my suitcase; my plan to take one home with me just needs a few finishing details…

If I’m free and the other teacher’s willing, I’m allowed to sit in on other classes. Which is one of the best parts of my job. I now know all about gagaku (traditional Japanese court music), how to make all kinds of nifty charts and graphs in Microsoft Excel, and how to play “Hey, Jude” on the recorder. The other teachers are all incredibly friendly and helpful, and don’t mind at all if I observe their classes (and assault their ears with my dreadful recorder playing).

All the kids eat lunch in their classrooms. Every day six kids from the class are ‘lunch monitors’ and have to wheel the dolly with all the food into the classroom and serve it to their classmates. Everyone pushes their desks together. I try to sit with a different class every day. We all eat the same thing, students and teachers and staff alike. The food’s not that bad and has the added advantage of being cheap.

Today’s Menu:
A grilled fish filet with daikon radish paste on top
A bowl of rice
A salad of carrots and some kind of Japanese green vegetable
A bowl of pork and vegetable soup
Milk
Green tea

Yesterday’s Menu:
A strip of some kind of porkchop-y thing
A salad of Japanese pickles: cucumbers and carrots and sesame seeds and other suff
A bowl of rice with bamboo shoots
A bowl of wonton and cabbage soup
Milk
Green tea

My teeth are several shades yellower than they were in America. It comes from being served green tea three or four times a day. At every school I’ve taught at, there’s been one lady whose role at the school seemed to be to pour tea for the teachers, serve lunch in the teacher’s room, and sit and gossip.

After class the kids have to clean the school. I’d always thought that was a bit harsh, until I got to Japan and saw how little effort was actually involved. If you have thirty kids in a class, it doesn’t take long to sweep the floor and clean the blackboard. The closest most of them get to actual ‘cleaning’ is a few desultory swipes with a broom while they’re chatting with their friends.

After school is hours of clubs. I usually don’t stick around for all of it, but I try to visit one club a day. The volleyball club was fun for about 20 minutes, until the bruises started developing and didn’t go away for a week and a half. The brass band’s interesting if you can catch them all playing together. The science club’s a lot of fun—that’s where all the cute Japanese geek kids hang out, and they let me play with the hamsters. Kendo (Japanese fencing) club is AWESOME, but I don’t want to spend several hundred dollars buying the correct equipment so I can’t participate. My favorite, though, is the Japanese tea ceremony, which is very peaceful and graceful—and they give me candy!

After that it’s another hour home, which means another hour of reading.

So all in all this job’s awesome. The kids are The Cutest Things I’ve Ever Seen in my Life OMG!!! It’s hard to imagine any other job where I’d get paid $30,000 a year to teach a few of hours a day and study Japanese for another few. Being the only Westerner in the school, I’m getting in a lot of Japanese practice; I’d actually say I was functionally fluent now. In other words, I’m having a great time here. I’d definitely recommend picking a random foreign country and spending a couple years teaching ESL to any young person. Strange how every time I talked with the counselors at school about my job options, not one of them mentioned that being a native English speaker automatically qualified me for a job anywhere I wanted in the world. Before I came I’d never thought how blessed I was to be born into an English-speaking country. If you know English, the sky’s the limit.
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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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Can't type for long because I need to get ready for work. But I just wanted to let everyone know I'm still alive and well.

Went to Kamakura last weekend. It was wonderful! Kamakura was the capital of Japan about 1,000 years ago, so there are dozens of 1,000-year-old historical buildings and temples. It's along the coast, so I walked across the bridge to Enoshima island, which had temples and old caves and grottos filled with ancient statues of gods and magical creatures. I only scraped the surface and I can't wait to go back again and see more!

I got trained to teach kids last week, and this weekend I had my first kids lessons. Ack! I'm going to DIE of the adorableness! THEY ARE SO CUTE!!! Some of the little boys can be rambunctious, but generally if you play lots of games that involve jumping around they'll stay involved. At least they obey when you say in your 'serious voice', "No, I mean it. Stop that." Kids lessons break up the routine, too--with kids and adults and Voice I have a little bit more variety in my day now than before.

Got my first paycheck last week. Ugh. You know that old joke, about how everyone's a Republican after they get their first paycheck? What are you supposed to do if you're already a Republican? Become an anarchist? I'm about at that point myself. First, I'm still on probation, so there's a nasty salary cut right there. Then, what with income taxes in both the US and Japan, and resident taxes here in Kawasaki, there goes another 20% of my salary. Plus I have to pay $280 for my health insurance 'registration fee'. Take out 10% for tithe, 10% for savings, and I'm left with... Well, it's enough to live off of, but I won't be eating out this month. I may not be able to meet Kei in Osaka for Christmas, either.

So now I *really* have to resist the urge to shop. Okay, I can justify buying comics, because they're really good Japanese practice. But I guess I'll hold off on buying a new pair of boots. My nice, warm pair that I brought with me lasted about five days, before the heel suddenly started falling off the right boot. The shoe repair store down the street from work says there's nothing they can do, so I guess no more boots for me. I really liked those boots, too!

I wonder how my boss feels about me wearing sweats and tennis shoes in to work, and changing in the bathroom when I get there. Some of the other teachers I've chatted with say it depends on who your boss is, and mine is pretty laid-back. It would be nice not to have to walk around in the cold in my knee-length skirt and heels.

On the plus side, I just figured out how to make the heater in the apartment work. Yay, heat! It's so nice not to have to choose between wearing gloves or typing at the computer anymore. :P

Okay, now I'm *really* behind schedule. Everybody let me know in the comments how Thanksgiving goes!
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Life as usual here. Work, chores, chatting with the roomies, watching anime, the usual.

Winter seems to have finally hit. I need to wear a light jacket and gloves whenever I go out. It's still quite liveable, though. In fact, the mornings are *gorgeous*, clear and sunny and bright. I was walking to church at dawn on Sunday, and the sunrise was unbelievable.

Church was wonderful--both of them. I nearly DIED, dragging myself out of bed at 5 AM Sunday for the dawn service, but it was worth it. It was a small service--me, the pastor, and three other people--but the pastor was a good speaker (the half of the sermon I understood, anyway), the message was inspiring (once again, the bits I understood), and everyone was very friendly. I can't guarantee that I'll make it every week, but I'm going to try my best to attend regularly.

At 10 the church down the street had a special Shichi-Go-San celebration instead of Sunday school. Shichi-Go-San is actually today (Nov. 15th), but it's not a national holiday so most people move the celebration to the nearest weekend. So all the seven- and three-year-old girls and the five-year-old boys at the church dressed up in traditional clothes and were blessed by the pastor. It was adorable beyond belief, all the little kids in kimono singing children's hymns and fidgeting and making funny faces at the audience. And I stayed after a few minutes and chatted with members of the young adult class, most of whom spoke a little bit of English and all of whom were very friendly and welcoming. I'm DEFINITELY going to attend Sunday school there every Sunday.

So God has amply answered my prayers in that area.

Yesterday was a long, slow slog of a day. I had eight hours of kids training, which mainly involved pretending to be five years old and saying stuff like "I like pizza" or "He's wearing a red jacket" so the other teachers could get a chance to practice teaching. Blah. On the plus side, I'm now trained to teach children. I can't WAIT for my first kids class! Everyone says I'm going to have a lot of fun with them. Hey, how could I not enjoy getting paid to sing songs and color with crayons? And Japanese kids are THE CUTEST CREATURES ON THE PLANET!

To make up for going in for training last weekend and yesterday, I only had to teach two classes today. I'm not complaining about getting off work at 11:30! I'm spending the afternoon doing chores--laundry, cooking, shopping, vacuuming--and watching anime and chatting with people online. Tomorrow, since all the housework's out of the way, I'm leaving to spend two full days in Kamakura, which is a very famous historical town about an hour from my house full of temples and shrines and famous statues and museums. I can't wait! Expect updates in a couple of days with lots and lots of pictures of temples.

If you feel like praying for me, you could pray that I find some way to get involved with the church here. I know God has some task for me to do here, and I'm not sure just yet what it is. My Japanese is so bad I'm not sure what I can contribute, but I want to find a niche somewhere.
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Here you go:

The Imperial Palace
Nihon Minka En
Nova

As for the pictures of my post-training celebratory party, don't worry, Mom, Dad, I just had the one drink. But it's apparently a long-standing and venerable Nova tradition to get 'station drinks' after completing training. Basically, it's perfectly legal to sell alcohol from the magazine stands by the train stations, and it's also legal to just hang around outside the train station and drink. For some Nova teachers, this never gets old. They find it infinitely amusing to sit on a bench outside a train station day after day. Some of the guys at my branch do this 2-3 nights a week, although I imagine they'll stop whenever winter arrives. On the plus side, station drinks are great for people-watching, and boy are there interesting people to watch over here.

Speaking of winter, I'm no longer worried about the cold here. As I'm typing this, it's a beautiful, clear, sunny day, probably in the upper 60s or low 70s. We've had two or three days where I needed socks and a long sleeves about the house, and a few days of miserable, torrential rain, but mostly it's been PERFECT here. I bet it's colder in Dallas right now.

My students keep complaining that it's too hot. Strangely enough, the ones that complain are inevitably the ones wearing sweaters. I just don't get Japanese people sometimes.

I've found a church. Sort of. There's one that's just down the street--the one I was intending to go to originally--that has a Sunday school class I can attend. As for worship, they recommend going three stops over to the 6 AM service in Noborito. I'll try my hardest to attend that service this Sunday, but I'm really not sure I'll be able to cope with waking up at 5 in the morning. But at the very least, I have a Sunday school class.

I learned last Sunday that,strangely enough, watching magical girl anime is great preparation for studying the book of Revelation in Japanese. I already knew words like 'reborn,' 'judgment,' 'the destruction of evil,' 'angel,' and 'seal.'

Anime: it's educational. Really!

This also gave me an idea for an essay comparing Messianic symbolism in Western and Eastern comic books. Maybe I'll get around to writing it sometime.
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Here's the first round of photos:

Akihabara

Asakusa and Sensoji

Ginza

Ikuta

I can torrent higher-quality photos to anyone that's interested.
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Yesterday was Culture Day, aka Yet Another Holiday That the Japanese Government Randomly Made up to Keep Japanese People from Working Themselves to Death, and pretty much every temple in the country had a festival. It was hard to choose between them, but eventually I decided on Meiji Jingu's celebration of the Emperor Meiji's birthday.

First there was an archery competition, which ruled. But little did I know the day was only beginning. After that was a martial arts demonstration that ran most of the day and included demonstrations of karate, aikido, kendo, nunchucks, throwing knives, samurai battle techniques, and even horseback archery. Horseback archery! Let me just say, if I saw one of those guys charging at me on a horse with a bow and arrow pointed at my head, I'd wet my pants. Those guys were awesome! Everyone was in costume or traditional clothing. Have I ever mentioned that I find hakama dead sexy on a man?

I also got to see a bit of the ceremonial dances, which were actually rather boring. Less dancing, more standing around and occasionally taking a step or waving an arm, while a cat dies in the background. I've tried--really, I've tried--to appreciate gagaku, traditional Japanese court music, but it really sounds like howling felines. There's a taiko drum, which beats a beat which bears absolutely no relation that I can fathom to the beat the other instruments are playing to, and various types of flutes and stringed instruments that twang in a way that put country musicians to shame. There's nothing that bears much resemblance to a melody, or a tune. I really enjoyed the other music that followed, though--there was a taiko group, and a folk dance group, and a dancing-Chinese-lion-puppet group. The taiko group was amazing--half their musicians had to be less than 10 years old.

After that I hung out in Shibuya in Tokyo with my friend Liz. Shibuya is the real hip, young area of Tokyo, with lots of teenage clubs and clothing boutiques with shirts that cost more than my monthly salary. In Liz's words, "There's no words in the English language to describe the kinds of girls that hang out in Shibuya. Actually, there are: skanky hos. There just aren't any polite ones." I saw my first ganguro gyaru--a girl that deliberately wears five layers of makeup about 10 shades too dark for her, often compounded with big white or black facepaint circles about their eyes. They're known for sitting in 'gyaru circles' in the middle of a busy sidewalk and applying makeup and chatting for hours at a time. One of the stranger subcultures in Japan. There were also a fair number of goths and gothic lolitas wandering around, too.

It was fun wandering around all the shops and people-watching. But after walking around the shrine all day I was exhausted, and we headed back to Ikuta around 7. I felt rather silly, being in the center of Tokyo's nightlife and heading home by 7 PM. Ah, well, that's the price you pay for being a hopeless nerd. :P




Work is continuing to go well. Today for Voice we played Hangman. The students had a lot of fun with it. Can you imagine getting paid actual money to play games with really nice people? Okay, one or two of the students is really, really annoying, but most of them are darling beyond all belief. And I'm getting paid. To play Hangman. The higher-level classes are a lot of fun, too, because they're all discussion-based. You just throw out a topic like, "What do you think about the death penalty?" and sit back and watch the fur fly. These debates often provide a unique look into the Japanese mindset. The other day I had a student tell me that the government should do more to step in and censor 'crude' comedians on TV-- their opinions are insulting, he says, so the government should take them off the air. The other students nodded in agreement. Can you imagine the American government trying something like that? Note to self: 'freedom of speech' means something slightly different over here.

I mentioned earlier that I always have trouble teaching the lesson on tactful criticism. The students, particularly the male ones, JUST DON'T GET IT. We try to teach them the 'Sandwich Method': First, say something positive. Second, define the problem. Third, phrase the solution as a request (e.g. "Would you mind...?" or "Maybe you should consider...?"). Not so difficult, you think?

So, I review the steps and explain the situation. "Now, one of your employees works very hard, but has been late for work twice this week. Please tactfully correct him."

Student: "Don't be late again or I'll fire you."

Me: "Remember, step one is to say something positive. Maybe tell him that you're pleased with his work performance?"

Student: "Um... Do you have an excuse for being late?"

Me: "Something positive. A compliment?"

Student: "You work very hard... But don't be late again or I'll fire you."

Me: ::facepalm::

I've had two students UTTERLY FAIL this lesson, because by the end of 40 minutes they still don't remember they need to compliment and make suggestions instead of issuing a direct order. The women are better than the men--they're used to more indirect ways of speaking--but whoever told the West that the Japanese were a polite and reserved people obviously didn't know what the heck they were talking about.
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I had noticed that the cheese selection at the local grocery store was a little limited--mostly it's provolone and brie and camembert and other fancy white stuff--but I didn't find out why until one of my students told me today that most Japanese people don't like cheese.

They DON'T LIKE CHEESE.

The mind boggles.

This is the same nation of people who see nothing wrong with drinking mayonnaise straight from the bottle, and they DON'T LIKE CHEESE. They say the texture's not quite right. The Japanese. Who eat NATTO. And they criticize the texture of cheese.

I would kill for some decent colby jack right now. Or even Kraft American cheese. I made myself a provolone grilled cheese sandwich last night, the first time I'd had cheese in a month, and it was HEAVEN ON EARTH. I never realized before the simple pleasure to be found in eating a decent plate or nachos or a quesadilla. With avocado, and tomato, and sour cream... ::weeps::

[Update: As I was posting, I was thinking that I really like the word 'boggle'. It's quite fun to say. I'm not quite sure what it means, and why only minds do it, and not... socks... or whatever. But it's still lots of fun. And I've officially passed sleepy and hit punchy, haven't I?]
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I imagine a lot of people are very confused by my descriptions of the places I live in. First I say I'm in Kawasaki, then in Ikuta, then in Tama. The problem is, people give directions differently in Japan that in America. First you start out by saying you're in Japan, then you describe your position as a series of progressively smaller concentric circles until you get to the exact location of your house.

For example, I live in Kanagawa-ken (province). Then I live in Kawasaki-shi (city). Kawasaki is further subdivided into wards, so I'm in Tama-ku. After that, I'm in the Ikuta district. Ikuta is further divided into several sections and, confusingly enough, I live in the Ikuta section. After that is a series of numbers, my chome (area), me (neighborhood), and bangou (house number). If you write out my address in full, the post office or a taxi driver could find where I live down to the exact house.

So I live by Ikuta Station in Ikuta, Ikuta, Tama-ku, Kawasaki-shi, and I work by Mukougaokayuen Station in Mukougaokayuen, Noborito, Tama-ku, Kawasaki-shi. Confusingly enough, Noborito is simultaneously the name of a district and a section and a train station.

Tokyo is also divided into 23 'cities' or wards. My train goes from Kawasaki to Shinjuku, so most of the time when I'm in Tokyo I go through Shinjuku. My bank's there, and my computer store, and one of Nova's head offices. I also like to visit Ueno, Asakusa, and Akihabara, used of which have their own unique character and flavor. Akihabara has Electric City, a huge maze of discount electronic stores. In the south-west corner is the Kanda used book market, with about 200 used-book stores in a half-mile radius. Asakusa has historical stores that sell The Most Random Junk in the World. If you want to see stores devoted entirely to rice crackers, or plastic food, or cell phone decorations, head to Asakusa. And so on.

Just in case I've just confused everyone more, I'll try to remember to be more careful about how I describe where I go. :P

So, anyway, Tokyo is THE AWESOMEST CITY IN THE WORLD. I'm not much of a shopper--I'd always prefer an hour in a Barnes & Noble over an hour at a department store. But there is SO MUCH RANDOM CRAP HERE!!! I'm turning into a total shopaholic. I can spend hours wandering around the booths at Asakusa, or browsing through the discount book stores in Kanda (I found one with manga for 105 yen. That's right--I can get a comic book for less than a dollar! I can't wait until payday!). And there's an area in Ueno that has dozens and dozens of temples--there's a temple practically every other building. There's tons and tons of parks and video arcades with random games (DDR is out, and taiko drumming games are in, apparently).

I thought Tokyo would just be another city--a lot of concrete and pigeons and gum on the sidewalk. And, true, it is pretty grim and drab sometimes. But there's so much to DO, and everywhere you go has its own unique personality and character. And you never know when what you think is a gap between two ratty, run-down office buildings, will turn out to be a tiny, mysterious, quiet little shrine.

So every day I have off I pick a random spot on the map, take the train over there, and wander around for hours exploring. Thursday I hit Kappa Bashi Doori in Asakusa, which is a street devoted entirely to accoutrements for restaurants: entire shops of plastic food, or waitresses' uniforms, or old-fashioned street-side ramen carts. Friday I wandered around the temples in Ueno. Thursday I think I'm heading into the Meiji Jingu shrine at Yoyogi Park in Shibuya in Tokyo, because this week is a festival dedicated to the birthday of the Emperor Meiji.

I wasn't bored BEFORE I got the Internet, and now that I have Net access I have about ten billion things I want to do. Don't be surprised if I update LESS now than I did this past month. I'm probably catching up on my TV shows or wandering around the parks along the Tama River or spending far, far too much money at the 100 yen store down the hill (hey! It only costs 100 yen! Who can turn down a deal that good?!).
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In my room. On my bright, shiny new Internet connection!

I also got a cell phone today, so e-mail me if you want the number. Incoming calls are free for me, so please phone as often as you like.

Anytime I'm home I'll be on AIM. My username's Hanabira. I'd love to chat any time you feel so inclined.
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PROFESSIONAL KACIE!!!

It`s still kinda strange waking up and putting on a suit first thing in the morning. I look so... adult. Not too adult, because people still ask me which university I`m going to, but at least they don`t think I`m a high school student anymore.

Which reminds me, I have about TEN THOUSAND pictures to show you guys when I finally get the Internet up. I got my alien registration card yesterday, so hopefully on my next day off (Thursday) I`ll be able to sit on hold with NTT for a few hours and hook up the Internet. When that happens, anyone that wants to chat please e-mail me your Skype or AIM usernames and I`ll be more than happy to talk. It will be so good to talk with everyone again! I can`t wait!

Soon after I arrived I found out that my French roommate Pascale was getting ready to go back to France. She moved out Sunday, and the new girl, Sara, arrived. Sara`s from Ohio, but she just spent the last two years working for a TV show in London. She and Leslie love to talk London for hours. So Leslie and I have been passing on our accumulated month`s worth of knowledge--where the best grocery store is, where the Internet cafe is, and don`t bother teaching the lesson about tactful criticism, because Japanese people just don`t GET it.

God has really blessed me here in Japan. My roommates are both wonderful, and I think we`re going to get along great. I couldn`t ask for a better boss--Becky`s so cheerful and friendly. My house is only one train stop away from my school--some people have to commute over an hour. I`m outside of the COOLEST CITY IN THE WORLD, instead of being stuck up to my neck in snow in Hokkaidou. The apartment`s MUCH bigger than I was expecting--I actually have to leave my futon sitting out during the day so I don`t have a huge, empty hole in the middle of the floor.

Kawasaki`s not what I asked for, but it seems God knew better than I did what I wanted.

I would be madly, passionately in love with my futon right now, except maintaining it is a serious pain in the butt. Every day I have to lean it up against the wall or fold it up and shove it into my overfull closet so it can air out. Twice a week, when no one else is drying laundry out on the balcony and the weather`s good, I have to hang it outside for a few hours and beat it with a stick to get all the dust out of it. Otherwise it`ll collect mold and mites and all kinds of nasty other creatures.

My room coordinates slightly better than my dorm in England, although it`s a close call. In England, I had pistachio green walls, red and blue curtains, and blue and purple chairs. Here I have white walls, pistachio green and pale blue curtains, magenta sheets, and a lemon yellow duvet with pistachio green and burnt orange flowers. Fortunately, I found some blue and green pillows at the 100 yen store that match both the curtains and the bed, and kinda tie the room together a little. Still, what were they thinking? Sara got pale blue futons and duvets that match her curtains perfectly. I guess mine are a step up from Leslie`s, though--she has pale pink futons with navy and white sheets.

We`re trying to figure out what to do with one of the sofas in the living room, though--to hide the holes in it it`s covered in a stained pink sheet. Maybe I`ll look at the 100 yen store for a big tablecloth or something.

I`m not sure if Pascale and Shev (the previous inhabitents of the apartment) were very messy people, or if they just didn`t spend a lot of time at home, but the apartment was a MESS when I first arrived. So now that Pascale`s gone, Leslie and Sara and I spent about three hours Sunday night cleaning junk out of the apartment. We found some pretty cool stuff--about a three years` supply of toothpaste and soap, a few cute lamps, some nice winter gloves, a couple of backpacks, etc. But there was so much TOTALLY RANDOM JUNK in the closets you couldn`t close them. We also found 14 lighters; a bunch of old, moldy clothes (you can`t just leave clothes crumpled up in the back of the closet in Japan); used candy wrappers; five-year-old issues of People magazine; plastic toys from McDonald`s; half a dozen old, moldy pillows; and all kinds of other crap. If we were so inclined we could form a band: we found a guitar with a broken neck, two sets of speakers and a tuner for the guitar, a keyboard without a stand or power cord, a tambourine, a hot pink plastic recorder, and a strange sort of plastic lap-accordion! The girls next door came over and watched us clean, because it was hilarious some of the stuff we were pulling out of the closets.

In the end we three out FIVE TRASH BAGS worth of junk. And that was just the living room--next the kitchen needs some SERIOUS cleaning. Yesterday Leslie and I cleaned out the fridge and the furoba (the bathroom with the sink and cabinets, not the tub or toilet) and found five-year-old bottles of who-knows-what. Next is the kitchen, because one of these days I`m going to kill myself reaching for a plate on a high shelf and causing an avalache of glasses and plastic lids to fall down onto my head.

Well, it`s about time for work, so I`ll sign off now. Next time I`ll tｅｌｌ more funny stories about classes and describe Tokyo, the COOLEST CITY IN THE WORLD!
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Sorry it`s been so long. The Internet War saga continues. On the plus side, the phone company has stopped sending us bills in the other girl`s name. On the minus side, they refuse to set up a connection for me until I have my alien registration card, which I can`t get until the 23rd. So it`ll be at least a week before I have Internet up and running. Expect sporadic updates until then.

Anyway, work.

I`m having a great time so far. 90% of my students are wonderful, and another 5% are ADORABLE BEYOND ALL BELIEF OH MY GOSH! I JUST WANT TO ADOPT THEM! There`s this one little junior high student that`s the cutest creature on the planet, and this one tiny little old lady--a total beginner, still trying to figure out the colors and numbers--that always smiles so sweetly, even though I doubt she understands half of what I say. My branch is right next to a university, so we get a lot of college students. And most of the rest are either computer programmers, engineers, or housewives. They`re all serious about learning and really try very hard in classes.

Here`s my schedule:

Saturday 10:00 - 5:40
Sunday 11:40 - 7:00
Monday 2:15 - 9:00
Tuesday 2:15 - 9:00
Wednesday 10:00 - 4:45

Thursdays and Fridays off.

This seems like a strange schedule, but I actually like it. My favorite are the 2:15 - 9:00 shifts, because I can sleep in that morning, or wake up and run errands, or watch a movie over breakfast, or even go sightseeing for a couple of hours. On the days where I have regular business hours, I don`t really get a chance to enjoy the sunlight, and I can`t conduct any business that takes longer than my lunch break.

So every day I have either 7 or 8 40-minute lessons of 1-4 students, and on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I have one period of Voice, which is just a free conversation room. Voice is my favorite--I can sit back and let the students talk about whatever they want, and if conversation falters I just need to have a couple of conversational topics to discuss, or a game to play, anything to keep people talking. So I`m basically getting paid money to sit around and chat with people about travel and pets and fashion--I`m DEFINITELY not complaining.

I`m told which students will be in each lesson, and what level the lesson should be, and then I`m given total control over the class. So I pick a subject none of the students have studied--or at least haven`t studied recently--and either use the lesson plan in the textbook or make up my own, depending on my mood, how much time I have, whether I can think of anything interesting, etc. Generally 2/3rds of the lessons I teach are straight out of the textbook, but I think with practice I`m getting better at making up my own ideas.

I passed my one-week review with flying colors. My assistant trainer, Becky, said she was impressed. That was something of a minor miracle, though--that lesson went better than 90% of my lessons do. Sometimes, and I`m not sure why, my plans totally bomb. Sometimes it`s because there`s a whole bunch of shy students that refuse to talk, sometimes it`s because one student is monopolizing the conversation, sometimes it`s because the lesson in the book was written by a moron, sometimes it`s because I am experimenting with something new and it`s too complex... I hope with time to get better at controlling a class and tailoring lessons to each students` abilities.

I really do enjoy my job. Okay, it`s not so fun at 7:30 in the morning when I have to leave my nice, comfy bed for the cold, harsh real world. But when the bell rings and I sit down in front of the students, time flies. I`m always wishing classes were longer, because there`s just *one* more idea I need to teach.

Students say the funniest things, too. I once asked a group of women, "Can you give me an example of a status symbol?," expecting answers like "Cars" or "Jewelry." Instead, they looked at each other, giggled, and blurted out, "Younger boyfriends." Apparently it`s something of a status symbol in Japan for a woman to be able to parade around a younger man, because it means she earns enough money that she doesn`t have to depend on an older and more financially stable husband. In another class, a man said dogs were a status symbol in Japan--you`d have to be pretty rich to have enough space for a golden retriever here.

In Japanese, the -mashou ending on a verb can mean "Let`s go..." or "Would you mind if I..." or "You should..." or "Don`t you think it`s..." depending on context. So I`ve had to explain to students that "Let`s go" does not mean the same thing as "You should go," especially when the speaker is a man, the listener is a young woman, and the topic under conversation is the strange and bewildering variety of hotels, inns, and resorts available in Japan. :P

Teaching at Nova has forcefully reminded me of the complexity of Japanese culture. On the one hand, yes, they are a very polite and reserved people. I`ve learned never to ask the students to raise their hands when they have the answer to a question, because they won`t--they just kinda nod and twitch their fingers in a generally upward direction. And I can`t play games with the girls, because they`ll spend thirty seconds offering one another the chance to win the point instead of buzzing in themselves. "Go ahead!" "No, it`s okay. You do it." "No, no, please go!" And the lessons on denying blame always bomb, because they won`t bother to defend themselves--they just say, "I`m sorry! I won`t do it again! Here, let me buy you lunch!"

On the other hand, the Japanese can be incredibly blunt and direct sometimes. I`ve had students TOTALLY fail lessons on politely correcting others. "No, no, no! That`s wrong!," they`ll say, even after I`ve pointed out that, "Can you think of a better way to say that, like `Maybe is a better answer?`" Older men and women, in particular, can be incredibly bossy, and sometimes I have to jump in and prevent them from quite loudly and forcefully correcting the other students` mistakes.

My coworkers have all been wonderful, my AT Becky in particular. She had a big welcome party for me at a local izakaya (a restaurant/bar frequented by company employees). I tried some kind of fish that they seared with a blowtorch right at the table, and cheese-flavored tofu sprinkled with honey and some kind of nut (I`ve GOT to learn how to make that), and `the dragonball` sashimi (shrimp and caviar and some kind of greenery and wasabi over rice). Then Saturday she dragged us all to karaoke. She`s always very cheerful and energetic, and has really been supportive and helpful. And as far as I can tell she likes me, so yay! I`m not going to fail at my first job!

Strangely enough, I`ve found that I don`t like Japanese tea. I mean, I like green tea, but that`s not what they serve at restaurants in autumn. Instead, they give us mucha (?) which is browner than green tea and very bitter and strong. Sometimes they`ll serve cold barley tea, which is even worse. I guess I`ll just have to wait and see what their winter tea is like. So far, though, I`ve had much better luck with the seasonal fruit juice. Tropicana has a seasonal line here, actually, and the autumn flavor is this WONDERFUL mixture of apples and blackberries and some other berry I can`t identify. I`ll be sad to see it go when winter arrives.

It seems strange to say so, but I actually think living in Japan is more convenient than England. I mean, there have been a few communication difficulties, but I`ve been able to find everything I really wanted easily. In England, the nearest grocery store was a forty-five minute walk away; in Japan there`s two grocery stores and a 100 yen shop right next to the train station. Plus, across the street from my office is another grocery store, two 100 yen stores, a bookstore, a park, and this Internet cafe. If I need to go into town for banking or shopping, the local train line can take me straight into Tokyo in 30 minutes. In Japan, if you know how to get to a train station, you know how to get to anything　else your heart could desire.

Besides, I`m living in a country where every grocery store and 7-Eleven has manga. Oh, the manga. The piles and piles and　piles　and　piles　of manga. I　can　die　happy！　I`ve read the first volumes of Death Note and xxxHolic, and I hope to　buy　more　as　soon　as　I‘m　done　posting。

Okay,　I`ve　somehow　managed　to　turn　the　Japanese　input　feature　on　and　I　can‘ｔ　figure　out　how　to　turn　it　off。　I`m　signing　off　before　this　driveｓme　nuts。

// posted by Kacie @ 1:09 AM

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I was a little disappointed when I didn't get posted to Kyoto, but I really can't complain about Kawasaki. As my roommate Leslie puts it, we're kind of "out in the sticks." I have all the advantages of living in a big city--I'm a ten-minute walk from a train station where I can go anywhere in the entire greater Tokyo area in 30 minutes--but there's a big bamboo grove on the way and greenery and wide-open spaces all over the place. The Tama River's a few miles away, and apparently there's wonderful parks and gardens along it--I need to investigate on my next day off. I count myself blessed in this regard--downtown Tokyo is very drab and depressing. Every building is some shade of either dull tan or bland gray, the monotony only broken by the occasional blue-grey tile roof.

I take back what I said about Tokyo being rainy. It rained non-stop for DAYS, Wednesday through Friday, but apparently that's something of an aberration. Everyone was talking about it at work the next day, that the storm was just short of typhoon levels. But except for the nasty storm it's been lovely. Saturday and Sunday the weather was PERFECT--it was warm and sunny, with a few fluffy little clouds floating in the sky and a warm, gentle breeze. I could not ask for better. Everyone's really looking forward to the turning of the seasons--unlike in Dallas, the trees actually turn brilliant orange and yellow and purple-red in the fall.

I live on the top of a HUGE hill--I'm definitely going to be in excellent shape by the time I get back, from dragging myself up and down that blasted hill every day. My roommates have been lovely--Pascale, our veteran French teacher, knows a little bit about everything, and Leslie's always smiling and cheerful. We get along very well.

The apartment's actually much bigger than I was expecting--not really that much smaller than most American apartments, and my wardrobe tends to disappear in the depths of my huge closet. The futon's more comfortable than my bed at home, and the duvet is FABULOUS, perfectly fluffy and soft and warm. I'm still not used to the pillow, though--it's much thicker than American pillows, and one half is filled with little plastic beads. I generally just sleep without it most nights. The problem with living in a country as humid as Japan, though, is that everything tends to get moldy. Every few days I have to open the windows and stretch out my stuff so my bedding and curtains and clothes don't get moldy. It takes FOREVER for laundry to dry, too.

I got a Japanese bath! I'm so excited about that. I need to buy a little plastic stool to sit on, though, and that green bath solution Japanese people use. For now I'm just using it like a normal American shower.

The fridge is about half the size of the fridges back home, but since there's just the three of us we get along all right. I've been making a lot of okonomiyaki in the mornings (pretty much pancake mix with carrots and cabbage and whatever else you feel like tossing into it) and after work I nibble on leftovers, or cereal and dried fruit. I may try packing a lunch later, but for now I'm trying to eat out with my coworkers, get to know them a little. There's a supermarket next door to my office, too, but my experiences with their bentou have been... discouraging. I didn't realize it was POSSIBLE to make tempura taste bad. Today I had the most WONDERFUL onigiri--rice balls stuffed with fish and wrapped in what I THINK was salmon and the fish equivalent of beef jerky.

Apparently my roommate Pascale is moving back to France in a couple of weeks. She says she has personal reasons, and I don't want to pry. But when she does, I'm doing some MAJOR spring cleaning. There's years and years of junk built up in the apartment. We have the most RANDOM book collection--everything from Freud to random Japanese mysticism to cheap romance paperbooks--and you can't open half the cabinets without stuff falling down on top of you.

At Kawasaki City Hall there's a group of volunteer English teachers that meet every Friday. I went last week and had a lot of fun. I didn't really learn much because I was with my roommate Leslie that doesn't speak a word of Japanese and we mainly worked on teaching her how to introduce herself. But next week they say they'll move me up to a more advanced class. I can't wait! That was the first time I'd had personal contact with Japanese people, and they were all absolutely LOVELY. It's strange to think that I've lived in Japan for almost two weeks and spent next to no time with Japanese people. There's a sort of English bubble that most Nova teachers spend all their time in--I've only met one or two teachers that speak any Japanese. One of the veterans has lived here for seven years and doesn't know more than the basics like "Thank you" or "How much does it cost?" I can see I'll need to put effort into actually getting out of the English Bubble into real Japanese society.

Still haven't found a church that meets outside of my work hours, but I'm working on it. Hopefully by next week. Still looking for a good phone company and ISP, too.

I'll describe work to you later. Love you all!
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Sorry it's been a while since I posted. The last girls to live in this apartment apparently left without paying their phone bill, so in order to get phone, internet, cable, etc. we'd need to pay a huge fee. Instead of bothering with that, we're looking around for another phone company.

In the meantime, I can only connected to the internet intermittently when my roommate Pascale isn't using her computer and the atmospheric conditions are right for tapping into our neighbors' unsecured wireless network. So I probably won't be updating regularly. If you want to get in touch with me, please e-mail me and wait a day or so.

I just spent 30 minutes writing about my roommates, my apartment, the weather, my job, etc., but then Pascale's computer deleted it. Blah. I really don't feel like re-typing it right now, so just be assured that I'm alive, I'm well, it rains here even more than England, and I really, really like the instant okonomiyaki mixes you can buy down the hill at the grocery store. More info later.

If you happen to remember me at prayer time, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep praying for my church situation. I talked with my area manager, and she was VERY sympathetic. Apparently it's fairly common for teachers to request certain time off on Sundays for church. Unfortunately, the period from 11:00-1:00 on Sunday is the busiest time of the week, and she really can't spare me then. She says if I can find a church with an earlier service, at 8 or 9 or so, or an evening service after 5, she will change my schedule so I can attend. So I'm going to e-mail the church I had intended to attend and ask if they know of another Bible church near my house that has services at a good time for me.

Love you all!
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So I rode the subway with Emily and Linda to Asakusa yesterday. We saw the three big landmarks in Asakusa: the Asahi Beer buildings, the Kaminarimon Gate, and Sensoji temple. The Asahi Beer buildings are pretty funny, actually--I`d recommend looking them up on Google. The first is designed to look like a mug of beer--it`s a gold skyscraper with white and bumpy `foam` at the top. The second is supposed to be the Olympic torch, but the flame didn`t turn out quite right and now locals call it `kin no unchi,` the golden poop.

Kaminarimon is a huge red gate whose most prominent feature is a giant 10-foot Japanese-style red lantern. Inside the supports on either side are statues of Raijin the thunder god and Fuujin the wind god. If you step through the gates you find yourself in the Nakamise shopping arcade, full of all kinds of little random trinkets. There was one booth that had samurai top-knot wigs and really pretty hairpins (Erin--come visit me and we can go hairpin shopping in Asakusa!). Another had all kinds of little figurines and the CUTEST totoro stuffed animals. A third had dozens of different kinds of senbei (rice crackers). A fourth had lovely wallscrolls and curtains (Apparently the popular style right now is a dark background of black, navy, or crimson, decorated with ADORABLE little white bunnies watching the moon and eating clover. I know where I`m coming to get decorations for my apartment!). A fifth had yukata (light summer kimono)--some for as cheap as $20! (DEFINITELY coming back there.) Apparently a mile or so to the west is a street lined with shops devoted exclusively to selling the little plastic food they put in front of restaurants. So, Asakusa is the place to go if you want to buy any kind of trinket or junk.

For lunch we stopped at Tenya, a chain of tempura restaurants. I had the tempura teishoku (set meal), which included miso soup; rice; a little plate of some vegetable dish made of pickled green mustard, daikon radish, and some other unidentifiable vegetables; a little bowl of fish paste (which is quite interesting--and by interesting I mean GROSS); and shrimp, squid, Chinese potato, green bean, and fish tempura. Except for the fish paste, it was all absolutely DELICIOUS. Emily had a tempura yasai don (vegetable and rice bowl), which had pieces of tempura resting on top of rice and this really yummy vegetable broth. I`ll have to see if they have a branch in Kawasaki.

After lunch we caught the subway south to Akihabara. I`d heard that Akihabara was a mecca for electronics, and I hadn`t heard wrong! It was about a square mile of electronics stores. What no one thought to mention to me was that they also have anime and video game stores there. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MUCH ANIME IN MY LIFE!!! Emily and I vowed to come back sometime and spend an entire day wandering around the shops there. It`s like the dealers room at your average anime convention, but about 1,000 times bigger. And, if such a thing is possible, even more crowded. Of course, Akihabara makes up for it by not having 300-pound hairy men in mini-skirts. Strangely enough, we ran into some friends of Linda`s there--what are the odds of that happening?--and they told us the location of a popular `maid cafe,` where all the waitresses dress in cute little costumes and will do cute things like sing or draw pictures on request. I might have to go there sometime--they said it was really a lot of fun, if full of creepy fanboys with maid fetishes.

After we finished drooling over the toys at Akihabara, we rode south to Ginza, Tokyo`s upscale name-brand shopping district. Of course, we weren`t dressed for wandering around in the Gucci or Chanel stores, but we did briefly look around the Apple and Nissan stores. I have pictures of Nissan`s new demo car, the Pivo, that you absolutely HAVE to see. It was the most amazing little car I`ve ever seen in my life. The cab itself is separate from the undercarriage, and with the press of a button it will circle around 360 degrees. The Apple store looked just like Apple stores back home, except it was much, much bigger, and absolutely CRAMMED with people playing with the new iPod Nanos. Then we just sat on the curb for a couple of hours, talking and watching people and admiring the sunset. I might have to go people-watching in Ginza again, as there`s really all kinds of interesting things to see. Going to Ginza`s something of a status symbol--everyone dressed up really nicely and brought their dogs. Those poor creatures were decked out in enough bows and cutesy clothes to clothe a small third-world country. Seriously, who puts a magenta BIKINI on a dog? There were also a fair number of women wandering around in VERY expensive-looking yukata. So once I buy my yukata, I know there will be at least ONE place I can wear it.

After that we were tired so we headed back to Shinjuku. We stopped briefly at the Tokyo Municipal Government Building again, and got to see Tokyo at night. How did it look? STUNNING. I always thought Dallas was a fairly cosmopolitan area--after all, I can shop for saris, visit the opera, and top the evening off with dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant--but Tokyo is HUGE. It`s amazing to stand on the top of this skyscraper and look down and realize there`s nothing but buildings as far as the eye can see, and you`re only looking at a fraction of the city. I took some very cool pictures that I hope turned out so I can show you all what it looked like.

So I`m typing this now as I`m waiting to catch my train to my apartment. Next time I update I`ll be able to describe my neighborhood to you and tell you what my roommates are like. I can`t wait!
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On Friday I went to Ueno Kouen Park with a few of the other Nova teachers. The pond there is covered by lily pads two feet long! I`ve never seen lily pads that size before! On the bank was a temple to Benzaiten, the goddess of words, knowledge, and music. I wasn`t too impressed with it--it was a fairly small and run-down neighborhood shrine. A few hundred feet away, though, hidden in a small grove of trees, we stumbled across the most delightful little shrine dedicated to Hanazono, a former emperor, and Inari, the god of rice and agriculture. We almost missed Inari`s shrine because it looked like it was simply a gap between two of the larger temple buildings, ending in the stone wall that surrounds the temple. But the opening of the gap was guarded by two kitsune fox spirit statues and a red torii gate, so I slipped through to see what was inside. Apparently the building on the left had a secret back room, lit only by candlelight, filled with the smoke of burning incense, and holding a small prayer shrine and mandala. It was wonderfully restful and peaceful back there.

After that we stopped at a noodle shop for lunch. I tried tanuki udon, `badger noodles,` which turned out to be noodle soup covered with seaweed and little bits of tempura batter. No complaints about that!

One of the girls with us, Liz, worries me a little. She doesn`t speak a word of Japanese, she hasn`t watched anime, and she`d never eaten Japanese food before this trip. When we were recommending food at lunch, she completely floored us by asking, "What`s miso soup?" ::blink:: I`m still not sure what made her decide to move to a country she knew nothing about. When asked, she said she has a relative that works for a magazine over here, and she wanted to experience a culture that was completely different from America`s. But I don`t think she`s going to last very long. Every time we eat, she takes about three bites of her food, then puts her chopsticks down and waits for the rest of us to finish. If yakisoba and ramen are too adventurous for her, I don`t know how she`s going to avoid starving over here.

She really freaked out yesterday about having to travel all the way from the hotel to her apartment. We showed her which train to take, pointed out the English signs directing her the right way, and wrote out directions in Japanese in case she needed to ask someone for help, but she was still really, really worried. I don`t think she`s at all comfortable here. It`s sad, because she`s really the sweetest girl, and she`s going to be living about 10 minutes away from me, but I wonder sometimes if she`s completely nuts.

So after lunch we went to the Tokyo National Museum. Some of the exhibits were more interesting than others--I`m sorry, Erin, but I just can`t find it within me to get excited about 3,000-year-old pots--but the Edo-period exhibits were fascinating. They had GORGEOUS antique kimono, samurai armor and swords, pottery and hairpins and wallscrolls and paintings and silverwork and all kinds of wonderful pieces from the 16th-18th centuries.

There`s tons more to see in Ueno Kouen--about five more museums, a couple more shrines and temples, a famous graveyard, several well-known statues, etc. And in an area covering a couple of square miles around the park there are about 15-20 little neighborhood shrines, according to my map. I`ll have to come back sometime.

After that our feet were killing us, so we went back to the hotel and rested. That afternoon I walked down the street to the Tokyo Municipal Government Building, which has a free observation tower where you can look down and see the most BEAUTIFUL view of Tokyo. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day so I could only see a few miles, but in clear weather apparently you can see all the way to Mt. Fuji.

So after all that I decided to count Friday as a success, and went to sleep, feet aching and blistered all over, and a smile on my face.
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So I got to have real-life conversations with real-life Japanese people yesterday! Who doesn't relish the feel of asking the clerk at the front desk where to buy sunblock? Who can't but gasp in sheer delight at the wonder of asking the lady at the yakitori shop if there's room for 5 people inside? Okay, probably most people. Simple pleasures for simple people, I guess.

So I went sightseeing with five other girls yesterday. First we stopped in Roppongi to see the Imperial Palace. Unfortunately, the gardens there are several square miles in size, so we only got to see the tiniest portion of them. We all posed for pictures in front of Nijubashi Bridge, which is a very famous bridge that shows up in a lot of movies, including "The Last Samurai."

From the palace it was a short walk to the Diet Building, where Japan's parliament meets. I found to my chagrin that 'Diet' is just the English word for it--when I asked random people where the Diet Building was they looked at me like I was nuts. Their word for it is Kokkai. Where in the world does 'Diet' come from?

Then we rode the train over to Zojoji Temple a very famous temple that was built over a thousand years ago and served as the family temple of the Tokugawa clan that ruled the country as shogun for 250 years. Inside the main temple was a giant statue of Amida Buddha. To the right were Jizo statues, which supposedly protect the souls of dead children. Bereaved mothers will knit caps and leave toys for the statues. At the back of the temple was a graveyard and a monument to several Tokugawa shoguns buried there.

Tokyo Tower was only about 1/2 of a mile away from Zojoji, and I got some *beautiful* pictures of the temple with the tower looming in the background. Then like any self-respecting anime fan I had to go to the tower and take a couple of pictures there, too. For those of my viewers that don't watch anime, Tokyo Tower is almost always the location of the final battle between the good guys and the bad guys in any show with magical powers. Card Captor Sakura, Tenchi Muyo, X, Magic Knights Rayearth, Sailor Moon, and many, many other anime all had final show-downs on top of the tower. So it was really an amazing experience to finally see in person something I've seen a thousand times on TV.

When we got back to the hotel we found that the Japanese cleaning services take their responsibilities *very* seriously. All of the toiletries in my bathroom had been neatly organized, and Emily across the hall found all of her clothes neatly folded and set at the foot of her bed. I'm not so sure how I feel about total strangers rifling through my dirty clothes...

I finally figured out how to use the toilet in my room! Yay! It comes with a water-conserving option, a bidet, a water spray, and an option for changing the pressure and temperature of the water. Note to Japan: seriously, guys, if you need three instruction stickers, and the poor gaijin STILL takes 10 minutes to figure out how to flush, you might want to consider whether the toilet's a little too complicated.

Today we're heading to Ueno, which has a huge garden full of museums and temples. I can't wait!

Love you guys!
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Okay, everybody, I've arrived in one piece and not totally exhausted. Right now I'm staying at the Keiou Presso Hotel in Shinjuku for a few days while the woman that's currently staying in my apartment moves out. There are about 15 other Nova teachers here, and they're all really nice, so I think after breakfast we're going to go on a massive tourist spree around Tokyo today. First on the list: Tokyo Tower! I can't wait!

Excuse me if this post sounds a little strange; I didn't sleep but about 30 minutes on the flight and then I woke up at 5:30 this morning, my body complaining that it was 3:30 in the afternoon and I needed to get out of bed now! So I'm a bit punchy. But I'm sure I'll be fine with an afternoon nap. Strangely enough, the sun had already risen by 5:30. Either they like to set the clocks earlier here than in America or I'm going to get a LOT of sunlight. (I'm hoping for option number 2, of course.)

I'm trying not to fangirl too obviously, but I can't help a little squeeing here and there. There are Japanese people everywhere! (Many of them are staring at me.) There are Japanese signs everywhere! And OMG there are SCHOOL GIRLS IN SAILOR FUKU! GAH! They are SO CUTE! And there's Japanese stuff on TV! I watched part of Hey! Spring of Trivia as I was getting ready for bed last night. (For those of you that don't watch enough Spike, Hey! Spring of Trivia is a totally silly and pointless trivia show where the hosts say one ridiculous statement and the contestants have to guess whether it's true or not. Then they rank the true statements according to just how amazed they were to find out that it was true. Last night I learned, for example, that Michael Jackson made a Sega game in the early 90s in which you had to moonwalk to save the planet from aliens. No, I'm not kidding. They showed fight scenes from the game, and it was the most bizarre (and frightening!) thing I've seen in quite a long time. Bet you never guessed just how educational this international experience would prove for me!)

Japanese computers are really hard to use. First off, it took me about 10 minutes to find the apostrophe. Then I accidentally turned on the Japanese input mode, so all the characters moved around the keyboard. And even common pages like Blogger pop up in Japanese--good thing I could read the 'New Post' button or I wouldn't be writing this right now!

I was wondering if everyone would be so kind as to pray for me. I got my work schedule last night, and I've been scheduled to start on Sundays at 11:40, which is right in the middle of church. According to my contract, I'm not allowed to request a shift change until I finish my two-month probationary period, so I may end up unable to go to church for two months. Hopefully my supervisor will be willing to make an exception for religious reasons. I guess I'll know when orientation starts Monday. Oh, yeah, and I'll be traveling about 45 minutes into Shibuya, Tokyo, for orientation, but after that I'll be working about 15 minutes away from my apartment in Kawasaki. (At least, I think it's 15 minutes away in Kawasaki. I can't tell from the map if it's actually in Kawasaki or not, but I assume they would have taken care to mention if it's in another city. Another question to ask my roommates, I guess.)

Well, I'm going to go get a map and plot out my train route for the day, then it's off to breakfast and exploring. See you guys later!
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I'm busy, busy, busy getting everything ready to go. I'm so excited I could simply explode! Starting September 27th, or whenever I manage to get Internet access, drop by this page regularly for the latest news on my wild life in Kawasaki, Japan!

For those who are curious, Kawasaki is about 30 minutes south of Tokyo and 20 minutes north of Yokohama. It's kinda the Japanese version of Arlington--a good place to stop and take a bathroom break when you're traveling between the two large cities. So I'm a half-hour away from all kinds of fun stuff. I can't wait! Expect to hear about my trips to Hakone, Kamakura, and Nikko, as well, as they're famous historical sites within a couple of hours of my apartment. And I should have highly amusing tales to tell of trying to communicate with my French roommate and attending Kawasaki's annual festival devoted to their patron deity, the fertility god Kanamasa-sama (lit. 'Iron Penis Lord'. No, I'm not making that up.)

See you in a couple of weeks!
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Here's my itenerary from my trip to Greece:

Saturday: Drove from Athens to our Patra hotel. Got lost in Megara.
Ate suvlaki (shish-kebab).
Travelled Patra: Patra Castle, the park, a Roman ampitheater,
the Rio Bridge.

Monday: Trip to Olympia. 3 museums, the ruins.
Dropped by Archaia Tritaia.
Took the scenic route home.

Tuesday: Delfi and Nafpaktos Castle.

Wednesday: Archaia Korinthos, Akrokorinthos, Mikines.
Lunch at Nafplio.
Theatre of Epidavros.

Thursday: Archaia Clauss, Patra archeological museum, Patra Castle.
Walked Rio Bridge.
Roman aqueduct.

Friday: Drove to Athens.
The Acropolis, the Olympeion, the Roman agora.

Saturday: Dionysus theater, the prison of Socrates, ancient agora,
archeological museum, Byzantine museum, Horologue,
changing of Parliament guard.
Ate moussaka.
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